Chapter 2

Scrambling to my knees only took a moment, but that was long enough to catch a glimpse of Dominic going all red and doubling over laughing amidst a sea of open mouths and wide eyes.

Oh, I'd be killing him too, whether or not he had any hand in this. Bastard.

I rolled to my feet and pulled a funny face, hoping to convince the audience, at least, to laugh with me instead of at me.

Dominic would be laughing at me until the heat death of the universe. Or until I killed him.

At least my embarrassment and annoyance kept me from popping the world's most prominent and illegal erection as I focused on circling my hips and strutting my stuff again. It wasn't easy. That magical scent had tensed all my muscles and set my heart racing, my whole body ready for action. Shifters, alphas especially, had a lot of strengths. Literal strength, for one, and sharp senses, not to mention the even sharper claws and fangs.

But we had a secret we tried to hide from the world at large: our instincts enslaved us in a way no other beings had to cope with. If I lost my cool, I'd do it spectacularly.

On the other hand, I was an adult, and a professional, and I forced myself to channel my body's reaction into displaying my claws and fangs and glowing eyes, giving my mostly human audience the thrilling edge of erotic danger they'd come to Lucky or Knot to experience.

Right below, a cluster of women threw bills at the stage, and I gyrated my hips in their direction, flexing my muscles and my claws. More money rained down.

The part of the song with lyrics was almost over, which meant Scott would be fading it out soon, thank the gods. My hip-thrusting bump-and-grind, aimed at the women paying me for my time, was taking a lot more effort than it should, and I desperately needed a few minutes of quiet to simmer down and get myself under control.

I gathered up my money, bowed and waved, and smiled and flexed some more, bulging my biceps and rippling my eight-pack.

When I sucked in a deep breath, that scent hit me again, a thread of almost unbearable freshness in the sweat-and-booze-and-sex reek that always pervaded the club, no matter how powerful the air conditioning system might be.

My cock stiffened again. Shit, I had to get off stage before I got myself fired after all. With a last flourishing bow, and a waggle of my ass at the particularly appreciative group down in front, I scooped up my pants and booked it down the stairs.

I slumped against the wall in the little hallway, breathing deep, grateful for once for the stale reek of concrete permeated with decades of cigarette smoke that characterized the area backstage. It almost completely drowned out the mysterious scent. One breath, two, and I let my head fall back as some of the tension drained out of me and common sense flowed back in to take its place.

Someone trying to sabotage my dance seemed ridiculously unlikely.

So a prank, probably. Jesus. Why couldn't people just act their ages?

Prank or not, though, I had to head out to the floor. Immediately after a dance was the best time to mingle in the crowd and hopefully capitalize on their enthusiasm, turn on the charm and get a few private or semi-private dances, make the real money.

Louie's deadline…

Of course, thinking about that wouldn't help me bring my blood pressure down.

Another deep breath, a flex of my claws to stretch my ligaments before I retracted them, and I pushed off the wall and went to toss my pants and my stage money into my locker.

As I slammed it shut, footsteps came down the hall, and one of the bouncers stuck his head in.

"Guy's in room four hoping you'll come and join him," he said. "He put half an hour totally private with a bottle of champagne on his card already, so maybe he'll be good for more. You up for it?"

A guy in a room who'd already paid even though he didn't know if I'd want to do a private dance—or anything else. Yeah, not suspicious at all after what had just happened. Too good to be true, actually.

Noah might be big, built, and not a total idiot, but he was also human, with a human's limited sense of smell and insensitivity to magic. He wouldn't be able to tell me anything useful about whoever had asked for me, so I'd be going in clueless.

Fuck it. Curiosity and the possibility of a good night's pay won out over my reluctance to give whoever was screwing with me what he wanted. I could practically hear my father's voice in my head: "Don't argue with morons, Tuncay. It only makes you stupid, but it doesn't make them any smarter." When he had some serious wisdom to impart to me, Dad used my traditional Turkish name instead of the American alternative he and Mom had given me as a middle name. I always kind of wished they'd been more familiar with their new home's pop culture before they named me, but too late now.

Anyway, engaging with someone who pulled childish pranks was the definition of getting stupider, but I'd never claimed to be a genius in the first place.

"Be right there."

Noah nodded and left, and I took a second to put my pants back on before I followed him. After all, you never knew. This guy might be totally legit, and he'd pay more to get me to take them back off again.

But the second I pushed open the door to the private room, I knew . That perfect scent wafted out as if blown on a sweet spring breeze, and for an instant, I was standing in an orchard, surrounded by fresh grass and bees and apple blossoms.

I blinked away the madness, strode through the door, and shoved it closed behind me with way too much force, irritation eroding my usual self-control.

This room was the smallest one, designed to hold one or two customers and one stripper, max—one large stripper, given the club's theme. But even though the guy who jumped up, startled, from the L-shaped padded bench as I came in barely qualified as normal-sized, the room felt even smaller than usual. His mouthwatering scent surrounded me, along with the faint tingling skin-prickle of his magic.

Long, glossy black hair, sheened faintly pink by the room's low red lighting, pale skin tinted rosy, and jet-black eyes gone wide and glossy. Slim, dressed all in black from the high collar of his shirt down to the tight fit of his capri pants and…

And…

I should've done my job and seduced money out of him, or subtly asked him about his scent, or tried to work out if he and Dominic were in cahoots.

Instead: "Who the fuck comes to a strip club in stripper heels?" I demanded, totally and uncontrollably nonplussed.

Also, horribly aroused.

His nails sported some subtle pastel color where they peeked out of his open-toe pumps, and I'd never once in my entire freaking life been a foot guy, but his toes were so slim and delicate and his ankles looked breakable, and let's be honest here. Anyone who smelled like he did? I'd have sucked any part of their bodies, including toes. Maybe starting with toes and working my way up. I wouldn't mind being on my knees.

How did he not topple over in heels like that, let alone leap up from a seat without wobbling even a little bit? And how gods-damned short would he be without them, when he only came up to my chin wearing the things?

On my knees, I'd still have sucking access to at least three quarters of his body.

"Maybe I'm here to audition," he said, his voice as light and sweet-tart as his scent, laced with a thread of…amusement? "I wouldn't even fall over. You're wearing combat boots. What's your excuse?"

That snapped my gaze back up to his face. My fists clenched at my sides, my claws poking out enough to prick my skin.

"What's my…" I trailed off into something like a snarl. My excuse. My excuse! Another step forward, and now the room really felt claustrophobic. Probably more so for him, because no one could loom like a pissed-off alpha. I had to be twice as wide as him. Maybe more.

A flash of something like oh, shit passed over his pointy little face, and his eyes went slightly, impossibly wider, arched brows rising.

But he stood his ground, maybe because even someone with extraordinary balance couldn't back up in those shoes without doing an unintentional somersault into the champagne on the table behind him.

At this distance, I could smell the actual warmth of his skin underlying that magical scent. And I could feel him against my own skin, the energy of him, the frisson of another body's pulse and electricity.

He bit his lip, a very pearly tooth digging into a flower-petal lower lip.

Jesus, he had to be using some kind of illusion on top of whatever seduction magic he had going on. Didn't he? For one thing, he might be disguising the scent of his magic. Usually I could distinguish types of magic by their top notes, like perfumes, but his had me confused. He could be a human warlock, or something not human at all.

But seriously, no one looked or smelled like this naturally, right? If Dominic was responsible for setting me up for this nonsense, there'd be nowhere on Earth he could hide.

By the way my mystery man's eyes were darting to the side, he'd realized he had nowhere to hide, either, and a tendon stood out in his slender neck.

Damn it.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said, and forced myself to take that step back that he couldn't. I'd almost lost my temper, and that hadn't happened in years, even working with Dominic. For an alpha, I was almost stolid. "You're a paying customer, after all."

My little attempt at humor fell so flat I could almost hear it thud into the floor. His eyes narrowed slightly. The pink lighting nearly drowned out the flush on his face, but I could smell the heat of his skin increasing, a fresh waft of his sweetness in the stale air.

"So far only for the bartender," he said. "But I, ah. I. Ah."

His shifty gaze lingered on something off in the corner of the room rather than on me. Huh. You had to be really nervous about making eye contact not to keep your attention fixed on the enormous predator confronting you in an extremely enclosed space.

Also, he had to have noticed the rampant, straining erection that no Nevada law could possibly have kept in check at this point. That likely added to the threatening quality of my presence, even though I didn't mean it that way. I liked to think of my big alpha cock and knot as more of a promise.

"A E I O U," I suggested, a bit breathless myself. "You? Ah? Sometimes Y?"

That earned me a sharp flick of his gaze and a twist of his lips that could've been meant as a sneer, but ended up looking more like a soft, kissable pout.

"You don't need to make fun of me," he said softly, with a flutter of his very long, feathery eyelashes.

Oh, for—Christ. My mouth opened, with something like, Will you knock it off, I work here, not you, so stop it with the magical seduction routine ready to come out.

But for a miracle, my brain managed to hang on to a tiny bit of the blood flow that'd mostly rushed south to make me stupid. He might be using magic on me, but he had paid up. I needed the money more than I needed to vent my irritation.

So I could play along, right? That would be the potentially profitable thing to do, wouldn't it?

Somewhere in the back of my lust-clouded mind, a voice whispered that I never crossed the line with clients. And that while a bit of playing along was part of the job, I was always the one in control…and I'd never felt less in control of a situation than I did now. If this pretty little magical whoever-he-was followed through on any of the suggestions his gleaming eyes and softly parted lips were silently making to me, I ran the risk of knotting my tear-away pleather pants.

Okay, I'd be playing along, at least for now, and pretending otherwise would only be lying to myself. Fine. But was I playing along with some fantasy of his, a prank like I still half thought, or with my own magically stimulated libido?

Only one way to find out, I guessed.

I shifted my weight forward again, leaning, not quite moving yet—but finding a middle ground.

"I'm only teasing," I said, letting my voice drop to its lowest, raspiest register. "Maybe I like that you're flustered. It's flattering."

His blush deepened, spreading down his neck, a scarlet stain on his white skin. I didn't know the name for the type of collar his shirt had, but it had a sort of rim that stuck up to the middle of his slim throat. Not a turtleneck, but more like what you'd see on one of those embroidered silk outfits Chinese aristocrats wore in old photos. It had a button at the front that my fingers itched to undo, to see how far down the blush went.

"I'm not flustered," he protested unconvincingly. Hmm. Humans could lie, while some nonhumans could and others couldn't. But this bit of untruth didn't prove anything either way. As long as you believed what you said, technically you were telling the truth. Did he honestly think he was fooling himself, let alone me? His gaze snapped up to meet mine at last, eyes all wide. "I'm perfectly calm!"

He so wasn't. Odd, because he'd seemed calm enough when I walked in. It was when we'd talked about him being a paying customer that he'd started to get ruffled, now that I thought about it.

Huh. Jesus. Maybe his credit card was going to decline and this would be a big fat waste of time.

I took that step forward again after all, because why not? And I wanted him to really lose his cool, if only because he seemed likelier to start stammering out some explanation for what the hell he'd been doing to me.

"Oh yeah? I can see your pulse in the side of your neck. Pounding away." Another small step put me right in his personal space, enough that he had to tip his head back to keep looking at me. "Maybe you want me to do some things to get you even more worked up, huh? Or maybe you want to get me worked up? I can sit down and let you do that audition. You want to show me how you can dance in those heels?" As an experiment, I added, "Put your money where your mouth is."

His whole body tensed, and his eyes flitted away from mine again.

Bingo, and the satisfaction of being right gave me a momentary sense of smugness.

But figuring out his problem somehow revolved around money didn't help me much. And anyway…like, join the club, dude.

Whatever, no matter how attractive this guy might be, and no matter how much magic he'd used on me to make himself appear that way, I had a loan shark to pay. If he hoped that seducing me would get me to give him perks for free, I had to shut that shit down.

Playing along stopped as soon as he didn't pay. No exceptions.

"I can dance instead," I suggested—reluctantly, because now that I had the image of him writhing in my lap, all covered up in his ridiculously modest clothes but wearing those even more ridiculous shoes, flushed and flustered, neither of my heads were letting go of it easily. "Since we're back here where it's nice and private, I can do a little more than I did on stage. Forty for the first song, but if you want to keep going, that can be thirty each for the next couple of dances."

I gave him my smirkiest, most suggestive smile, and his eyes flicked up. His chest visibly rose and fell now, and his pulse had gone wild. Was he hard? If I stepped back and took a good look I'd be able to tell, but from this angle I couldn't be sure.

His tongue flicked out to moisten his lower lip, and…no, I had to have imagined the slight fork at the tip, right?

Christ, what had I gotten myself into?

"Do you want a dance or not?" The words came out a lot more harshly than I'd intended, and definitely not in a customer-friendly tone. I should've taken the night off. Had a couple of beers. Watched some hockey. Simple, dammit. I liked my life simple .

Not infested with forked-tongued magic stripper-wannabes who made me fall down on my ass on stage and then got me all hot and bothered.

He pressed his lips together and cocked his head, and then nodded once, like a man—almost man-shaped being?—who'd made up his mind.

"No," he said at last, and then, "No, I don't," more firmly. "I don't want a dance. Not because you fell down!" he added hurriedly, in what appeared to be an attempt at tact, and then even more hurriedly, probably because I couldn't help the low growl that curled out from between my teeth: "Not that it was, um, it was a great dance. Very seductive. That's why I'm here, in this private room with you," he finished triumphantly, and pasted on an obviously forced smile.

"Okay," I said, with all the patience I could muster. Beer. Hockey. Or, failing that, a normal paying client. Fuck. Fine, forget patience. And forget customer service. "If you don't want a dance, why are you back here? You wanna talk or something? Or just drink the overpriced champagne? I don't have any drugs, but I don't care if you want to do some, but I charge the same to watch you do lines as I do to dance, FYI. Double if you want to do it off my abs."

That was a request I'd gotten surprisingly often. Or maybe not so surprisingly, considering that more than half the people who came in here, no matter what sex or species, had gotten all their ideas of what you did in a strip club from watching shitty movies.

He blinked at me, his mouth falling open. "Ugh! Seriously?" he asked, his voice going up a startled octave. "By the time you scraped it together, it'd be half glitter!"

That startled a laugh out of me, because…agreed, it would be, and it was indeed ugh. On my side of the equation, too.

But then my laugh turned into a choke as he reached in his pocket, whipped out a shimmering gold coin, and said, "I want you to give in to your instincts and knot me thoroughly, and I can offer you this in exchange."