The shouts and whistles grew deafening.
Glancing at the crowd, she gave a coy wink and grin at the audience.
Tyr watched that lean body undulate sinuously before she flipped back around to land neatly on those super high-heeled, sparkly red shoes… only to fall again into full splits on the polished floor. She rolled over, undulating back up and grabbed the pole again, twisting around it easily with one leg hooked gracefully.
She moved so evenly and precisely, it looked almost mechanical.
She barely planted her weight before she spun around the pole again, all in perfect time to the music, pulling herself up and over a few more times before she landed easily and did a high kick, bringing her foot up past her head and planting it lightly on the seat of the chair.
The crowd went wild.
“MARRY ME, MARION!” the man in the crowd shouted.
Everyone burst out laughing.
“NO!” a woman yelled from next to him. “MARRY ME!”
The woman with the long black hair winked at the woman, then spun around, walking archly around to the chair, her knees high, before she did another high kick over her head, landing her foot on the seat of the silver chair from behind.
Stepping over the back of it, she flipped forward, landing neatly on her back on the polished stage, her hips in the air, her dark black makeup emphasizing her cat-like hazel eyes. She undulated again with the music, and Tyr found himself staring at those long legs and lean abdomen, trying to remind himself silently what he was doing there.
His eyes flickered to her face, only to find those hazel eyes on him.
She stared at him, her body writhing to the music.
It felt like the two of them were locked in the dance together…
Then she gripped the silver pole and pulled herself up, so gracefully, it looked like someone had brought her upright with wires.
Hooking her leg back around the pole, she spun liquidly around it again, her other leg hooked in a dancer’s pose, right as the song was winding to a close.
She ended the routine hanging upside down, one long leg kicked out in a perfect line, decorated with its red and white-striped stockings.
Her mouth quirked in a faint smirk as she held Tyr’s gaze.
The god didn’t move.
He didn’t so much as blink.
Still, it took him a few seconds to remind himself who she was.
She was the reason he was here.
Marion Ravenscraft was his job.
Even as he repeated the words in his head, in several different languages…
…he wondered if any part of him really believed it.
5
Making A Scene
S he hung upside down, staring at the man with the obsidian-black, stunning, and disturbingly riveting eyes, breathing a bit harder from the routine she’d thrown together at the last minute when Charlie asked if she’d entertain the troops.
Someone blabbed to Charlie that Marion had been a dancer, once upon a time.
Before she’d been a professional party girl.
She wasn’t really thinking about any of that now, though.
She wasn’t really thinking about anything.
She felt locked there instead, lost in those unfathomable eyes, which were only one part of an unbelievably beautiful face.
She held his gaze unflinchingly, even after her mind made it halfway back into the rest of her head. She never looked away, even as she started to think about him clearly enough to wonder about him. She watched him watch her, that stern face unmoving over a well-built, equally beautiful body that lounged on a bar stool at the far end of the bar.
Something about the way he sat there told her the casual pose was highly deceptive.
He looked more like a great cat, ready to pounce.
In fact, everything about him screamed “fighter,” and Marion, of all people, should know. She’d been around fighter-types most of her life.
She wondered who the hell he was.
With her insanely crappy luck, he was probably a reporter.
Given the fact that she’d more or less been dancing solely for him for the last thirty seconds or so of the song, that would be just… perfect.
Although she suspected a reporter would look a lot more delighted at the treat she’d just handed him than this guy currently did. He likely wouldn’t be staring at her with that unmoving, possibly-judgmental, possibly-angry look on his statuesque face.
He wouldn’t be staring at her with those strangely dark and hypnotic eyes, either.
Being a reporter also wouldn’t explain his build, which was closer to gymnast or middle-weight boxer than your average print jockey. Most of the paparazzi who followed her around looked like they’d just crawled out of their car after sleeping there the night before. The normally-scruffy exteriors of the reporters Marion had met over the past year tended to be notable more for their five o’clock shadow, or the Hawaiian shirts they bizarrely tended to favor, or their seemingly daily hangovers.
Even the ones who seemed a little more put together didn’t look like this guy.
They definitely didn’t give off the same vibe.
She wondered if he was someone new on her security detail.
She was still looking at him as she flipped off the pole, then walked across the stage to the narrow wooden steps that led back to the main floor. She descended those steps carefully, placing each foot cautiously in the crazy high heels.
Then Joanna Reeves grabbed her arm, laughing as she squeezed Marion around the waist, gushing in her ear about how everyone in the whole world just adored her. Joanna led her insistently, and Marion did her best to follow, teetering on those sparkly red heels across a slick tile floor where a number of drinks had already been spilled.
“You REALLY need to be an actress, my dear…” the actress slurred, speaking loudly over the rising music as the DJs came back on. They immediately resumed their thumping dance beats to further energize the crowd.
“…You have just so much charisma! Just SO MUCH! There is performer in your SOUL, Mari, I would bet money on it. I’m going to talk to my manager about you… I think we need to do a screen test at once! I am just dying to know if the camera loves you as much as I do!”
Marion didn’t answer her, but instead gave a head-tilt, a smirk, and a wink.
Sticking her finger in her dimple, she executed a sailor’s salute with her other hand, all while sticking out her butt and chest, imitating the old pin-up posters from the forties.
This only delighted Joanna more, who burst out in a laugh, steering Marion, still wearing nothing but a fuzzy white bikini and knee socks, over to her table, where Marion saw the usual mixture of famously famous and famously rich.
She curtseyed at the clapping and whistling that ensued.
Then she smiled at Joanna, disentangling her arm.
“I need to go change,” she said, speaking loudly over the music, right into the actress’ ear. “I’ll be back in a few minutes––”
“You look great, just like that,” a man told her, speaking with a thick, Irish accent.
When Marion looked over, she saw the actor smirking as he looked her over, her Santa hat from the show perched jauntily on his head, a hard-alcohol drink in a rocks glass gripped tightly at his chest.
“Why not come on over to my lap, love?” he said, patting his thigh. His Irish accent came out even thicker as he took another drink. “Tell horny, hard-on Santa what you want for Christmas, before he bursts out of his pants––”
“Oh, I strongly suspect you’re much more interested in what you want for Christmas, Harry,” Marion tossed back at him. “But we all know you’re on the list of bad little boys and girls. I suspect it’ll be a lump of coal for you.”
A man sitting next to him, some rich guy in tech, if memory served, burst out in a genuine-sounding laugh.
“Come on, love,” Harry coaxed, winking at her as he glanced down at her legs. “Give Santa’s cock a bit o
f a cuddle. We can work out the details of mutual presents later.”
“I’m way out of your price range, lover,” Marion returned with a smile.
“Oh, I doubt that. My price range is pretty high.”
“I’m sure you think so, honey,” Marion replied sweetly. “But then, men and woman often have different perceptions of size… and of its relative value.”
The tech mogul laughed again, slapping his thigh and grinning at Marion.
When Harry only smirked knowingly at her, Marion pretended not to notice, looking away before she executed another mock curtsey.
She leaned towards Joanna’s ear.
“I’ll be back,” she half-yelled. “Order me a margarita, will you?”
“Of course, darling,” Joanna yelled back. “Salt on the rocks, right?”
Marion nodded, winking at her. When she turned to go, however, the Irish actor caught hold of her arm, yanking her back towards him before she could make it a full step.
Marion didn’t think.
She reacted in pure instinct.
All those years of training flooded through muscle memory, jacked up by adrenaline and pure reactive self-defense. She flipped around, jerking her arm free, pivoting her leg, hip, torso in a smooth, tightly-controlled arc––
Bringing her foot around in a reverse back kick.
She ended up with the business end of one high heel, from one of those sparkly, red, fuck-me pumps, planted right up against the skin of the Irish actor’s neck.
Dimpling the place where his jugular lived.
Harry Mortensen froze, staring at her with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Marion cooed. “I thought you liked my shoes, Mr. Mortensen?”
The tech mogul burst out in another drunken laugh, clapping loudly.
“BRAVA!” he said with a thick European accent. “BRAVA, MISS!”
Harry only sat there, unmoving, his complexion darkening.
Marion watched the fear in those dark blue eyes.
She watched as it turned to a harder anger.
Smirking at the furious glare he aimed up at her, Marion withdrew her foot and leg with precision, drawing her knee and leg straight back, then planting the shoe’s high heel on the slippery tile floor. She glanced around at the wide eyes, even as one of the other men, another actor friend of Joanna’s, burst out in a nervous-sounding giggle.
“You should see your face, Harry,” the American actor joked. “I can’t tell if you pissed yourself or if you’re in love.”
Marion smiled at him politely, but she saw differently.
There was no love in those eyes.
Joanna looked at Marion in utter disbelief. Marion couldn’t tell if she’d impressed her new actress friend, or just convinced her that she, Marion, was a homicidal maniac, or possibly some kind of real-life spy.
Whatever the case, Joanna looked at her as if Marion had just held a gun to the guy’s head and threatened to murder him.
Which, Marion supposed, wasn’t entirely off-base.
Smiling at the group, she pretended not to notice any of their disbelieving stares.
“Back in a jif!” she said, doing a perky little leap as she made her hands and arms into bunny paws. When she jumped up, the heel of one foot touched her butt, right before she did a little skip and walked away.
M arion was already regretting what she’d done, even before she’d made it off the club’s floor.
Shoving the scene she’d just made out of her mind as best she could, she focused on changing back into normal clothes. Maybe she should take the whole thing as an omen, call it an early night and go back to the villa.
Maybe even back home.
Of course, Marion didn’t know where home was, not anymore.
The house in California was gone. One of the first things dear old Dad did after her mother and sister died was to get rid of the house Marion grew up in.
Home definitely was not the White House.
Honestly, Marion wasn’t even sure if it was the United States, not anymore.
Living in America was rife with all kinds of issues, as long as dear old Dad was president. She wouldn’t be able to leave her house unidentified for the next four to eight years. Everything she did would be under even more of a microscope if she did it on American soil.
She likely would be recognized and accosted by strangers on the street.
She’d be photographed and followed, just buying groceries or going out for coffee.
It would be pretty much impossible to date.
She supposed she could take Joanna up on her offer, disappear into the enclaves of other celebrities in Los Angeles, maybe even try to make a career out of being recognizable.
Somehow, the thought of doing that only made her feel faintly nauseous.
Also, she wouldn’t be helping out her dad much, if she went the Hollywood route.
Then again, if she was going to be a cliché, she might as well go all-in.
Sighing at the thought, she focused on getting out of the club for now. Screw the margarita. She was going to head back to the rented villa. Order food in. Take a shower and put on a fluffy robe. Maybe watch some old movies on cable, or a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , or Supernatural, or maybe Dexter.
If it wasn’t too late, she could even call some of her old martial arts buddies back home.
They would at least find her interaction with Harry Mortensen––renowned actor, heartthrob, international superstar, and total douchebag in real life––genuinely funny.
Smiling faintly at the thought, Marion walked around the stage to a black-painted door she’d used to gain entry to the backstage area prior to her routine. Yanking open the panel, she felt herself relax a bit once she’d entered the dim corridor.
She smiled at a bar-back who’d come backstage for a crate full of alcohol, and he nodded a return greeting, smiling back.
Marion never stopped walking.
She continued down the black-painted corridor with its widely-spaced bare bulbs, aiming for the row of gold-painted doors leading to small rooms that served as prop and dressing room areas for the various live shows they hosted at the club.
The second door down was the room where she’d changed out of her street clothes.
Walking inside, Marion closed the door, locked it, and sighed for real, pausing briefly to lean on the wooden panel.
Feeling her mind start to level, she straightened a few seconds later, reaching behind her and kicking up a heel to yank off first one shoe, then the other. She dropped the sparkly red shoes on the floor near her bag, rotated her ankles a few times, stretched, then rolled down the stockings one by one before tossing those in her bag along with the shoes.
Dragging the bag closer, she tugged out the clothes she’d worn here from the hotel, and began to change for real.
After wiping the more egregious layers of makeup off her face with a handful of tissues someone thoughtfully left behind––at least toning down the most dramatic lines of dark eyeshadow and eyeliner, and pulling off her fake eyelashes, not to mention rubbing off about half the rouge she’d been wearing––Marion slipped on the relatively-sensible, gold, three-inch heels she’d worn under the relatively-understated, but still short, gold dress she’d thrown on before coming down here.
Stuffing her costume into the large purse, including the red shoes, she slung the leather strap over her shoulder and walked out.
She wasn’t really watching where she was going.
She was too busy thinking about the heel she’d planted against the neck of a movie star who made something like twenty-million a picture, and whether anyone was likely to have snapped a photo of her doing it.
She was too busy thinking about how she’d managed to make yet another semi-public scene that might end up embarrassing her father.
Wincing at the thought, she entered the dim corridor, aiming her feet for the door that would bring her back to the main area of the club.
She was t
oo lost in her thoughts to bother looking at the space around her.
She also didn’t hear the normally-reliable alarm bells her danger-radar let off when something bad was about to happen.
Marion Ravenscroft didn’t notice a damned thing.
She walked through the door and hung a right, lost in her thoughts––
––when someone very large, someone a lot taller than her, with hands bigger than her face, grabbed her roughly around the throat.
They yanked her up, off her feet, before she could make a single sound.
“There now, kitten,” a voice purred, exhaling hot breath in her ear. “Be a good little kitty-cat... and I won’t snap your tiny, soft, weak, little-kitty-cat neck right here.”
Marion froze, hanging above the floor.
She heard what lay behind those smirking, cold words.
She knew he meant every one of them.
6
Party’s Over
M arion’s mind went totally still.
She hung there, unable to breathe, realizing the person behind her had her in what amounted to a sleeper hold. Whoever he was, whatever they wanted, he fought to grip her right arm, presumably to twist it behind her back.
She struggled mindlessly, trying to keep that arm free.
The real issue was her throat.
He held her by her neck, a foot off the ground, her breath trapped behind an arm roughly the size of her thigh.
She thought of her panic button, the thing she pressed to let her Secret Service detail know she was in trouble. It was in her purse. Her purse, which was zipped closed, and currently trapped behind her back.
She’d pass out from lack of oxygen before she got to it.
She needed to deal with her throat.
She needed to deal with her oxygen being cut off.
Strangely, her mind was very, very clear about all of this.
She hung suspended for what felt like a long time.
Objectively, she knew it could only have been a second or two.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 35