Page 69 of Long Way Down

“Nah. Supposed to come on at the top of the hour.” His hand found its way into her back pocket and he didn’t miss the chance to squeeze her ass. She pinched his side in retaliation, and there was a laugh in his voice when he said, “C’mon, let’s get seats.”

There weren’t any upfront, but Pongo leaned down to speak in a guy’s ear, a handshake was exchanged that wasn’t quite slick enough to conceal the rolled cash he passed over, and then the man and his friend stood and offered their chairs.

“I’m a little impressed, I’ll admit,” Melissa said when they were seated. “How much did you give him?”

“Fifty. Plus a little bonus.”

Drugs, he meant. She tried to fix him with a look, but he faced the stage and trailed his fingers up under her shirt and across the skin of her side, expression falling into placid attentiveness. “Watch the show, Dixie,” he murmured, too low for anyone to hear above the music. “Make it look like you wanna be here.”

The only emotion she had any skill in faking was anger, unfortunately, but he had a point. She faced forward and settled in slumped against his side, letting her gaze pass briefly over the girl – her routine finished with the final chords of the song and she bent down, artless and hurried, to gather the dollars that had been tossed on stage – and glanced at the faces she could see illuminated in the stage lights.

She catalogued the puffy, sagging jowls of over-fifty alcoholics, straight from the office with their white shirts wrinkled and ties tugged loose. A few young guys whose hairlines were already receding, wedding rings flashing on their fingers as they fished out their wallets and counted singles. Some wannabe gangsters and a few stone-faced guys who might have been the real deal. There were women, too: a pair who were obviously a couple, and some who were wives or girlfriends, all up in their man’s space, stroking their arms, and necks, and petting in their laps, whispering in their ears as the men watched the blonde strut off stage.

“Something to drink?” a smooth voice asked, and Melissa noted a waitress at Pongo’s other side.

“Two vodka tonics, doll.”

Doll. He was so good at this. So smooth. There was nothing feverish or sleazy about the way he surveyed the stage; nothing fractious or anticipatory about his energy. He was younger than some of the young businessmen opposite them, but held himself with a much-older man’s nonchalant grace, here in this den of iniquity.

She marveled at it, a little, even as her insides burned with a jealousy she refused to acknowledge. So what if he came here often. So what if he’d fucked every woman in this place and called them alldoll, andsweetheart, andbaby. He didn’t belong to her.

Their drinks arrived, just as the lights dimmed and a new song cut on, something low and pulsing she didn’t recognize. She was glad of the cold glass in her hand, the way it gave her something cool and solid to hold onto; it was grounding. A few whistles erupted from the audience as a pair of girls who looked like twins strode out onto the stage in matching yellow corsets and shorts.

Melissa sipped her drink – though she knew it was a bad idea and would only dull her senses and emphasize her fatigue – and searched for a creeper in the crowd.

The tap-tap of Pongo’s fingers at her side offered warning before the heat of his breath touched her ear. “Are you looking for him?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” she whispered back.

“You could watch the show.” A darted glance proved that one twin was using her teeth to unlace the corset of the other, which seemed to excite the younger men in the audience, especially. “That’s some talent, right there.”

She sipped her drink to keep from making a disagreeing noise.

“You’d never find him like this, anyway,” Pongo continued. “Everyone in here’s a dog – and not the good kind, like me. Your guy’s not gonna stick out from the rest.”

Much to her chagrin, she had to admit that he was right. Some watched the action with a quiet, predatory reserve, and others were vibrating in their seats, shifting to try and hide the bulges behind their flies.

She took another sip and then thought better of the rest, nausea curdling in her belly.

Pongo turned his head, so his face was pressed into the side of her throat, and that, more than the gyrating display on stage, the music, or the atmosphere sent a shiver down her back. The shape of his lips against her pulse point was familiar, and always welcome, even though she’d never told him so.

“You know,” he drawled, “I’m surprised at you, Dixie. As much as you like fucking, I thought this would get you at least a little riled up. I’m disappointed, to tell the truth.”

Disappointment had always carried the weight of her mother’s sharp stare, the heat of Sunday mornings, hair curling against the back of her neck, Mary Janes pinching her toes. It had tasted like stolen Oreos she had to pay for with her allowance money, and felt like the sharp pinch of Mama’s fingers on the back of her arm when she said something unkind about a member of the congregation. Disappointment was home, and was heavy, and was something she didn’t have to worry about here, in this city where no one knew her well enough to give a shit what she did or didn’t do.

But hearing the word now, Pongo breathing against her skin, fingertips tracing the band of her bra under her shirt, disappointment burned in a whole new, wholly unexpected way.

“Look at her over there.” He tipped his head, so his nose grazed her jaw and his chin settled on her shoulder, his breaths ruffling her hair.

She wanted to look at him, but couldn’t, with their faces pressed together like this, so she looked where he wanted her to, across the stage to the couple sitting across from them. One of the twins had crawled toward them, and the woman in the audience bit her lip as she leaned forward to run her hand all the way up the stripper’s leg to tuck a bill into her boyshorts. At the woman’s side, her boyfriend watched eagerly, heel of his hand grinding in his lap.

Pongo’s hand shifted beneath her shirt so he cupped her breast over her bra. “That doesn’t get you a little hot?” he asked, voice rumbling in all the places they touched.

The strippers didn’t, at least not directly. But having him touch her like this, all bold and unbothered, in a place where the music pulsed in an erotic rhythm, the atmosphere ripe with the promise of sex…that got to her. She didn’t want it to – sex was nevernotgoing to be a complication and a hang-up for her – but there was no denying the heat that kindled down in the cradle of her hips, or the way she couldn’t keep her thighs from squeezing together. It was all too easy to imagine turning, kissing him.

Then the other stripper came to crouch down at their side of the stage, and she did just that, rather than be forced to interact.

Pongo caught her with his other hand, pressed it lightly to the front of her throat and held her back when she sought his lips. Grinned. “Nah.” His look was amused, aroused…and clearly told her to stay. His hand withdrew, and he held her gaze while he pulled a few bills from his pocket and slid them across the stage without ever looking the stripper’s way.

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