Page 60 of Nikolay

Then, because subtlety had become both impossible and unnecessary, I gave a single nod.

Her breath changed. I saw the slight lift in her chest even from where I stood.

And I winked.

Not broadly. Not like a boy. A single deliberate lowering of one eye, intimate as a hand at the back of the neck.

Then I turned from the bar and walked toward the stairs.

Chapter 10

Maddie

The demonstration continued, and so did I. My section gathered its breath in pieces—one broken exhale here, one murmured curse there, the clink of crystal finding tabletops while the swing still moved overhead and a vampire and a witch found their pleasure. I could tell they were nearing the end; at least I prayed they were.

That was the job.

Obsidian’s main floor breathed around me in purple low light and velvet shadow, all controlled appetite and expensive vice with its collar on. The air smelled like whiskey, skin, arousal, perfume, polished leather, and that faint sweet trace of vampire venom that always seemed to drift after demonstrations involving mouths and throats and too much pleasure done in public. People sat a little differently in their booths. A little looser. A little hungrier. Like the whole room had been reminded it owned a body and was considering what to do about it.

I balanced my tray on one hand and kept moving.

That helped. Movement always helped.

Which was almost funny, considering how badly it had betrayed me in the last ten minutes.

My panties were soaked.

There was no gentler way to phrase that to myself, and I was too irritated to try. Bodhan’s little public-service lecture had been one thing. I worked at Obsidian. I had seen enough sex, kink, blood, and elaborate supernatural nonsense to stop blushing over the mechanics of pleasure pretty damn early. But tonight the whole thing had gone wrong in the worst possible way because at some point it had stopped being about a beautiful witch on a swing and started being about the broad-shouldered vampire prince across the room watching me watch him.

That was the sort of problem a woman could not put on an incident report.

I passed beneath one of the low chandeliers and felt the cool drag of air conditioning over the backs of my bare thighs, my short black skirt shifting with each step. My face stayed neutral.

By the time I angled back toward Ironwood’s table, I had my expression under lock again.

Mostly.

Sage sat at the center like he had not moved at all, and yet somehow the entire table still arranged itself around him.

His whiskey glass stood empty near his hand.

I stepped in with my tray tucked at my hip. “Can I get y’all anything else?”

The bearded one asked for another neat pour of something top-shelf that cost more than my first car. One of the women wanted sparkling water this time. The other lifted two fingers for a refill of the red blend they’d been sharing. I nodded, committed it all to memory, and reached for Sage’s glass.

He picked it up at the same moment.

Our fingers met in the handoff.

It should not have mattered. People touched people in service work all the time. Knuckles brushed, palms grazed, receipts exchanged. But some touches arrived carrying too much awareness in them. His fingers were warm and callused where they slid against mine, not rough enough to scrape but rough enough to remind me that all the tailoring in the world did not make him soft. The contact lasted a beat. Then another, because either he was slow to let go, or I was.

He leaned in slightly as he passed me the glass.

“Another whiskey,” he said.

His voice was deep enough to feel before I fully heard it, an alpha register built low in the chest and thrown with no effort at all. It brushed my ear in a way that made something primitive in me come alert. I felt the fine hairs rise along my forearm under the sleeve of my fitted black top. My spine straightened before my mind caught up, a little involuntary line of steel running through me, and I stepped back half an inch on pure reflex as if distance could keep my body from hearing what it wanted to hear in a man’s tone.

Sage’s eyes flicked over my face.