Page 82 of Dominion's Guard
"Someone has to make sure you don't double-book yourself, Detective. You're very popular with the staff."
"Am I."
"The barback thinks you tip too well. I told him you're compensating for personality."
The banter has changed over the weeks. The sharpness used to be defensive, every line a wall she built mid-sentence. Now it's recreational. She pushes because she likes the way I hold when she does, and the difference between this and what she used to perform for Arnold Voss is the difference between armor and foreplay.
I finish the bourbon. She pours another without being asked, her fingers precise on the bottle, her wrist turning with the control she brings to everything, and I watch the tendons flex under her skin and think about those hands fisting my sheets an hour from now.
She catches me watching and doesn't look away. The dare in her eyes is quiet and constant.
Her shift ends an hour later. She unties the apron, folds it into the space below the register, and disappears toward the staff area to change.
I wait at the bar and let the bourbon work. The main floor holds active scenes, spaced with the geometry Dominion's layout encourages, and the sounds of the floor settle into the low-frequency register that means the negotiations are done and the real work has started.
I know those sounds. I've made those sounds. The woman changing in the staff area has made them underneath me, and the memory of her voice breaking on my name tightens something behind my sternum that has nothing to do with patience.
Renata returns dressed for a scene, and the shift from bartender to submissive isn't in the clothes. It's in her shoulders, a loosening I've learned to read as the moment she sets down the armor and picks up the want. The want is harder for her. It always has been. She lets me see it now, and that's worth more than the kneeling.
"Ready?" she asks.
"When you are."
"If I waited until I was ready for you, we'd never leave the bar."
She takes my hand as we cross the lounge toward the stairs, and the contact is casual and public and deliberate. Members who know the shape of us register it and look away with the practiced courtesy the floor extends.
The private room is the same one I booked the first time, with clean sheets, low lighting, and a lock that clicks from the inside. The noise from the floor fades to a vibration through the walls.
Renata turns to face me with the look that has become the opening move of our scenes: lifted chin, widened stance, the expression that saysI'm here and you're still going to have to earn every inch.
"You look like you're planning a heist," I tell her.
"If I were planning a heist, you wouldn't see it coming."
"I'd see it coming. I'd just enjoy watching the approach."
The corner of her mouth pulls. "What's the scene tonight, Detective? You've been eyeing me across the bar for an hour like a man with a plan."
"I always have a plan."
"That's what worries me."
"Liar." I close the distance between us, slow enough that she can track every step, and stop with my hand at the side of her throat, my thumb at the hinge of her jaw where her pulse kicks fast under the skin. "Your safeword."
"Copper."
"Good. Strip."
"Make me."
I tighten my grip by a fraction. Her pulse jumps under my thumb, and the jump goes straight through my hand into my bloodstream. The defiance is calculated and precise and she delivers it with a look that says she knows exactly what it costs me and is charging interest.
"That's one," I say.
"One what?"
"One correction you've earned. Want to go for two?"
