Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  “It’s like they heard someone say something clever once upon a time and they’ve been trying to replicate it ever since.” Blake shook his head, moving the box aside.

  “Anything else of interest?” I asked, lowering my towel and slinging it up over the door of my locker. Around any other Alpha in such a confined space like this, I wouldn’t have dared. But when I looked back at Blake to see if he was watching or not, I only caught him stuffing his face.

  “Chocolates,” he said through a mouthful of Godiva, plucking one out of the box he’d opened on his lap and offering it to me. “Saved you a coconut one.”

  I eyed it for a moment, hearing my mother’s voice in my head all over again. A moment on the lips, forever on the hips. Eight years ago, that would’ve been enough to keep me from eating for the rest of the week—but I had enough muscle mass now, and spent enough hours pumping iron at the gym, I hardly gave it a second thought.

  I smirked as I bandied over to Blake, almost daring him let his eyes slide over my nude, rippling body as I approached him. If any Alpha had any right to look at me in that way, it was him. Blake had been my knight in shining armor after all these years at the Ballroom, standing watch over me as I performed even the sexiest of routines and throwing out any asshole who couldn’t quite wrap his head around the concept of look, don’t touch.

  But Blake’s gaze never strayed from mine. His icy blue eyes, clear and bright and glimmering, told me that he knew exactly what I was doing. Exactly how I was teasing him. And that he, unlike every other Alpha I’d run into that night, wasn’t a pig at all. He never even wavered—not even as I struck out a hip, making my half-hard cock swing heavy against my thigh while I plucked the chocolate from the palm of his hand.

  “Thanks,” I said, popping it into my mouth. Defeated, but not deterred. Not yet.

  “None needed.” He gave me a broad, smug smile before digging back into the chocolates—his own personal reward for all that valor. “Always a pleasure, Anders.”

  The lushness of the dark chocolate and the sweetness of the coconut beneath it filled my mouth as I returned to my locker, changing into my street clothes without another word. Blake fell strangely silent as well—but no matter how many times I looked back to see if it was because he was checking me out, I was disappointed.

  The one Alpha in all of Manhattan that I didn’t feel uncomfortable around, and he didn’t even want to fuck me. It was a small price to pay, I supposed, to know that I had at least one Alpha I could call a friend…

  But after so many years of self-imposed celibacy, I knew I’d be lying if I didn’t sometimes fantasize about him making a move on me. Even just to catch him looking—even just once.

  Instead, as I pulled my shirt over my head, I caught him scowling suddenly as he read over one of the cards he’d brought back with him.

  “What?” I asked, feeling my heart skip a beat. Blake was usually the personified version of a golden retriever. Sure, he could probably break a man’s nose with little more than a flick of his fingers—but despite that, normally he was all smiles. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Blake said, closing the card and shifting it beneath his thigh. “Don’t worry about it. Want another chocolate? I know there has to be another coconut one in that box…”

  “Blake,” I said sternly, moving toward him again as I stared him down. “Tell me. Is it…?”

  Blake only cringed, slipping the card back out from beneath his leg and cracking it open again with a look of warning in his eyes. “It’s…not pretty. You sure?”

  “Yes,” I insisted—even though I already had a pretty good idea of what he’d read. I’d had hundreds of cards just like it before. Not every night—but just often enough that I was always waiting for the next. “Blake…I have to know.”

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  3

  Blake

  I ran my thumbs over the front of the card, tracing the letters spelled out across its swirling, black and gold design. Bravo! it read in beautiful cursive script. The kind of thing I’d send to one of my nieces after scoring a lead role in one of their high school plays. Elegant, but generic. Benign. Inside, I’d write something about how proud I was. How much I wished I could be there to see it for myself. Something heartfelt to make up for the lackluster prettiness of the card my well-wishes had come in.

  The Alpha who’d sent this particular card had obviously been of the same mind. But instead of break a leg, or wish I was there, they’d taken a far more sinister approach. Like a scorpion in a little blue ring box. Innocent packaging, dangerous contents.

  “Says he enjoyed seeing you tonight,” I said carefully, keeping my voice as level as I could. I didn’t want to startle Anders, but there was no good way to tell him what he wanted to know without doing that. “Says you looked gorgeous up there on the stage.”

  Anders sucked his lower lip between his teeth, staring me down for a moment then shaking his head. “But that’s not all he said.”

  “No,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck with a long, labored sigh. “No, it’s not.”

  I usually figured myself for a man with pretty fast reflexes. Hand me a shotgun and put me out in the field, and I could hit a turkey flying up out of the tree line at a half-second’s notice. It’d made me one hell of a SEAL. One hell of a bouncer, too. But the card in my hand had the same weight and emotional heaviness as the one I’d handed to my best buddy’s mother the day I’d shown up at his funeral—and its contents were just as grim. It left me hesitating. Trying to buy a little more time between this moment and the one where I had to break to Anders the worst news of the night.

  “Oh, fuck it. Give that here,” Anders said, losing his patience and taking advantage of my dilly-dallying. He snatched the card from my big, callused hands in an instant, so fast he nearly left me with paper cuts.

  As he opened it up to read the last line, I watched his face turn from his perfect tawny tan to a shade of pale even whiter than the cardstock the note had been written on.

  “Shit,” he swore softly, snapping the card closed again.

  “Here,” I offered, holding out my hand. “Let me take it. I’ll toss it in the trash and we can forget this happened.”

  That was what I wanted for him. To be able to forget. No man, Alpha or Omega, deserved to walk around with that kind of threat hanging over their head. I knew that well enough myself—I felt much of the same every time I woke up in the middle of my bed, drenched with sweat and completely convinced that I was back in Syria again.

  To my surprise, though, Anders shook his head and tucked the card away in his duffel bag. “No,” he told me. “I’m keeping it.”

  “Why the hell would you want to keep it?” I blurted out, raising my voice loud enough that Anders shot me a dirty look.

  “Because,” he explained. “It’s evidence.”

  I raised an eyebrow, impressed. “You’re building a case on this guy?”

  “Not really, no,” Anders said, shrugging and looking deliberately away from me. “The police can’t do anything about it. No real clues—just these threats. No clues, no leads. You know how it is.”

  “But they should be doing something about it,” I argued. “How long has this been going on for? Five years? Six?”

  Anders laughed harshly. “Something like that. But what can they do, Blake? Escort me home every night on my way back from the club? Stake out my apartment twenty-four-seven, just in case this guy finally decides to make good on all these promises he’s been making for all these years?”

  “Well, why the hell not?”

  “Because, Blake.” Anders rolled his eyes, shrugging his gym bag up onto his shoulder. “They don’t believe he’s really going to do it. Drain on city resources, I think they called it. They think he wants me scared. Not dead.”

  “So why even bother collecting evidence, then?”

  “They might not believe that he wants me dead—but I s
ure as hell do. Years ago, he showed up at my apartment one night. Damn near kicked down the door. I think we can both imagine what would’ve happened if he’d succeeded.” He gave another laugh, shouldering past me on his way out the door. “Someday, he probably will. And when it finally does happen…at least I’ll have plenty of these cards stashed away somewhere safe to prove that I was right. To prove them wrong.”

  I blinked, taking that in for a moment. Forgetting about shit like this was one thing. Forgetting was what you tried to do so you could sleep soundly at night. But if Anders really believed that he was in danger like this—if he really believed that his stalker might finally come to him one night and fulfill all these years of terror he’d been sowing into Anders’ pretty blond head—then forgetting wasn’t what Anders needed at all.

  He needed protection. A sense of safety. Security. The real kind. And if the NYPD wasn’t going to provide it…

  “Wait,” I called out to him, grabbing the chocolates and jogging after him. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how scared you were.”

  “Oh, I’m not scared,” Anders said—and there was enough confidence in his voice that I nearly believed him. Almost.

  “If you believe this man’s really dangerous—”

  “I do,” Anders assured me. “Very much so.”

  “Then dammit, you have every right to be scared.” I leapt a step in front of him, wheeling around to cut him off as he made his exit. “This isn’t some baseless fear, Anders. This is legitimate. You really believe that this man intends to hurt you? You feel it in your gut?”

  “Feel it in my entire body,” he said—all too blasé about it, as far as I was concerned.

  “Then you’ve gotta trust that. Can’t deny yourself the fear of something real, Anders. That fear, it’s there for a reason.”

  “Actually, you’ll find that I can.” He shoved past me again, heading for the back exit that fed into the parking lot. “What’s the alternative? Spooking at every shadow that crosses my path? Checking behind the shower curtain every night, holding my breath and waiting for him to come down on me with a butcher’s knife?”

  “Why the hell not?” I shouted, bounding after him.

  Anders cast a glare over his shoulder at me again. “Stop yelling at me, Blake.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and meant it. Too many years in the SEALs had obviously fucked up my sense of volume control. “All I’m saying is, you shouldn’t ignore that gut feeling. Had too many of those of my own in my life. Not listening to your gut, that’s what gets you hurt.”

  “No, having an obsessive unknown stalker gets you hurt,” Anders snapped. “And there’s not fuck-all I can do to stop him—so, no. I’m not letting him ruin however much of my life I’ve got left before he finally decides to step in and end it.”

  I groaned in frustration. This was fucking infuriating, trying to argue with Anders like this. Sure, he’d been fine up until this moment right now—but what the hell happened when that finally came skidding to a halt? When this psycho cornered him in an alleyway on the walk home or on the way to the bathroom at Heaven’s like that other creep had done barely an hour ago?

  “Okay,” I said, pressing the door shut just as Anders opened it. “How about this, then. You let me drive you home, and I’ll check behind your shower curtain. Sound good?”

  Cue another eye roll. It was becoming Anders’ signature move at this point.

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Blake. Hard pass.”

  He tried to jerk the door open—and he was strong enough, if it had been any other man he was pulling against, he might’ve even managed it. But as strong as Anders was, evidence pointed to the fact that I was stronger—or at least, I was in a better position to leverage the full force of my muscles and my own body weight.

  “Right. My bad,” I said, smirking.

  “Glad you’ve realized it. Now, can you move?”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. See, you thought this was an offer that you could say yes or no to. What I meant was, it’s my bad for posing it as a question.”

  “What—? Oof!”

  I turned, dipping my shoulder and placing it against Anders’ hip. He had incredible hips, the perfect V of his lower abs carved out like a Greek statue. I could feel it against my neck as I hoisted him up over my shoulder, like I was carrying one of my former squad mates out of a combat zone.

  “What the fuck, Blake? Put me down, you ass!”

  “Hah. Been a while since I’ve been called an ass. Funny, I’ve missed that kind of sailor talk.” I looped my arm around Anders’ waist, holding up his weight effortlessly even as he kicked at my thigh and pounded his fists against my back in vain. “But you’ve gotta admit, as far as insults go, it’s no slut-dicked bitch hammer.”

  “Why on earth—Blake, come on! This isn’t fair!”

  “Life ain’t fair, sweetheart.” I pried the door open, kicking it swinging wide so we could pass through without it coming closed on Anders’ head. “If you’re not going to take your safety seriously, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

  I might’ve felt bad about some of the other things he called me as I carried him out to my truck. Things that weren’t quite as creative as slut-dicked bitch hammer, sure, but things that were a little more scathing. Bastard—that was always a good one. Jackass—music to my ears.

  But even as Anders struggled and fought me, I knew I was doing the right thing here. I wanted him safe—and as of that moment, safe meant giving him a ride home. Willingly on his part or not.

  You looked gorgeous up there on stage, his stalker had written in that exacting, precise dark black cursive he always wrote in. I’d seen cards like that come in a dozen times or more since word had gotten around that Anders had a gentleman admirer who was so far from gentlemanly. But now that I knew Anders had this gut feeling, I’d matched it with one of my own. Especially since reading that last line that the stalker had penned out across the card’s insides:

  You’d look even better bound and gagged in my bed.

  4

  Anders

  Blake lifted me like I was nothing. Less than a feather. Like I weighed nothing at all. I knew that much wasn’t true—I was easily fifty pounds of muscle heavier than I’d been back when I last did ballet. Normally, being picked up like that would’ve sent me spiraling into a world of self-consciousness and worry. Back before I’d sworn off sex, I hadn’t even let an Alpha try to lift me so he could fuck me up against the wall for fear that he’d hurt himself trying. But Blake didn’t even offer an uncomfortable grunt as he shouldered my weight. His gait didn’t even change as he hefted me out to his truck—and with my flailing limbs and protests, I knew I wasn’t exactly making it easy on him.

  “There,” Blake sighed, satisfied as he deposited me into his truck’s passenger seat. It wasn’t common to see trucks like his in New York City, lifted up so high off the ground on huge country tires like that. It was a vehicle big enough and pretty enough that it couldn’t have blended in with the rest of the city even if Blake had wanted it to. In that regard, I realized, it was a lot like Blake himself. “Was that so hard?”

  I glanced down at the ground, realizing that my chance of escape from this scenario was pretty low—and even lower once Blake reached across my lap to buckle me in. “For you? Maybe not. For me? Incredibly.”

  Blake stared up at me for a moment, blinking and stone-faced. “It’s just a ride, Anders.”

  “A ride that I’m being given by force,” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Yeah, well. My job as a bouncer is to keep you safe, isn’t it?” He gave me a quick grin as he moved to shut the door. “Can hardly blame me for doing my job, I think.”

  “It’s after hours, Blake. Can hardly pretend that it’s your—”

  Blake swung the door shut with a heavy thump, cutting me off prematurely.

  “Job,” I finished lamely as he came around to the driver’s side.

  Blake hopp
ed up into his seat, turning his keys in the ignition and sending the truck roaring to life. The engine was loud, but Blake’s stereo was louder. As soon as his console lit up, a Johnny Cash tune came blasting out of it—an old, crackling acoustic song about walking the line that nearly blew my hair out of place with the sheer force of volume.

  “Sorry,” Blake said with a chuckle as he turned down the volume. “Must’ve been rocking out in here before my shift.”

  “This is what you rock out to?” I raised a dubious eyebrow. I could hardly imagine anyone playing this at any of the clubs the other Angels and I had once frequented. Kylie Minogue or a Frank Ocean remix, maybe—but this, I wouldn’t have even known how to dance to if I wanted to.

  Which, I didn’t.

  “Johnny Cash? Sure. He’s a legend.” Blake cast a narrow-eyed glance over to me. “Not a fan?”

  “It’s not…bad,” I admitted. “But, ugh. No, not really my kind of thing.”

  Blake shook his head, laughing softly to himself as he switched the radio over to a Top 40 station. “Suppose if I’m giving you this ride against your will, it’s hardly right if I subject you to my music.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said, annoyed at how accommodating he was being. If he hadn’t changed the music over, I could’ve complained about that the whole way home, too.

  Instead, we listened to the Chainsmokers and took the drive in silence, with nothing for me to focus on other than my nerves about this new message from my stalker and the proximity of Blake’s hand to my knee every time he reached over to shift gears.

  Once upon a time, I might’ve thought that it’d be flattering, having a stalker. Naive, idiotic eighteen-year-old Anders could’ve seen the appeal. What Omega didn’t want some rich, powerful Alpha completely obsessed with him, after all? But now that I’d experienced the special kind of hell that my mystery man had put me through, I was a little bit smarter and a whole lot wiser than that. It’d never been obsession that I wanted—not really. Not deep down. Being the object of someone’s obsession meant not being able to sleep at night because you never knew when they’d show up at your place to kick down your door. Constantly looking over your shoulder, never knowing who might be following you on the crowded New York streets.