Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  It was the advice my Alpha father hadn’t given me, though it hadn’t taken long for me to learn it for myself. You couldn’t trust Alphas, either. Especially not looking the way that Omega did.

  Luckily, the Alphas managed to behave themselves. To my surprise, though, the Omega angel caught my eye as he passed back to the bar. At first, I thought it must have been a fluke—the dancers at the Ballroom didn’t bother with men like me on Friday nights. Not when there were two dozen billionaires sitting in the VIP seats up by the stage, just begging to be taken to a private room for the lap dance of their lives. But then, the glance held for a second too long, and I was sure of it.

  Just like I’d been staring at him, suddenly he was staring right back at me as he made his way to the bar.

  “I ought to charge you a twenty, you know.” He reached across me to place his serving tray behind the bar as he pulled up the stool at my side.

  “For what?” I asked, arching an eyebrow as I inhaled his cologne. Spicy. Faint, but warm. Cinnamon, amber and leather with a hint of something floral beneath it. Maybe violet. Maybe rose.

  “Looking at me the way you are.”

  I laughed. “I thought looking was free.”

  His lips were unsmiling, but there was a glimmer in his eyes. They were that color of blue, not bright or dark but somewhere in between, impossible to place because there was nothing quite like them in real life.

  “It is,” he agreed. “But you’re fucking undressing me.”

  I glanced down at the tight pair of gold briefs he wore, imagining how nice they’d look if I could have tossed them back behind the bar along with his serving tray. What could I say? If I was going to be accused of doing something anyway, I figured I might as well have enjoyed the benefits of doing it.

  “A twenty, then.” I shifted to pull my wallet out of my pocket and handed him the bill. Normally, I’d complain he was overcharging—but as fate would have it, I was getting the feeling he might’ve been worth the price.

  “Lap dance would be cheaper in the long run, you know.” He folded the bill and tucked it into the waistband of his briefs, just barely flashing the crisp edge of the note against his hip.

  “I don’t buy lap dances,” I grunted, resisting the urge to smirk.

  “Whatever are you doing in a place like this, then?”

  “Undressing handsome Omegas with my eyes, apparently.” I let my gaze fall over him all over again, not bothering to guard it. There wouldn’t have been a point—he already knew he was attractive, and he’d already caught me staring.

  “Expensive pastime,” he countered, holding out his hand for another twenty.

  My smirk finally broke through as I handed him another bill. “Make it worth my time, then? I’d love to take you out for a drink when you’re done with your shift.”

  “You’re not drinking,” he pointed out, nodding to my empty glass at the bar.

  I shrugged. “My father always warned me to never drink alone.”

  “But he didn’t warn you not to hit on Omegas when they were trying to work?” He had yet to smile still, but that glimmer was still in his eyes. Flirtatious, but guarded. If he liked me—and most Omegas did—he wasn’t willing to let onto it. Not quite yet.

  “Funny,” I commented. “And here I was, thinking you were hitting on me.”

  “Oh, I am.” Finally, the hint of a smile played on his lips as he nodded at the bartender. “Another drink for my friend here. Top shelf stuff. Whatever he likes.”

  “Water,” I suggested.

  He leaned in, his lips hovering dangerously close to mine as he inhaled. I could have leaned forward and stolen a kiss—but instead, I stayed very, very still.

  “No,” he said softly, his eyes narrowing delightfully as he smelled the last drink on my breath. “Whiskey.”

  “Whiskey it is,” the bartender agreed.

  That was my first mistake—thinking I could outmaneuver a man like him in a place where he knew he had backup.

  “And your drink…?” I asked him, hoping he’d give me his name.

  He only laughed. “I’ll let you buy me one after I’m done. Shouldn’t be long—maybe another hour or so.”

  “I’ll be here,” I said immediately, pleasure rising up in my chest. I knew better than to go fucking around with Omegas—especially Omegas like him—but on that particular night, it was exactly what I’d arrived at the Ballroom for. My only surprise was how easy it had been—twice as easy as I’d thought.

  “Good,” he said, pushing himself up off the stool and leaving. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Hey—” I called out after him, “I didn’t get your name.”

  He laughed, glancing over his shoulder at me but not stopping. “Noah,” he called back.

  Noah. Hearing his name from his lips confirmed it—he was exactly the man I needed. All I could do now was watch him go, running my fingertips across that scar on my jaw and reminding myself what a dangerous game I was playing.

  When the whiskey arrived, I tossed it back quickly before getting up to make a call. Normally, an Alpha like me didn’t have any business talking to an Omega like him. Normally, I would have known better—and unless I’d read him wrong, he would have, too. But on that night, it seemed that fate had left our guards down just enough to let us come together.

  I had my reasons. Maybe he had his, too.

  “Harmon,” I grunted into phone, pressing it to my ear as I heard him pick up. “It’s Ace.”

  “Is something wrong?” I could hear the concern in his voice—he obviously wasn’t used to dealing with professionals. Not yet.

  “Nah. Just checking in,” I reassured him. “Good news. Guess who’s got a hot date?”

  “Noah Layton?”

  “That’s the name he gave me, yeah. Matches the picture. That’s the one you want, right?”

  “Oh, you are good.” The pleasure was dripping from Harmon’s voice. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

  “A week, give or take.”

  He sighed. “Can’t you do it any faster than that?”

  “Can’t rush these things, Harmon. Besides—you’ll wind up paying more if I manage to do it in any less.”

  I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Fine. As long as you do it—that’s the important thing. The bar’s pretty low, Ace. I don’t want to waste any more of my time on someone who can’t live up to his word.”

  I laughed, a short, harsh thing. “Getting it up—not an issue for me.”

  Harmon didn’t laugh. Apparently, when it came to humor, he wasn’t a fan. “Don’t call me again until you’ve got him, Ace. I’m too busy right now for your bullshit.”

  I could hear a voice in the background as Harmon hung up—his new Alpha lover, I was sure, telling him to get off the phone before he whisked my two-faced employer off to bed. Wesley Harmon wasn’t a good man, but he was less bad than some of the men I’d worked for in my past. The things he was paying me to do were shady, sure—but all things considered, they could’ve been worse.

  I edged back out toward the bar, glancing up at the stage again. My target—Noah—was gyrating his hips to something nice and slow, teasing a pair of black slacks down over his hips while the entire audience watched, slack-jawed and completely in awe.

  If undressing him with my eyes had cost me twenty dollars a pop, every Alpha in that audience owed Noah a small fortune now. I didn’t love the work that Harmon had hired me to do, but I wasn’t going to kid myself—I couldn’t have picked a better mark.

  Did I trust Noah? Hell no. Did I want him? Of course. I wasn’t about to let those two feelings compromise each other—finishing this job depended on it. But all in all, by the end of the night…

  Hell, at least I’d enjoy doing it.

  2

  Noah

  As I stared at the picture of Ace Winston’s ruggedly handsome face pinned up on the cork board in my boss’ office, I realized I’d never trusted a man less in all my life.

>   “And he has no idea we know?” Foster asked, running his fingers through his hair in excitement.

  I smirked. “Not a clue. He’s as slick as they come, though. You should have heard the lines he was feeding me.”

  “Not to mention the cash.” Foster nodded to the twenties still tucked in the waistband of my golden briefs. “It’s bad enough that you’re leading him on…”

  But the grin on Foster’s face told me that he was just as amused by the fact that I’d extorted forty bucks from Ace Winston as I was. It only made my own smirk widen.

  “If he thinks he can seduce me, he’ll have to pay for the privilege.” I shrugged, slipping the twenties out of my waistband. “Suppose I owe you half, though.”

  “Nah. Keep them. You’re doing the Ballroom a huge favor—might as well benefit from it.” Foster’s eyes narrowed suddenly as he leaned forward. “Just don’t let him make you slick with those clever lines of his, Noah. I don’t want you getting in over your head on this.”

  “Me?” I laughed, raising my eyebrows incredulously. “With that guy?”

  I glanced at Ace’s photo again, a mug shot that Blake, our bouncer’s police buddies had been able to turn up when we first spotted Ace scoping out the Ballroom. He was criminally handsome, sure, but with a criminal past to boot. The police figured he probably hadn’t really committed the inter-gang robbery-gone-wrong that they’d put him away for. The possibility that he’d taken the fall for his criminal father was the reigning theory, but when they’d given him an opportunity to set the record straight, he hadn’t budged.

  Under other circumstances, it might’ve even seemed noble—if some would-be gangbanger hadn’t lost his life in the process, anyway. But even if Ace hadn’t killed the man, he’d protected the man who probably had. That alone made him dangerous—and even more interesting. Foster and I still didn’t know what a man like Ace wanted with a club like Heaven’s Ballroom. We didn’t have mob or mafia ties. No bad debts with crooked loan sharks, no dark delinquent secrets, no penchant for laundering drug money. In a city with such a filthy underbelly, the Ballroom was as clean as they came. The only thing we did dirty here was the dancing—and despite men like Ace Winston lurking around, Foster and I aimed to keep it that way.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Noah. I wouldn’t trust you with this little reconnaissance mission of yours if I didn’t believe you were more than capable of it.” Foster leaned back in his chair, giving me a firm little nod of confidence. “But he’s not exactly a puppy dog, and you can’t pretend he doesn’t have…a certain charm to him.”

  I licked my lips, closing my eyes as I chuckled. “Are you warning me not to sleep with him?”

  “Do what you like,” Foster said with a shrug. “Just remember—he’s here for a job. So are you. Your biggest strength right now is that you’ve got the upper hand on this—you know he’s up to something. He just thinks you’re an idiot Omega who can help him get what he wants.”

  “And if what he wants is this ridiculously attractive body of mine?” I ran my hands down my bare abs, every ridge of my muscles rising and falling beneath my fingertips.

  “You know he wants more than just that.” Foster leaned forward, pointing a finger at me. “If you end up too cockstruck to function with this asshole…”

  I grinned. “Foster, come on. I’m not going to fall in love any more than I’m going to fall in…I don’t know. Leprechauns. Unicorns. Fall in narwhals with the guy.”

  Foster laughed. “Narwhals are real, you know.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean. I’m not going to turn complete idiot over a feeling that doesn’t even exist.”

  “Yeah?” Foster sniffed, obviously impressed. “In that case, I can’t imagine a better man for the job. Figure out what he wants. Who he’s working for. What their weaknesses are and what they think they’ve got to gain from sending a man like him sniffing around a place like this.”

  “And when I do?” I asked, broaching the one topic that Foster and I hadn’t covered yet. Compensation—the one thing we’d been putting off until I knew I had my in.

  Foster nodded, understanding that it was finally time to lay his cards on the table. “We both know you can’t strip forever, Noah. And look—you’ve been here at the Ballroom for nearly as long as I have. I figure, you know, this kind of dedication to the place…speaks well of you. You care about this club as much as I do, don’t you.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “You know I do.”

  “I know. So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that if you can pull this off, I can feel safe passing this place off to your capable hands. I’ve been grooming you for management long enough—might as well finally give you the title to go along with it.”

  My smirk returned in full-force—it was exactly what I wanted, and Foster knew it. But I couldn’t help it—it wouldn’t be a conversation with Foster if I didn’t find some little way to get a dig in.

  “Then what happens to you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You run off with the mystery man who’s been sending you all these lovely flowers for the last three months?”

  I eyed the vases around the room—white roses, mostly, with some greenery and lilies thrown in for variety. There were nearly a dozen of them, displayed on every available surface. When I breathed in, the air was thick with the sweetness of their scent.

  “Maybe I will,” Foster returned, having enough decency to look a little smug. “Seems fair, right? You have to deal with the bullshit drama of running this place, I get fucked by some Alpha on a yacht in the Mediterranean.”

  “Everything we’ve ever dreamed of,” I agreed with a wink.

  “As long as you don’t fuck this up,” he reminded me, punctuating it with a harsh little laugh.

  I left Foster’s office with pleasure swelling in my lungs and pride puffing up my chest. Seducing a handsome, dangerous Alpha? I’d been born for this job. Foster and I both knew it. Ace Winston might have been good-looking. He might have been strong and charming and more clever than he dared to let on. But I wasn’t bad-looking myself—and better yet, I was stronger. More charming. And cleverness? I had that shit in spades.

  It was cute, the way Foster had warned me about falling in love with the poor schmuck, but as I headed down the stairs to change out of my work clothes, love was the last thing I was concerned with. I’d never fallen in love before in my life—it probably wasn’t even possible. Sure, for other people, maybe. I’d seen enough of my coworkers swoon over the Alphas they’d gotten pregnant by, gotten married to. But me? Hell no. Whatever part of me that was meant to be capable of that kind of thing had broken long ago, and the emotion store had been fresh out of replacement parts.

  Falling in love with Ace Winston—that was the funniest fucking thing I’d ever heard of in my life.

  I changed into a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt that clung to my chest just so and the combat boots I’d brought back from Afghanistan with me—ever since my tour had started, I’d never really felt right in anything else. Ace Winston might have been a criminal, but I was a Marine. If anyone should’ve been afraid that night, I reckoned it should’ve been Ace.

  I found him at the bar where I’d left him, still only two whiskeys deep.

  “You ready to get out of here?” I asked, slinging my denim jacket over my shoulder and looking him over one more time before we committed to the night.

  Nice suit. Incredible cut. Muscles that rippled beneath it with his every move—there must not have been anything better to do in prison than work out, I supposed. The fact that he’d kept them once he’d gotten out of the joint impressed me, even though maybe it shouldn’t have. I’d done a hundred push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups every day since I’d first signed up to serve; they were the first thing I did every morning, without fail.

  It hit me that maybe we were alike in that way, Ace and me. Old habits died hard.

  “Shame,” he grunted, looking me over as well as he rose. “I was thinking I�
��d take you somewhere nice—but you’re underdressed.”

  The grin rose on my face, wolfish and wry. “It’s more than I was wearing before—and you sure as hell weren’t complaining then.”

  “Mm. Maybe I’m overdressed, then,” he conceded, smirking back at me like he knew how that statement made me imagine him with fewer clothes on.

  Fuck. Overdressed couldn’t have been more true.

  “Maybe you are. Don’t worry, though,” I said, winding my fingers around the black silk of his tie and plucking it a little looser. “I know somewhere we can go where it won’t matter.”

  “Little early to go to bed, don’t you think?” When he smiled, I could see the sharpness of his teeth.

  “Oh, you’re dirty.” I plucked the top button of his collared shirt open as well. “So dirty, in fact… I think we’d better head to The Shower first.”

  3

  Ace

  The Shower, as it turned out, was a club in the Bowery. We took the subway there, the harsh lights of the train casting shadows on the faces of the other passengers. It made them look tired, worn out, run ragged by the day—but not Noah. Even in shitty lighting, somehow he managed to glow.

  “You know, you could lose the suit jacket and you wouldn’t look so fucking awkward,” he told me, nodding to the bouncer with familiarity as we skipped the long line in.

  I straightened my lapels with confidence. “It’s a two-thousand-dollar suit jacket. Not exactly planning on dumping it into the trash.”

  He turned, grinning, the thrumming bass of the music still so distant as the Omega at the door stamped our hands. “The club has coat check, Ace.”

  As I shrugged it off and handed it to the man at the coat check desk, I blinked as I tried to remember when I’d given him my name.

  Sloppy. I should’ve kept better track of what I’d said to him, and I shouldn’t have let Noah pick our venue. A quaint little restaurant, maybe an Italian place, would’ve been perfect for my intentions for the night. Somewhere nice, quiet, a little ambient music in the background and a few glasses of red to lubricate the conversation. Instead, I’d let him draw me into an explosion of electronic music, sweaty bodies grinding against each other on the dance floor in a room too loud to talk in.