Chapter 5: Diamond

The private rooms don't smell like the main floor.

Out there it's sweat and cologne and the particular desperation of men who came in alone. Back here it's just quiet. Dim lighting. The hush of money being spent carefully.

I've never been nervous walking into one before.

I open the door.

The room is dark except for a single spotlight over the chair in the center. A small stage. A pole. And sitting in the chair, wearing all black and a masquerade mask that covers the upper half of his face, is a man. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark hair.

I don't let myself look too long.

I lock the door behind me. The music starts automatically, low and slow, and I walk toward the stage. This is the job. Just the job.

His eyes track every movement. I can't see his full face behind the mask but I can see his jaw, strong and defined, and I look away from it fast. I step onto the stage and let the music do what it always does — pull me out of my own head and into my body, into the place that has nothing to do with wanting and everything to do with control.

I run my hands down my body, over my waist and hips. He doesn't move, just watches, but I can see his hands tighten on the armrests and the tension gather in his shoulders. Good. I turn around, give him my back, unhook my bra slowly and let it fall. Look over my shoulder at him. His jaw tightens. I smile and face forward again, let my hands slide down my stomach and into my underwear without taking anything off, just teasing the edge of it.

And then it hits me.

Not a choice. Not anything I reach for. An ambush.

One second I'm working and focused and I'm Diamond, and then the angle of his jaw in the half-dark sends it arriving before I can stop it.

Cain.

I kill it instantly. It comes back. That pull low in my stomach that I've been outrunning since last night, the warmth I can't explain away, the ghost of his weight that my body keeps returning to without asking permission. I hear the man in the chair shift, hear his breathing change, and my body responds before my brain catches up, still back in that guest house, still—

Stop. It's not him. It's the dark and the music and the worst night of my life still living under my skin. I turn back around and walk toward him, down the steps of the stage.

He's right there. I straddle his lap, hands on his shoulders.

The rules say no touching. My rules. The ones I made eighteen months ago and kept every single night since without exception.

"You can touch."

The words leave my mouth before I understand I'm saying them.

The cold that moves through me is immediate and specific — not fear, just the clean sharp recognition of what I just did. I broke my one rule. For a man whose face I can't even see clearly. Because my body is still somewhere in that guest house and I can't pull it forward into the present.

His hand moves toward my hip. I let him. I let this stranger put his hands on me and then his fingers brush my skin and I see it.

The tattoo.

Black scales wrapping around his wrist, disappearing up his arm in the pattern I have been trying not to think about since last night. I go very still. His knuckles are split and bruised, fresh, and on his middle finger there's a silver ring I felt against my throat last night.

No.

I'm off his lap before the thought finishes forming. Backing away. My heart so loud I can hear it over the music. He stands slowly, reaches up, and takes off the mask.

Cain Russo.

Smirking at me like he just won the lottery.

"Hello, Diamond."

I slap him. Hard. His head snaps to the side and he laughs.

"I was wondering when you'd figure it out."

"What the fuck are you doing here."

"Getting a dance." He touches his jaw. "A very good one actually. You should finish."

"Get out."

"I paid for an hour."

"I don't care." I'm shaking. "Get the fuck out."

"Make me." He's across the room in two steps, backing me into the wall, hands on either side of my head.

"You knew," I breathe. "You knew I worked here."

"I found out tonight." The smirk drops. What replaces it isn't readable, isn't any expression I've seen on him before, and I don't have a name for it and that is somehow more unsettling than anything else he's done tonight. "A friend dragged me here last week. I saw a dancer. Couldn't see her face but there was a tattoo on her hip and I couldn't stop thinking about it." His eyes drop briefly to my hip. Come back up. "Last night I saw it again. On you. And I had to know."

The silence stretches.

"So no," he says, quieter. "I wasn't looking for you. You just have a way of showing up."

I don't know what to do with that. With the way he said it, like it cost him something to admit. So I do the only thing I know how to do with Cain Russo.

I get angry.

"You had no right—"

"You're right." He doesn't move back. "I didn't."

That stops me cold. He never concedes anything and we both know it and the fact that he just did makes me more unsettled than if he'd kept pushing.

"Get out of my way."

"Were you going to let me fuck you too?" His voice drops back into that register that has no business making my spine do what it does. "Or is that extra?"

There he is.

I shove his chest hard. "Last night was a mistake. It's never happening again."

"You sure about that?" His hand catches my hip. "Because you broke your rule tonight. The no touching rule. You said it yourself, and you said it to a man whose face you couldn't even see." He leans in close. "Were you imagining it was me?"

"No—"

"Liar." His thumb brushes my hipbone, right over the tattoo. "You're wet right now, aren't you."

Heat floods my face. "Stop—"

"Admit it." His mouth is right next to my ear. "You were pretending I was the one in that chair. Watching you. Getting hard for you."

"Stop talking—"

"Why?" His other hand slides up my side slowly. "Don't want to admit you've been thinking about last night? How good it felt?"

"It didn't—"

"Your body says otherwise." His hand cups my breast and I hate the sound that almost leaves my throat. "Your nipples are hard. You're breathing fast. And if I put my hand between your legs right now—"

I grab his wrist. "Don't."

"Scared you'll like it?"

"No." I push him back, actually move him this time. "Because last night was the biggest mistake of my life and I'm not making it again."

He steps back. Puts his hands in his pockets. "Okay."

I stare at him. "What?"

"Okay." He shrugs. "If that's what you want."

"It is."

"Then I'll go." He turns and walks toward the door and I stand there topless and breathing hard watching him leave.

He pauses at the door. Looks back.

"By the way. You dropped something last night." He reaches into his pocket and tosses it across the room. I catch it automatically.

My underwear. The red lace from the lingerie set. The ones he ripped off me.

"Keep them," he says. "As a reminder of the mistake you're never making again."

The door clicks shut.

The room is very quiet. The music has stopped. I'm standing here alone holding my own torn underwear in both hands.

I look down at the lace. Feel where the straps snapped.

Three shifts at the diner. That's what this cost.