The VIP floor was the kind of exclusive reserved for serious debauchery or the highest class of criminal hacker—neither exactly Maya’s area of expertise. She probably could have bought her way up to see the club’s elusive owner with a few of the TechCorps secrets buried in her brain but not without exposing herself in ways that would end her life as she knew it.
Opposite the staircase was the centerpiece of Convergence. A sleek, six-meter-long bar was crowded three deep with people jostling to reach the embedded ordering tablets. Behind the bar itself, dozens of glowing backlit tubes climbed the wall, a dizzying array of liquor and mixers and wildly colored liquid alchemy that, according to rumor, could do anything from give you a pleasant buzz to open your mind to the mysteries of the universe.
All of the tubes fed into a trio of elegant machines that whirred and hummed and produced perfectly mixed drinks as fast as the pair of bartenders could provide the glasses. Blended, straight, on the rocks, glowing, smoking—the only thing the drinks had in common was that you could feed a family of six for a week on the credits you had to fork over to enjoy one.
That was Convergence in a nutshell. Big. Flashy. Expensive.
Too much.
Maya had only been here a handful of times. No place in Atlanta beat it if you wanted black-market tech or hacks—be they software, hardware, or biological. But the sound of it alone was enough to set her bones to humming. The flash of lights, the press of half-naked bodies, the smell of those expensive drinks and aftershave and sweat, the taste in the air, like high-scale crime and lush sin had been converted to oxygen.
Sensory overload wasn’t just a danger after a trip to Convergence, it was an honest-to-God certainty.
But it was the only place where she could meet her most dangerous contact.
“Are you going to be okay in here?” Gray spoke close to her ear, the only way to be heard. His breath tickled her skin, the warmth of it too intimate combined with that honey drawl.
She was not going to be okay if he kept doing that.
“I can handle it,” she replied, turning so he could hear her soft words. “I can almost always keep it together when I have something to focus on. A mission. I’ll just crash a lot harder tonight when we get home.”
“All right,” he relented, but his gaze held hers, intense and searching.
Dani broke in, bouncing a little to the beat of the music. “Who are we meeting here, exactly?”
Maya checked her watch, but no new messages had come through. “She’s not here yet.”
Rafe grinned and tilted his head toward the dance floor. “Then I’m doing recon.”
“Knock yourself out, Morales.” Dani headed in the other direction, slipping into the masses of people moving together.
Maya swayed, instinct almost driving her after Dani. Dani was the perfect clubbing partner for someone who needed to exhaust her body without dealing with the constant physical contact that came with a mass of thrashing dancers. Dani’s entire vibe screamed fuck off loudly enough that Maya usually danced it out in a blissful circle of personal space. The few idiots who crossed the boundary and actually touched one of them were lucky to leave with all of their fingers.
As the crowd closed around Dani, Maya took a step back. Her arm pressed into Gray’s. His entire body was scalding heat against her, but for all that her awareness of him was an ever-present prickle against her skin, his presence didn’t bother her the same way.
Gray was like Nina and Dani. Gray was safe.
“Can I ask a favor?” She had to stretch up on her toes to be easily heard.
He touched her elbow, so lightly she almost wondered if she’d imagined the contact. “You know you don’t even have to ask. Just tell me what you need.”
“Turn on your scary predator vibe.” Someone bumped into her from behind, and she edged closer to Gray, close enough to curl an arm around his neck. “Just don’t let them all dance into me.”
He nodded, one arm sliding around her. His palm pressed against the middle of her back, right between her shoulder blades, and his other hand landed on her hip. Then something changed—his expression hardened, and waves of sheer possession crashed outward from him.
The crowd writhed around them. Nothing obvious, nothing overt, but within a minute it was like an invisible force field had edged the dancers back. Some eyed them with curiosity, some with appraisal … but no one accepted his silent challenge and encroached on Gray’s starkly declared space.
Survival instincts were one thing everyone in Convergence had in abundance.
The music booming over the speakers shifted to something slow and deep and grinding, and the rhythm of the crowd shifted with it. The bright neon lights flashed across the dance floor and faded, replaced with a sultry red that turned the twisting bodies into some puritanical preacher’s nightmare vision of a hell populated by lustful sinners.
The large hand splayed between her shoulder blades flexed, and Maya curled her other arm around Gray’s neck. Their bodies were already moving to that rolling bass beat, and she wasn’t sure which of them had started it. “You’re really good at that.”
He didn’t bother asking what she meant. “You learn early on the streets, or you don’t last.”
Sympathy tightened in her chest. “Is that where you grew up? Was it here in Atlanta?”
He nodded. “Bankhead. Spent most of my time in a church-run orphanage.”
She fought an instinctive twist of her lips. Some of the churches had clung to a message of hope and healing after the Flares, but too many had gone in the opposite way—fire and brimstone and shouting that the collapse of the world they had known had been fitting punishment for society’s sins.
Maya didn’t want to imagine how those orphanages treated their charges. She curled her fingers protectively around the back of his neck, the short hair there tickling her palm. “Did your parents…?” She trailed off. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal.”
He did anyway. “Dead. I barely remember them.” His hand tightened on her hip. “Not sure if that’s better or worse, but it’s how things are.”
“I understand.” He was still giving off scary monster vibes that cleared a path for them as they rolled with the music, but the low, tense rumble of his voice and those fingers clutching her hip … She stroked her thumb up and down the strong column of his throat, softly comforting. “I never knew my parents. Most of the time I think it’s easier. Nothing to miss except the idea of what parents are supposed to be.”
“You can still miss something you’ve never known.”
The words slid over her, low and oddly intense. She couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be suggestive or if everything sounded suggestive when you were practically riding a guy’s thigh to a bass beat that promised the kind of sex she’d never had and was pretty sure she wouldn’t survive.
Her limbs felt loose. Her whole body felt loose, except the parts that were wound too tight. Her heart pounded, and she waited for him to ruin it. To take the silent invitation in her flushed cheeks and parted lips, to slip his fingers under the thin cotton of her layered tank tops, for the hand at her hip to slide down to cup her ass. To drive this fluttery feeling inside her from warm and melting to the sharp edge of too much.