Chapter 2 ZARA POV

ZARA POV The music dropped into something slower and I let my body follow it, rolling my hips against the pole, one hand trailing down my own waist, giving the front row exactly what they paid for. I turned my back to the crowd, gripped the pole and dropped it low, rolling slow, and the noise spiked immediately, bills hitting the stage around my heels. I worked the edge next, dropped into a squat in front of the closest table, popped my hips once, let them look, then stood up and walked away without giving them the eye contact they wanted. Control, always mine. Then my eyes caught a pair of green ones in the crowd. Intense, completely still, watching me in a way nobody in this club ever watched me, not with hunger or entitlement, something else entirely, something I didn't have a word for, and a shiver ran straight down my spine before I could stop it. Absolutely not, I thought, and pulled my eyes away. I walked off the stage. Gia was waiting in the hallway with a towel and my robe. "Good set," she said. "Thanks," I wrapped the robe around myself without breaking stride, "Marcus find you again?" "He's been at the bar for the last hour looking like he's waiting for something terrible." "Good." I found him exactly where Gia said, far end of the bar, phone in one hand, drink in the other, eyes going to the entrance every few seconds. He saw me coming and straightened up, "You were supposed to come before your set." "I was busy." "I own your contract Zara." "You own my performances, not my schedule," I stopped in front of him and crossed my arms, "what do you want." He glanced at Gia behind me. "She stays," I said. He looked like he wanted to argue, then looked at his phone instead, "There's a booking tonight, private, VIP, top floor." "Gia told me." "Then Gia told you it's important." "She told me you cleaned your office, which told me everything." His jaw tightened, "I need my best girls upstairs at eleven, that means you." "Who is he." "That's not your concern." "It is if you want me in that room." He took a slow drink and set the glass down, "His name is Zion Blackwood, private investor, old money, serious money, comes in twice a year, same setup every time, top floor, his own security on the door, no phones, no cameras." "No cameras," I repeated, totally normal, nothing alarming about that at all. "His team's requirement from the start." "And you agreed." "One night with Zion Blackwood covers six months of operating costs, so yes I agreed," he looked at me straight, "eleven o'clock, dressed, ready, professional." I looked at his face, the tension around his eyes, the way his hand on the bar wasn't quite steady, the way he kept glancing at that door. Scared, actually genuinely scared. Marcus Webb, the man who had bought my contract without blinking, was standing here scared of a name. Interesting. "Fine," I said. He blinked, "Fine?" "Eleven o'clock, top floor," I turned from the bar, "you'll get your money Marcus." Gia pulled me into the alcove before I made it three steps. "You just said yes," she said. "I know." "You never just say yes." "I want to see what has Marcus looking like that," I glanced back at him, still at the bar, still watching the door, "three years I've been here and I have never once seen him scared of a single person who walked through that entrance, not once." "So your plan is to walk toward the scary thing." "My plan is to understand it." "Zara that is the most dangerous thing you've said this week." "It's Monday Gia." "Exactly," she grabbed my arm, "just be smart tonight please, that's all I'm asking." "Smart is the only thing keeping me alive in here," I stepped back into the hallway, "I'll be fine." "You always say that." "I'm always right." I spent the next two hours on the floor, working tables, keeping my tips up, my face neutral and my mind busy, but those green eyes kept drifting back into my head no matter how many times I pushed them out, that stillness, that look, that shiver I was still annoyed about. I didn't do shivers, not in this building, not for any man sitting out there with his wallet open. My body had clearly not received that memo tonight. Eleven o'clock came and I was upstairs at two minutes to, outside the VIP door where two men I had never seen before were standing, big, quiet, suits that fit too well, eyes that swept over me once and went back to scanning the hallway without expression. Not Marcus's security, completely different energy, the kind that didn't need to announce itself. "Zara Cole," I said, "I was told eleven." One of them spoke into an earpiece, waited, nodded, then stepped aside and pushed the door open. The room was darker than the rest of the club, low light, long curved couch along the far wall, bottles already open on the table, music playing but soft and controlled, like even the sound in here knew better than to overstep. I stepped inside and looked at the man on the couch. Broad frame, deep brown skin, one arm resting along the back of the couch, a glass held loosely in his other hand, completely still in the way that men with real power were still, like the room had arranged itself around him and he'd simply allowed it. Then he looked up. Green eyes. Intense, steady, the exact same ones that had found me on that stage an hour ago and sent that shiver down my spine, and now they were sitting here in this dim room looking at me with that same expression, calm and certain, like he already knew something I hadn't figured out yet. My heart did something I told it very firmly not to do. It skipped. But I kept my face blank, chin up, shoulders back, every wall I had standing at full height, because whatever this was I had not survived everything I survived to get shaken by a pair of green eyes in a VIP room. He looked at me for a long moment, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. Then the corner of his mouth moved, just barely, just enough to be infuriating. "Will you dance," he said, his voice low and running through me in a way I refused to give a single thought to, "or will you keep staring at me."