Aerial Ethereal

The best aerial technique won't land twenty-one-year-old Thora James her dream role in Amour, a sexy new acrobatic show on the Vegas strip. Thora knows she's out of her element the second she meets Amour's leading performer. Confident, charming, and devilishly captivating, twenty-six-year-old Nikolai Kotova lives up to his nickname as the 'God of Russia.' When Thora unknowingly walks into the crosshairs of Nikolai's aftershow, her audition process begins way too soon. Unprofessional. That's what Nik calls their 'nonexistent' relationship, but it's not like Thora can avoid him. For one, they may be partners in the future-acrobatic partners, that is. But getting closer to Nik means diving deeper into sin city and into his dizzying world. Thora wants to perform with him, but when someone like Nikolai attracts the spotlight wherever he goes, Thora fears that she's destined to remain in the background of his spellbinding show.

"Don't have a best friend that's a girl"-this was the advice from my older cousin. I didn't take it. Because he followed with, "friends don't f**k friends. And you'll want to f**k her." It was terrible advice. My cousin should've told me that being best friends with Baylee Wright-since she was twelve-would be the best and worst decision of my life. He should have told me to protect her from what was coming. He should have told me that when a darkness crawled towards us, there'd be no safety net. Now I've signed back on to the same Vegas acrobatic show as Baylee, working together for the first time in years. And she tells me that she's having trouble in a certain "area" of her life-because of our past. "You can help me fix it," she says. And then she hands me a list.