The Jazz Club Siren

They call me Velvet.

Not my real name—that's Veronica Mae Johnson—but in the Blue Note, I'm Velvet. Been singing here for fifteen years, ever since my divorce left me with nothing but a voice and a sequined dress.

Every Friday night, I take the stage and pour my heartbreak into standards. Billie Holiday. Nina Simone. Etta James. The tourists cry. The regulars sway. And I feel, for a few hours, like the woman I used to be.

Beautiful. Desired. Alive.

He started coming six months ago.

Same corner booth every Friday. Bourbon neat, barely touched. He watches the whole set with eyes I can feel even in the spotlight's glare.

Salt-and-pepper beard. Broad shoulders in a tailored jacket. Hands that rest on the table like they know what they're doing.

He's never approached me. Never sent a drink. Never done anything except watch.

Until tonight.

The set ends at midnight.

I'm backstage wiping off sweat when there's a knock. Expecting Marco, my pianist—it's him.

"Ms. Velvet." His voice is a bass drum. "I'm Marcus Webb. Forgive the intrusion."

"Mr. Webb." I don't stand from my vanity. "You've been in my audience a while."

"Six months." He doesn't pretend otherwise. "Took me that long to work up the nerve."

"The nerve for what?"

He steps closer. Meets my eyes in the mirror.

"To tell you that your voice is the only thing that's made me feel something in five years."

I'm fifty-one years old.

Been singing in this club since I was thirty-six, watching myself age in this same mirror. The curves that made men crazy in my twenties have multiplied. My waist is thick. My arms are soft. My chin has company.

I've made peace with it—mostly.

But the way this man is looking at me makes peace feel like surrender.

"What do you feel?" I ask.

"When you sing?" He moves behind my chair, hands resting on the back. "Like someone finally understands what it is to want something you can't have."

"What can't you have?"

His eyes meet mine in the mirror again.

"Until tonight, I thought it was you."

"Buy me a drink, Mr. Webb."

We end up in a back booth, away from the crowd. He orders bourbon for both of us—remembered my preference from some interview, some article, some research that tells me he's serious.

"What do you do?" I ask. "When you're not haunting jazz clubs?"

"Corporate law. Retired last year."

"Young for retirement."

"Fifty-eight. Made my money, wanted my time." He sips his drink. "Spent the first year traveling. Saw the world. Found it empty."

"And now?"

"Now I come here every Friday and watch a woman remind me why I'm still alive."

I should be flattered.

I am flattered—but I've been in this business too long to trust pretty words.

"What do you actually want, Marcus?"

"You." Simple. Direct. "I want to know the woman behind Velvet. The one who chooses songs like she's telling her own story. The one who closes her eyes on the bridge like she's somewhere else entirely."

"And if that woman isn't what you imagined?"

"Impossible." He reaches across the table, and his hand covers mine. "I've studied you for six months. I know you're more than what you show on stage."

"You know nothing."

"Then teach me."

We end up at his place.

Garden District, old money architecture, more books than furniture. He pours wine I don't need after the bourbon and puts on Coltrane.

"You don't have to do this," he says. "If you want to leave—"

"Do I look like I want to leave?"

I move toward him, closing the distance he's been so careful to maintain. My hands find his chest, feel his heart pounding beneath the expensive shirt.

"I've been watching you too," I admit. "Wondering what you'd do if I came to your booth after a set. Wondering what those hands would feel like."

"Velvet..."

"Veronica." I tilt my face up to his. "My name is Veronica."

"Veronica."

He kisses me like he's savoring the word.

His hands are everything I imagined.

Strong, certain, reverent. They trace my shoulders, my back, find the zipper of my dress and lower it slowly.

"I should warn you," I murmur against his mouth. "I'm not a small woman."

"I have eyes." The dress falls. He steps back to look at me—full breasts in black lace, belly curving soft, hips wide as the Mississippi. "My God, Veronica."

"It's too much—"

"It's perfect." He lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me toward the bedroom. "You're perfect."

He lays me across sheets that probably cost more than my rent.

Kneels beside the bed and removes my heels, kissing each ankle. His lips trace up my calves, my thighs, until his breath is warm against the lace between my legs.

"May I?"

"Please."

He pulls the lace aside and shows me what those hands—and that mouth—can really do.

Nobody has touched me like this in years.

Maybe ever. He eats me like I'm music—slow movements, building crescendos, attention to every note. His tongue finds rhythms that make me arch off the bed.

"That's it," he murmurs. "Sing for me, Veronica."

I do. Different songs than I sing on stage, but just as soul-deep. He plays me like an instrument until I shatter.

"Your turn."

I push him back, straddle him, work his buttons with fingers still trembling. He watches with dark eyes as I bare his chest—strong, graying hair scattered across brown skin.

"You're beautiful," I tell him.

"I'm old."

"You're beautiful," I repeat, and show him I mean it.

I take him in my mouth, and his groan vibrates through my body.

I haven't done this in years—haven't wanted to—but with Marcus, I want everything. I work him slowly, savoring his taste, his sounds, the way his hands find my hair without pushing.

"Veronica—I can't—"

I pull back, climb up his body, position myself above him.

"Then don't."

I sink down, and we both exhale.

He fills me perfectly.

I set the rhythm—slow, deep, rocking—and he lets me. His hands grip my hips, helping but not controlling. His eyes never leave mine.

"Beautiful," he keeps saying. "So beautiful."

"Stop talking." I lean down, kiss him hard. "Just feel."

We feel.

The first orgasm crests while I'm riding him.

The second comes when he flips us over and drives deep. The third—I lose count of the third. We move through positions like movements in a symphony, each one building on the last.

By the time he comes—buried deep, groaning my name—I'm wrung out and remade.

"Stay," he says after.

"I have a set tomorrow—"

"Stay anyway." He pulls me against him, chest to back, arm around my waist. "I have a car. I'll get you wherever you need to be."

"Marcus..."

"I know we just met. Properly, anyway." His lips brush my shoulder. "But I've been looking for you my whole life. I'm not letting you go that easy."

"You don't even know me."

"I know your music. I know your pain. I know the way your voice breaks on 'Stormy Weather' like someone who's lived it."

He's not wrong.

"And now?" I ask. "Now that you've had me?"

"Now I want to hear all your songs." He kisses the back of my neck. "Every single one. For as long as you'll let me."

I stay.

That night and the night after. Pretty soon, my toothbrush lives in his bathroom and my dresses hang in his closet.

I still sing at the Blue Note every Friday.

But now Marcus doesn't sit in the back corner alone.

He sits in the front row, where I can see him, where I can sing to him.

And every song feels like coming home.