“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.”
“I was tempted to do exactly that during my final years aiming for professional,” she admitted. “Then I realized I didn’t want fame. I only wanted to dance, and I could do that on my own.”
“Where do you dance?” Janvier took her down the narrow steps to the man-made cavern that was Hinge.
“That’s for me to know.” She wasn’t ready for him to be her audience—she had no shields when she danced, was naked in a way she wouldn’t be even if she took off every stitch of clothing on her body.
“Janvier! Here to make the misère, my friend?”
Looking up at the statement she couldn’t quite work out, she found herself facing a solid wall of a man with black hair tightly curled to his skull, his mocha skin pockmarked by acne scars and his eyes a gray-green that caught her attention and would’ve held it if Janvier hadn’t been in her life. This was a man who’d never want for female company.
“I never make trouble, Louis.” Janvier grinned and, releasing her hand, exchanged a back-slapping hug with the bouncer.
Ashwini had seen him do the same thing with another man once, back during the Atlanta operation. So she saw the difference. With Callan, it had been for show. This was genuine, affection pulsing off both men.
“This is Ash.” Janvier reached back and took her hand when the two broke apart.
“Your Ash?” Smile huge, Louis would’ve hugged her if Janvier hadn’t slid in between and she hadn’t stepped back. Instead of being insulted, the other man laughed and said something else in the dialect he shared with Janvier.