She liked calm, and quiet, and a more structured kind of exercise. She didn’t like feeling wild and unhinged; it reminded her too much of what it had been like to be sick; to feel like her body was running away from her, control sliding through her fingers like sweat-slick reins.
But Val wanted to go inside – saw it as another modern indulgence he was dying to explore – and she didn’t have it in her to protest, not when he’d been locked up longer than this country had existed. So she let him open the door for her, and invite her to lead the way with a courtly wave of his arm. It hadn’t been very long, but she’d already grown used to that – to his manners, so extravagant by today’s standards, so very him. She took a deep breath, steeled herself for the onslaught of sight, sound, and scent, and stepped into murkiness of the vestibule.
It was dark, but once the door had shut, she found it wasn’t as dark as she’d feared. Low-level can lights with a faintly purple tinge glowed in the black-painted ceiling, and tall, chrome urns on either side of the door held tall sprays of silver, purple, and blue faux grass. She spotted a counter – a coat check – where a sizable line had formed, patrons stripping jackets off of cocktail dresses, silk shirts, and even a suit or two, handing them over to efficient employees dressed all in black.
This wasn’t a shitty nightclub where kids with fake IDs came to get drunk; this was swanky, upscale. The people taking off their coats were young business professionals, tastefully decked out for the evening.
Some of her anxiety eased, though there were too many smells to properly catalogue, and she felt the throb of music through the soles of her feet and back in her molars. Anxiety buzzed under her skin, in a way it never had when she was normal. She didn’t fit, didn’t belong, wasn’t supposed to be here…
She glanced at Val, though, and realized she fit better than him. She at least knew what a club was, and how to behave in one. She blended into the throng, and he stood out, striking as a lit match among dry stalks of wheat.
He stood just inside the door, as if rooted, his gaze flicking from person, to person, to person. His expression was calm, but Mia could see the faint spark of apprehension in his eyes; could sense the way his pulse fluttered and swooped. Overwhelmed, but not showing it; carefully controlling his outward reaction.
He’d had several lifetimes of practice on that front, she thought with a sharp pang. She reached for his hand and laced their fingers together. Smiled when he turned to her. “Come on, we’ll keep our jackets for now.” They might need to leave quickly, and she didn’t want to bother with receipts. “Let’s find Sasha.”
His returning smile was small and thankful. “Alright.”
The vestibule opened up into a wide, thankfully high-ceilinged lounge area. Black marble floors, black ceiling with more of the can lights – some purple, some blue, some soft white – and tiny pinprick lights that looked like constellations. A long, padded, leather banquette ran the length of one wall, until it ended in a low staircase leading up to a roped-off area, and down its length were round tables flanked with chairs, many occupied by snazzily-dressed patrons sipping drinks. The bar – lit from beneath with more tricolored lights, a dazzle of glass and chrome – sat off to the right, and beyond that a writhing dance floor, where lights swept in beams, crossing and panning like stage lights.
It was…a lot. A whole lot. Conversations that ebbed in tides, audible beneath the bass thump of EDM, the occasional shout breaking through, high, laughing whoops from the dance floor, the chime of feminine laughter, like bells. Hundreds of brands of perfume and cologne competed with the earthier scents of sweat and musk, and the sticky-sweet notes of liquor from all the candy-colored cocktails she spotted in stemmed glasses.
Mia took a few deep breaths – wished she hadn’t – and tightened her grip on Val’s hand, hating how comforting it was to have him grip back. She was supposed to be keeping him grounded, but instead they kept anchoring each other.
Maybe that was better; maybe that’s how it was supposed to be. Who knew.
A scan of the bar revealed two backlit bartenders, one a woman with a high ponytail and cat-eye shadow and mascara, the other unmistakably Sasha, his hair thrown back in a low, messy bun, his hands deft on the vodka bottle as he poured ingredients into the mixer.
She headed that way, Val towed along in her wake.
Sasha turned to them, smiling, when they bellied up to the bar. “Oh, good, he let you in.”
Mia felt her brows go up. “You thought he wouldn’t?”
“Oh. Um.” His face flushed, and he tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear self-consciously. “Just…” He trailed off, and let the sentence hang.
Mia had been able to tell right away – through some new, vampire instinct that defied explanation, and was instead a matter of just knowing things when she encountered them – that Sasha and Nikita were mates. The scent of sex, faint, but detectible, yes, but also a strange blending together of their individual scents. A connectedness. Like sensing Fulk’s aura laid over Annabel, even when they weren’t in the same room together. An intentional sharing of a bond that went beyond the physical. But not quite like the way she could sense Fulk and Anna were bound to Val.
Nikita hadn’t bound Sasha, Val had explained last night, with true sympathy in his voice. That shouldn’t have surprised her; he showed his sympathetic side often. To her, to his brother, to his Familiars. To poor Kolya Dyomin, who still gave Mia the willies, even if she could have picked him up and thrown him across the room. (This was something she knew, intellectually, but which was so new, so untested, and so alien that she still reacted the way she used to when she encountered a potential threat: felt threatened.) But Val seemed truly sad for Sasha; all day she’d sensed his urge to comfort him, always laying a hand on his shoulder or his arm, offering him smiles, being gentle with him.
She’d witnessed all this, and told herself it was innocent, because she didn’t like to think about the ugliness of her own jealousies. There were many things about Val she didn’t yet know; she’d chosen this life – chosen him – knowing there were large chunks of the unknown that she would stumble across as she went. She hadn’t expected Val to have this kind of connection with a young werewolf in New York. She was trying to be okay with that.
She looked at it analytically, compiling information about this new world she was a part of.
Val had a wolf friend named Sasha.
Sasha was mates with a vampire whose scowl seemed permanently etched into his face, and whose own jealousy put any Mia was feeling to absolute shame. The aggression had pulsed off of Nikita last night. She wasn’t sure he didn’t hate Val, and all of that, she’d sensed, had to do with Sasha. With what Val meant to Sasha.
Val leaned an elbow on the bar and grinned, tossing his head just enough to send his hair cascading off his shoulder. He’d practiced that move, she thought, and finally had hair clean and silky enough to put it into his repertoire again. “Don’t worry about us, darling, your mate looks much scarier than he actually is.”
Sasha’s expression was skeptical. “Uh-huh.” He laid out two small, pink cocktail napkins with a professional flair. “What can I get you guys to drink?”
Mia ordered Merlot, and Val told Sasha that he wanted to try something “new and extravagant,” and to “be surprised.”
When Sasha turned to pull their drinks, Val leaned in close to Mia, rested a hand on her hip, and directed her gaze toward the dance floor with a nod, his lips right against her ear when he spoke. She shivered, and his hand tightened, briefly, on her hip. “Look at that,” he whispered, his voice gone breathy. Suggestive.
It was just a dance floor, just like every other one she’d ever seen, but she tried to distance herself and look at it through his eyes. Through the viewpoint of someone who’d missed centuries, and who only understood modern social culture through what he’d witnessed dream-walking, on TV, and through his human handlers over the years.
The dancers moved in pairs, sometimes i
n groups, and sometimes all alone, arms raised, heads thrown back, and then forward, hips rolling. Men with women, women with women, men with men. Thighs slipping between legs, pelvises flush together. Swaying, grinding, spinning. It was an upbeat song, with a deep, rhythmic bass line that pulsed, pulsed, pulsed in a way that mimicked an elevated heartbeat – and sex. It was commonplace by today’s standard, but when she let herself really look at the scene, it was undeniably erotic. Boldly, unashamedly so.
She had a fleeting mental image of medieval dancing; slow, stately prancing, two lines of dancers, gliding forward, turning, breaking apart, the women moving slow and ponderous as ships at sea to accommodate their bulky skirts. She’d seen something like that in a movie once, with dulcimers and lutes accompanying, onlookers clapping their hands to the regular beat of it.
How strange this must look. How wild and inviting for someone of Val’s…appetites.
She’d never had sex like this in her life, hot, and slick, and relentless, in turns playful and then fraught. He loved it, and was teaching her to love it, and she turned her head a fraction now, breathing in the scent of his skin, his hair tickling her face, so she could see his expression.
Pupils dilated, fangs just visible through damp, parted lips. She hadn’t seen him wet them with his tongue, but wished she had, imagined it, that glimpse of pink tongue.
All day, she’d floated along, brain buzzing with sensory overload, numb and struggling to take hold of reality. Batting away question after question: what are we doing here? Where will we go if Nikita turns us away? Will you fight him? What is Sasha to you? How much do you love him? And, worst of all: Why am I even here? Do you need me at all?
Now, when he shifted his electric gaze to meet hers, all that static disappeared. All the doubt and worry.
Adrenaline flooded through her, and with it want, and love, and the urge to laugh. To grab onto him and let him lead her anywhere and everywhere.
“Do you wanna dance?” she asked him.
His smile widened, his fangs long. “Oh, darling, yes.”
~*~
Sasha turned to set their drinks on the napkins he’d already laid out, and was met by a vacant stretch of bar. They’d walked away. It wasn’t hard to find them, though, despite the crowd. Val’s hair shimmered under the lights, rippling over his shoulders like molten gold – a hue mirrored, two shades darker, down his mate’s back. They were dancing, right at the edge of the dance floor, but other dancers had already noticed them and stepped back a fraction to watch; before long, there would be a ring around them, couples watching, emulating.
They were good.
Not in a flashy sense, not modern and gesticulating and trying to be seen, not like some he’d seen in here over the years. But they both had an easy, sinuous way of moving their spines, and rolling their hips. They’d found the beat right off, and worked with it, following it, rather than providing a physical counterpoint.
Val reeled Mia in for a moment, rested a hand on her waist, and took her other hand in his, stepped lightly, spun her, a perfectly executed movement from a dance that had been popular in another century. Mia laughed – smiling, mouth open, pink-cheeked – and let him lead her along, taking control back a moment later, spinning and putting her back to him, urging his hands to her hips.
Sasha watched them with a smile, his chest light. He hadn’t thought to see this: Val free. Smiling, dancing, living in this modern world. With his own mate, no less. He had so many questions about Mia – where had Val met her? Where had she come from? – that he hadn’t asked, too wildly happy for Val to worry about the details.
Questions Nikita would voice, no doubt, with skepticism. He would question everything about her, if Val stayed here in New York, just like he’d questioned Val’s story about Vlad’s help.
His smile dimmed, and he felt an invisible weight settle over his shoulders. He stowed the drinks he’d poured down below the bar, where they’d be safe, and turned to his next customer with a fresh cocktail napkin. “Hi, what can I get for you?”
He got lost in the usual rhythm of work for a while, smiling, mixing drinks, fielding the occasional flirtation from customers. He didn’t play along with any of them tonight; didn’t collect any phone numbers on napkins to share with Nikita later.
If he thought too hard about Nikita going home with a stranger, he wouldn’t be able to contain a growl. Fuck that, he thought with an inward snarl, so vicious he surprised himself. He’s mine. Whether or not things were strange right now.
Lost in his own dark thoughts, he startled a little when Val and Mia slid onto the stools across from him. Both of them smelled of clean sweat, their temples shiny with it, hair clinging to their necks and faces flushed.
Val shed his jacket and laid it on the bar, revealing lean, bare arms, sharp collarbones, and a glimpse of ribs through the too-large openings of his tank top. “This place is wonderful,” he exclaimed, talking too loud after having been so close to the dance floor speakers. His eyes sparked and flared beneath the lights, almost feverish.
“I feel like I’ve been falsely advertised to,” Mia said, lifting her hair off her neck with one hand and fanning herself with the other. “I thought I wouldn’t get tired anymore.” She was smiling, though, her gaze impossibly fond on Val.
“Ah, that’s a misnomer,” Val said. “You still get tired – you just recover faster.”
“Boo. I didn’t want it to be logical.”
Val beamed at her.
Sasha put glasses of water in front of them, and Mia reached for hers with a grateful “thanks,” taking long pulls straight from the rim of the glass. Someone who understood the importance of hydration. An athlete, Sasha thought, when he paired that small fact with her slender, muscular build. He thought Val had said something about a farm – about horses.
“Sasha,” Val said, swinging his gaze to him, eyes wide with yet more excitement. “Come dance with us!”
His first, unconscious response was yes. A pulse of purely physical anticipation; a quick urge for mindless joy. He wanted to dance, he loved dancing – but Nikita wasn’t a dancer, and dancing with strangers had long since lost any appeal for him. It always started out fine, but then his partner, man or woman, coquettish or brusque, would put a hand on him, a pointed touch, wanting more, and his blood would run cold. He didn’t want to be groped by someone whose name he didn’t even know; didn’t want to put that kind of trust in someone who wasn’t pack. Whom he didn’t love.
Val smiled at him now, not the knife-edged, in-control, calculated smile that he’d shown to Nikita in the pub last night, but something true and joyful that drove home how young he really looked. He smiled, and Sasha did love him, differently than he loved Nikita, yes, but there was trust, and it was mutual, and Sasha wanted to dance so badly it shocked him.
But he said, “Oh, um. My shift…” He pointed to the bar behind him, a weak gesture.
Val wasn’t deterred in the slightest. “Oh, come now. This is my first time dancing as a free man, and you’re going to deny me?”
“Careful,” Mia said, dryly, “he’s shameless.”
“Darling,” Val chided, sweetly, and somehow dialed his smile up another notch, his blue, blue eyes crinkling. “Sasha. Sweetheart. Come dance.”
“If you can say no, you’re stronger than me,” Mia said with a snort of laughter.
“My shift,” Sasha protested again, weakly.
“Have you had your break yet?” Mia asked.
He hadn’t. And he was due for one. He met Val’s gaze, and his last bit of resistance crumbled. “Okay. I’ll clock out.”
“Excellent.”
“You guys go ahead,” Mia told them, when Sasha had found someone to cover him and came out from behind the bar. “I need a break.”
“We’ll miss you, darling,” Val told her, but he took Sasha’s hand, and towed him to the dance floor, to the kaleidoscope of light and sound and flailing arms.
~*~
There was a lull in t
he door traffic every night between nine and ten, when most of the first wave was already inside, and the second wave of younger, rowdier patrons hadn’t pre-gamed and come out yet. Marco came out to swap places with Nikita. “Some asshole needs bouncing out of the VIP lounge.” The guys had long since grown used to the unlikely truth that, though Nikita wasn’t the largest of them, he was the best at tossing out unruly patrons.
He nodded, and moved inside, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that Val was in here, where Sasha was, while he’d been standing out on the sidewalk for hours. It wasn’t as if they’d been spending time together: Sasha was at his post behind the bar, and it was a busy night. The most they could have socialized was trading a few comments across the bar, and that was while Sasha was fielding customer after customer. There was no change for any kind of…intimacy.
He hated himself a little for even thinking the word. He was being an idiot.
When he got to the lounge, one of the waitresses told him – voice tremulous with nerves, rattled from dealing with the jerk who’d apparently been throwing drinks and making drunken threats – that his prey had gone to the bar. He turned around and headed that way, firmly not thinking any more idiotic thoughts along the way.
Until he got there, and found Val’s mate, Mia, sitting alone, drinking water, with Sasha nowhere to be found.
All thoughts about the drunk patron evaporated. He went right up to Mia – charged, really, he would acknowledge later, when he had enough distance from the moment to feel properly ashamed – and said, “Where are they?” Didn’t say, barked.
She started, but recovered quickly, expression smoothing as she set her glass down and turned to him. She’d had a quick spike of panic, that flash of natural fear that he wouldn’t blame any woman for feeling with a man was being a dick to her. But then it was like she remembered that she was far from vulnerable.
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