“Good.” He rose and stood by the table, obviously waiting for Michaela to choose where they would go for their tryst.
“Where” definitely not being the flophouse where she was staying while she completed her mission. She suspected that Jesus, too, would not volunteer where he lived for their encounter.
Which left only one immediate choice—one of the back rooms at the Blood Bank.
She stood and inclined her head toward the rear of the club. “We can pay for a private room in the back.”
Jesus narrowed his eyes, seemingly doubtful, but he didn’t hesitate to follow her as she led him to the bouncer by the door. He stood with tattooed and muscular arms across a broad chest barely covered by the metal-studded leather vest he wore. He kept an unwelcoming glare on his face until Jesus reached into his pocket and extracted some cash.
“What will it be for the best room you have?” Jesus asked.
The bouncer looked at her and replied with a snicker, “I guess such a fine lady only deserves the best. A hundred dollars until dawn.”
“Dawn?” he asked, even as he peeled off the bills and handed them to the man.
“A virgin, are you?” the bouncer said with a sneer, but Michaela shot her hand up to silence him.
“The key is all we need from you.”
When he held out the large brass key, she snagged it from his grasp and rushed into the hallway containing the private rooms.
The hall was narrow and relatively short. The walls were painted black and seemed to devour the light from the dated wall sconces located near each door. The floor beneath their feet was carpeted with a thick shag rug in deep crimson. It was matted down in the center, testifying to the traffic that passed this way.
Jesus followed Michaela as she checked the number on the key against the ones on the wooden doors of the rooms. Finally, at the door farthest away from the club and all its noise, a brass number eight marked the room as theirs.
“What did he mean that we had the room until dawn?” Jesus asked, towering over her. His physical presence rattled her calm, causing her to falter while she tried to unlock the door. He immediately covered her hands with his and helped steady her as she turned the key and opened the door.
She had heard about the Blood Bank’s private rooms, but she had never been in one. The room was surprisingly more than what she had expected.
A queen-size four-poster bed took up one side of the space, the bed’s surface lushly appointed with a satin comforter, an assortment of pillows and remarkably clean sheets.
But it was the accessories on the opposite side of the room that subsequently snared and held both her attention and Jesus’s.
He walked to the wall where an assortment of whips, chains, cuffs, knives and other toys were conveniently displayed. Running his index finger along a pair of fur-lined wrist cuffs, he shot her a half-lidded glance as he once again asked, “Why dawn?”
“Why do you think?” She removed the wrist cuffs from the wall and examined them more carefully, even going so far as to undo the strap on one of them.
“It’s when the vamps go home after a night of play,” he said.
A rough edge tinged his voice. Was it from fear or from imagining their own night of play, fur-lined wrist cuffs included?
“It takes a lot of trust, don’t you think?” she asked, slipping on one cuff and holding out her arm the way one might do when examining a bracelet.
It would take a lot of trust, Jesus thought. More trust than existed in their newborn relationship. He reached out and slipped off the cuff, tossed it aside, encircled her fine-boned wrist with his hand and urged her close.
“Tell me what you want, Michaela.” He enjoyed the contradictions she presented, but he needed something concrete on which to begin this night, on which to—perhaps—build something more. Because he suspected that with a woman as complex as Michaela, one night just wouldn’t do it.
She laid a hand on his chest and stepped so close she had to tip her head back to peer up at his greater height. Softly she rubbed her hand against the fabric of his shirt and said, “I want normal.”
The longing in her voice was unmistakable. His own yearning responded in sympathy.
It had been way too long since he had done normal.
Gingerly, aware that she was a little skittish and might bolt, he eased his arm around her waist. Slowly he urged her to move that last little bit, until her body brushed his. But he moved her no farther, not wanting to intimidate or overpower. Somehow, he understood that Michaela needed equal footing.
She needed a partner, he thought as he bent from his greater height to put his face level with hers.
“I think I can do normal,” he teased, a playful grin on his face as he sought to begin her night of respite.
Their evening of pleasure.
A smile crept to one corner of her mouth. She cradled his cheek and traced the lines of his mouth with her thumb, shifted it to the dimple beside his lips.
“You have a nice smile. You’ve done it often during your life,” Michaela said. At his puzzled look, she slipped the pad of her index finger across the faint lines on his face.
His grin turned wickedly sexy. “There’s something to be said for maturity in a man.”
Dipping one hand while bringing the other upward, she placed both on the cotton of his shirt, exploring the gloriously sculpted muscle beneath. As she closed the final distance between their bodies, the hard jut of his impressive erection pushed against the flatness of her belly.
She pressed against him, shifting her hips back and forth. “Maturity doesn’t seem to have affected your ‘something,’ because it’s definitely saying—”
“I want you, Michaela. You’re…unique.” He buried his hand in her shoulder-length hair and cupped the back of her head.
Unique?
He couldn’t even begin to guess just how different she was, but she had asked for normal tonight. Any explanations could wait until she’d experienced the wonder that he had promised.
“You sweet talker. I bet you charm all the women with lines like that.”
The playfulness faded from his face, replaced by an intensity that nearly stole her breath. “Not much for talk, Michaela. I’m an action kind of guy.”
At the back of her head came the gentle pressure of his hand, urging her to her tiptoes until his lips were a breath away from hers.
“Are you an action kind of woman?” he asked and his tequila-spiced breath spilled against her lips, creating an intense pull of need within her.
“Yes,” she replied.