Free The Naked Detective by Vivi Andrews Page B

for being so helpful. As it was, the brunette was lucky Ciara didn’t pull out all of her big Jersey hair. Yes, Nate was a hunky piece of manflesh, but he was Ciara’s hunky piece of manflesh, thank you very much. At least until they found the necklace.
    Ciara dragged Nate away from his newest fan and down the escalator into the club, mur.mur . As they descended, the heavy beat rose up to slap them in the face. The club’s name was a total misnomer, unless it referred to the range of hearing that would be eliminated inside.
    They moved through the dark cave of the entrance. The club, tucked beneath the floorboards of the casino, opened in front of them. In the center of the room, a crowded, sunken dance floor was surrounded by couches and low circular tables. The go-go dancers they’d chased across the casino shimmied atop platform tables strategically placed at the edges of the dance floor.
    Directly in front of them, the bouffant blonde dropped down into a feline crouch and straightened with sensual aplomb. Ciara stared. She’d thought the outfits were trashy, flashing every semi-decent inch of skin and then some, but under the strobe light with the beat pounding through her blood, the costume sort of worked and there was a certain style to the go-go dancer’s gyrations.
    And a distinct sexiness. These women knew things .
    “I should become a go-go dancer.” She spoke the words softly, knowing no one could possibly hear them.
    “Do you see her?” Nate shouted over the thundering bass. His arm was tense beneath her fingers, his cane held in a white-knuckled grip.
    There were six dancers altogether. All of them in various hot pink porn-star getups, but not one of them was the woman from her vision. Above the dance floor, a wide walkway wrapped around the room. A bar immediately to their left was mirrored by another on the opposite wall. The walls not occupied by bars were lined with shadowed nooks, the curved couches and fabric hangings giving the illusion of privacy.
    “Not yet,” Ciara shouted back. “Let’s dance until she shows.”
    Nate slanted a glance toward the crowded dance floor and frowned, but Ciara didn’t give him a chance to object. She grabbed his cane-free arm—the one she’d been dragging him around by all week—and hauled him toward the pulsating mass of humanity.
    He shuffled awkwardly to the music—which she should have expected, really, since a man with a permanent limp could hardly be expected to be graceful. Especially when the nearby dancers were constantly jostling them with misplaced grinds, thrusts and booty bumps.
    Nate angled his shoulders to block one particularly enthusiastic flail. Ciara watched as he jerked back the other direction, shoulder-checking another dancer who was bobbing dangerously close on her right. After a few more similar moves, realization smacked Ciara in the forehead with a tire iron.
    He was protecting her.
    The dance floor was crowded, people bouncing off one another, pushing and squirming, but since she’d come down here no one had touched her . He wasn’t awkward because of the cane. He was awkward because he was trying to protect her from the casual touches of the other dancers.
    Her heart clenched. They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.
    Ciara moved in closer, twining her arms around his neck and sliding her body against his. He looked down at her, a little frown wrinkling his Everybody’s All-American brow. Ciara smiled, suddenly feeling dippy and sentimental. “You’re the real deal. Aren’t you, Agent Smith?”
    “What?” he shouted down at her.
    Ciara just smiled and mutely shook her head. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t hear her. She felt frighteningly sappy at the moment.
    The music was anything but sappy. A driving, unapologetic, pulsing invitation to sex. The bass vibrated through the soles of her Ferragamos.
    Ciara tucked herself against Nate’s chest, brushing aside the lapels of his suit jacket to press closer