It was, it turned out, the point of the whole exercise. Bethany, tiara slightly askew, had set the whole thing up so Nero could be the one to take the shot off Amani's stomach. Nero, recognizing an ambush when he saw one but also recognizing that refusing would have made things worse, shook his head at Bethany, bent down, and did the thing with more precision than strictly necessary, the salt off Amani's collarbone, the shot off his stomach, the lime from his own mouth which Amani was still making fun of him for a week later.
The bar whooped. Amani was laughing so hard his stomach hurt and the tequila burned on his skin where it had spilled. Nero's face when he came up from the lime was a mix of mortification and I'd-do-it-again-in-a-second that Amani filed away forever.
Amani grinned. His real grin. The one that used to live behind that bar before the ranch. It broke across his face wide and unhinged and showing teeth. A few people in the room who had really known him before made a sound, like a quiet, collective exhale, because the grin was back. The lion's specific grin that had been the signature of this bar for years, the one that said I am twenty years old and I know exactly how beautiful I am and it is your problem, not mine.
There he is.
Nobody said it out loud. Nobody had to. The club knew.
Amani sat up on the bar. Bethany handed him a shot for himself. They clinked glasses with Nero and Sero across the room. The four of them drank. The bar cheered again. Amani was twenty-one in a week. He was home. His back was unmarked. His collar scar was visible. The music shifted to something with a heavier beat and the crowd went back to the floor. He got down off the bar and got back to work.
Twenty minutes later Lady Leo texted him from Reno.
I don't know what you did but I have a feeling. We will discuss on Sunday. I love you.
Amani showed it to Nero and both of them lost it. Nero put his hand on the back of Amani's neck briefly, casually, the way he'd been testing the touch for weeks in small, careful doses. This time Amani didn't flinch. Nero noticed. Neither of them said anything. The hand stayed for three seconds longer, then lifted. That was everything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Reza had clocked out at two. The cleaning crew wasn't due until later that morning. The club was theirs.
Amani slid off the bar.
He landed on his feet, his healed feet, the scars still there but the pain long gone, and stood in front of Nero in the empty club with no shirt and the amber light on his skin and he looked like someone making a decision.
He dropped to his knees.
Not with the measured caution that had characterized every physical gesture since the ranch. He dropped to his knees on the floor of Kinky Kritters with the confidence of someone who had done this before and enjoyed it and was choosing to do it again because he wanted to, because it was fun, because the man in front of him had earned this and Amani wanted to give it.
Nero looked down at him. The amber eyes looked up. The grin was incandescent.
"This," Amani said, his hands already on Nero's belt, "is another thing I used to have fun doing."
"Amani—"
"Shut up and let me."
He opened Nero's belt with a bartender's hands, fast, sure, no fumbling. He pulled Nero's cock free and looked at it with appreciation, hunger, the delight of someone rediscovering something they'd thought they'd lost. He was already hard just from the body shots, from Nero's mouth on his skin, from the feeling of standing shirtless in his own club and wanting someone instead of hiding from everyone.
He licked a slow stripe up the underside of Nero's cock from base to tip, the same deliberate intensity Nero's tongue hadtaken on his collarbone. Nero's hand shot out and gripped the edge of the bar behind him. The sound he made was immediate and wrecked.
"Tequila tastes better on you," Amani said, and then took him in.
Deep. He took Nero into his mouth with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what he was doing and liked doing it. His tongue worked the underside, his lips tight, his cheeks hollowed on the pull back, and when he sank down again he took Nero deeper, into his throat, and swallowed around him and the sound Nero made was something Amani wanted to record and play back on the club's sound system.
He was good at this. He'd always been good at this, a skill he'd been proud of before pride in his body was something the ranch had buried. His mouth was hot and clever and he used his tongue the way he used it behind the bar, by instinct, by attention, reading Nero's body like a drink order. The way Nero's thighs tensed told him to slow down. The hitch in Nero's breathing told him the tongue was working. When Nero's hips jerked forward, Amani took it, letting Nero push into his mouth, letting him feel the heat and the wet and the suction.
"Amani—" Nero's voice was shredded. "Your mouth. Fuck."
Amani hummed around him, pleased. The vibration made Nero's knees buckle. His hand flew from the bar to Amani's hair. Not pushing. Not guiding. Just there, fingers spread, feeling the movement, the rhythm, the deliberate bob of Amani's head. The touch in his hair was safe. Still safe. Still not the other touch.
Amani pulled back. Looked up. Licked his lips with theatrical slowness, tasting Nero on them, letting Nero watch him do it. "You know what I want."
Nero's hand was trembling in his hair. His chest was heaving. His cock was slick, hard, and straining. His eyes werenearly black. The control that Amani had been cracking for months was barely holding. "Tell me."
"I want my Dom." Amani rose to his feet. He was hard, visibly, straining against his jeans. He didn't hide it. He stood in his mother's club and let himself be visible, wanting, and unashamed. "I want you on top of me. I want it rough. I want it here."
He walked to the bar. Reached behind it to the security panel near the register, the one he'd known about since he was sixteen, the one that controlled the camera system Nero himself had upgraded. He pressed a button. A small red light went dark.
