Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  It meant that I’d have to shift tactics, which I hated. Casual seduction was one of my techniques whether I was on the job or off it, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t just as good with my body as I was with my mouth. But I knew an Omega like Noah had the same set of skills when it came to dancing hip-to-hip, making Alphas like me want him. An expensive dinner would have given me the upper hand—now, instead, we were in Noah’s club of choice, operating on Noah’s terms.

  Instead of charming him with my words, I’d have to try and keep up with his moves. Normally, I would have sulked about that for a little bit longer—but then he grabbed my hand, pulling me onto the dance floor with him.

  It was hard to sulk about anything when I had an ass like his grinding against my cock.

  “You like this kind of music?” I had to lean over his shoulder, press my lips to his ear just so he could hear me. My fingertips brushed against the waistband of his jeans teasingly, testing to see what he liked.

  Immediately, he grabbed my hands, pressing my palms to his thighs. “Love it,” he shouted back, his eyes closed as he leaned his shoulders against my chest. “Don’t you?”

  “More of a rock ‘n’ roller myself,” I answered truthfully. Other Alphas in my profession would have lied—come up with something believably clever to fit whatever persona they were putting on for the evening—but I didn’t need that shit. It would’ve been just as hard to deny my love of guitar solos and AC/DC as it would’ve been to remember that I’d told him I liked shitty club music some asshole with a Mohawk had put together on his laptop.

  Besides—why bother lying when I already knew he’d be more attracted to the truth.

  “Poor thing,” he cooed, raising his arms up to wrap them around my neck. “And here you are, suffering just to be close to me.”

  “I imagine plenty of Alphas have suffered worse for an Omega like you.”

  Then the bass dropped, and even shouting wouldn’t have been intelligible over the sheer force of the sound.

  I was hard for him already. He must have known it. Every move of his ass against my hips managed to caress my cock through my slacks, leaving me throbbing and painfully stiff against my zipper. Knowing what he did for a living, it wouldn’t have been out of line to imagine he was doing it on purpose, too. Omegas like Noah knew how to get an Alpha’s blood pumping on sheer instinct. Add in all the practice he’d had at the Ballroom, and he’d perfected it to an art.

  No wonder Harmon wanted him so fucking bad.

  I could have fought it. It wasn’t like I didn’t have that level of self-control. On jobs like this, when I needed to, I could go hard or soft in minutes as the situation demanded it. But on this night, with this particular Omega…hell. I might’ve been the luckiest bastard in the room, but for once, what Noah was doing to my body and what I needed my body to do were in perfect sync.

  It almost felt wrong that I was getting paid for it, really. Wanting a man like Noah was as easy and natural as breathing—which made it all the more pleasurable when he turned to face me, trailing the tip of his nose along my neck until my breath ran short.

  Getting paid for this was just the cherry on top.

  We lost ourselves in the sound, the blaring speakers overhead urging our bodies closer and closer until there was no more space left between us to be had. I ran my fingers through the dirty gold of his hair, feeling the humidity of his heat and his sweat. The leather of his scent bloomed to life as our bodies moved together, harmonizing to each other’s shifting rhythms. Every place that he touched me left the feel of white-hot fire beneath my shirt on my skin.

  Christ—he was good. Better than I’d expected. Better than I could’ve dreamed. I gave it back to him bit by bit, being gentle when I knew he thought my touches would be rough. Holding him tight against me when he backed off and made like he was planning on moving away.

  “You wanna get out of here?” he finally shouted up to me as the set ended and the crowd erupted in a cheering roar.

  “Depends on where you want to get to,” I countered, giving him the space I knew he needed to ask for what I knew he wanted.

  A flash of recognition lit up his eyes. Like he knew what I was doing, somehow. Like he knew exactly how calculated my every word had been so far that night. Like he was impressed at how well I was doing—and like he couldn’t help but want to find out how much better I could get.

  “Come on,” he agreed, fingers winding around my wrist to drag me back out of the crowd. “I don’t live far.”

  I traded my coat check ticket for my suit jacket and watched the way his biceps turned to gooseflesh in the nighttime chill once we were back out the door.

  I smirked as I shook out the jacket and wrapped it around him. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t throw it out now?”

  “Mm. Very, yes.” He tugged the lapels around him, wearing it like a cape without bothering to slip his arms in the sleeves. “I’ve never worn anything that’s cost the same amount as my rent before.”

  “You can thank me later, then.” I wound my arm across his back, holding the jacket on. The wind clipped my collarbones, turning my sweat from the club into an icy coolness—but I didn’t mind.

  He looked good in my jacket.

  He’d look even better when that jacket was with the rest of our clothes on his bedroom floor.

  “Reminds me of Fallujah when it gets like this,” he said off-handedly.

  My brain pricked with interest. I hadn’t expected that.

  “You served?”

  “Just one tour. Went into the Marines right out of high school—not a lot of other options for me, I guess.”

  “Marines, huh? My dad was a military man.” I didn’t know why I was telling him that, but in the moment, it felt right. “Probably fucked him up pretty bad.”

  Noah laughed. “Yeah, fucked me up a little too. Probably would’ve done another anyway—but I tore my ACL just before we shipped out again. Those nights I was Iraq, though…I’d sweat all day, then freeze all night once the sun went down. Weird to have that same kind of feeling here in New York.”

  “How’s a Marine end up dancing at a burlesque club, then?” I didn’t know why I’d asked him that, either. Normally, I wouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help myself—I was curious.

  “Story for another time.” There was a glimmer in his eyes, like it gave him some kind of pleasure to withhold information like that. “Your dad a Marine too?”

  “Army,” I grunted, realizing that I could clip him in the exact same way. “Story for another time.”

  It was almost too easy, the way we’d come together. Casing the Ballroom for so many weeks had given me little insights into the dancers there—the way they held themselves. The things they liked. Noah never wore jackets, but always ended up cold—and so there I was to wrap him up when he needed me to. I’d planned for that. Known it would make him feel safe with me. Known that it would build his trust.

  But the rest of this? The hardness of my cock that, even as I tried to coax it back down, didn’t seem to want to go away? The way he poured himself against me, falling into perfect step with me as we headed up the block to his place—that tension between us, a mutual wanting that, despite the fact that I was supposed to be faking it, seemed all too real—that wasn’t part of the plan.

  It was too easy, sure, but I wasn’t going to complain. Harmon had given me my instructions—and there hadn’t been anything in my contract that said I couldn’t enjoy following through with them.

  Case the Ballroom. Catch Noah Layton’s eye. Make him want you. Learn his secrets. Use them against his club. Take Foster Collins down a peg. Maybe convince him to jump ship in the process—the Backdoor could always use fresh meat. With anyone else, it would have been simple enough. With Noah, though, it was like it was fated already.

  I couldn’t grumble about my job when it seemed like, by the time I got paid for it, Noah and I would have both gotten what we wanted.

  Piece of fucking cake.

  “T
his is me.” Noah nodded to an old brownstone that looked like it had once been some kind of factory building. He fished his keys out of his pocket, his teeth scraping over his bottom lip as he looked me over once more. “Want to come up?”

  My cock twitched against my boxer briefs, reminding me that I was already almost too up to function.

  “You sure that’s what you want?” I asked. I knew the answer—but I needed to hear him say it, too.

  He only grinned. “I want a lot of things from you, handsome. But for starters—why don’t I at least show you the bedroom first?”

  4

  Noah

  He walked into my apartment behind me like he was casing the joint. In a way, maybe he was. I watched him for a moment, the way his gaze slid over everything so casually even though I could see him carefully tucking every bit of information he could glean from my furniture and belongings by the intelligent light in his dark eyes. The Bon Jovi poster on the wall, matted and framed over my IKEA couch. The vase of white irises on the end table, a gift from one of my regulars at the club.

  For a moment, it made me wonder what conclusions he was coming to. That I liked men in ripped denim, strumming steel guitars and singing about cowboys, I supposed. That I had an admirer, maybe—or at least, that I liked myself enough to buy myself flowers of my own.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. I knew that Ace wasn’t just here because he wanted to fuck me—even though the hard-on he’d been packing in those expensive slacks of his might’ve suggested otherwise. No Alpha sat outside a club in a black SUV for nearly a month just so he could choose an Omega dancer he wanted to take to bed. If that had ever been his intention, he could’ve easily just come inside, watched me perform and asked for a dance.

  “See anything you like?” I crossed my arms over my chest as I called him out of his thoughts.

  His gaze shifted to me immediately. When it raked over me, though, there was a hunger in it that made my hips ache.

  “At least one thing.” He moved toward me slowly, every step so measured he might as well have traced his path out with a ruler.

  “Not a Bon Jovi fan, then?”

  He smiled. “They’re all right—if you like overproduced hair metal, I guess.”

  “Like your taste in music is any better. You’re into—what, Nickelback?”

  He stopped in his step, then laughed. “Not quite. Guess you could say I like my rock music the same way I like my men.”

  “Loud and powerful?”

  Another step in my direction, then another until the black Italian leather of his shoes was kissing the tips of my boots. “Stripped down,” he replied. “Messy. A little raw.”

  “You’ve just described the perfect steak dinner,” I pointed out, matching his smirk.

  “Yeah? Sounds good, too.” He took my wrists in his hands, curling his strong, thick fingers around them before pulling them down to my sides. The way his lips pulled away as his smile widened, I could see the sharpness of his incisors. Perfectly straight, white teeth. “We did skip dinner.”

  “Feeling hungry?” I turned my chin up toward him, pushing it out in that arrogant way I’d learned from my drill sergeant in basic.

  “Starving,” he replied, staring down at my lips.

  “Could make you a sandwich,” I teased. “Couple beers in the fridge to go with it.”

  “Different kind of hungry,” he countered—and then his lips dipped down to claim mine.

  Ace’s kiss was the hard kind, nothing gentle or hesitant about it. He crushed my lips beneath his, giving me a taste of that hunger while I stood, unmoving, just feeling it. At first, I didn’t kiss him back at all. Made him work for it. Made him want it more. But then, my tongue slipped between my lips, flicking against his kiss in a way that would tell him he was satisfying more than just my appetite. My cock was hard for him in my jeans, precum already coating the front of my boxers as it strained against the zipper.

  I knew then that I was going to fuck him. I’d known it all along. The moment I’d first set eyes on Ace Winston, I’d been just as hard with the thought of all the things he might do to me. All the things I’d do to him in return. But now, with his hold on my wrists tightening as he tugged my body closer to his, the reality of how bad I wanted him was being pulled fully into the light.

  I hadn’t just taken up this job as a favor to Foster. I wanted to impress my boss, sure, and I wanted to do what I could to protect the Ballroom from the things that a man like Ace Winston might’ve been lurking around outside it for. But I wouldn’t have fucked him just for that. Not a damn chance. I wanted him because he was tall and broad-shouldered, because of the way he stared at me like he was already deciding exactly how he wanted to put his cock in me, and how hard he wanted to do it besides. It was animal attraction, pure and simple. Dancing with him at the Shower had only amplified it. The kiss had only reminded me of what I already knew.

  From what I knew about Ace Winston, he was a bad, bad man—and from what I was now learning about myself, that meant he was just my type.

  My wrists broke free of his grasp, and he let them. It meant that my hands were free to tear off his tie, and his hands were free to reach around me, cupping and squeezing at my ass.

  “You already wet for me?” His teeth nipped at my lower lip, sending a gentle shock of pain running through my system. I could almost feel the endorphins rush through my veins after in response—god, he was good.

  “Get these pants off me and maybe you’ll find out,” I snarled back at him.

  He certainly would—I could feel it already, the white-hot heat that rushed all the way from the tight pucker of my ass all the way up to my fucking womb. As we stumbled backward elegantly, like two tango dancers a little drunk on their own wanting and red wine, I could feel that wetness he was longing for against my cheeks, coating my thighs like molten honey. My need for him was undeniable—and lucky me, I didn’t have to deny myself anything tonight. Fucking Ace was all part of the game I was playing—the fact that I so desperately wanted to just made me that much harder for him. That much more wet.

  The bedroom was just down the hall. We barely took our hands and lips and teeth off of each other as we lumbered to it. If I wasn’t dancing my tongue against the shape of his mouth, I was scraping my incisors against his collarbone, my fingers clawing against the back of his neck. His hands were all over me, tearing open the button of my jeans and pulling my shirt off me so fast it made my head spin. Ace’s shirt went next, and I thanked the good Lord for button-downs so I didn’t have to break our kiss while I stripped him down. His chest was a masterpiece, a gorgeous network of old-school tattoos, chest hair and battle scars. I gasped at it as he pushed me back onto the bed, staring up at the way he loomed over me like some kind of dark god. But I wasn’t the kind of Omega who just simpered and moaned his way through a quick fuck. In an instant, my gasp curled my lips into a devious smile.

  I wasn’t afraid of him, the criminality of his past or the strength it would have taken to endure whatever pain he’d been through. If anything, I only wanted him more for it.

  I’d seen war. I’d seen hell. I wasn’t going to be afraid of a man like Ace when I had plenty of scars of my own.

  The rest of the clothes came off in a scramble, neither of us able to control ourselves around the other for long enough to be tender or gentle or even thorough about it. He dropped to his knees, taking my cock into his mouth before I even managed to kick my boots off. The tangle of my jeans around my ankles was like some kind of makeshift bondage as he forced my thighs apart, purring deeply with every taste of precum my tip smeared across his tongue.

  His mouth was fucking fire, flames licking at every sensitive nerve ending of my throbbing cockhead. He went down like he’d been born to do it, taking me deep and unyielding without so much as bracing himself to draw a breath first. His throat milked me, clenching and swallowing me down like it needed to be painted white with my cum. I might have shot into him right then and there, too�
�which never fucking happened. Normally, I was in control of my body, my pleasure, when I wanted to cum and where—but Ace’s lips were wrapped so tight around my shaft, his tongue was so greedy as he lapped at my balls while he took me, for a moment I forgot what control even felt like.

  I was so fucking close, it made my chest ache with want of it. But then, just as I felt my balls tense, ready to empty themselves onto Ace’s tongue, he drew back with a triumphant gasp. Left me fucking trembling. He wiped the delicious mix of his saliva and my precum away from his mouth with the back of his hand, grinning up at me like he’d just won some kind of fucked-up lottery and I was his prize.

  “You bastard,” I spat, unable to control the black velvet laughter in my throat as I realized what he’d done. Pushed me right to the edge, then denied me. No one had ever done that to me before—no one had ever been able to help themselves around me for long enough to dare trying it. “God, I’m going to make you pay for that.”

  “Sure you are, sweetheart.” He kicked his own pants off as he stood, drawing himself to his full height while keeping his thighs between my knees, making it impossible for me to shift out of the position he’d put me in. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  In that moment, I might have tried to get him back for it, too. Pushed him to the floor, held him down by his hips and made him cum for me, whether he meant to or not. But then he gave me something so captivating to look at, I was stunned fucking stupid.

  Ace shoved his boxers down, catching the engorged tip of his dick on his waistband and making it spring up in stiff response to me. He took it in his fist as he stood over me, stroking it slow and hard. It was longer, thicker, more gorgeous than anything I’d ever taken before—so big, maybe I should have been afraid of it, but so perfectly shaped that all I could do was clutch at the bedsheets beneath me and brace myself for impact.