Chapter 552: Out of Your League

Alex followed Naomi as they slipped past the outer ring of tables, the warm amber lighting of the bar gave way to slow, rhythmic pulses of deep indigo and drifting smoke.

The music had settled into a heavy, dragging tempo. It wasn’t a track meant for quick turns or showy footwork. It was a low, vibrating pulse designed to press bodies together and leave them with nowhere else to look.

The crowd had already begun to thicken toward the floor. A few heads turned as the crimson dress passed, then turned again when they saw the man behind her.

Naomi stopped at the edge of the lights.

She turned to him with that look still on her face, eager and hesitant at once, as if she had dragged him here on pride and only now remembered what his hands had already done to her. Her chin was up. Her eyes were not as sure as her mouth had been.

Alex smiled.

"What are you waiting for, darling?"

He took her hand properly this time, not the hurried grip she had used at the counter, and turned her into him with one smooth pull.

Naomi’s breath caught as her back met the hard line of his chest for a second, then he spun her the rest of the way until she was facing him, one of his hands settled at the small of her back, the other holding hers against his shoulder.

They began to sway.

There was no performance in it. Alex moved with the beat, slow and close, forcing her to follow or stumble.

Naomi followed. The ruined silk between her thighs clung with every step, a private reminder she could not shake, and the heat of him through the thin dress made it worse. Her palm rested against his jacket. His thumb pressed at her waist, holding her exactly where he wanted her.

Around them, other couples filled the floor, all of them drifting toward the same center without meaning to. Cole and Violette were already there, two dark figures turning under the strobes as if the room belonged to them.

Alex’s eyes locked on Raymond.

The old man was not performing. He guided Violette with clean, unhurried control, every turn placed, every pause measured. To everyone else on the floor, it looked like an intimate dance, nothing more.

Alex knew better.

He watched their hands, the timing of each lean, the way neither of them wasted a step, and he already knew what they were. With identities like that, this was not courtship. They were exchanging information in plain sight.

’Did he already hire her?’ Alex wondered. ’Or is this their first meeting dressed up as a dance?’

Whatever it was, Cole had not come here to play the fool.

Alex was still turning that over when a patch of stillness at the edge of the floor caught his eye.

Off to the side, the young man who had tried to humiliate Cole stood with a glass forgotten in his hand. His face had the look of a man who had swallowed something rotten. His eyes burned with fury as he stared at the couple in the center, too proud to look away and too late to pretend he had won.

Alex smirked.

He understood that look perfectly. There was no worse place to stand than the edge of a room after the man you called a fool took the only woman you never dared approach.

’Something interesting is about to happen,’ Alex thought, a dark, expectant hum settling in his chest.

Naomi felt the exact second his attention drifted.

She tracked his gaze past the crowd, watching his dark eyes linger on Violette Valenne. Another woman might have shrunk back or bristled with petty jealousy, but Naomi only smirked.

Violette might be the untouchable queen of the room, draped in midnight silk and mystery, but she wasn’t the one pressed flush against his body. Alex was in her hands right now... and she knew precisely how to drag a man’s focus straight back to her.

Swaying with the slow, heavy dragging beat of the bass, Naomi let her hand slide away from his lapel. Her fingers traced a lazy trail down the front of his shirt, skimming over the taut muscles of his abdomen before slipping lower between their bodies.

Shielded by the dim violet strobes and the crush of nearby couples, her palm closed boldly over the thick, rigid length straining against his trousers.

Alex’s rhythm didn’t break, but his eyes immediately snapped down from the center of the floor, locking straight onto her face.

Leaning down until his mouth grazed the heated skin beneath her ear, he let out a low, amused chuckle. "Can’t wait anymore, darling?"

Naomi didn’t pull back. Instead, her fingers curled tighter around him, giving him a slow, deliberate stroke through the fabric that sent a jolt of heat between their hips. Tilting her chin up, she met his stare with half-lidded, heavy eyes, a dangerous, feline smile curving her bruised lips.

"Just curious," she whispered against his jaw, her breath warm and tantalizingly slow. "Are you this hard for her... or for me?"

Alex’s lips parted to answer, but before a single word could leave his mouth, Naomi squeezed, her thumb gliding smoothly over the hot ridge.

Her voice dropped into a dark, velvety purr.

"Actually... it doesn’t matter. I’m the one who’ll be tasting it tonight."

With that parting purr, Naomi released her grip on him, her fingers sliding up to lace tightly through his. She didn’t wait for him to answer.

Pivoting sharply on her heels, she turned and began cutting a direct path across the floor.

She moved with fierce purpose, using her shoulders and the sharp, deliberate sway of her hips to glide past the surrounding couples. Her crimson dress clung stubbornly between her thighs, every step a scalding, friction-heavy reminder of what he had done to her under the counter, but she carried herself like a woman who had just taken full command of the board.

Alex clocked her trajectory immediately, a dark, amused smirk touching his lips.

Alex let her lead. Towering behind her, he matched her stride with lazy, effortless ease, his eyes fixed on the rigid, defiant line of her spine.

​"I hope you’ve really thought this through, darling," he murmured, his voice sliding easily under the heavy, hypnotic rhythm holding the room. "Because once we’re alone, I’m not the type to show mercy when you start begging."

Naomi didn’t break her stride until they cleared the fringe of the dance floor, slipping past the velvet curtain into the dim, marble-lined alcove leading toward the private executive washroom.

"Shut up," she hissed.

She turned right as her back reached the entrance, her dark eyes flashing with feverish defiance. Her breath was coming fast, her cheeks flushed with raw heat, but her grip on his hand tightened until her knuckles went pale.

"You’re not getting away tonight," she whispered, shoving the heavy door open with her hip and pulling him inside.

The door clicked shut behind them, cutting the deafening roar of the VIP lounge down to a muffled, distant pulse. The air in the dim, tiled room was instantly colder, thick with the scent of cedar soap and the electric, suffocating charge between their bodies.

But Naomi didn’t stop at the shared marble vanity or the long mirrors. Knowing anyone could stroll in from the floor, she dragged him straight past the sinks toward the far end of the room.

​She pushed open the door to an oversized executive cubicle... built wide and deep with floor-to-ceiling dark timber partitions, easily spacious enough for both of them to move without constraint.

​Pulling Alex inside, she backed into the enclosure and reached behind him, throwing the deadbolt on the cubicle door with a sharp, decisive click.

​The space was intimate, lit only by the soft glow spilling over the top and a recessed amber sconce. Trapped between the locked door and the heat radiating off his chest, Naomi leaned back against the cool marble ledge behind her.

Her chin tilted high as she looked up into his dark, amused eyes, her bruised lips parting in a reckless, breathless smirk.

​"Now... let’s see if you’re all talk, or if there’s actually something notable about you."

Alex didn’t move an inch. He leaned his shoulders casually against the locked door, hands tucked loosely into his pockets, his dark eyes daring her to follow through.

Naomi didn’t hesitate. Step by step, she closed the remaining distance until the heat radiating from his chest completely swallowed the chill of the room. Her pride was on the line, but beneath that stubborn defiance ran an electric current of pure anticipation.

On the dance floor, pressed against the wet silk of her dress, the sheer weight of what she had felt had seemed impossible — an exaggerated trick of friction and adrenaline. She needed to see the truth for herself.

Reaching down, her fingers closed around the heavy silver buckle of his belt.

The metallic click of the prong releasing sounded unnervingly loud against the polished tiles. With practiced, urgent precision, she guided the leather through the loops, popped the waist button, and hooked her manicured fingers firmly into the bands of both his trousers and underwear.

She shoved them down in one smooth, impatient pull.

The heavy fabric dropped toward his knees... and the cool air of the washroom instantly gave way to a wave of scalding heat.

A strangled, choked gasp ripped past Naomi’s parted lips, so sharp it was nearly a scream before she caught herself, swallowing it down in a frantic hitch of her breath.

There had been no delusion.

Thick, aggressively rigid, and mapped in prominent, pulsing veins, the sheer mass freed before her eyes looked terrifyingly unreal under the amber sconces. It carried an uncompromising, heavy density that defied reason, throbbing with raw, unbridled heat just inches from her trembling thighs.

Naomi froze dead in her tracks, her hands hovering uselessly in the space between them.

The razor-sharp composure of an elite mercenary vanished completely, her dark eyes wide and unblinking as she stared in stunned, bewildered disbelief at what she had just dared to summon.

Slowly, almost unconsciously, she tilted her head back, looking up the broad expanse of his chest to meet his gaze.

Towering over her, Alex merely arched an eyebrow, a slow, lethal smirk spreading across his lips as he savored the sheer panic written across her face.

"What’s the matter, sweetheart?" he murmured, his deep baritone rumbling with velvet amusement. "Didn’t I tell you? It’s entirely out of your league."