Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(9)
“Oh?” I finally said. “When did you graduate?”
“Nah, school wasn’t my thing, but I ran a few rackets on campus back in the day.” I waited for an explanation, ready to call this * on his bullshit. “Kid stuff really, before I knew what I was doing.” He dismissed the truth with a nod and led me down a narrow hall with more red velvet and marble edging around the hardwood. “The point is, this city loves a good game. Any game. And they love their heroes. Kona Hale is the f*cking king around here. Hell, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.” This wasn’t new information to me. God knows how often my dad’s name got mentioned when people met me, but that didn’t seem to be Ironside’s point.
We stopped in front of large wood door guarded by a thug sporting a pair of black Raybans. “I’m just saying, people around here, they got big hopes for you. If you’re anything like your daddy, you’ll be king here too.”
“No, I’m not…”
“And we like to treat our kings like a different kind of royalty.” He pushed open the door without a second glance at the bouncer, directing me inside the room before I could put up much of a fight. “I got something extra special for you, Ransom. You’ll like this.”
“Listen, man, this isn’t really my thing.”
“Trust me,” he said, slapping my back in that pseudo-friendly way again. “You’ll like it. Stay. Have a seat.” When I made to move anyway, the man frowned, insulted. “I insist.”
So not worth the shit.
The lights were low and the room was draped in black velvet. Muted marble covered the floor in beige and gray checks that stretched around the small stage in the center of the room. Timber gestured to the red chair in front of the stage with its high-back cushions and walnut tapered legs.
“Shit,” I told myself, knowing what was coming, instantly feeling guilty for the poor girl who’d been talked into dancing for me. Summerland’s wasn’t a strip club. There wasn’t a Champagne room, or so I thought, or dancers willing to make your lap their personal stage if you kept the dollar bills flowing. It was about the art form, the seduction of the dance, the tease and talent it took to make the audience titillated and entranced. Yet I knew Ironside had convinced some girl that she was just a body for me to enjoy. He was just standing there, grinning at me like the Cheshire cat who’d eaten tempting, gooey cream.
I was going to walk out. I even took a step away from the stage. But then, the music started—and a slow, sultry voice I knew well began to sing. A voice filled the room, a voice that I’d been obsessed with at fourteen, all but convinced that Rockabilly music was the end-all, be-all. Imelda May. Her voice was the drugging hum that mesmerized me, that hooked me so the leg I saw, long and covered in midnight fishnet, yanked me forward on an unseen line. Then a knee hanging from red silk, the side of a hip, the small waist and after that, I only remember sitting down in that plush fabric and thinking, for the first time in over a year that I badly wanted to take something that wasn’t mine.
2
I fell in love at sixteen. And stayed there. Only one girl for me then, and the same girl for me now even if having her was impossible. But I wasn’t ignorant to seduction. The education my body, my size, my name, brought me, had always been unwelcome? uninvited, but women had still thrown themselves at me.
The woman in front of me didn’t want me. She hid her face with a mask, all dark purple and black feathers winged at the sides, swathed with small rhinestones that caught the dim light as she moved around the stage.
Imelda’s voice sang on, low, brutal—one, two, three knocks on the wall that calls her man, tells him she’s ready—while the dancer gyrated to her music, moving her hips with each word, a pop, a swirl, arms, torso sliding against the red silks above her as she lifted from the stage, became something surreal, fluttering, borne aloft. This was not a dancer but a dark fairy, with long, curled blonde hair and skin the color of a fawn, and my eyes would not move from every swirl of those silks or the way they cradled her in their tresses.
You’ll find me under your spell
Secret safe, I won’t tell.
She was an athlete. Strong, cut arms corded with faint veins, proof of exertion, testimony of muscle that was stretched, firm. Her legs were fit, thighs supple, but underneath there was the work of a thousand hours, of sweat and movement, of twists and bends that showed itself beneath that smooth skin. I could not stop watching her.
On the silks she took us both from the small room and we left the world behind, with her swooping among the fabric, looking weightless in the air as though she belonged there—free, uninhibited, alone. With the chorus came a quick slip of the silk, swinging her so close to the edge of the stage that I felt my pant leg move against my ankle in the whip of air and movement. Another dip, a quick swirl of her legs and the dancer spun above the stage, hair pulled behind her body, hanging onto that red fabric with the strength of her thighs.
When the song lowered, the bassline dipped into another rhythm, a sensual, vulgar song I recognized, and suddenly I realized there was a tapping at the only window that looked out into the private room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Ironside standing there, gesturing to the dancer to move on with her routine. I caught the shift of the dancer’s eyes, noticing for the first time how she kept glancing towards that window, the worry and anxiety masked behind her movements and the subtle hypnotizing sway of her body.