Page 30 of Beauty and the Billionaire

A drag queen wearing a color-shifting dress that hugged her curves to perfection and a bright red wig pushed through the crowd and joined our little party. “Are you scaring my guests, Roman?”

“Only a little, Mama Viv,” Roman replied with a tight smile.

“Stop it,” the drag queen scolded him. “Welcome to Neon Nights, darling.” Acrylic nails extended from her long fingers, red like the wig, as she placed her hand in mine. “Lady Vivien Woodcock,” she introduced herself. Then, turning to Zain, she beamed. “I’m so happy to see you here, Zain. It’s long overdue.”

Zain’s cheek turned a darker shade. “Thanks, Mama Viv.”

The drag queen turned to me again, a warning in her clear, sharp eyes. “We’re all very fond of Zain, Mr. Blackthorne.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I replied, trying not to sound icy. To me, these were the people I distrusted with Zain’s well-being. Even so, it warmed me a little that someone watched his back, even if they were all strangers to me.

“Enjoy the party. It’s about to start,” the drag queen said, then shot Zain a warm smile before turning to Roman. I overheard a mutter about having something better to do and something about someone called Everett.

“Quite a crowd,” I pointed out as Zain came closer.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize they’d see you as a…well, a threat.”

I waved it off. “I’m used to it. Please. Enjoy yourself.” And after glancing around one more time, I added, “I’m glad to see you have friends. You never mentioned them.”

Zain shrugged shyly. “I didn’t realize we were friends.”

I would have asked him about that right away, but lights dimmed suddenly, and artificial fog began to fill the bar. Lasers and stage lights flashed around frantically, building up theanticipation and distracting you from the dark stage on the far side of the bar. And when the lights flashed to life on the stage itself, five young, tall, slender queens in skimpy, slutty drag were standing on the stage in a perfect pose. A track cued, blasting some modern, dancey pop tune from the speakers, and the bar erupted in cheers, hands rising high, bodies shifting around, and the dance floor filling up.

It was quite a spectacle, although I was perfectly happy to be just an observer.

I lifted my poorly mixed cocktail and toasted Zain silently, and then we each tried our beverages. Zain’s eyebrows shot up as he nodded with pleasure. Guilt filled me for dismissing my drink when it touched my tongue. Flavors of whiskey existed only as the base of it, but vanilla, orange peel, and subtle notes of oak excited my taste buds. The bartender took me seriously, serving a proper surprise.

I was stiff, wooden, and entirely out of my depths, but Zain, who had never done this sort of thing, was swinging his shoulders gently to the beat of the music. He sucked his cocktail through a big, swirly straw, nodding in the rhythm of the song, and we both watched the stage, where the queens acted out a lip-sync battle.

Song after song, the stage was filled with different performers, and the center of the bar was full of dancing bodies. A few observers like us stood by the walls, bobbing their heads or tapping their feet, but the main attraction was the dance floor. More than a few young men had abandoned their tops, sweat and glitter shining when the beams of light hit them.

Zain watched the crowd with youthful fascination. I could almost put myself in his shoes. Perhaps ten years ago, this sort of thing would have excited me. The endless prospects of playing cat-and-mouse with willing guys, fever dreams of intoxication, and sheer destructive lust. I couldn’t blame him for not knowingwhere to look. To someone who’d never let himself indulge in this sort of thing, all these guys were too alluring to resist.

So I buried my nose in my glass and sipped my cocktail, letting Zain live out his fantasies. Had we gone to a nice rooftop restaurant, I would have…

What?

I didn’t know what I would have done.

All I knew was that there existed a sort of urgency deep within me. Something was tense and tight, strung so far that it was threatening to snap, but I still didn’t have a name for it.

“Do you want to dance?” Zain asked.

Begrudgingly, I glanced in his direction, wondering who he was asking, only to find his gaze squarely on me.

Every fiber of my being wanted to say no. The urge for self-preservation, even if it was simply a defense against other people’s mockery, was so strong that I almost frowned. But he was sweet and soft and gentle, all the things I’d pushed away from myself when I was his age or younger.

Before I could decide on my course of action, I found myself nodding and set my glass on the counter. Perhaps the cocktail had been stronger than I’d thought, or I’d eaten very little to protect myself from the power of whiskey, but my hand touched the side of Zain’s narrow waist as I led the way closer to the dance floor.

Even as I wondered if I still knew a few dance moves from a decade ago, I saw us surrendering to the power of the crowd. They all swayed and twisted in different ways, not caring if they were out of rhythm, and something lifted from my conscious mind, allowing me to care a little less about the way I looked.

I scanned the crowd and met Roman’s gaze. The self-conscious part of me wanted to pull away and not do this, but the young man tipped his head to me and winked, his lips stretching into a grudging smile.

Zain lifted his head as he let the music lead him and danced inches away from me. We found a rhythm of our own. It loosely matched that which the speakers blasted at us, but it worked for our styles. He was free, shifting like a forest brook, moving where the surroundings led him, but he wasn’t weak. He was persistent and carved his own way where the resistance was the lowest.

I resisted the yearning to touch him. He was so ephemeral, like some dreamy embodiment of all that was good, visible through the mist of an early morning. And when he lifted his arms high above his head, his torso arching back, his body surrendering fully to the sensations of his dance, images flooded my mind. I saw him bathing in a forest stream, naked and cold, drops of water on his shoulders and chest catching sunlight that pierced through the rich canopy above. The image was so sudden and striking that it overpowered my body. It pushed me forward and made my left arm wrap around Zain’s waist.

He looked into my eyes, and we both froze in this incredible moment, shorter than a heartbeat, yet still and infinite, a coin spinning in the air. And when it fell, not a second had passed, but we had passed some threshold that I couldn’t be sure we could return to. Something had given.

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