Elspeth had to go, but Steve – he couldn’t think straight about the guy. His nose stung and his head started swimming whenever his thoughts strayed in that direction. He appreciated that things had been tense between them of late, but he’d genuinely believed their friendship had remained solid. He wished he could talk to him, ask him why he’d gone behind his back like that, yet at the same time he didn’t want to talk to him at all.
They headed into the first bar they happened upon, Xane having got his shirt back on the promise that he’d hand it over again before he left. The place also served snacks, and so consisted of cosy circular booths suitable for private dining. Naturally, he ended up in the centre with two ladies apiece either side of him, and Dani tacked on the end of the curved seat like an afterthought – a situation she bore with admirable stoicism.
Xane promised himself he’d make it up to her at the first opportunity. He prayed she understood that she had nothing to fear from these women. He’d much rather be alone with her than any number of fawning fangirls. Still, one drink had somehow become two, and then three. He didn’t plan to make it four.
‘I saw your set at the Salle des Etoiles when you did the Gala Evening last summer,’ Tartan Girl explained to him, her voice breathless with excitement. The whole of her seemed to thrum as though she were in a state of constant arousal.
Xane wasn’t sure if that was down to his presence or if it was simply her normal state of being. Her name, he’d determined, was Tori. With her were Brigitte, Clara and Catwoman, who was Annalise. Tori wasn’t native Monégasque but she had spent most of her life there, hence her propensity to switch between French and English without warning, though for the last few minutes she’d seemed to be preferring French. Xane suspected the choice was down to Dani’s inability to understand what was being said.
Never mind that he was striving to keep the conversation clean and Tori’s hands out of his pants. It probably sounded like a whole lot of dirty to Dani, especially given the way the woman liked to lean towards him conspiratorially as she spoke, and use all these breathless pauses.
His poor ladybug was sitting so straight she looked as if she had iron rods welded to her spine. She was going to take some unwinding once he got her back to the suite.
Not that he minded helping her to relax.
Xane’s cock stirred as he imagined how he might do that. He had a few tricks in his repertoire, and he wasn’t afraid to experiment in order to work out her kinks. Whatever it took, he promised both her and himself.
The memory of her soft, tight pussy clasping him in a fluttering embrace momentarily caused an unfortunate lapse in his focus, during which Tori’s hand found its way onto his knee, then up the inside seam of his trousers. She’d almost reached her goal and copped a feel of his package when he thwarted her by standing up.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me.’ He shuffled his way around the table and made like he was heading to the bar for more drinks. He even went to the effort of ordering another round, while he slipped the waiter a hefty tip to call him a taxi. It was past time he and Dani split. Though he could have jogged to the hotel in less than five minutes, the taxi would take them door to door without the risk of them being followed. All he had to do was alert Dani to his plan.
Dani pre-emptively joined him by the bar as he swallowed the shot of whisky he’d ordered. ‘What did she offer to do for you – blow you, perhaps? Give you the use of her tits?’
Xane turned his back to the bar. ‘Actually, she was telling me about the last Halo gig she attended, and how she has a set of Paul’s drumsticks and one of Spook’s baseball boots.’
‘Seriously, you expect me to believe all that … breathless … ness … was … over … Jan … Mortensen’s smelly old shoe?’ Dani asked, imitating the other woman’s pattern of speech. ‘You … must … be … fucking … nuts! I saw where she had her hand.’
Xane shook his head. ‘Not anywhere I wanted it. There’s only one woman’s hands I want on me.’
‘Then why rush to the bar after your conspiratorial whisper? No one needed another drink.’
He did.
‘Was I not supposed to notice her slipping off to the toilets at the same time, and you following a moment later?’
‘You really think I’m going to do that?’
Dani folded her arms defensively across her chest. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Have I given you reason to think that I would? Of course, if you’d like me to follow
you
in there …’
Her mouth opened and closed again without her making a sound.
‘Your taxi’s outside,
monsieur
,’ the waiter leaned over the bar to inform him.
Dani blinked and searched his face for an explanation.
‘Don’t pout, and I’ll pretend you didn’t accuse me of trying to sidle off with someone else. I’m only interested in you, Dani. That’s why I invited you. If I’d just wanted to scratch an itch, I’d have flown here alone, and probably taken all four of them somewhere and had them one after the other. Is that honest enough for you?’
Dani stared at him, a thoughtful, slightly sorrowful expression on her face.
‘The point is, I haven’t chosen to do that. I don’t enjoy soulless partying. It eats away at me. I’d much rather make love to someone I have a connection with.’
‘So we have a connection, do we?’
‘Don’t we? You at least try to understand me. And you look out for me in a way none of these ladies will ever do.’
‘Well, I suppose …’
‘Like you’re my girlfriend.’
‘Like,’ she parroted, as though she couldn’t quite comprehend his meaning. She shook her head vehemently, while her knuckles whitened where she gripped the edge of the bar. ‘Like, but not actually.’
Xane snatched another drink off the tray and gulped it down, feeling rather put on the spot. Considering the wasteland ruins of his most recent relationship were only a day old, he wasn’t committing himself to anything, even if he did really like her.
She certainly made a welcome change from Elspeth, whose flighty, floaty image was all show. Dani simply didn’t demand the same level of expectations, nor did she create complications, or seek out controversy for the sake of it.
The only thing he couldn’t figure out about her was why she was so neurotic over her body. As far as he was concerned, she was absolutely gorgeous, soft and curvy in all the right places.
He hoped some idiot ex hadn’t suggested she was fat, or something equally odious. If that were the case, he’d happily rip off the guy’s dick for knocking her confidence, should they ever happen to meet.
Drink drained, Xane returned the glass to the tray. ‘Let’s go.’ Hand between her shoulder blades, he nudged Dani towards the exit.
Thank God, the car sat right outside. He guided her straight onto the back seat.
Halfway into the taxi himself, he stopped. ‘Ah, shit!’ he muttered, backing out again. While he thought nothing of running out on the four rock babes, having already reached his tolerance limit over their wandering hands, he refused to rescind a promise.
‘What are you doing?’ Dani called, shock evident in her voice as he backtracked to the bar door.
‘Two seconds. I’m coming.’ He peeled off his shirt in front of the doorman and handed the bewildered man his shirt along with an apology. ‘Could you give this to the four ladies in the corner booth? It belongs to them.’
‘
Monsieur
?’
Xane bounded back to the car. He ducked, hurled himself onto the backseat and slammed the door. ‘Hotel de Paris,’ he snapped, before sliding close to Dani. He felt sure the doorman would fulfil his request. What else was he supposed to do with a random stranger’s shirt?
The taxi pulled away with a roar, but barely got into third gear before their destination sprang into view. The driver let them out beside the canopied stone steps at the front of their hotel.
Xane stuffed a twenty-euro note into his hand and then, holding Dani’s hand tightly, sped up the steps, past hotel security and into the nearest elevator.
‘What the devil was that about?’ she asked pointedly as the metal doors closed. ‘Are you determined to reveal your whereabouts to the whole planet? Another twenty minutes and I’ll bet that everybody and their gran knows you’re in Monte Carlo.’
‘Four people can hardly be considered the whole world.’
‘Ain’t you heard of Facebook and Flickr?’
‘I did it quickly.’ And with good reason. Nudity, even semi-nudity, wasn’t tolerated on the streets of Monaco. ‘Did you know you can get done around here for wearing your swimming costume on the streets? Being seen with my shirt off is more likely to earn me a night in the cells than raucously serenading the locals with my rendition of “The Final Countdown”.’
Seemingly perplexed, Dani squinted at him. ‘I wasn’t specifically talking about your shirt, more the whole drinks thing. And you didn’t actually have to hand over your shirt.’
‘A promise is a promise.’
She pursed her lips, and then added, ‘You know the words to that?’
Xane grinned wide and hard. ‘Course. Everyone knows the words to that. Dur nr nr ner, dur nr n n ner,’ he belted out. ‘It’s the final –’
‘Stop it,’ Dani begged, her frown morphing into an enormous grin. ‘Please don’t. I don’t want my image of you wrecked.’
‘You don’t like my singing?’ He continued his exaggerated performance, adding a few hair flicks.
‘Please.’ Her fingers trailed against his abs. ‘I love your singing, but not when you’re singing this. Oh, God, stop it.’ She laughed. ‘Xane, please.’
He leaned around her to hit the appropriate floor button, and used their nearness as an excuse to snuggle even closer. Dani turned her face away from him to stop him kissing her, but more, he sensed, because she was still laughing too hard, rather than out of any desire to avoid him. He aimed for a spot by the base of her ear instead. Oh, man, she smelled incredible, a tantalising mix of fragrance and arousal, and she felt so good in his arms, her curves fitting against him so well.
‘Or else what will you do if I don’t stop singing?’
‘Ignore you,’ she huffed, attempting to be serious.
‘Yeah.’ He was definitely up for that sort of challenge. She didn’t have a hope in hell’s chance of winning. Didn’t she realise he’d had years of practice at making himself conspicuous? He didn’t need his stage paint on in order to turn heads. Hey, on this occasion, he didn’t even need to take off his shirt.
Xane settled against the nearest wall of the elevator’s mirrored interior. Visually, he might not be at his absolute best, what with the ugly graze across his temple and the vicious bruising around his neck, but corded muscles defined his torso, and his nipple rings glinted with cold promise in the muted light of the lift. He licked the tip of his middle finger and then circled it around one of his nipples.
It took less than a second for Dani to notice.
‘Wanna see a bit more?’ he mouthed at her reflection.
Gotcha, he thought, when she stood a little straighter. From what she’d insisted he do earlier, Xane knew she liked watching, and he saw no harm in using that knowledge to his advantage. He wet the same finger on his other hand, and began circling both nipples. He even briefly squeezed his eyes closed and let out a sigh. ‘This is what you do to me, Dani. When I’m with you, when I think about you …’
Dani crossed her legs so her thighs were squeezed together. Her unblinking gaze remained focused upon him.
Next he tugged on one of his nipple rings, and let her see in his eyes the pleasure it provoked.
‘Want me to undo my fly?’
Her lips parted and her tongue peeped out and made a sweep across her lips. ‘You can’t do that here.’ Her gaze flicked over to the control panel, which showed they were less than two floors from their stop.
‘Is that a dare?’ he asked. He took a step and banged his fist against the emergency stop button, bringing their ride to a juddering halt.
‘Oh, God!’ she gulped. ‘You can’t be serious. You’ll get us chucked out of the building. There’s probably CCTV. Get us going again. We can do this upstairs, where we’re less visible.’
‘Yeah, in a minute, because you know we need to talk some, Dani, and I want you to listen and take me seriously.’
‘About … about what?’ she asked.
‘I want you to be honest with me.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, sweeping her tongue over her lips. ‘I’ve not lied to you.’
He hushed her by pressing a finger to his lips. ‘I never thought you had, but you’re not exactly relaxed with me either. You don’t need to keep your guard up so much. No one is watching us, and I’m not going to do anything terrible.’
‘Maybe you’re into things I’m not.’
‘Like being naked?’ He knew that wasn’t primarily what she meant, but it was the most important issue they needed to deal with right now. He didn’t want to have to fight her out of her clothes. He’d much rather she undressed for him.
Her gaze flicked back and forth between his body and the lift’s operating panel. She bit her lip. Crossed and uncrossed her arms.
‘Tell me what you’d like me to do. Besides letting you out of this lift.’
‘Take me upstairs.’
‘And then what?’
She cast a quick look around for cameras. ‘Ca-carry on doing what you’re doing.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t quite hear that.’
‘Keep touching yourself.’ A magnificent blush coloured the tops of her cheekbones and the front of her chest. ‘I like watching you touch yourself.’
‘Like this?’ he asked, primarily to draw her attention, because he’d never really stopped touching himself. ‘What is it about this that turns you on so much? Because, you know, I’ve no problems with you touching me.’
‘It just kind of … I’m not that brave. I can’t just grope you.’
Why not, every bugger else did. ‘Yes, you can.’
Her tongue peeped out and flicked across her lower lip. ‘Are you actually hard?’ she asked. ‘Does doing that turn you on?’
He hadn’t been, but her question changed that instantly. How could he not be when she was eating him up like that with her stare? ‘Why don’t you come and find out?’
‘I want you to show me.’ She covered her mouth. Xane drew down his zip, exposing his erection.