Chapter 2: The Lap Dance Gambit
The whiskey in Winter’s glass had become a prop, a weight in her hand she used to punctuate the lies she told. Junior’s laughter was a grating, phlegmy sound that cut through the muffled music. He was enjoying himself, leaning back with proprietorial ease, his eyes never straying far from the line of her collarbone where the robe had slipped.
“So this ex,” he prompted, swirling his own drink. “He teach you all those… precise moves?”
“Discipline was his language,” Winter said, her voice a monotone she forced into something resembling reminiscence. Inside, she tracked the seconds. Emerald should be in the office by now. The deposit cash was a folded wad of marked bills in a sealed envelope, but the real payload was the micro-transmitter hidden within its lining. Planting it was the only objective that mattered.
“Boring,” Junior declared. “Life’s too short for manuals, Frost. It’s about feeling the music. Letting go.” He reached over, patting her knee with a heavy hand. The contact was a jolt of revulsion that traveled straight up her spine. She didn’t flinch. “Maybe I can teach you.”
Winter offered a smile so thin it felt like a papercut. “Perhaps.”
Her mind was across the club, in the back corridor, willing Emerald to be swift and silent.
The hallway to Junior’s office was a throat of shadows, lit only by a faulty fluorescent that buzzed like an angry insect. The music from the main floor was a dull throb here, absorbed by stained carpet and concrete walls. Emerald moved with a thief’s instinct, weight on the balls of her feet, her cocktail tray abandoned in a cleaning cart.
She’d palmed the keycard from a distracted bouncer twenty minutes ago, a flirty whisper and a promise doing the work. The lock clicked with a satisfying snick.
Junior’s office was a monument to cheap ambition. The reek of stale cigars and old sweat hit her first. A bank of monitors glowed on one wall, showing grainy black-and-white feeds: the stage, the back alley, the cash-counting room. On the central screen, she saw Winter, stiff-backed in the VIP booth, Junior’s hand on her knee.
Emerald’s jaw tightened. She looked away.
The desk was a landslide of paper—invoices, ledgers, scribbled notes. The infamous bottle of whiskey, two-thirds gone, stood sentinel beside a heavy glass ashtray. The neon sign behind the desk, “No Questions Asked,” buzzed and flickered, painting the room in pulses of sickly pink.
Right on brand, she thought, her eyes already cataloguing. The safe was behind a terrible landscape painting. Too obvious, too time-consuming. The bug needed somewhere central, somewhere with consistent audio.
The computer.
She skirted the desk, her fingers poised. Just as she reached for the envelope in her garter, the door handle rattled.
Shit.
Not a click. A rattle. Someone was testing it.
She had three seconds. The window was barred. The only closet was full of boxes. No exit.
The door pushed open.
The bodyguard from the VIP section filled the frame, his expression shifting from routine boredom to sharp suspicion. “The hell are you doing? Boss doesn’t like staff in here.”
Emerald’s heart hammered against her ribs, but her smile was instant and dazzling. She leaned back against the desk, letting the posture curve her spine, turning surprise into invitation. “Oh, thank gods it’s you. I was hiding.”
“Hiding.” His voice was flat.
“From Larry from Logistics,” she sighed, rolling her eyes with practiced ease. “He’s drunk again, thinks we’re engaged. I saw the door was unlocked and just… ducked in.” She took a step toward him, letting the fear in her eyes read as relieved vulnerability. “You won’t tell Mr. Xiong, will you? I’d get in so much trouble.”
He wasn’t buying it fully, but his posture relaxed a fraction. Men like him were used to women being afraid of other men. It was a logic they understood. “You gotta leave. Now.”
“I know, I know.” She sidled closer, now within arm’s reach. Her gaze flicked to the monitors. On the VIP feed, Winter was nodding at something Junior said, her face a beautiful, frozen mask. A strange pang shot through Emerald—part protectiveness, part something hotter and more inconvenient.
She needed a better distraction.
“You’re his main guy, right?” she breathed, looking up at him through her lashes. “You look like you’re in charge of important things.”
A grunt. “I handle security.”
“I bet you see everything.” Her fingers went to the thin straps of her cocktail dress. It was a cheap thing, black satin with a lace trim. “It must get boring, though. Just watching.”
His eyes tracked her hands. “It’s a job.”
“Jobs can have… perks.” With a fluid shrug, she let the dress slip from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet. She stood before him in just heels, stockings, and the garter belt holding the envelope and a few other tactical tools.
His breath hitched. All suspicion drowned in a wave of pure, stunned hunger.
“The monitor’s kinda bright,” Emerald murmured, her voice a husky whisper. She reached behind her, fumbling blindly on the desk. Her fingers found the dress. With a smooth motion, she draped it over the central bank of monitors, blotting out the grainy images, including the one of Winter. The office dimmed, lit now only by the flickering neon and the glow from the remaining screens.
“What’re you—” he began, but his protest was weak.
“Shhh. It’s a thank you. For rescuing me.” She placed her hands on his broad chest and pushed, gently. He stumbled back, falling into Junior’s oversized leather chair with a soft whump. He didn’t resist.
She climbed onto him, a calculated movement, one knee on either side of his hips. The leather creaked. Up close, he smelled of stale deodorant and nervous sweat. She started to move, a slow, rolling rhythm that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the keycard clipped to his belt.
Her mind, however, was a vault of cold focus. As her hips swayed, her fingers walked up his shirt, dancing over his shoulders, threading into his hair. She whispered nonsense about how strong he looked, how safe he made the place feel. He groaned, his hands rising to grip her waist, his eyes glazing over.
Her right hand trailed down, over his pectoral, down his rigid abdomen. Her touch was feather-light, teasing. He shuddered. Her fingers found the hard plastic of the keycard in its clip. The dexterity of a pickpocket took over. Her thumb found the release button. A slight twist, a gentle pull.
The card came free, silented by the sound of his ragged breathing.
She palmed it, her hand continuing its journey. She brought it up, behind his head, as if to steady herself. In one fluid motion, she slotted the keycard between the cushion and the leather backrest of the chair.
Distraction complete. Access secured.
Now, the planting.
His mouth was on her neck, sloppy and wet. She fought a full-body shudder of disgust, channeling it into a more convincing moan. Her left hand, which had been braced on the chair back, crept along the desk. She knew the layout. The whiskey bottle. The ashtray. The ledger.
Her fingers brushed the cool, pebbled leather of the ledger’s cover. Junior was old-school. The real stuff, the unmentionables, would be in here, not on a computer connected to a network. This was the prize.
But the bug needed to be on the tech, where it could upload to their remote server.
She let her head fall back, a picture of abandon, as her searching fingers found the tower unit of the computer under the desk. It was warm. With a subtle press, she attached the wafer-thin transmitter to its underside, near a ventilation grill. The adhesive was strong. It would pick up every word, every keystroke in this room.
The bodyguard’s grip was becoming demanding, his hands sliding down.
His hands were large and rough, settling on her bare hips with a possessiveness that shifted the energy in the room. The clinical distance Emerald had maintained fractured. Her own grinding rhythm had created a friction, a building heat between her legs that was now a low, answering pulse to the hard length she felt straining against his trousers.
A reckless curiosity, warm and slippery, uncoiled in her gut. The mission was done. The keycard was hidden, the bug was planted. For a few stolen seconds, the performance could become a reward.
“Someone’s eager,” she whispered, her voice thick, as she nipped at his earlobe.
She let her fingers, clever and swift, undo his belt buckle. The leather hissed through the loops. His breath came in a hot, ragged gust against her neck. Her hand slid down, past the waistband of his pants, and closed around him. He was thick and fully hard, velvet over steel.
A jolt of pure, undiluted hunger shot through her. It was a physical truth that short-circuited her professional dispassion. Her own moisture answered, a sudden ache she hadn’t planned on acknowledging.
He groaned, a raw animal sound, and his hands clamped down on her backside, pulling her harder against him. The pressure was exquisite, blunt and promising. A small, genuine moan escaped her lips before she could choke it back.
“Yeah, just like that,” he growled, his voice garbled.
For three heartbeats, she lost the plot. Her hips moved of their own accord, riding the heel of her hand, seeking that pressure. The neon’s buzz faded. The world shrank to heat, and texture, and the pounding of her own blood. She could take him right here, in Junior’s stupid chair, and for a moment the wild, defiant thrill of it was almost worth the catastrophic fallout.
Then a flicker on a surviving monitor caught her eye—a blurred image of the VIP booth. Winter.
It was like a bucket of ice water down her spine.
The mission. Schnee. The icy Specialist waiting for her signal, enduring God knows what. This wasn’t a game. This was a job with body counts.
Her arousal didn’t vanish, but it curdled, mixing with a sharp wash of shame that tightened her throat. She had a role to play, and it wasn’t this. Not for real.
She slowed her movements, gentling her grip, extracting her hand with a deliberate, lingering stroke that made him buck. “Easy, tiger,” she purred, masking her sudden clarity with a breathy laugh. “The boss could come back any minute. And I don’t share.”
She climbed off him, her legs unsteady. The cool office air hit her damp skin, raising goosebumps. He looked dazed, furious at the interruption, his pants still open. “What the hell?”
“I want a real date,” she said, leaning down to retrieve her dress, using the motion to hide her face. She smoothed her features into a pout. “Somewhere nice. Not a five-minute hurry-up in an office. You’re worth more than that, big guy.” She slipped the dress back on, the cheap satin feeling like a prison. “Tomorrow. You get off at two, right? Meet me at the all-night diner on 5th.”
He was still swollen and frustrated, but the flattery landed. The promise of future ownership soothed the interruption. “Yeah. Okay. Two.”
“Perfect.” She blew him a kiss, her smile brilliant and empty. “Now I really gotta run before Larry finds me.”
She slipped out the door, closing it softly on his stunned, wanting face. The hallway air felt cleaner. She leaned against the wall, closing her eyes, listening to the thump of the bass through the floor. Her body still hummed, a traitorous echo of sensation. She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing it down, locking it away with all the other reckless impulses she couldn’t afford.
The envelope with the deposit was still in her garter. She had to deliver it to complete the cover. Straightening her spine, she walked back toward the VIP stairs, the click of her heels like a ticking clock.
Above, in the booth, Winter saw her approach. Emerald gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. Package delivered. Objective secured.
Winter’s glacial composure didn’t change, but something in her eyes—a minute tightening at the corners—seemed to ease. She turned her attention back to Junior, who was pouring another drink, his hand now resting on her thigh.
“Your associate is efficient,” Junior remarked, having watched Emerald’s brief appearance on the periphery.
“She is.” Winter’s voice was calm. “The deposit is delivered. So we have an agreement for tomorrow night.”
“We do.” Junior’s fingers pressed into her leg. “My place. More private. We’ll discuss the details of your introduction then. Bring the rest of the money.” His gaze was a clear, greasy promise. The business and the pleasure, irrevocably tangled.
Winter stood, the motion abrupt enough to dislodge his hand. “Until then, Mr. Xiong.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, walking away from the booth with the same lethal precision she’d used on the stage. She collected her street clothes from the fetid locker room, changed in a filthy bathroom stall, and met Emerald at the service entrance in the alley.
The night air was cold and tasted of garbage and distant rain. Emerald leaned against the brick wall, lighting a cigarette, her hands steady. “All set. He swallowed the story and the bait. The listenin’ device is live.”
Winter just nodded, pulling her long coat tight around her. She looked at Emerald, really looked at her in the dim amber light from a security bulb. The thief’s usual smirk was absent; she looked tired, her red eyes holding a flicker of something unsettled.
“You alright?” Winter asked, the question startling in its rarity.
Emerald took a long drag, the coal glowing bright. “Peachy. Just need a shower. A long one.” She exhaled a plume of smoke. “You?”
Winter stared down the dark mouth of the alley toward the street where their car was parked. The image of Junior’s hand on her, the smell of his breath, the damp weight of his attention—it all felt like a contamination no shower could reach.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, her voice betraying nothing. “Once we have Torchwick.”
They walked in silence to the car, the unspoken horrors of the night settling between them like a third passenger. The engine turned over with a subdued growl. As they pulled onto the slick streets, the neon glow of the Dusty Barrel shrank in the rearview mirror, a festering jewel in the city’s gutter.
But the mission was only half done. The real danger, Winter knew, was waiting for her tomorrow night.