by Nicole Fox
Chapter Four
Xander
Xander couldn’t believe it was her. Strolling into the bar, a place that he and the Hunters and had come to dozens, if not hundreds of times over the last few years, Daphne Carver was the last person that he’d thought he’d see. The woman who’d left him without a word so many years ago, the woman who had broken his heart like no other woman had before or since, was standing not fifty feet away, sipping a girly drink and looking at him in a way that reminded Xander of a horny, clueless teenager.
But he saw that there was something strange to the way she looked at him; there wasn’t the tiniest bit of familiarity in her eyes. It was like she was looking at someone she’d never seen before.
Before Xander could think too much longer about it, Cutter shoved him a drink.
“Another shot, man,” said Cutter, a wild smile on his face. “First we conquer the Spawn, and now we’re gonna conquer the pussy in this joint.”
Xander smirked, liking just how single-minded Cutter was tonight.
“Who you got your eye on?” asked Cutter after they’d downed their shots. “Me? I’m all about that little blonde piece in the short-shorts.”
“Might have to narrow it down, man,” said Xander, noticing that Cutter had described just about half the girls in this place.
“That one over there; the one with the big tits,” said Cutter, shoving his thick, ruddy finger into the air in the direction of one floozy or another. “What about you?”
Xander scanned the crowd again, looking for Daphne and realizing that she’d disappeared.
“Not sure yet,” said Xander. “Don’t like to rush into these kinds of decisions.”
Cutter flashed Xander a wry smile.
“Good fuckin’ call, man,” he said. “We’re goddamn conquering heroes; we can have the pick of any piece of ass in this joint.”
“I think I’m gonna scope out the scene,” said Xander.
“Do it,” said Cutter. “And next round’s on you, bud.”
Xander gave him a nod of acknowledgment before heading into the crowd. He decided to use the bathroom, looking through the masses of people on the way there for Daphne. He couldn’t see her, and part of him wondered if he’d just imagined her, like she were nothing more than some kind of drunken apparition.
Once he’d arrived in the bathroom, a shitty little space that smelled as bad as it looked, he stopped in front of the mirror and looked himself over.
Do I look that different? he thought.
In the last few years, he had made some changes. He’d grown his hair and beard long, gotten a handful of new tattoos, and put on about thirty pounds of solid muscle through steady, hard work at the gym. But he didn’t think he’d changed so much that a woman he’d dated for a year wouldn’t be able to recognize him.
Reaching into his pocket, Xander pulled out his phone and went through his pictures. He swiped over and over, going back to photos taken from years ago and finally landing on one of him and Daphne. His eyes went wide when he realized how he used to look.
The picture was of the two of them at one restaurant or another, Xander’s arm around Daphne and pulling her close. The arm was the first thing Xander noticed; it was thinner, and free of the tattoos he’d put on it recently. He looked down at his arm, his eyes moving from a tattoo of a snake being crushed under a combat boot, to one of a sharp-looking knife, to one that said “memento mori” in an elegant font.
Then, he looked at his face in the picture, almost feeling as though he were looking a different person. The Xander in the picture was barefaced, his chestnut-colored hair worn in a short, nearly buzzed style. His mouth was in an inviting smile that Xander realized he hadn’t made in years. The man in the picture struck Xander as less than a man, more of a boy fresh out of college and playing dress-up as a biker. He couldn’t believe how different he looked after only a few years.
Xander left the bathroom and went to the bar for another shot. He downed it eagerly as he watched his fellow Hunters move through the place like untamed beasts, being rowdy and carrying on as they usually did. He smirked as he watched Cutter and Ricky, one of the other men in the club, each scoop a woman off the ground and fling them over their shoulders like they were cavemen. The girls each let out a little shriek as they were lifted, and the smiles on their faces made it clear that they were more than okay with what was happening.
Xander glanced at Earl, one of the bartenders, who watched the unfolding with a knowing smile. The Shadow Hunters had been coming here for years, and Xander knew that they’d have to make a hell of a scene to get kicked out. Besides, mingling with rough guys like them was what brought the girls here from the city.
Leaning against the bar and turning back to the crowd, Xander looked once again for Daphne. His eyes flicked from woman to woman, and after a little searching, he spotted her.
No hallucination, thought Xander. That’s her, all right.
Other than her new, shorter hairstyle, she looked just the same, just as beautiful as ever. Against his better instincts, Xander felt a longing as he looked at Daphne. He knew he should just leave well enough alone. After all, he reminded himself, she did leave without saying a word. But the pulling just didn’t stop; after a time, he knew that he had to talk to her.
Downing one more shot of whiskey, he started off towards Daphne, who was now sitting at a small high-top table off to the side of the dance floor. Finally, he approached her, and Xander watched her eyes go wide as he made his way towards her. Once he stood on the other side of the table, a strange silence hung in the air.
“’Sup, Daph,” he said, crossing his thick arms over his burly chest.
“I’m … sorry,” she said, her voice slurring in a way that struck Xander as classic drunk girl. “How do you know my name?”
Chapter Five
Daphne
Daphne was drunk, to put it mildly. After a little more time on the dance floor—not to mention the few more drinks that Margaret had shoved in her direction—she was now so tipsy that she could hardly keep a thought in her head. But it was the pleasant kind of drunk—not yet sloppy. She was enjoying the feeling of cutting loose, but now that the man who she’d been ogling from the other side of the bar stood in front of her, her thoughts felt somehow both muddy and erratic at the same time.
“I mean, I don’t think we’ve met, right?” asked Daphne, following up on her previous question. “So how did you know my name? And why did you call me Daph? Only my friends call me that.”
The man shifted his standing position, as if processing this new information. Then, speaking in a deeper, lower voice, he leaned in.
“Uh, I was talking to your friend Margaret at the bar,” he said. “I asked who you were, and she said ‘that’s my friend Daph; be careful with her’.”
“Oh,” said Daphne, satisfied with the answer. “Got it.”
But before she had a chance to say or even think anything else, the man slid into the chair across from her. She was a little shocked by his gall, but part of her actually appreciated his boldness. Her eyes drifted up the man’s thick, toned, tanned arms, noting his winding tattoos. She didn’t know what to think of his thick, full beard, to say nothing of the fact that he was the sort of man whom she’d swore to never date again.
And why, she thought, did he look so goddamn familiar?
“You look a little out of your element,” said the man, a small smirk visible on his full, sensual lips.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Daphne, the booze giving her just enough courage to be confrontational. “You think a girl like me doesn’t come to places like this?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” said the man, not missing a beat. “You’re probably not gonna find a man with a steady four-oh-one-kay and a premium Netflix account here.”
A quick flash of the men that Daphne had gone on dates with over the last year or so ran through her mind. Sure enough, the man described the exact sort of buttoned-up, clean
-cut guys who worked in marketing and administration that she’d gone on dates with here and there. They were the types of men who she knew she should be dating, the kind who might one day make loving, stable father figures for Jack—the kind of guys who she forced herself to date, despite feeling nothing but boredom for them half of the time.
But with this beefy, rough-looking biker sitting across from her, Daphne realized, to her chagrin, that there was no getting around her type. She loved the thrill and mystery of the kind of men like him, and, against all her better instinct, the promise of danger and thrills.
“You never know,” said Daphne.
The man only smirked in response before flagging down a passing bartender and ordering a pair of drinks.
“Who says that I even want to drink with you?” asked Daphne playfully.
“Call it intuition,” said the man.
Daphne smirked.
He’s bold, I’ll give him that, she thought.
“So, you’re a biker, huh?” asked Daphne as the bartender returned with their drinks.
This is a bad idea, she thought. I’m drunk already; I should be shooing this guy away with a broom.
But instead, she wrapped her lips around her drink and took a long pull.
“Something like that,” he said.
“‘Something like that’?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I figured it was a rhetorical question.”
“Well, I have a bike, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I figured a guy who looks like you wouldn’t be driving a minivan.”
The man smirked.
“Now, that’s an offensive stereotype. What, just because I look like this it means that I drive a Harley or something? For all you know I could be a family man with a house out in the burbs.”
The comment was so silly that all Daphne could do was take an ice cube from her drink and toss it at the man. The cube hit him square on a bare patch of his chest, and Daphne couldn’t help but notice how the water from the impact trickled down his pecs.
“Okay, so you’re a biker,” she said. “And you and your boys look like you’re celebrating something, from what I can tell.”
“You could say that,” said the man, wrapping his hand around his glass of whiskey. “We had a pretty good week and we’re blowing off some steam.”
“You all from here?”
“For the most part. We’re mostly around St. Louis and Chicago, might take some longer trips here and there.”
Daphne couldn’t shake just how familiar this man appeared. Though she couldn’t really make out his features through his thick beard and long hair, she recognized something in those sapphire-colored eyes of his, almost like an intelligence that one wouldn’t normally find in a biker like him.
“And now you’re out getting rowdy.”
“Gotta cut loose every now and then.”
“‘Every now and then’?” asked Daphne. “Isn’t the whole point of being a biker that it’s a non-stop party? Isn’t your whole life cutting loose?”
The man scoffed.
“Spoken like someone who only knows about the way we live from the movies.”
Daphne had a quick flashback to the night that she’d spied on Xander. She remembered with perfect clarity the sight of the man beaten to a pulp, the way Xander had looked covered in his blood. She shuddered, doing her best to dismiss the image from her mind. She wondered if this man got up to the same type of business.
“Then tell me about it,” she said. “What’s so secret about bikers that an ignorant little girl like me just wouldn’t know?”
Daphne continued to feel bold. And it wasn’t just the alcohol; something about this man made her feel as though she could let her guard down.
“To be blunt, it’s something chicks don’t really get. It’s about brotherhood, sticking together, watching each other’s backs. And getting paid in the process.”
“I see,” said Daphne.
“You don’t, but maybe now you know there’s a little more to it than keggers and Harleys.”
The man’s tone had an aggressive edge to it. He struck her as so … different than the men she typically dated. Daphne couldn’t help but like the way he wasn’t afraid to push back, that he wasn’t scared of offending her.
The man killed his whiskey.
“You did a good job on yours,” he said, gesturing to her glass.
Daphne looked down and, to her shock, she saw that it was nothing but half-melted ice. She’d been so into her conversation that she’d sucked her drink right down without even thinking about it.
The man’s gaze flicked over to the dance floor.
“You into dancing?” he asked.
“Um, I’ve been known to, from time to time. But only when I’m drunk.”
“Then it sounds like you’re in the mood.”
“Oh my God,” said Daphne. “Is it that obvious? I mean, I’m only a little tipsy, really.”
“I’m just giving you shit,” the man said. “But it looks like that friend of yours is having a pretty good night.”
Daphne looked over the man’s shoulder and spotted Margaret, who was currently in one of the more secluded areas of the bar shoving her tongue down some grungy-looking guy’s throat, one of the man’s hands on Margaret’s ass, the other on one of her breasts over her shirt.
“Geez,” said Daphne. “I feel like I should do something.”
“She’s a big girl,” the man said. “Besides, girls like her come to places like this and get drunk so that they can do the things they want to but can’t admit.”
Daphne smirked, realizing there was definitely truth to those words.
“You think I’m that kind of girl, then?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said the man. “One way to find out.”
With that, he rose from his seat and strode towards the dance floor without looking back. His body language seemed to say “come on if you want, but if you don’t, then I’ll find someone who will.” Daphne couldn’t help but find that irresistible. Moments later, she was on the dance floor with the man, his hands on her slim waist and his body pressed against hers. And as the music swirled around them and the booze ran through her veins, Daphne couldn’t help but wonder just what she was getting into. But at that moment, in the man’s hands, in his possession, she was ready to get taken away.
Chapter Six
Xander
Xander couldn’t believe it.
Daphne honest-to-God doesn’t know it’s me, he thought, shaking his head.
During their dancing, he took a quick break to the bathroom to check his face in the mirror once again, just to confirm that he was still the same person.
Did I get zapped by a magic spell or something like in one of those eighties body-switching comedies? he thought, pushing the door open
Looking at himself in the mirror he confirmed that, just like he’d thought before, it was a combination of Daphne being drunk and him gradually changing his appearance over the years. The little changes he’d made added up; between the booze in her system and the chaos of the bar, Xander realized that it wouldn’t be too hard to think that he was someone else.
And it doesn’t help that I’m playing along with the whole thing, lowering my voice as best I can so she wouldn’t get tipped off by listening to me talk, he thought with a wry grin.
Xander normally wouldn’t be down for screwing around like that, but this was such a crazy situation to him that he just couldn’t help myself.
He headed out of the bathroom and back to the bar for another shot. Daphne was still on the dance floor, and he couldn’t help but watch her body move to the music.
I may have changed a bit, he thought, but goddamn, she looks just as hot as ever.
Her skintight jeans hugged every curve of her hips, and the simple fitted gray t-shirt that she wore outlined her breasts perfectly. Xander realized he was almost getting a hard-on right then and there watching her move.
Downing his
shot, he watched as a couple guys on the dance floor looked her up and down, and he realized that if he didn’t get back in there and make it clear that she was his, he just might be fighting off one of these assholes out back behind the bar.
Who am I kidding though? he thought. Daphne’s such a sucker for bad boys that she’d probably orgasm right then and there, watching me pound some other guy in the face for her affection.
Xander strode back onto the dance floor, his swagger making the crowd spread out around him. He clamped down his hand onto Daphne’s hip and shot a look to the nearby men who’d been sizing her up. The men all looked away sheepishly, determining all at the same time that Xander wasn’t the kind of man they wanted to mess with over a woman.