I was lightness and air, anchored to this mortal plane by the rasp in Rohan’s voice and the gentle bite of his fingers through the thin fabric of my tank top. I caressed his cheek and he nuzzled into my hand. “Did you get yourself happy, Snowflake?” I asked, referring to the lyrics.
“I did. I am.” Still, when he sang along about freedom, the insistence in his voice was more than emotive karaoke.
“Is that what it felt like to leave the band? Like you got your freedom?”
He pulled me to him, making me ride his hard thigh in the dirtiest of dancing. Cuntessa de Spluge was in Heaven. “I thought all heavy conversations were banned tonight,” he said.
“Yes. Heavy conversations pertaining to current Brotherhood-witch shit are banned during date night,” I confirmed, my hips in a slow, syncopated slide with his.
“But prying into my past?”
“A total go.” My breath quickened, a spark low in my gut bursting into flame.
“Nice try. Pool?” he asked as the song ended, taking away my happy motion ride.
“You callous bastard.”
He leaned in, his lips brushing my ears. “I want you desperate for me.”
“Your arrogance isn’t doing it for me.”
“Yeah, it is.” He waggled his eyebrows at me in exaggerated fashion.
I shot him the finger and sashayed off the dance floor.
We passed Naomi, currently the filling in a boy sandwich. She’d shed her jacket, leaving her in a lacy camisole. Good time evidently unlocked. Christina smiled at her from outside the plastered-together bodies, but her expression was a bit strained. I didn’t blame her. Naomi had gone from “no” to “wheeee!” in record time and she’d been known to ditch Christina when there were more interesting–or dangerous–things around to play with.
I raced off ahead to snag a pool table, practically flinging myself bodily over it until Rohan caught up. I handed him a pool cue. “Answer my prying now. Was it a relief ditching Fugue State Five? You ever wish you had that back or some new version of it?”
Were you going to run away soon?
His expression turned distant. “Sometimes… It felt like I was living with a noose around my neck. Writing music, even performing again, it wouldn’t be like that. I wouldn’t be like that.”
“What changed?”
He pulled some balls out of the corner pocket, rolling them over the green felt for me to rack up. “Time. Heals all wounds, right?”
Rohan had always had a dark side, which had gotten worse with the twin fallouts of fame and the demon murder of his cousin Asha. His personal demons had been front and center pretty recently on our mission in Prague and only intensified on his gig in Pakistan, so I doubted he was suddenly a paragon of mental wellbeing, but I nodded.
He bopped the tip of my nose. “Don’t worry, Sparky. I’m not going back down any dark roads.”
I wasn’t convinced of that either. Not given the single-minded focus Rohan had shown in unraveling the mystery of what certain Brotherhood members were up to these past few weeks. But that was part of tonight’s ban on serious Rasha topics, so I pushed those thoughts away.
Maybe I was overthinking things. Besides, I needed my full concentration to kick his ass. Rohan was exceedingly competitive.
The hour grew later, the music faster, the crowd drunker. Despite being jostled yet again by a stray elbow, I sank three balls in rapid succession. I chalked my pool cue, eyeing the eight-ball. “Need a safe word, baby? Because when I sink this and obliterate you for a second game, it might be more pain than you can handle.”
Rohan slid his palm in a teasing glide along my belly. “Try me.”
“My favorite dare.” I positioned my stick slightly off-center, and with a satisfying crack, sank the eight-ball. I handed Rohan my pool cue. “Does it chafe? Be honest.”
He snapped both our sticks back into the mounted wall rack. “It’s a little raw, not gonna lie.”
“Good. I want you to feel it in the morning. Remember who owns you.” I smacked his ass, laughing at the mock-scandalized expression on Rohan’s face.
He caught my wrist, tugging me up against him and nipping my earlobe. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to minister to me and take away the sting like a good girlfriend?” His voice ran over me like rivulets of honey.
I mentally stomped on the memory of his ex, Lily, adjusting his scarf and quietly caring for him in a dozen small ways when we’d all been in Prague.
Without having to be asked.
In the Grease lens on the world, which was really the only useful metric, Lily was Sandy and I was Rizzo. Rohan claimed to want Rizzo, so he should have known that the idea of me on some Sandy scale of good was laughable. I gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Got something in mind, O wounded man child?”
“Since you asked.” He motioned for me to fan him.
“Yeah, right.”
“So hot,” he whined, taking my hands and moving them ineffectually up and down. It was so humid in the club, my skin was sticky where he held my wrist. “I know these are the wilds of Canada, but don’t you people know about A/C?”
Laughing, I blew air on him. “Poor pampered L.A. baby.”
Motioning for him to follow, I unclasped the chain blocking access to a small stairway and led him up. At the top was a small balcony overlooking the back half of the dance floor and one of the bars. The door behind it had been jacked open to the summer night. A siren cut through the alley below, its flashing lights bouncing off the building walls.
“Befriending bouncers has its perks.” I sat down on the bench, snickering as Rohan turned his face to the breeze wafting over us like a dog sticking its head out a window.
“Bootylicious” started up, and oh yes, I sang along. Rohan scoffed, with a “Figures you anthem’d this,” but I didn’t stop my beauteous phonetic rendition of the song.
That is until the chorus when Rohan spun, breaking into moves worthy of Queen B’s backup dancers. Shimmying, he wriggled closer until, keeping out of touching range, he canted his hips up in a long slow roll, running his hand down along the hard planes of his stomach. His shirt rode up, exposing a stretch of brown skin I wanted to lick. Lower and lower, his hand slid dangerously along his waistline, then lower still.
I sat there, gaping.
Rohan jumped onto the bench, feet planted on either side of me. He tossed his head, flicked off each shoulder, grinning. Clutching the burnished gold railing behind me with one hand, he twerked his ass lower and lower, his falsetto singing note-perfect.
Fuck. Me. Where had he been hiding this?
Rohan ground against me once, twice, and I lunged for him, our mouths crashing together. He tasted of anise seed and gin, his mouth cool from the ice he’d been crunching all night.
I opened my eyes, seeking a deeper connection. Seeking affirmation that he was here and this was real and that the voices trumpeting disbelief that we were a we could go screw themselves.
A flash of something caught the light from the club area below and I stilled.
Rohan’s eyes fluttered open. “Hey,” he murmured.