The club pulsed with life, bass vibrating through the floor as colored lights fractured across the crowd. Drinks clinked, laughter mingled with music, and bodies moved with a rhythm that felt both chaotic and precise. You had found your own space in the chaos, moving with the music, letting your body take over, swaying and spinning as if the world had shrunk to the space around you.

From the corner of the room, Bruce’s eyes tracked you with quiet intensity. Noticing the way you moved, the way your hips moved in time with the beat, the way your laugh carried just enough to catch attention without trying.

Selina, his partner, was leaning against the bar nearby with her usual smirk. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t intervene. She noticed the intensity in his gaze, the hunger that lingered there. She gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod, a silent signal that he could approach—so long as he remembered the rules. No emotional connections with anyone besides herself.

You eventually had stepped out of the dance floor. Leaning sideways against the bar, you sip your cocktail, the pulse of the club still thrumming through your veins. Bruce’s path toward you was effortless, magnetic, a presence that seemed to part the crowd without a word.

When he reached your side, the club’s noise fell into background hum. The energy between you was immediate, electric, but not personal—at least not yet. Selina’s condition always hovered in the air, a quiet reminder that what happened here was temporary, untethered, just physical. Bruce leaned slightly closer, letting his gaze linger on you a moment longer than necessary, the hunger in his eyes softened just enough by restraint.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, voice low enough to cut through the music but still intimate, just above a whisper.