Angel Salvadore knows all about power.
She has it when she dances, when she does a slow, sliding figure-eight with her hips, when she makes a man's eyes darken with nothing more than a slight pout. She loses it by possessing that curve of her ass, the swell of her breasts, the brown of her skin.
Men have power, too. They have it in their money, their suits, their laws and assumption that this is their world. Of course, they lose power. She takes it from them when she parts them from their money (so much money), when they worship at the shrine of her body, and sometimes that makes her feel like a queen.
But not always.
(she tries not to keep a tally of who loses more and who wins more, because she knows the answer.
hint: she doesn't win)
– –
Of course, she turns the showing of her wings into a dance, a whole-body-flirt. Of course she does. She can fly, and that is groovy, and she can spit fire, which does wonders for a girl's confidence, but the pair of them have walked into her club, paid her, and now they expect her to go thank you, thank you for being a freak like me, just like that?
So she turns it into a slide, a hint of a seduction, just to get things back onto a somewhat even ground. The German might be able to make metal do his bidding, but he's still looking at her like she's something exquisite. She doesn't know what the other one can do, but he's still a man in a suit and she can own men in suits.
(except, maybe, not this one. She knows the type, the type that likes to think it's his charm that makes girls tumble into his bed; he would never pay for services rendered, goodness no.
you win some, you lose some)
– –
After a week of being the employed guest of the CIA, Angel comes to the conclusion that she had more freedom when she was dancing on a bar-top with tassels on her tits.
It's fun being with others like her, and they are all drunk on being able to show off, high on the company who understands. Of them all, Angel feels like Raven is the one who most gets it, she who crafted a fake body with fair skin and blonde hair. But Angel also knows a cage when she sees one, and a cage where there are comfortable couches and the guards wear pressed suits is still a cage.
(she earned more dancing on tables, too)
– –
"...live like kings," Shaw says to the group, and then he looks at her. "Like queens."
She's taken power before, stolen it and bargained for it and paid for it. Normally, men offer her money, which is both power and payment in one. No one has ever just offered power to her before. And it is an offer, despite – or maybe because – of the carnage this man has orchestrated just to talk to them.
So Angel reaches out and accepts.
