Insatiable

Chapter Twenty

1:00 A.M. EST, Thursday, April 15

Concubine Lounge

125 East Eleventh Street

New York, New York

The club was dark and the techno music pounding, louder even than in most discos in Bucharest.

Not that Lucien frequented such places…if he could help it. They were too smoky for his taste and tended to attract a rough crowd, lured by the promise of copious amounts of cheap liquor and scantily clad women. Those kinds of clubs were more for students. It made Lucien uncomfortable to be spotted in the same places as his students. It wasn’t, he felt, appropriate.

Particularly when his female students threw their legs over his and began rubbing their groin over him, a dance move popularly referred to as “grinding.”

Lucien had seen many dance styles come and go, usually with more amusement than alarm. But of all of them, he hoped “grinding” would be of shortest duration. There really wasn’t anything attractive or sexually alluring about it.

However, as he stood surveying the crowded dance floor of Concubine, he saw that grinding was as popular in the States as it was in Bucharest. It was a bit difficult to tell because of the smoke from the dry ice machines. But it certainly seemed that way from all the bodies writhing up against one another.

When one body, garbed only in black leather pants and a metal bikini top, detached itself from the others and wriggled up against him, Lucien asked, “Where’s Dimitri?”

The girl ran a black-nailed hand along his flat abs, pulling his white shirt from his trouser belt. She looked up at him through her spiky blond bangs as she began grinding against him in time to the music and said flirtatiously, “We don’t need him. Unless you like it that way.”

Lucien reached up and caught her wrist in an iron grip before she could dip her fingers into the waistband of his trousers.

“Where,” he asked again, his eyes flaring red, “is Dimitri?”

The girl stopped grinding and said, her voice rising to a fearful whine, “He’s over there. God! I was just trying to be friendly.”

Lucien let go of her wrist and strode toward the VIP area, where she’d pointed with a shaking finger. He hadn’t meant to frighten her.

On the other hand, she’d been high and hoping he had drugs on him to get her even higher. Beyond that, her mind had been empty as the Sahara. Lucien couldn’t help being reminded of the dog walker from the night before, whose mind had been just the opposite-impenetrable as a jungle.

He wondered why he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. He told himself it was only because she and the dancing girl were close in age and both attractive.

The resemblance ended there, however. He’d given up feeling sorry for addicts like the dancing girl. There were too many of them these days.

The VIP area where Dimitri was sitting was separated from the dance floor with black velvet ropes and featured a series of elegant, high-backed booths that formed a retreat from the loud music and gyrating bodies on the dance floor. On the soft black leather seats lounged a half dozen middle-aged men-much too middle-aged, and far too paunchy, for the extremely young and slender women who were draped all over them, their doe-eyed gazes as blank as that of the girl who’d just attempted to grind upon Lucien.

In a neighboring booth sat a few much younger men. One of them looked up and smiled as Lucien approached…

…just as two heavyset bodyguards attempted to block Lucien’s path.

“Sorry, sir,” said one of the men, who weighed nearly three hundred pounds and was wearing a gold chain around his thick neck with the name Reginald emblazoned on it. “This area is for VIPs only.”

“I can see that, Reginald,” Lucien said. “I’m here to see Mr. Dimitri. And you’re going to let me pass.”

“Of course I am,” Reginald said, and he moved aside. “I’m very sorry, sir.”

Reginald’s partner, who weighed nearly as much as Reginald, all of it muscle, was appalled.

“Reggie!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

Reginald explained, as he unhooked the velvet rope for Lucien to pass, “You heard the man. He’s here to see Mr. Dimitri.”

Dimitri had risen from his booth and come to meet Lucien. A tall, dark-haired man in a business suit that fit as perfectly as any of Lucien’s, he wore a white shirt that was open at the throat, revealing a leather cord from which hung a small iron dragon symbol.

“Brother,” Dimitri said, stretching out a hand to take Lucien’s in his. “This is a surprise. It’s been too long. When did you get in?”

“Dimitri,” Lucien answered coolly. He shook his half brother’s hand, pointedly ignoring the question. “You’re doing well, I see.”

“Oh, this?” Dimitri’s wide gesture with his left hand (in which he was holding an expensive Cuban cigar; he’d always, Lucien remembered, had a fondness for smoking, one that matched Lucien’s own fondness for fine wines) encompassed Reginald and his partner, the VIP area, the whole of the club. “This is nothing. I have four more nationwide, and am opening another one in Rio de Janeiro next month.”

“Rio,” Lucien said, raising his eyebrows. “Still treading dangerously.”

“What danger? It’s a nightclub,” Dimitri said, emphasizing the word night. “Only we call them lounges now. You would love Rio. The humidity! Very good for the skin. Come, you must meet my new friends from TransCarta. You must have heard of it, the private equity firm? They’re brokering a rather large deal at the moment and are in need of some stress relief. So of course they’ve come here. Everyone who works in finance has such a bad reputation these days. Negative publicity. That’s something you and I know a bit about, don’t we, brother?”

Dimitri laughed at his own joke as he took Lucien’s arm, attempting to steer him toward the booth of middle-aged men being nuzzled by the reed-thin young girls.

“Maybe later for that, Dimitri,” Lucien said. “I’d rather speak privately to you for a moment first. We have much business to discuss, I think, you and I.”

“Nonsense,” Dimitri said. “Pleasure before business! I know what you’re talking about…and why you’re here.” He slapped an arm around Lucien’s shoulder and began steering him toward the booth he’d just vacated. “An unfortunate thing, about these young dead girls. And I’ve asked around-believe me, it’s not good for the club, having a maniac like this loose-and I can assure you, no one knows a thing about it. If they did, don’t you think I’d have taken care of it already? You know me, Lucien. Anything to improve the bottom line!”

Lucien tilted his head toward the girl who’d approached him as he’d come in, the one in the metal halter top. She was now gyrating by herself on the dance floor, off in her own little drug-induced stupor.

“And her? You aren’t doing a very good job of keeping hard drugs out of the place,” he remarked. “Surely that can’t be helping to improve the bottom line.”

Dimitri followed his half brother’s gaze.

“Oh, drugs,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Well, what are you going to do? They’re everywhere. The government should legalize them already, then tax them and use the money to pay off the deficit and get the addicts the help they need. But why are we talking about such a depressing topic? Come, you haven’t seen Stefan in ages. And you have to meet my very latest project.”

“Your latest project?” Lucien raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t this…lounge?”

“Not at all!” Dimitri guided him toward a table at which sat a somewhat seedy-looking young man and his even seedier companion, both of whom were wearing extraordinarily tight trousers and shirts open to mid-chest beneath leather motorcycle jackets. They were flanked on either side by pencil-slim young women who did not appear to be wearing much in the way of clothing at all but had exceptionally flat chests and very straight hair.