Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  Alton and Eliot shared a tense look.

  “Absolutely,” Eliot said with certainty, gnawing on the corner of his lower lip.

  “Eliot’s had one bad run-in with him already.” Alton wrapped his arm protectively around his husband’s waist. “Broke his teeth for the trouble. Knowing John…I’d say he’s capable of kidnapping and worse.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. But…thank you. Really.” I cocked my head toward a table, where Noah had already laid out a pitcher of ice water and some glasses in preparation for the arrival of our ragtag task force. “Would you mind sticking around for a bit? Telling the police what you know?”

  “Of course not,” Eliot assured me. “Anything else you need, just say the word. Anders was…just, incredibly kind to me when I started working here. We want to see him safe just as bad as you do.”

  Alton gave me a long once-over, then shot me a sympathetic look of understanding—like he could somehow read my mind just by looking at my face. “Maybe not quite as bad, then,” he said softly. “We’ll do whatever we can to bring your Omega home.”

  “His Omega?” Eliot asked, turning to Alton in surprise as he was whisked away toward the table.

  “Lucky guess,” Alton explained—but it couldn’t have been.

  If he’d already had one violent encounter with Simmons, I could imagine Alton knew exactly what an Alpha in my position must have felt like. He’d already been there himself.

  The next to enter was Foster Collins himself—the Ballroom’s owner, simultaneously smoothing down the wildness of his hair and trying to do up the final button of his shirt.

  “Blake. Shit,” he swore, half stumbling over himself as he came to me. “If I’d had any idea—”

  “It’s not your fault,” I assured him, eyeing what looked an awful lot like a hickey on his neck. Under any other circumstance, I would’ve given him shit for coming straight from one of his mystery hook-ups—but current situation considered, there were more important things to say. “This has been going on for long enough…what the hell could you have done?”

  “It’s not your fault either. Noah told me you’ve been looking after Anders, and…” He gave me the same long, calculating look Alton had, apparently reaching the same conclusion. “Oh, fuck. This is more than just a kidnapping for you, isn’t it?”

  “Could say that, yeah.”

  He clapped his hand on my shoulder, giving me a look that might’ve been reassuring if he didn’t look quite so comically freshly fucked. “We’ll get him back, Blake. Safe and sound. I promise. Until then…”

  We both turned as the front door opened again, revealing Rand and his partner both dressed in uniforms and looking ready for action.

  “Open bar,” Foster offered, giving my shoulder another pat before moving away. “You let your police buddies know that if they catch that fucker, they’ll drink here free for life.”

  As for Rand, he had no words of assurance for me—only questions and more questions. He’d seen just as much shit during his years on the force as I had when I was overseas—and as nice as it was to hear so many words of assurance from Foster and his former dancers, I could see from the look on Rand’s face that he knew exactly how dire our situation was as I brought him up to speed.

  “We’ve got a name, at least.” Rand crossed his arms over his chest as his partner headed up to check in with Noah and Ace for an update on the surveillance footage. “You sure he’s our guy?”

  “John Simmons,” I repeated with a nod. “It’s gotta be.”

  “It’s a bit of a long shot,” Rand admitted, pulling his lips tight and thin. “Even with the positive ID on the police sketch. But we’ve got a pretty good case that he’s a viable suspect, at the very least. I can get some guys on this, figure out his address. Get a warrant to search his apartment. Just…it’ll take time, Blake.”

  “Time we might not have.”

  Rand nodded, grim. “That’s what I’m worried about. And if Anders isn’t there… Anything else you can give us? Anything at all is only going to help right now.”

  I reached into my pocket, running my thumb across my phone with a heavy sigh. I’d promised Anders that I wouldn’t go tracking him down with that app again. It was a promise that I’d intended to keep. But all things considered…his life was on the line, and every second I hesitated pushed us even closer to being one second too late.

  “I can track his iPhone.” I felt dirty even admitting it—that I still had access to that kind of power. That I’d breached his trust with it to begin with. But now that Anders was in danger, I didn’t see any other choice. He could have it out with me over it later—after we’d saved him from whatever Simmons had in store. “His phone was gone when I woke up—and if he still has it on…”

  “That’s perfect,” Rand said, suddenly looking a shade less fatalistic.

  From the stairway up to Foster’s office, Rand’s partner came jogging down with a triumphant grin, Ace and Noah in tow. “We’ve got a vehicle description. Black BMW, silver rims. Video, too—face from the sketch matches.”

  “Then that’s our guy.” Rand turned back to me, holding my gaze. “Pull up the tracker. We’re heading out.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I insisted, to which Rand only gave a sharp little laugh.

  “Of course you are, idiot. You’re riding shotgun—I’ll drive.”

  18

  Anders

  Every truck we passed on our way out of the city left me craning my neck, hoping to see that Blake was behind the wheel—to no avail.

  He’s going to find me. He’s going to save me, I kept telling myself. But slowly, as John’s hand crept further and further up my thigh, even that mantra was beginning to wear thin, until it finally just became, Blake, where the hell are you?

  “We’ll get you a new pregnancy test before we hit the border, of course,” John informed me. He’d been prattling on and on about all of his plans for us for so long now, I’d started to tune them out—but that statement in particular stuck out to me like white pants after Labor Day.

  “The border? To where, New Jersey?”

  John glanced over at me with a seething side-eye. “Don’t play stupid, Anders. It’s unbecoming. I’m hardly going to whisk you away to New Jersey, of all places.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” I forced myself to say—seeing as my lack of appreciation for John’s master plan seemed to be wearing thin. If I had to spit politeness out through my teeth to get answers from him now, so be it. “Where are you taking me then?”

  “Mexico, of course. As far away from that stupid club and that meathead of an Alpha as possible.”

  “I don’t have my passport on me,” I pointed out. “Not to poke holes in your master plan or anything, but—”

  John scoffed, his lip curling into a sneer. “Didn’t I tell you to stop playing stupid? You’re not supposed to be like those other Omegas, Anders. I chose you because you were special. Cultured. Well-bred. I’m not taking you across the border under your real name. You should know better than that.” He sniffed again, like I’d somehow disappointed him so much that the car was beginning to reek of it. “Had one of my connections make us up a couple of fakes. They’re in the glove box, if you’re interested.”

  Raising an eyebrow, I leaned forward and twisted my bound wrists to the side to pop the glove box open—out of curiosity more than anything. Within, there were two stiff, fresh United States passports as promised. When I wrestled one open, I found a shockingly good passport photo of myself staring back at me—the one from my real passport, in fact. Seemed that information wasn’t all that John had gotten from my mother. But when I saw the name that I’d be living under if Blake didn’t hurry the fuck up with this rescue attempt already, I couldn’t even suppress the laugh that followed.

  Ben Dover. Incredible.

  I was about to begin my new life in Mexico with a psychopath as a fucking gay sex pun.

  “What’s so funny?” John snapped at t
he sound of my amused disgust.

  “Nothing. Just…nothing,” I replied. Anything else would’ve probably gotten me called stupid again.

  As we neared the exit to the interstate, John continued to inform me of what our new life together would be like. He had a house in Tijuana. A boat. A bed specifically built to accommodate the regular use of handcuffs—which I was obviously just dying to try out. He’d fly my mother out—yet another thing to look forward to. Ideally, in his mind, I’d be pregnant. All swollen with someone else’s child—a child that he intended to pass off as his own. That was a riot in and of itself. As if any child that would inevitably be as blond-haired and blue-eyed as Blake and I were would ever believably belong to him.

  But as much as I wanted to continue laughing to myself at the absurdity of his plan, I couldn’t help but notice the other contents of the glove box. Rope—lots of it. A box of matches. A roll of duct tape. And worst of all, a knife—sharp, combat-ready, slightly curved and heavy with a serrated edge on one side of the tip. For a moment, I thought about reaching for it as I put my new “passport” back in place—but as soon as I moved for it, John reached over, snatching the little blue booklet out of my hands and slamming the glove box shut.

  “I don’t think I’ve made myself sufficiently clear, Anders,” he said, all the malicious joy that had seeped into his voice as he described our new life together suddenly siphoning out completely. “So let me spell it out for you. Try to run, and I’ll kill you. Find some way to ask for help, and I’ll kill you. Displease me in any way, and maybe I won’t kill you after all—maybe I’ll send someone after that Alpha of yours. Or that slut at the Ballroom you call your boss. Or your mother—she misses you so much, you know. Is that what you want? If you don’t have any sense of your own self-preservation, then you’ll obey me to save them.”

  And just like that, any kind of humor that I’d been able to pull from the situation dissipated. Like rain off the pavement on a hot summer day.

  It wasn’t just my life at stake here. It wasn’t even just the life of my child. No, now it was Blake’s life. Foster’s life. My mother’s life. The life of anyone who John thought he might be able to leverage against me so I’d do as he said. Behave as he wanted. Unless John was bluffing, now they all hung in the balance—and in my experience with John so far, I’d never known him to bluff. The fact that I was bound at the wrists in the passenger seat of his BMW on my way to Mexico with him was proof enough of that.

  “Do you understand, Anders?” John asked. Judging by the look on his face alone, I knew there’d be a price to pay if I didn’t.

  “I understand, John,” I said—my voice suddenly sounding just as cold as his.

  “Mm. That’s good. That’s very good.” John’s tongue darted out from between his lips, slicking across them in a way that made him look even more like a rat-faced toad than usual. “But…I think we can do better than that.”

  “We can?” I wasn’t even being flippant that time—hadn’t I already given him everything he wanted?

  “Let’s hear it again…but with a sir at the end.”

  “What?”

  He glanced over at me, glaring daggers. “‘I understand, sir.’ I want to hear you say it.”

  And just like that, I could see my entire life playing out in front of me. The abuse. The cruelty. The crazed way John planned to keep me as both some kind of sick, twisted semblance of a husband and, simultaneously, nothing more than a fucking slave. The only person I knew who deserved to be called sir was Captain Blake Ayers—and he had several Purple Hearts to his name to prove that he’d earned it.

  I hated it. Hated this. Hated myself for not heeding Blake’s warnings. For not keeping my promise and letting this awful, fucked-up thing befall me. Hated John fucking Simmons for ever noticing me to begin with.

  And yet…

  And yet, I knew I didn’t have a choice.

  “I understand, si—” I began, but was immediately cut off by the sound of the BMW’s honking as John brought the vehicle screeching to a halt while he laid on his horn.

  “Fucking traffic! Always so much goddamn, motherfucking—”

  But as I glanced out the window to see what the hold-up was, suddenly I wasn’t paying attention to John anymore. I couldn’t have, even if I wanted to.

  Instead, I was looking to the taxi ahead of us—a taxi that had a familiar face staring out the back window, right at me.

  A face with lips that slowly turned upwards into a smile as I met the man’s eyes.

  Noah.

  And just like that, everything changed all at once.

  There wasn’t time for me to feel anything. Not elation, not joy—not anything at all. It all happened so fast, I hardly caught all of it, and by the time I’d processed any of it, the next movement was already in the works.

  I remembered seeing the cab’s doors pop open on either side. Ace Winston’s massive, burly figure coming out on door. Noah’s almost equally tall, very pregnant form coming out the other. On my side of the BMW, another car pulled up—with two more familiar faces peering up at me. Alton and Eliot, flipping on their hazards and blocking the BMW in on the right-hand side. A glance in the rearview mirror gave me a flash of a dark-haired driver boxing us in from behind, with Foster Collins’ eternally cocky smile grinning up at me from the passenger seat.

  But best of all was the flash of blue and red lights on John’s side of the car—just before his door was yanked open by a tall, broad-shouldered blond with fire in his eyes.

  “New York traffic,” Blake said with a vicious grin and a shrug. “It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  Blake’s gaze slid over to me, taking in what must have been an awful sight. My zip-tied wrists. My pale, shocked face and wide, stunned blue eyes. Something about seeing me sent the fire in Blake’s own eyes flaring up to a whole new life—and before John could even get his wits about him enough to reach for his gun, Blake was snarling with his fist wrapped around the front of John’s shirt.

  I could only watch in shocked silence as Blake threw my stalker—my kidnapper—the man who’d made my life a living hell all these years—down to the asphalt, his fist raised and ready to strike. I’d seen that look in Blake’s eyes twice before. Once, when I’d woken him from that flashback dream and he’d nearly choked me to death before he’d even realized what he was doing. Again on the night we’d first fucked, then made love.

  A chill shot through my body as I realized what was about to happen. Blake’s fist was going to connect with John’s head, pounding him into the pavement—and once it did, it would connect again. And again. And again.

  And it wouldn’t stop until John Simmons’ head was beaten to such a pulp, there wouldn’t be enough of the man left for a mugshot.

  There wouldn’t even be enough left for an open casket.

  “Blake!” I called out at him, wrestling with my seatbelt in a desperate attempt to stop him from doing something he might come to regret. John deserved everything that Blake gave him—but I wasn’t doing this for him. “Blake, please—stop!”

  And just like that, something seemed to break. Blake hesitated, his fist trembling in place—but then, his shoulders slumped as he backed away and the police swept in.

  After that, it was all a flurry of handcuffs and flashing lights—but I didn’t have eyes for that anymore. Didn’t have eyes for anything or anyone.

  Anyone but him.

  19

  Blake

  “You’re alive,” I breathed, pulling myself into the driver’s seat of Simmons’ BMW and moving toward Anders like I was seeing a ghost.

  It had been on my mind the whole way there. Weaving in and out of traffic, staring down every big, black vehicle that came into my line of sight. That maybe, despite my best efforts, we were already too late. That I wouldn’t be recovering Anders, my Omega, the only person who’d made things feel right for me since Az Zahir.

  That I’d be recovering his body instead—or at least, what was left of it.


  But there he was, clear as day. Pale, shaking, a little green around the ears, sure. But whole. Unharmed. Safe—and with Rand just behind me, putting Simmons into handcuffs and reading him his rights, I knew that he’d stay that way. For a long, long time.

  If I had it my way, for the rest of his life.

  I reached into my pocket, flicking out my pocket knife and slipping it between Anders’ wrists. The zip tie split open immediately, freeing his hands—and for a moment, I half expected him to hit me when he realized I must have done exactly what I said I wouldn’t. Tracked his phone. Tracked him down. Sure, it had been to save his life—but when I made promises, I took them seriously, and I knew that breaking that one was another breach of trust that Anders might still hate me for.

  When instead, he dove across the seat and wrapped his arms around my neck, forcing grateful kisses against every bare bit of skin he could find, it was the most relieved I’d ever felt in my life.

  “You saved me,” Anders whispered in between kisses, which didn’t feel like they’d ever stop—and I didn’t want them to. “You saved me, Blake. God, you saved my fucking life.”

  “Course I did,” I said, chuckling softly with exhausted delight. “Told you I’d protect you, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t have to, though,” Anders pulled away just enough that I could see the contrition in his eyes. “I didn’t deserve it. And you did it anyway. You saved me anyway.”

  “Couldn’t exactly let Simmons run away with you, sweetheart,” I pointed out, my lips aching for his. “After all—you’re mine.”

  “Oh, god. I am yours. I’m so, so completely yours.”

  Then, there it was. The moment I’d been waiting for. Hoping for with such a desperation, my blood was still boiling with fury at Simmons for nearly stealing it away.

  His lips crushed against mine, kissing so hard it didn’t even feel like a kiss at all at first. It was something more than that—something made of intensity, forged out of that mix of terror and relief. The sensation that we were together again—for good this time. Ecstatic, afraid, but wholly, completely real.