was showgirl tall and wore black leather pants and Gucci boots. Her cherry wraparound silk blouse displayed a nice amount of midriff—Evie worked out. But it wasn’t just her looks that turned heads. There was an air about her, as if here was trouble, but not the kind most people wanted to avoid.
She caught the eye of the doorman and signaled for him to hail a cab. The instant she stepped off the curb, a gray Bentley swerved to a stop, blocking her path. The tinted window rolled down.
She took out her ear buds and leaned down to the window. “Hello, Zag,” she said with a smile.
He lowered his leopard print Dolce & Gabanna shades. He looked absolutely furious.
“You missed the show.”
“Did I?” She glanced back at MGM’s entrance. “And here I thought I caught the main event.”
The door opened. “Get in.”
It wasn’t a request.
“Someone’s feeling grouchy,” she said.
She slipped inside the Bentley next to him, throwing her Prada bag and iPod on the floor. Zag pushed her up against the white leather seats. Evie knew he’d been onstage with the band as a guest guitarist. He still wore stage makeup and was dressed in an electric-blue suit with tails but no shirt. She ran her hand through his spiked, bleached hair, staring into his eyes.
There were many unique things about Gonzague de Rozières, not the least of which was his name. Like a rock star, he went by the moniker Zag. He had the wiry frame of a long-distance runner but managed to appear imposing despite being a good two inches shorter than Evie’s six feet one. He had more money than God and just as many secrets. But to Evie, the most unique thing about him was his eyes.
The pupils appeared always enlarged, as if he lived on some perpetual high even though he didn’t do drugs. There was almost no pigment to the iris, either. The color changed depending on the light and his mood. At the moment, they appeared a steely-gray.
“You want a show?” he asked.
She leaned against the door of the Bentley. With the grace of a ballerina, she raised a Gucci-clad foot and pressed the stiletto against his bare chest, pushing just enough to know she’d leave a mark.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He took her boot by the ankle. He shook his head, smiling. “I told you to stay away from the cage.”
She pouted. “Why? Don’t you enjoy the effect?”
She kissed him, hard, and then bit his lip, almost drawing blood. He returned the favor by grabbing her arm and pulling it tight up her back.
“Now, now,” he whispered in her ear. “No fair biting.”
Evie was twenty-six. She’d been with a lot of men. But there’d never been anyone like Zag. He could take everything she handed him. And then some.
By the time they reached his suite at the Wynn, she knew she’d have bruises. It’s what she wanted. Seeing those men in the cage, drawing that energy to her, she needed the release.
Afterward, they lay naked on the Egyptian-cotton sheets of the California King Wynn “Dream Bed,” one of the hotel’s most talked about attributes. Like everything about the Wynn, the suite was opulence itself. At two thousand square feet, it was larger than some New York apartments and featured wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows with a gorgeous view of the Strip…which was why Zag preferred the salon suites to the more exclusive villas on the hotel’s golf course.
Zag covered her body with his, making that connection with his eyes that she only had with him. Despite a broken nose—a memento from a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas—he possessed an almost striking beauty. He had a thick head of bleached white hair, but absolutely no body hair. A genetic condition, he’d told her.
He reached for the bottle of Cristal nestled in the bedside ice bucket. He took a drink from the bottle then offered her a sip, holding the bottle up to her mouth. Only, champagne wasn’t what Evie wanted.
She dropped the bottle on the carpeted floor. She heard it roll away as she pressed her lips to his with enough force that his head sunk into the down pillow.
She continued their kiss, forcing the issue when he tried to push her away. She didn’t stop to catch her breath, felt herself getting light-headed. She visualized the men in the cage—the blood—the idea of death making her feel so alive.
She felt her head yanked back by a fistful of her hair.
Zag stared at her, his eyes almost colorless now. Catching his breath, he said, “Be careful, Evie.”
She smiled, breathing just as hard as Zag. He kept his grip on her hair, but she didn’t care.
She brushed her thumb over his swollen bottom lip where she’d bitten him earlier. “Fuck that.”
Evie locked her legs around his hips and bit his lip again, this time drawing blood.
The next thing she knew, he rolled them both off the bed. He pinned her to the carpeted floor, straddling her.
“I said, be careful!” This time, he meant it.
That was another thing she enjoyed about Zag. He was one of only two men who could best her physically.
She turned her head and looked at the Cristal bottle and the champagne soaking into the confetti design of the carpet next to her face.
“Oops,” she said, smiling coyly.
“Gracious, was that almost an apology?” he asked, nibbling her earlobe, his anger easily forgotten.
He stood and held out his hand. Pulling her to her feet, he clucked his tongue at the empty ice bucket.
“Cristal.” He made a soft sound of disappointment deep in his throat. “What a waste.”
But Evie was already heading out of the bedroom toward the wet bar in the living room. The marble floor, in a deep shade of cocoa, felt deliciously cold under her bare feet. She passed the room’s most touted feature: a fifty-inch plasma screen set dead center against the wall of curtained windows. Anyone watching the high-def television would have the Vegas strip as background courtesy of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The furnishings were chic and contemporary, the color scheme soothing. The russet grasscloth wallpaper served as the perfect foil for the cherry-toned furnishings. Two sofas bracketed the marble-topped coffee table and Andy Warhol prints graced the walls. Steve Wynn had spent two-point-seven billion on his namesake casino hotel. The opening had featured an exclusive with Vanity Fair magazine and a commercial during the Super Bowl. Zag prided himself in knowing all the right people, people like Steve Wynn.
In the living room, she took in the flotsam and jetsam of Zag’s other life. A curious array of scientific papers, business journals and scholarly tomes covered most every surface. Tucked among such lofty subjects as “string theory” and “dark matter” were the pseudosciences that so fascinated him—several copies of the Journal of Parapsychology, printed articles examining sundry paranormal phenomenon, a report on remote perception put out by PEAR, the
