Excerpt from "Starr in Charge"

Calyx paced backstage. He couldn't believe he was about to do this. In particular, he couldn't believe he was feeling so freaked out about it. He loved to dance. He loved people watching him dance. He loved attention and he loved sex, even though lately he'd been avoiding it.

So what was the fucking problem?

Maybe it was that Adrian had actually sold broadcast rights to this little performance. Anyone could be watching it, anywhere. So much for trying to convince anyone in the JCPD that he was retired from selling his body. But that wasn't really what had him so wigged out. Unhappy, maybe, but not crawling out of his skin.

.Calyx stopped, rubbing his bare arms. The costumer had added a half-length vest to the pants, made in the same manner and materials. It barely covered his pecs and then fastened in the middle with long silver ties so it wouldn't flap crazily about as he moved. He looked hot and he knew it. The costume would help inspire people to help him generate the best possible show.

And that was the problem. This wasn't just a one way show. The intimacy of what Adrian wanted from him was what was giving him the serious creepy-crawlies. He was used to dancing in a crowd, feeling their bodies and emotions moving with him. Not this.

A hand lit on his shoulder. Calyx nearly jumped through the ceiling.

With a chuckle, Adrian said, "Your guest has arrived. Very handsome, you have excellent taste."

Calyx forced himself to smile. Great. Black was here. If the telepath had any mercy in him, he'd come backstage and do that little shooting thing right now.

"You look like you're going to pass out," smiled the club's owner. "Would you like to feel how I'm anticipating this will go? It might," he paused, looking Calyx up and down with a hint of lust in his eyes, "warm you up."

Normally Calyx would have said no, but he needed something to stoke his fires or he was going to make a fool out of all of them. He nodded, and the man took his shoulders before dropping his shields like a beautiful woman letting her robe slide to the floor.

Calyx's head fell back and his mouth fell open as anticipation/lust/need/desire/appreciation/envy bulldozed over him, blanking out his mind and revving up his body. After a too short moment, those shields snapped up again, and Calyx would have stumbled back if it wasn't for Adrian's grip.

"You will make them feel that and more," purred Adrian, letting go and stroking the blond's hair. "Is that better?"

When Calyx nodded, Adrian patted his cheek.

"Good, because I'm about to introduce you."

Calyx swallowed as the Latin hunk slipped through the curtain, and went to take his place in the center of the stage behind it. He held tightly onto the feelings that his employer had shared, using them to relax his body and feel the warmth of sensuality flow through him that he would need. At least he'd extended the music loop out to thirty minutes. It could take a long, long time for this little experiment to produce results.

#

Black smiled as a scantily-clad woman sat his drink on the table, wiggling her pert butt as she moved on to the next customer. Getting in free was nice, but being sent directly to the VIP table with the best view in the house was even better.

The place was absolutely packed. He'd actually been concerned about his own safety when the bouncers had let him in past those who were being turned away for lack of room. Only Calyx Starr could draw a crowd like this. Black was desperately glad the empath wasn't sitting next to him to feel the possessive surge of jealousy that thought caused.

The lights dimmed. Black recognized the well-dressed gentleman striding onto the stage from the data they'd compiled. Adrian Romero, owner of the Silk club and minor functionary of Lord's gang. Laundered money, prostitution, and drugs flowed in and out of the place like electricity through a circuit. Without this club the gang's power in Juxtapose City would be greatly reduced.

"Ladies and gentlemen," purred Romero's rich voice over the speakers. "As you know, we have a special guest with a special act tonight. I hope you have all come clean, since an audience full of Blissed-up junkies won't give our gorgeous little empath what he needs, will it?"

Laughter rippled through the room. Black half wondered if this was the JCPD's dream come true somehow, an event that actually made everyone want to be clean so their emotions could be read.

"I won't torture you with a long, involved introduction," smiled Romero. "After all, Calyx Starr needs no introduction."

Hoots and hollers echoed through the crowd. Black resisted the urge to probe minds. It was best he didn't know how many of these customers were former clients, or were hoping to get into Starr's pants here at the club. Being in the mood to bust heads wasn't the best way to enjoy what was about to start.

The curtain started sliding open, and Black realized he'd missed the rest of Romero's brief patter. In true dramatic fashion, Calyx Starr was gloriously, gorgeously draped on his back over a long black couch with undulating curves. His waist-length hair cascaded off the edge to the floor like a waterfall, glitter within sparkling in the light. But it was the costume that made Black's breath hitch. He'd always found being creatively dressed hotter than raw nudity, and the patchwork of glittering cloth and flesh gave the mind-bending illusion that Calyx was both.

Silence descended over the crowded club. Black thought he could even hear their collective heartbeats. There was a brief ripple of sound as people shifted in their seats, and then it was quiet once again.

A faint, sultry drum beat began to play, and one by one, instruments joined it to form a sensuous middle-eastern rhythm. At first, Black thought that Starr remained still, and then a glint of light caught on the purple stone on the blond's naval ring. Soft murmurs floated through the club as only the empath's stomach moved, the muscles visibly rippling upward, and then downward, the direction changing like water eddying down stones.

Just as the music and subtle movements started to lull Black into a lazy trance, a more modern, techno beat started to overlay the fading rhythms. As though pulled by a painfully slow string, Starr arched, his stomach sucking in and his chest rising, his torso forming an bowing elegantly as his head slid to drape off of the couch.

Black's palms were already starting to sweat. He rubbed his hands on his thighs, thinking this was going to be a long night. The empath was obviously trying to set the "mood" and he was doing a damn fine job. Black didn't need to probe the minds around him to know that most people in the club were picturing the empath in their beds, his flexible, powerful body writhing beneath or performing for them.

He certainly was.

#

As desire/admiration/envy washed over him in spades, Calyx was glad that he'd chosen a slow, technically difficult start for his performance. The fine muscle control required to accomplish the look he was after made it easier in a way to let the deluge of emotion wash over and through him, since he needed his concentration to keep himself in position.

When the music picked up, he couldn't help but smile as he eased cat-like off the couch. It had felt undeniably narcissistic practicing all of this in front of the club's large mirrors, but he didn't need those now to know how good he looked as he worked the long lines of his body. The crowd's building lust pawed him like so many hands, and he had to focus on enjoying that in order to keep himself from retreating.

Calyx dug down and focused on the music. As long as he remembered to focus his efforts for the audience and not for the people pressed against him, he could lose himself in the throbbing beat. It was a strange and erotic thing, knowing that every single wave of hunger coming in his direction was due to him and him alone.

#

Black had known that Calyx was a frequent visitor to the city's hottest underground clubs. He'd always assumed that the lusty descriptions of the way the man danced were exaggerated, the way everything else he had heard about the empath seemed blown out of proportion. Yet at every step since he'd fallen into Dickerson's web, Black had learned that if anything, Starr's reputation might be underrated. It certainly was when it came to watching him move.

Calyx Starr rarely sat still as a rule, but he wasn't frantic either. Even when doing his best to force his elegant, pale features into the very picture of a stern police Lieutenant, that rich emerald gaze jumped about, observing. On the stage, the hypnotic sway and jerk of the empath's hips captured the increasingly bold, raw spirit of the music and brought it gasping to life.

Sweat trickled down the small of Black's back as he shifted, adjusting himself in the sudden discomfort of his jeans. On that stage, Starr was Eros personified, and Black knew he wasn't the only one in the room who hoped to bind that wild spirit to himself. He was willing and even happy to share with Parker, but he suddenly feared that Calyx Starr was, ultimately, a gift that one or even two men couldn't possess.
The thought of that flushed face and those tantalizing, slack lips being stilled by a single shot from a gun filled him with both cold dread and white-hot anger. Even worse was the realization that whatever was going to happen could very well stem from this night.

Watching Calyx lift his hair and spin as he slowly let it fly and fall about him made Black want to focus only on the show. Still, he was here to work, and part of his job was to protect the members of his team. He forced himself to start scanning minds for unhealthy, dark urges.

Of course, he had to start by sorting theirs out from his own.

#

Some small part of the back of Starr's mind wondered if his erection was visible as he turned. The costume designer had fitted him with an ingenious little getup that made sure that his "friend"--as she'd put it--wouldn't get caught in the costume as it rose. Now it was plastered against his stomach, and he had this insane urge to just fall onto the couch and start pumping for them all to see.

But that wasn't how this game worked. Calyx danced closer to the front of the stage, drowning even further in the stormy waves of lust and desire crashing over him. He wanted to dive in among them, feel their bodies against his, but the room was far too crowded and that wasn't allowed either.

However, he'd thought ahead. His empathy worked best up close. Since this was, after all, a sex club, the tables were fixed firmly in place and designed to be large and wide, big enough for a dancer to use and travel across on their way around the room. He'd practiced several times moving along them, following paths between the glasses and dishes the wait staff tried to keep arranged for easy passage.

On a whim, Calyx started on the table to the far right, surprised and pleased to find a familiar face among the crowd there. He licked his lips at Black, throwing the telepath a kiss before he rested his palms on his ass and turned with a slow gyration of his hips. In his current state, he found himself hoping that the jolt of hunger that fell straight to his groin indeed came from Black. If the man came on to him at that moment, he'd be hard-pressed to say no.