by Garren, Jax
“We get one day—one day—of presents for three hundred and sixty-four days of being good. Boxes of useless crap for a year’s worth of no fun? What kind of rip-off deal is that? This year, I decided…” She slowly peeled down a glove to cheering applause. “I’m going to be naughty those three hundred and sixty-four days.” The glove snapped off. She let it fall and moved to the other one. “And when the holidays come around…” She sang with her best whiskey voice, “I’ll get nothing, get nothing…and like it!”
She launched onto her toes for the striptease, using her classical training in ways she’d never been allowed as she sang and smiled and played with her audience. With the removal of two hairpins, her red-gold curls tumbled around her shoulders. The Santa dress unsnapped from the front to reveal her corset and bustle. Her toes carried her into the air again, and she spun and leaped to the howling appreciation of the audience. Then the bustle was gone, leaving her in a corset and ruffled hot pants. She stepped back onto the lyra.
She’d been lying when she said she couldn’t use it.
The circle rose back into the air with her once more on it. She crooned about all the naughty things she planned to do as she unhooked the corset. Amidst escalating cheers the fabric fluttered to the ground, leaving her in a red lace bra as revealing as she could find while supporting her enough to dance.
Now for her favorite part of the routine. She took hold of the metal, flipped and swung, piked and did the splits, flashing the audience in a way that would’ve made her parents pass out—all from ten feet in the air and to resounding applause.
She backflipped off the lyra and sucked in air to sing the last chorus of her number: “There may be coal in my stocking, my old friends may be mocking, but baby, I lived every day. I got nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing! Ow! And I like it this way.”
The crowd hopped to its feet as she bowed, flushed with her success and ready for more.
In the shadows at the back of the party, Hauk tried unsuccessfully to close his jaw. He was supposed to join Brayden in a backroom, somewhere safe from all the eyes. But his feet were rooted to the floor, his own eyes locked on a goddess of beauty incarnate. And not just beauty. The way she sang. The way she moved. Every straight man in the room was praying for a chance to be on her naughty list, and damn his scars, he was still a man.
Albeit a foolish one.
The dancer’s bright eyes flashed across her audience, soaking in their adulation, but they didn’t penetrate back to his dark corner. Not that he’d want them to. Not in real life, anyway, when they would look at him with disgust or fear or pity. No, he needed to take his hard-on back to the office and ask politely for a cold drink.
But she was sauntering his way. He sank into the shadows as the dancer—Jolie, she’d been called—exited through the audience and back into the bowels of the building. Exactly where he needed to go.
He waited a beat and then another, hoping to give her enough time to reach her destination so he could remain unseen. He debated donning his motorcycle helmet, just in case, but that made him ridiculous. He’d stick with ugly. He pulled up his hoodie to hide the phoenix tattoo on his skull and shadow the rippling pink and white welts dappling his face.
His boots pounded like a machine press against the concrete as he followed Jolie’s path. A few steps in he found a threadbare white sheet slung up across a wire to make a changing room out of an alcove off the main path. Light from behind the fabric outlined Jolie’s curves as she shimmied out of her shorts. Once again he was stuck in place, frozen this time by a shadow.
The shadow laughed a rich sound of warm honey and forbidden things. “You know,” she said, “the audience is supposed to stay in the other room. Following me back here is against the rules.”
“I didn’t, er, follow you. I’m looking for…” Gods, why could he think of words? “Catrina. I didn’t mean to, uh, run into you.” Changing, possibly naked. Behind a thin sheet.
“Aw…” He could hear her pout and it was damn cute. “And here I thought I’d inspired anarchy. Oh, well.”
He took a step toward the sheet. “Oh, I’m an anarchist, all right.” Most people would call him and the rest of the Citizens of the Underlight a pack of dangerous anarchists. Hauk didn’t see it that way. He loved America, the heart and soul of her. But the reality of today was a crumbling façade of the freedom she espoused, and politicians and CEOs with an agenda most people knew nothing about—all members of Ananke—were holding the wrecking ball. America had become a valiant soul in a ravaged body.
A lot like him. His own body may be beyond repair, but he’d be damned if he let his country rot when he could do something about it.
A sultry “Hmm,” brought his thoughts screeching back to the woman in front of him. “So I was uninspiring, then.” She bent over to push her feet into boots, and her backside pressed against the sheet like a perfect heart. “How disappointing.”
“Oh…” The word came out like a moan as he curled his fingers into fists. It took all the control he had to keep his hands off her perfect ass. “You’re inspiring, all right.”
She froze for just a moment before she stood, suddenly hesitant. “You have a delicious voice.” She turned until her body pressed into the sheet again, this time from the front. “So, anarchist, what rules are you going to break tonight?”
* * *
Copyright 2012 by Jennifer Hinson. Permission to reproduce granted by Harlequin Books S.A.
How Beauty Met the Beast, and its sequels How Beauty Saved the Beast and How Beauty Loved the Beast are available now from all major electronic retailers.
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