Page 7 of All Mixed Up

I wanted to know every nasty thing lurking behind those coal-dark orbs. I wanted to touch him and then watch them glitter as I did. I wanted to witness them hardening with his lust.

And I wanted to know he was hard for me in other places too.

“Holy shit, moron,” I groused beneath my breath. “You need to calm the hell down, Juls. Right the hell now.”

I needed to remember that Milo Proust had hired me to make this club the hottest place in the city tonight.

I needed to remember that the reason I was even here, counting down the painful days in a city I really didn’t want to be in, was because of the last time I’d let a man use my sex drive as the detach cable for my brain.

I couldn’t have timed the pep talk better. The chastisement girded my resistance just as my ghost cleared the last two steps to the base of the DJ booth.

Except that he didn’t come up. Okay, there was a sizable gate in his way, a locked one, but if he was the kind of man who cared about gates, then I was Esmeralda the Gypsy. If he wanted up here, he’d be up here.

Why wasn’t he up here?

And why the hell did I care?

And why did I let him catch me in the act of that caring, with skittish glances at him as I cued up the next set? Why was I acting just like the clueless gypsy on the Notre Dame parapets?

Bullshit.

You don’t scare me, Quasimodo.

The edges of his mouth curled up…as if he’d just pawed into my mind and clawed out the words. He had a beautiful mouth too. Entrancing, actually. Fuller on the bottom than the top, though it was stopped from going full pouty-boy by the hard ridges defining its borders. It was a mouth made to fondle, suckle, give hours of pleasure…and dammit, the beast clearly knew it.

“Damn it,” I muttered, once more to myself. “Focus. Do the job you were hired for!”

Like that helped at all.

Like the man’s sizzling effect on my blood was going to stop now. Like my fingers were suddenly going to stop trembling against the controls, and my mind would simply clear out and think of a proper blend into the next set.

Attempting to read the crowd was not helping. The floor really had started resembling a scene from Dirty Dancing—if the “basement grinding” parts were expanded and taken to the next level. More bare thighs began to gleam in the lights. More heads started arching back, with mouths gasping in pleasure. More shoulders coiled and tensed, in time to hips that rolled and thrusted in time to the seductive throb of the music.

It was alluring. Awestriking. Worth a bitten lip or two. Or ten.

And it was the kind of scene that might wind me up in jail. Yeah, even here in the city that redefined carnality for the modern world.

But now that I’d started the orgy, did I really want to rein it back in? Imean, everyone here did look like a consenting adult…

Against every better instinct I possessed, I glanced to my apparition for guidance.

And locked my teeth against unleashing a new scream.

He’d was gone. Again.

“Of course.” My mutter was swallowed by the din of the music. Just as well, since who wanted thousands of witnesses to their own breakdown? And figuring it out would have to wait for later. When the opening night success of a Milo Proust nightclub was in one’s hands, Freudian musings were pushed far down on the priorities list.

Speak of the devil.

My standby laptop, also logged into my personal accounts, lit up with a direct message. Milo’s face appeared next to it: a slick corporate shot with him in suit, tie, and appropriate billionaire I’ve-got-the-world-by-the-balls stare. In short, totally unlike the Milo I knew.

Need you in the office. Liev’s coming up to fill in for a while.

Sure enough, I looked up to see Liev key in the gate code and then bound up the steps. The buff Brit was the go-to for anything in the club related to entertainment. He kept the system clean, repaired the lights, auditioned live acts—and yes, could fill in on the mixing duties from time to time. He’d also become a fast and cool all-around friend, except for right now. In response to my quizzical stare, he only shrugged then studied my song queue list. His message was clear. Details about Milo’s summons were not coming from him.

At least he was still grinning about all of it.

I took that as a general good sign, though it didn’t halt my heart from thundering in my throat as I left the booth. Also didn’t prevent me from looking down, ensuring my legs were still made of bone and muscle instead of Jell-O and whipped cream, while skirting the dance floor to reach the service door.