“Of course not.” Lacey hooked her arm through his, her dimples peeking out. “As if Ko would let you go there.” Her eyes grew huge the next second, her gaze focused past Ashwini’s shoulder.
She didn’t need to turn to know Janvier was behind her. “Cher”—he slid his arm around her waist—“introduce me to your beautiful friends.”
Lacey giggled, blushed prettily, while Flynn’s handshake was friendly.
“Ah, Rupert,” Janvier said when Lacey told him the name of her vampire. “He is a good man. Try not to take advantage of him.”
“Oh, I would never.” Lacey dimpled again, adorably smitten. “Do you know Ko as well?”
“Benita Ko?”
Flynn nodded.
“Yes, I know Benita. Tell her Janvier said hello.” He squeezed Ash’s hip. “I feel restless tonight, sugar. Let us walk outside, find another bar.”
Ashwini said good-bye to Lacey and Flynn, both of whom gave her a thumbs-up when Janvier momentarily glanced away. “You didn’t say Ko was a good woman,” she said once they were outside, winter gear back on.
“Ko is a sadist,” Janvier murmured. “But as Flynn’s breath caught when I applied too much pressure on his hand, enough to cause a tiny bit of pain, it appears he must be a masochist. Therefore, the two are a perfect match.”
Ashwini realized he was talking about sadism in the sexual context, rather than in relation to Ko’s personality. Or maybe it was both, since he clearly wasn’t judgmental about the lifestyle itself. “Is she a sadist out of the bedroom, too?”
“Yes, she can be ugly.” A shrug. “But she only ever has one donor at a time and treats each well. How long did the boy say he’d been with her?”
“A year—implied.”
“So, she’s unlikely to be the one we search for, but I’ll do a little digging, see if her tastes have altered.”
“Why do immortals fixate on sex and pain? It’s sad they don’t seem to see everything else life has to offer.”
“My darling Ashblade, your view is skewed. You see the Made who patronize such places because that is where your work takes you.”
“Vamps in suburbia?”
“Complete with minivans and white picket fences.”
“Flynn,” she said, putting the conversation back on track, “thought our victim may have gone to Hinge at some stage in the past.”
“Adele, who keeps an eye on everything in her establishment, is certain the girl wasn’t a regular, so Hinge it is.”
“You seem friendly with her,” Ashwini said before she could stop herself. Turned out that while naïve Marie May hadn’t set off her jealousy, the gorgeous, experienced Adele had turned the dial to blazing red.
“I am. She is a lush and sensual creature, Adele,” Janvier said, his lips curving as if he spoke from personal, intimate experience.
“If you go for overblown and obvious.” God, she needed to staple her mouth shut.
Open delight in his expression. “I’ve told you, I go for the unique and the dangerous.”
Realizing he’d been provoking her on purpose, she elbowed him.
He touched his fingers to her nape, curled his hand gently around it when she didn’t push him away. “Your body was thrumming with the music the entire time we were in the club. Shall we dance tonight?”
“Let’s see what we discover first.” Dancing with Janvier wouldn’t be like dancing by herself or with any other man. Dancing with Janvier would be a prelude to sex. He’d touch and stroke, whisper things in her ear as he flirted with his body and his mind both. With her resolve already on increasingly shaky ground, Ashwini had no confidence in her ability to withstand him.
He linked his fingers to her own. Stubborn Cajun. This time, however, she didn’t shake him off. When he shot her a smirking grin, she gave him a dark look. “Don’t get too full of yourself.”
Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, the contact lips to skin since she’d forgotten her gloves tonight. “Did you dance as a child?” At her nod, he said, “What kind of a dancer were you?”
“Ballet.”
He halted on the road. “Dit mon la verite’!”
She gave in to her laugh, he looked so comically stunned. “It is the truth. My mother took me to my first class when I was three. I think it was meant to give me an extracurricular activity to put on college applications later on, but I adored it.”
Janvier shook his head, dislodging several errant flakes of snow that had fallen from the sky. “I cannot imagine you as a tiny sprite in a tutu, but as a long-legged ballerina, yes.”
“I fully intended to become a professional dancer.” Soaring through the air, free and unchained. “But . . .” She shrugged.
His eyes turned solemn. “A professional ballerina cannot always dance alone and must often be in close contact with her partner.”
“Yes.” She tightened her fingers on his, deciding that maybe—possibly—she could get used to holding hands. If it was Janvier. Only him. “But it didn’t break my heart,” she told him with utter honesty. “By the time I accepted that the constant contact would exacerbate my ability, I knew I couldn’t be a professional dancer for other reasons. Do you know how much crap they take from the choreographers and the directors before they get famous enough to throw tantrums and do what they want?”
“You wouldn’t throw a tantrum.” Janvier’s tone was dead serious, his laugh in his eyes. “You’d just shoot the person who was irritating you.”