Hello again. Thank you to everyone who reviewed Chapter 1, you made my week. Also, thanks so much to In The Name, who provided the following quote. I had a lot of fun writing it, I hope you enjoy reading it.

I'm going to lie and say I own the Mentalist.

Chapter Two

Temptation is a woman's weapon and a man's excuse - H.L. Mencken

Lights, music, and the show began.

Jane crossed his legs in his seat as the first of the dancers emerged, one by one, from behind the curtain. Their costumes ranged from highly suggestive to almost non-existent, pink and green scraps of material that hid only their modesty. Hips swaying, smiles alluring and they each claimed their own dazzling catwalk, the music keeping in time with their steps. At the end of each runway there were poles awash with glitter and stretching to the roof. The lights overhead began to flicker dramatically, egging the shameless crowd on to a chorus of whoops and wolf whistles.

'This is disgusting,' Van Pelt commented in Jane's earpiece.

'Sure is,' he replied into his microphone, although he doubted Grace could hear him over his surroundings. He'd always hated these clubs. Drunken chauvinists scrambling for that moment's attention, for a glance or a touch that would satisfy their greed and keep their dreams of sexual ecstacy just a fraction from impossible. Women of the past spent their whole lives fighting for equality, only to see their grandchildren throw it all away. Pieces of meat to starving animals. It made him sick.

Atop the platform closest to him, one of the dancers had reached her pole and twirled slowly around it, hips exaggerated. She wore green, but only barely; her actions were confident, but Jane was near enough to see the nervousness in her eyes. Understandable, of course. After trying for so many years to hide herself away, Lisbon would naturally find this kind of parading galaxies from her comfort zone.

He'd never seen so much of her in his life, and with that thought came the knowledge, sudden and powerful, that they were headed for a dangerous place. Everything Jane knew about Lisbon fell apart to mere assumption, and everything he assumed fell apart to theories he didn't trust. In front of him was not a cop, but a red-blooded woman and he knew it had always been in her but was shocked by its presence. He tried to steady himself with thought of the case they would close tonight, as a result of this. But then she forced her back up roughly against the pole, and Jane forgot how to think.

They had to establish a connection, he vaguely remembered. That was what she'd called it; for everything else to happen conceivably, they had to first connect. As if on cue, Lisbon glanced over with a smile he'd never seen her give to anyone, and turned so that her back was to him. Her hands clasped around the pole, she slid down it and Jane fumbled in his pocket for a twenty dollar note. She reached the floor and laid on her back, one sparkly heeled foot gliding gently back up the pole and her dark hair falling in gushing waves over the edge of the stage. They were only inches apart now, so close that Jane could see every brush of mascara dripping from her eyelashes. Upside down, she seductively opened her mouth and he slid the rolled-up money between her teeth.

Lisbon bit down on the flimsy paper, smiled, and in one sudden movement she'd flipped onto her hands and knees, the money gone. Leaning forward, she ran her tongue slowly up one side of Jane's face and his vision went white. As a wall of drunken cheering surrounded them, he recalled that she'd told him to act lustful and bleakly hoped that it was his acting skills doing the job already. If so, he really should be in theatre because the primal inferno was burning through every inch of his skin, raging in his eyes, challenging his control over his body. As her tongue left his cheek, Lisbon pulled back slightly and flashed him a grin so dazzling it stole all his air. As she stood, Jane understood for the first time what it would have been like for his past clients to watch him perform his psychic act. There were fifteen dancers on that stage, but it was Lisbon's performance.

She turned her attention to a group of young men to his right, and their rapacious faces infuriated him. Jane desperately wanted to intervene and shield her from their undeserving gazes. They had no business looking at her like they did. But neither, he realised, did he. Pretending or not, by being here he was crossing the line she'd so boldly drawn between them and it could hardly be redrawn. The thought consumed him and suddenly Jane found that he couldn't look at her, so allowed his gaze to subtly wander across to the corner of the room. Standing in its shadows, he knew, was the club owner Darren Marsh. Jealous and insolent, guilty of shooting anyone who got a little too close to his dancers. By the night's end he would be knee-deep in their trap.

Time had passed quickly, he supposed; it felt like only ten minutes but already the dancers were retreating. One last touch and they stepped back onto the main stage; one last smouldering gaze, swing of the hips, and the curtain claimed them for its own. The crowd didn't like this at all, booing boisterously; the group of men near Jane began a chant of an increasingly erotic nature. No longer special, no longer satisfied. The lights calmed down, the music changed and Jane meandered through the crowd to the bar. Choosing the seat furthest away from the stage, he ordered a drink from the bartender and sipped it sparingly, calculating. It would take Lisbon ten minutes to change, give or take, a bit longer to slip discreetly back into the room… but barely a minute had passed before there was a voice in his ear, warm and close.

'Make sure Marsh sees us.'

He nodded and felt her fingers thread through his. Standing, he abandoned his drink and as she led him slowly out of the room he cast a sideways glance at the dark corner near the stage. Jane was too far away to see Marsh's face but body language proved to be enough. His sudden rage was almost luminous. Jane turned to inform Lisbon but then realised with a start that the reason she'd taken so little time was because she was still in her costume. It would add to the fantasy of their affair, he supposed, and for a moment the strange lust again took control. For a moment, he took in the curve of her upper legs and wondered what it would be like to… no. He couldn't. It was all for a case, for God's sake. It wasn't her, this playful seduction, only a character and it would be gone tomorrow. He told himself that, again and again, forcing his eyes elsewhere as they walked. Somewhere along the way she'd let go of his hand and they reached the female toilets, an 'Out of Order' sign attached. Lisbon pushed open the door.

'Nice work, Boss,' said Cho as they entered the room; beside him, Rigsby took a millisecond to digest Lisbon's appearance before nailing his gaze to the floor. She ignored both of them and spoke into the microphone hidden in her costume. Jane couldn't possibly guess where she'd fit the thing.

'Van Pelt, do you have a visual on Marsh?'

'He's headed your way,' Jane heard in his earpiece. Grace was upstairs, viewing the unfolding of events through the security cameras. 'One minute, give or take.'

'Can you see a gun?'

'Not yet.'

'Right.' Lisbon leant against the bathroom sink, her back to the mirror. 'So now we wait.' She crossed her arms in an obvious attempt to cover herself up, uncomfortable with the costume in such bland surroundings. Jane too was uncomfortable. He watched Cho and Rigsby hide themselves in the first two cubicles, but no matter how much he concentrated on the shine of their Glocks, Lisbon's presence continued to blind him. The mirror gave her a clone; twice as much skin and twice as much confusion, because she was Lisbon again, and yet the outfit claimed otherwise. His hand felt scorched from where she'd held it. One side of his face was numb.

'Jane,' she said. When he looked over she was holding out his scrunched twenty dollar note, her eyes seeing past him. Jane slowly crossed the room and took it from her, unsure of whether he really even wanted it back. But before he could wonder where it had been, Van Pelt spoke up.

'Uh, Boss.' There was tension in her voice. 'Marsh is fifteen seconds away, and there's no sign of any weapon.' The uneasiness was momentarily lifted from Jane as he realised the cause of Grace's concern. If Marsh simply waltzed into the room unarmed, he would find one of his dancers standing with a stranger. Doing nothing at all sexual, their cover blown. He would make some excuse about checking the plumbing, and then he would walk out. For the arrest and charge to be justified, he had to draw his gun, and he had to do it before he opened the door.

'Ten seconds.'

Jane met Lisbon's gaze then, and he could see in her eyes the same beginnings of panic that he felt in his. They looked over to the door simultaneously, and in the silence he heard the dull thump of feet in the hallway. Rhythmic, haunting. With every step Marsh delayed pulling his gun, their undercover act fell apart more and more, and he grew safer.

'Five.'

Jane wasn't sure why he did it. Time had slowed again, each second reluctantly passing in a haze of tension and uncertainty and the rising need to do something, anything. His gaze snapped back onto Lisbon and as she met it he stepped quickly forward, before he could stop himself. Taking her face in his hands, he shoved away his conscience and pulled her mouth to his.

At first, Lisbon froze in shock, but the sound of the doorknob turning reached them and suddenly she was returning the kiss. And she held nothing back. Jane felt her fingers tangle in his hair as her tongue collided with his, probing his mouth, searching for the satisfaction they'd both been hurtling toward… as he lifted her up onto the sink, she wrapped her legs around him and wrenched his jacket from his shoulders, allowing it to fall to the floor. With the fresh position, her face was slightly higher than his but it only added to the fantasy, the pleasure. And the blazing lust returned to rage through them both, driving them on not with anger but with desire… there was nothing in between their bodies, she was everywhere, she was all he could taste, all he could breathe…

The cubicle doors suddenly flew open behind them and Cho and Rigsby bore down on a shocked Marsh who had, evidently, finally revealed his gun. Jane heard the urgent tone of their shouts, but it seemed an easily won battle because a few moments later there was the clatter of metal to the floor and the click of handcuffs.

Slowly, gently, he broke the kiss and observed the sink in front of him as Lisbon reclaimed her legs. He couldn't look at her, though he wanted to; confusion and embarrassment wound through him and he found that his mask, once so reliable, now failed to camouflage these emotions from either of them. Awkwardly, Jane took a step back and her heels touched down on the floor once more. In the mirror, he watched Cho push a submissive Marsh out the door without a backward glance. Rigsby's eyes flickered to the back of Jane, still intimidated by Lisbon's costume. His words sounded like they were choking him.

'Good job, um, guys.' And then he was gone too.

Jane turned around to stare blankly at where Rigsby had been, and the tension returned with a new, more painful level of intensity. Van Pelt was silent in his ear, either because she'd left or because she was in shock. He was all too aware of Lisbon's presence beside him; the sudden lack of her warmth had turned his skin to ice. But only where she'd touched, which was basically everywhere. How had they come to this stilted uneasiness, when they'd begun the night so adament that nothing would change?

After a long moment, Lisbon cleared her throat.

'Well.'

He couldn't find any words, even with her simple monologue as the prompt, partly because his tongue was swollen from her touch but mostly because his mind was swollen too. In the process of avoiding her conversation and her gaze, he spotted his jacket crumpled on the ground and bent to pick it up. Jane's intentions were to put it back on, establish some sort of control over the situation. But then Lisbon shivered beside him and the image came into his head of the drunken horde of men she'd seduced, their gutter-worthy comments and their shameless grabs for her skin. She said nothing as he dropped the jacket over her shoulders, nor did she speak as he headed for the door.

Jane didn't like that she, after advertising herself for half an hour, still possessed the presence of mind to do her job. He hadn't been able to utter a single word since she'd made her beeline for him on that stage; his deniably artificial lust had taken the reins and apparently decided that words just got in the way. Underneath the composure, was Jane actually just another greedy male, another chauvinist, in disguise? No matter his morals or his dignity, did the world consist only of redblooded men and oblivious women? He was frustrated enough to believe it.

But as he turned to close the door behind him, Jane caught Lisbon's reflection in the mirror. She'd drawn his jacket significantly more tightly around her, and as he watched she pressed her nose to the material and inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering closed.

Deep down under Jane's skin, hope for the male species came alive.

Perhaps temptation was a two-way street.

Thanks for reading, please R&R! Again, if you've got a good quote for Chapter 3, sharing is caring.

TAJ :)