Zeke And Dorian

He smiled like that was exactly the right answer. He stood and held out his hand and I took it and let him lead me to one of the private booths along the wall. The sheer curtain fell closed behind us and the rest of the club became a soft blur of light and sound and we were in our own small world.

Music followed us in, slower and deeper than what was playing on the main floor. Dante stood in front of me and moved to it, unhurried, and I leaned back in the velvet seat and watched him work.

He reached up and pulled the laces of his trousers loose, slow, watching my face the whole time. The fabric slid lower on his hips. He ran his own hands up his stomach, over his chest, and rolled his body in a long wave that made my mouth go dry. He was performing but it did not feel like a performance. It felt like something being offered specifically to me.

I felt my pheromones shift. Thicken. Bleed into the warm air of the booth.

Dante felt it. His pupils blew wide and his movements changed, slower and more deliberate, more focused, like the music had slowed down just for him. He stepped closer and bent down and put his hands on the arms of my chair, his face close to mine, his breath warm, and I could see his pulse jumping at his throat.

"You are something else," he breathed.

I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart hammering under my palm. I let my fingers trace downward slowly and he exhaled hard and closed his eyes. My pheromones were pouring off me now and I could feel them filling the booth, thick and sweet and wild, and that shimmer started building low in my belly again and I chased it, leaned into it, let myself hope.

Dante pressed closer. His lips brushed my jaw and his hands slid to my waist and he was perfect, he was warm and skilled and completely undone by me, and I thought yes, yes, finally, this time—

And then the entire room went quiet.

I felt it before I understood it. The noise of the club did not stop but something moved through it like a current, a shift in the air that made Dante go still against me and made the low murmur of voices outside our curtain drop away to almost nothing.

I pulled back from Dante and looked at the curtain.

Through the sheer fabric I could see the main floor. People had turned. Not all at once but one by one, like something was pulling their attention toward the entrance and they could not help following it.

I stood up.

I pushed the curtain aside.

He was walking through the room and the room was parting for him and he was not even looking at it. He was tall, dark suit, black hair, a face that was all sharp angles and cold precision, and his eyes were moving through the crowd like he was looking for something specific.

They found me.

He stopped walking.

Around me I heard it, soft and certain, moving from mouth to mouth through the club like a wave. Alpha. That is the Alpha. That is Dorian.

He started walking toward me again. Steady. Unhurried. And my pheromones, which had been simmering all night, surged so suddenly and so violently that Dante made a low sound behind me and sat down heavily in the chair like his legs had given out.

Dorian stopped in front of me. He was close enough that I had to look up to meet his eyes and they were dark grey and completely unreadable and moving over my face with a focus so total it felt like being studied.

Then he inhaled. Slow and deliberate. Just once.

Something moved behind his eyes. Something that had not been there a second ago.

He reached into his jacket and set a card on the bar beside me without breaking eye contact. His voice when he spoke was low and even and gave nothing away.

"Your scent," he said.

He looked at me for one long moment.

"How much would you take for the night?"

I should have told him I was not a stripper.

That was what I had opened my mouth to say. Something sharp and dismissive that would have put him exactly where he belonged. But then I actually looked at him. Really looked at him. And every word I had prepared died somewhere in my throat and refused to come out.

He was devastating. There was no other word for it. Not handsome, not attractive, those words were too polite for what Dorian was. He was the kind of man that made your brain go completely stupid and your body start making decisions without consulting you first. Built like something designed specifically to ruin men, tall and broad and heavy with muscle, the suit he wore stretched across his shoulders in a way that made it clear the suit was fighting a losing battle.

I leaned back against the bar and crossed my arms and let my eyes travel down slowly because I had never once in my life pretended not to look at something worth looking at.

Wide shoulders. Thick neck. His chest was a wall of muscle under that shirt and I could see the outline of his arms even through his jacket sleeves and I thought about what arms like that would feel like wrapped around a man, pinning him down, holding him exactly where he wanted him.

My eyes kept moving. Down over his stomach, lower, and then they stopped.

The material of his trousers was doing absolutely nothing to hide what was there. The outline of his cock was right there, thick and heavy against his thigh, and the sight of it sent a rush of heat straight through my body so fast I actually had to press my thighs together.

God. He was big. Obscenely, unfairly big.

I wondered what he tasted like.

I looked back up and met his eyes and said, "We should take this somewhere private."

He looked at me for a moment and then said simply, "Come."