That, too, was a choice.
But when she walked into Chester’s, one of the Nine caught her eye across the dance floor and beckoned with such in-your-face enthusiasm and happiness to see her that she couldn’t resist.
Lor.
The man was a beast. A primitive caveman who loved being what he was. Blunt, blatantly sexual, with a voracious appetite for rock and roll, brawls, and hot blondes, he was prone to proposition a woman by saying, “Hey, wanna fuck?” and scored a ridiculous amount of the time with his Viking good looks and that hint of something dirty-kinky-raw just beneath the surface, locked, loaded, and ready to blast a woman’s inhibitions to dust.
They’d had something when she was younger.
Not that kind of something.
A bond that had been innocent yet knowing. An awareness that they were two people who were precisely what they were, no apologies, no excuses.
He’d appreciated who she’d been then, and from the look on his face, he was willing to appreciate her now.
He’d once brought her steak and potatoes. Had trailed her, making sure she stayed safe. He’d offered advice the night Ryodan dragged her off, after she’d defied him and slaughtered half the patrons in one of his subclubs. Helped her escape the room upstairs when the boss locked her in.
He’d encouraged her impulsiveness and belligerence, and for that reason alone, she should avoid him. She’d turned her back on those character flaws years ago.
But the music was seductive and the song playing was one of her favorites, and despite the icy facade she projected, she knew the heat she had inside. She didn’t deny it. Denying would have made her weaker.
Heat was strength. It was resilience. She channeled it, shaped it into purpose, like everything else.
Sexuality, too, was power.
Lor moved toward her, pushing through the crowd, completely ignoring the many hot blondes looking his way, his grin wide and only for her.
She approached him, allowing herself a faint smile. They met in the middle of the dance floor.
“Hey, kid,” he purred. “Looking good, honey. Nice to see you back.”
“You, too, Lor.” She could count on two fingers those who’d been happy to see her.
“Fuck, I always look good. I was born looking good. Dance?”
With Hozier inviting his lover to take him to church, she moved into Lor’s body with effortless grace, following the tempo of his hips, the muscle of his powerful torso. He danced from the groin, as most powerful, centered men did, easy to match.
On one of the worlds she’d briefly visited, nature itself had danced, sinuous vines, draping from trees, moving to a rhythm she’d not been able to hear. At first she was wary, regarding them as threats, but after nearly a week on that world, she’d seen a slender trailing plant heal a wounded animal with its dance.
And one night, under three full moons, she’d taken off her clothes and gone native, pretended to be part of the vegetation, imitating the sensual undulations until she finally found the rhythm with her body.
It had healed her, too. The wounds on her back had closed, expelling the infection, leaving only scars.
Now, she half closed her eyes and followed the lead of Lor’s hips, dropped her head back, arched her neck, and gave herself over completely to the music. The body had needs that couldn’t be ignored. It needed to run, to fight, to eat, to breathe, to move. There were other needs, too, which now that she was back on this world, surrounded by so many people with complicated feelings, had been making their presence known. She wasn’t yet ready to deal with them.
Nothing, no one, had touched her for a long time. It was difficult to process Lor’s body so close to hers, moving in tandem with her own.
So she pretended he was a vine and she was dancing in a great, dark forest, safer than most places because there were no upright creatures on that world, and the dance was only for her, to let her soul breathe, to revel in being alive one more day. In her mind, moonlight kissed her skin, a gentle, fragrant breeze rippled her hair. Abandoned to the moment, the beat, the freedom of thinking no further ahead or back than now.
“Aw, honey, keep dancing like that, you’re gonna get me killed,” Lor said close to her ear.
“I doubt that,” she said dryly.
“Figure it’s worth dying for. If only to get off on the look on that fuck’s face.”
She didn’t dissemble. Didn’t ask who. She knew who, and he knew she did. Lor was a hammer. He called it like he saw it, pounded words like nails into conversation and didn’t care what anyone thought of him. “And what is the look on ‘that fuck’s face’?” she murmured. “He’s behind me. I can’t see him.”
Lor laughed and spun them so she could see Ryodan standing on the edge of the dance floor, tall, powerful, dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled back, cuff glinting. Watching, thunderclouds in his eyes.
Once she’d seen him laugh.