“Go ahead and write me up again if it will make you feel better. But I can’t come in tonight, I really can’t. If you’ll let me slide this one time, I promise you Julia—I promise—that I’ll cover for you whenever you need me to. Any day you want. Just let me skip out tonight, ‘kay? Pretty please?”
“I will write you up and I will definitely tell Mr. Morlock if you don’t show tonight, George. I mean it. I’m not a machine, I can’t work all these long hours.”
“I’m only scheduled from seven to eleven tonight. What’s four more hours when you’ve worked all day anyway? And don’t tell me you have plans—you never have plans.”
“You try working a twelve hour shift on the busiest day of the week and then tell me how you feel about working four more hours on top of it! I’m exhausted, George, and I want to go home at a decent hour tonight.”
“But you need the money don’t you? Just grab a book and hide behind the desk until the shift is over. It won’t be too bad.”
“It’s not that easy, George, or you would be in here working like you’re supposed to. Now, please get in here and work your shift.”
George affected a long-suffering sigh. Julia gritted her teeth, surprised that they didn’t crumble, so hard did she clench her jaw. He wasn’t going to show. She knew it. He didn’t care about his paycheck enough to worry about getting written up—again. One more written warning after this and he would be fired. Not that it mattered. His parents took care of all his finances. This job was just gravy money to him. If the world were fair he would care that his laziness was going to cost her some much needed study-time.
But the world wasn’t fair.
“I’m sorry you’re not willing to help me out here, Julia. I thought we were buddies, but I guess I was wrong. Go ahead and write me up because I’m not coming in tonight. I’ve got better things than to hang around that place on a Friday night. See ya.” The phone clicked in her ear as George hung up.
Julia rubbed her temples. “Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean—think of a calm blue ocean, Jules.” She continued to repeat her mantra, taking deep, soothing breaths.
Calming her anger was not an easy thing to do, but she managed after several moments. Then, dislodged with the motions of her fingers at her temples, her hair fell heavily into her face once more. “Oooooh!” she screeched, yanking the oversized alligator clip out of her hair.
Unfortunately, she thought with a whimper, the night has only just begun.
* * * * *
8:30 p.m.
Julia sighed, sending a puff of air up into a stray lock of hair that had fallen over her face, making it dance. Time was just not passing quickly enough for her. Luckily though, the amount of new arrivals for check in had slowed considerably along with the passage of time and she was afforded the rare opportunity to actually sit in her chair behind the reception desk. Her boss, Mr. Morlock, had already left for the evening, sympathetic enough with her plight to help her write up the missing George, but not sympathetic enough to hang around and help her out on her shift. He, like everyone else she knew, had plans for the night that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—be broken.
Julia’s stomach gave a loud rumble, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day. She’d neglected to bring along a sandwich for lunch, expecting—foolishly—that she’d get off of work on time so that she could eat her meal in the quiet comfort of her apartment. With no small amount of chagrin, she realized that she should have planned on staying late from the beginning. She knew her co-workers all too well to harbor the hope that no one would call in sick on a Friday. Well, she was paying for her own naïveté now and she hoped her grouchy tummy could wait just a couple more hours until it was fed. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the money to blow on ordering take-out just now.
Hunching her shoulders to easy the empty ache in her middle, she bent back to flip through the fashion magazine she’d found buried in a cubby hole beneath the counter, pausing now and again to draw a bushy moustache or armpit hair on the forms and features of the models. Julia couldn’t help but grimace, as page after page was revealed, laden with advertisements featuring half naked, willow thin models. God, if only she could be so lucky. She sighed, then gave a small giggle at her overly morose thoughts, adding some potbellies and double chins to the lovely men and women for good measure.
It was then that the back of her neck prickled with a sudden, disturbing unease. Someone was watching her. Staring at her. She could actually feel the person’s gaze, like a heavy, laden weight on her bent head. Slowly, with a heart that was already inexplicably pounding, she raised her head to see whom the disturbing gaze belonged to.
Less than twenty feet away stood a man. A very big man.
Oh lord, she thought, as the bottom of her stomach landed with a plop somewhere in the vicinity of her feet. He’s amazing!
Dressed from head to toe in deep black clothing, standing tall and straight, he seemed to swallow all of the surrounding light in the hotel lobby. He stood so still that for an odd moment he appeared to her a lifeless stone statue. The man seemed truly otherworldly, in his stillness and in his stance. Then she saw the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and the moment passed. Julia couldn’t help but let her eyes rove over him, eating him up in the only way she knew she’d ever be allowed to. His head was slightly bent, leaving most of his face in shadow and his long golden hair framed his face, trailing down over the rich velvet lapels of his stylish overcoat. But his eyes—his icy blue eyes—positively blazed out like beacons from the darkness hiding his face.
And those gorgeous eyes were locked dead-on with hers.
The empty ache in her stomach intensified, then was replaced with the frantic, psychotic flapping of butterflies’ wings. To her dazed mind, it felt as if a thread were being drawn taught between her gaze and the stranger’s and she could not for the life of her pull free from it. Her heart raced in an almost painful cadence and she grew feverishly lightheaded. It took every ounce of her strength and will to draw a breath to steady her racing nerves.
The sudden, ragged sound of her indrawn breath did not go unnoticed by the man, if the widening and darkening of his eyes were any indication, and Julia was sure they were. Her cheeks burned with a sudden blush of embarrassment.
Julia was startled and amazed when he suddenly appeared directly in front of the desk. Even though her eyes had never left him, she had failed somehow to see his approach. One second he was across the lobby over ten feet away, and the next he was leaning down over her desk, hands splayed wide to brace himself on the counter top. It was like stop-motion film. He simply just appeared, almost on top of her. Strangely enough this both terrified and excited her.
Her first instinct, one ultimately of survival, was to push away from the desk and run for her life, especially after his abrupt and unexpected movement. But the thread that held her gaze to his was still there and would not break, so it was impossible for her to flee. In the back of her befuddled mind she heard her renewed, breathless pants, and knew she must look like a besotted fool. But she couldn’t control her helpless reaction to him no matter how much she wanted to.
The man was drop-dead, lip licking, gorgeous. Almost too handsome for her to look at him comfortably, his masculine beauty was just that breathtaking. His sharp, rugged features were both dangerous and sexy. His skin was tanned, but not with the smooth unblemished look one had from lying beneath tanning lights in a salon or spa. No, this was obviously the careless and incredibly sexy tan of a man who spent too much of his time out under the natural rays of the sun. His long golden hair was streaked from it as well, beginning in a lovely widows peak upon his high, broad brow and ending just a bit past his shoulders.
His eyebrows were artful black slashes above his wintry eyes, their dark color contrasting quite noticeably beneath the tawny gold of his hair. His soot colored lashes seemed ten miles long and were tipped with a similar gold. His nose was strong and straight, his mouth was lush and decadently sculpted—made pe
rfect for kissing she had no doubt. The column of his throat drew her attention especially, that strong ridge of tendon and sinew that led into the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen in her life. Underneath his stylish Armani suit and overcoat she could clearly see that he was heavily muscled, with the powerful body of an athlete, and he held himself with such grace that Julia instinctively knew he hadn’t earned his physique in a gym. He was far too comfortable in his skin to have been vain enough to work for his heavy form. He’d been born lucky enough to grow into it naturally.
Julia would have done anything for the chance to paint him. To capture such a wild and untamed masculinity such as the one he possessed would have been a priceless challenge.
The man oozed a potent animal magnetism and it was plain to see that he would be one of great carnal appetites. And he was eyeing her like he wanted to gobble her up at his next meal. Julia hoped and prayed she didn’t stutter when it came time to gather her wits and actually speak to him. Opening her mouth like a fish out of water, she searched for the proper and professional words that had been ingrained in her these past few years at the hotel in order to greet him. She was stunned anew when the man bent even closer and…sniffed her.
As strange as the moment was, as much as she wanted to flee for safety or better yet throw herself into his arms and what had to be certain danger, Julia couldn’t move away more than a few scant inches. The man’s nostrils flared as he breathed deep. His pale, pale eyes shuttered as he scented her hair, her neck and the air over her visibly shuddering chest.
The stranger was bent completely over the counter, his body otherwise utterly still. How much time passed, Julia couldn’t have said, but the strange man seemed oblivious to their surroundings. With a soft, low growl—a sound startlingly alien and feral—the man leaned even closer so that only the space of a breath separated them. She could feel the moist warmth of his breath and smell his wild, tangy scent. Desire and trepidation swamped her until she feared she would pass out. She was like a deer caught in the hunter’s spotlights, unable to run, unable to even think. Anticipation of his next move consumed her and her vision swam drunkenly.
Without meaning to, without even knowing she was capable of it, she leaned closer to him, meeting him halfway. Their lips were separated now by nothing more than a hairsbreadth. She tasted the sweet spice of his breath and knew that he could taste hers in turn. She wanted to shut her eyes, to give in to the temptation of closing that last miniscule distance between them, and press their mouths together. But her eyes were caught and held open by his and he seemed to reach into the depths of her with that gaze, laying her bare and open before him, so that she was forced to let him keep command of the situation.
It was the most wondrously seductive moment of her life.
The stranger muttered something in a foreign, exotic tongue, breathing the word into her mouth. His voice was deep and entrancing, and the sound of it echoed through her head long after his lips had ceased moving. Her eyes burned and the aching in her heart grew in intensity. Whatever he had said, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what it was, it had drawn that invisible link between them even tighter. In that moment she wanted to be his with a fierceness she’d never known in all her life. She wanted to belong to him in the most earthy and elemental of ways. It would break her heart if she couldn’t find a way to be wholly and utterly his. It was foolish to feel such a link with this stranger, but Julia was helpless to fight against its strength.
His heavily lashed eyes were still slightly shuttered, veiling his almost glowing gaze with a lush curtain of blond-tipped kohl, as he slowly closed the last minute distance between them. In the back of her mind she noted the rakish silver loop that pierced his ear, and the claw shaped tigers eye stone that dangled from it. Until the last, she thought he meant to kiss her, and she wanted him to kiss her with every last fiber of her being. But he moved slightly to the side and Julia was given no warning other than the sight of the stranger’s lips parting. He swooped in and licked her cheek with one long, velvet swipe of his tongue.
Oh God, but that was even better than a kiss! As strange as it was—his licking her, marking her—the caress seemed far more intimate and erotic than any kiss she could have imagined. Julia was nearly undone as she felt his tongue lave her flesh and an arousal so fierce she would have screamed with it had she been able, swept through her like wildfire. In that moment—for the first time ever in her life—she was swept away by passion’s fierce current, and had the stranger commanded it she would have spread herself wide for his pleasure with no thought to the consequences. In that instant she was but a slave to his potent and magnetic allure, unprepared in her innocence to deal with such a raw and instant attraction.
She loved every crazy, forbidden moment of it.
The man pulled away, but only slightly, and gazed intently into her eyes once more. A moment of sanity returned and she rallied the last remnants of her professionalism. It was the only armor she could erect just then between her fierce lust for him and this man’s obvious interest in her. “C-can…” her voice faltered then she tried again. “Can I h-help you, sir?” She knew the question was silly and anticlimactic under the circumstance, but she also knew that she was lucky to find the wits to speak at all.
The man slowly closed his eyes, as if savoring the sound of her voice, though she knew that had to be fanciful thinking on her part. Then, just as slowly, he opened them and the blaze of his eyes was even brighter than before.
“You have already helped me more than you know,” he said in that sinfully decadent voice of his. His words were lyrical in their cadence, letting her know that English was not his first language by any stretch of the imagination.
“I don’t understand.” She cleared her throat and straightened in her seat. In her mind she couldn’t help wincing over the sudden ripe throbbing in her breasts and between her legs. “Do you have a r-reservation? Do you need a r-room?” She tried not to blush over her obvious stuttering.
The stranger’s movements were slow when he pulled back, as if he were dazed or tired…or worse, in a stupor. Julia wanted to groan her disappointment when she thought that last part. It would be just her luck that the only attractive man to ever pay her any real attention in the past, well, forever, was drunk off his gourd.
But she didn’t smell any booze on him. He smelled sweet, sinful, but not inebriated. That, at least, gave her some hope and peace of mind.
The man’s gorgeous eyes were heavily lidded and he opened and closed them lazily, like a big exotic cat might be seen to do at a zoo. His sexy, gorgeous—positively deadly—lips smiled, slightly revealing the bright white glint of his teeth behind them.
“I have no need of a room. I already have lodgings here. I was just coming to check…” he paused and appeared to chose his next words with extra care before continuing, “and see if I could perhaps stay longer than my original plans dictated.”
For a moment Julia was sure that hadn’t been what the stranger had intended to say in his heavily accented tones, but he did not recant his request so she smiled and reached for the computer nearest to her. “If you’ll tell me your name and room number I can change it pretty easily. If you have your cardkey on you I’ll re-key it for however long you like. Oh! I almost forgot. I’ll need your credit card, too, so I can reserve the funds on your account.” She silently thanked the heavens that she was no longer stuttering.
“My room number is 1203.” He handed her the cardkey to his room, along with his credit card. “My name is Nikolai Tamits.” He paused for a moment. “What is your name?”
Julia felt the lunatic grin that spread over her face when he asked her the question. She tried not to blush on top of everything, but knew that she had failed when her cheeks heated under the intense regard of Nikolai’s pale aquamarine eyes. “Julia Thurman,” she said, more than a little breathless and helplessly chagrined because of it.
“Julia…” He seemed to savor the feel and sound of her name on his to
ngue. “Julia. In the Latin language your name means one who is youthful and soft-haired.” His eyes strayed across the curves of her face and the heavy tresses on her head. “I think your name suits you more than even your parents might have intended when they called you thus.”
What a slick-tongued devil this foreign man was, Julia thought with an inner smile. “Do you memorize the meanings of women’s names so you can recall their meanings at just the right moment?” She arched an eyebrow and knew her smile was a teasing one but couldn’t have helped it had she tried.
“I read it once in a book and for some reason I could never understand I remembered it. Perhaps anticipation of this meeting was the very reason I did.” His eyes burned as they practically ate the clothes off of her.
Julia shifted, a bit nervous under the intensity of his gaze. She kept swinging from extreme arousal to nervousness then to an instinctive, borderline fear as he continued to stand there and look her over from her head down to her midriff. The rest of her body disappeared behind the desk, and she had no doubt he’d be looking even further if he could.
“Well you’re certainly smooth, I’ll give you that.” She had to forcibly tear her eyes away from his lips and throat, which seemed to constantly demand her attention, and focus on her work at the computer. In the back of her mind she rejoiced in her sudden newfound ability to talk lightly with Nikolai—she’d never come so close to flirting in her life and it was a liberating experience. “How much longer do you intend to stay? I can program your card key for up to another week but after that you’ll have to come back and have it re-programmed again.”
“I am not certain how long my…business will take before it is completed. Can I just have you give me the week and if I wish to check out before then come by and turn it in?”
“Absolutely. And rest assured that your credit card won’t be charged until you check out, so if you leave early it won’t be a problem to calculate your bill accordingly. I assume you wish to stay in the same room? You can change if you like of course—“
Bitten: Moon Lust 2 Page 2