Was that my fate? Destined to be alone, never have a boyfriend or a husband or kids? To work beside someone I wanted desperately to be with but had to keep my distance from? Something cruel and hard twisted in my chest. Too late, anyway. I couldn’t change anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Ignoring the sick weight in my stomach, I tore my gaze away from the painting and started down the street. Where had the other sentinels gone? I wished I had some sort of spidey sense to tell me they were around so I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable, even with my grouchy guardian angel watching over me.
Everything was moving too fast. I had to keep my mind busy so I wouldn’t flip my biscuit about acting as the wraith-infected letch’s eye-candy for the night. Like I knew how to flirt. Would he really be attracted to me? I cleaned up all right, but Asher hit the nail on the head when he said Kat would be better at this. What was I supposed to do with the guy once I got him outside? Why didn’t I ask more questions? Because I was freaked out, that’s why. God, I wished life had a rewind or a pause button sometimes. Other than the one Izan seemed to have in his possession.
I could always use the Shift if I needed an escape. Disappearing within sight of someone might put a chink in that plan, though. I’d have to figure it out. It was a matter of pride. I’d hunt the hell out of Xavier Whatshisname and send his wraith-ass back to frozen hell. If I didn’t die first. Yeah, that would pose a problem.
Chapter 28
After almost forty minutes of waiting in a writhing snake of a lineup, I finally made it to the frosted glass doors of the Swan Club. Music beat against me as the large bouncer dressed in black opened the door and waved me in along with a giggling horde of wobbling drunk twenty-somethings.
At the ticket window, I went spelunking for my ID card and finally located it at the bottom of my clutch purse. Addison White, twenty-one years old. Although I couldn’t remember my real last name, my gut told me White wasn’t it. I knew Green wasn’t Asher’s real last name, either. Did everyone have color pseudonyms?
The chick behind the window took a long time, staring back and forth at me and my ID, but she finally asked for her cover charge and handed the card back to me.
I forked over twenty bucks from my purse and rushed down the hallway to wait for Asher to emerge from the Shift. Because I needed to know he was there watching my back and not to read his expression for clues about what he’d been thinking while petting me. Really.
I walked into a large, dark room alive with colored spotlights and neon. Latin music pouring from the speakers in the ceiling kicked me in the chest with every pulse. A bar ran the entire perimeter of the room. Above, balconies surrounded the place, probably leading to secret rooms where stuff I didn’t want to think about went on. The sunken dance floor in the center had stairs on all four sides leading from the bar area down to it. A live band was setting up to play on a stage in one corner of the lower level.
Clueless as to where to go or how to act in such a place, I wandered the perimeter of the room, dodging happy drunks. Remy and Kat were on the dance floor, and damn, for a big guy, he could move. So could she, not that I’d tell her as much. No big surprise there. If she could make walking look like a striptease, dancing would inevitably be worse.
I smiled at Remy busting a move, continuing my sweep to find Asher coming out of the men’s room at the far end of the bar, where I assumed he’d materialized in the true reality in private. Although he seemed to be scanning the room, I got the feeling his attention was all on me. No frown, no scowl or glare or anything.
A sigh of relief slipped past my lips, and I realized that I expected him to be pissed off about our interlude earlier. Which was stupid, because it had all been him. All I’d done was stand there. And possibly swoon a bit—equally stupid.
When he went to the bar and spoke with the tall Latina bartender, I grabbed a seat at a small table near one of the staircases that led down to the dance floor. What the flipping hell was I supposed to do now? That Xavier guy wasn’t going to notice a rabbit hiding in the grass unless I moved a bit. Did Asher expect me to get up and humiliate myself with my lack of rhythm and two left feet?
My focus gravitated back to where he perched on the edge of a bar stool, pinching a glass full of amber alcohol between his thumb and middle finger, sloshing it around and around in the bottom of the glass. He stared into it as if mesmerized, but the way he held his body told me he was on high alert, watching every movement.
Marcus sauntered up and plopped down on the stool beside him, leaning down to talk into his ear. Within seconds, Asher’s crumpled brow and rapid-fire lip action suggested they weren’t having a pleasant conversation.
A guy in a bargain-bin sport jacket swung around in front of my chair, scaring the bajeepers out of me. “Dance with me, beautiful.”
Did he just do the double-eyebrow-raise thing? Good lord, and I thought I was bad at flirting. Going with him might bring more attention to me, but the thought of being pressed up against his body that stunk of BO and sour wine turned my stomach. I shook my head, waving my hand. “No, thanks anyway,” I shouted over the thumping base. “I’d just like to watch for a while.”
“Ah, come on,” the guy insisted, running fingers through his greasy blond hair that needed a cut by someone other than his mother. But then his suave smile faded, and he abruptly rushed away.
I swiveled slowly in my chair, afraid to see what had scared him off in case it was Xavier. Nope. It was Asher, staring after the guy with murder in his eyes, his entire body vibrating with anger.
What the hell? The dude hadn’t even touched me, so why was he so mad?
Jumping up, I moved in front of my sensei to break his visual torture of the poor guy, who kept glancing back. When Asher’s expression lost some of its violence, I went toward the bar since we weren’t supposed to know each other, but he shot his hand out and grabbed my arm. His grip wasn’t hard enough to bruise, but firm and demanding. You’re mine, that hold said.
I sipped in a breath, startled by the hunger that radiated from him. A glance left and right didn’t reveal anyone beside me he might have been staring at that way. Was he really looking at me like that? I just stood there for seconds, trying to reengage my brain and steer it away from the image forming in there, of what Asher could do with that strength while we were both tangled in a silk sheet.
“Dance with me,” he shouted, and then softer, “try to fight me off, and make sure you control your storm, or our cover will be blown and Xavier will take off.”
Oh, I got it. We’d make a scene, draw some attention, hopefully from the club owner. Smart. I yanked against Asher’s hold, putting everything I had into keeping the lid on my inner box, and yelled to be heard over the music. “Let go of me. I don’t know how to dance to this.”
“Let me teach you, then.” Asher flashed a smile that nearly brought me to my knees. After twirling me away from the table, he used his free arm to clamp me against his body. Ho … ly hell, was he ripped in all the right places. And strong as freakin’ Godzilla. I’d been in his arms before, but I’d been so lost to sensation, I hadn’t appreciated him fully.
He stared down at me, breaths slipping in and out of his lips quickly and deeply, and I was helpless and languid in his arms. For a moment, only he and I existed in my world. I could have lived that way in bliss forever with his protective arms around me.
Movement over his shoulder broke the fantasy I’d been enjoying. It was Marcus making a little motion with his head to my right. Xavier was coming, was that it?
“Take your hands off the lady,” a guy with a voice deeper than Remy’s said from beside me, thickly accented. Spanish was his native tongue, no doubt.
Showtime. If my pulse didn’t leap right out of my body and take off.
“Pretty in Red and I were just about to dance, weren’t we?” Asher asked, his personality turning on a dime into innocent charm, though his words slurred a little. Relaxing his grip on me, he kept my hand without
hesitation as I stepped away. He’d begun to sweat, his palm slippery with it. Was he nervous?
“Is that true?” Xavier asked. He had a good foot on me. Slender with a dark complexion, black hair tied in a braid down his back. His eyes were such a deep brown they appeared as though he had giant pupils with no color. My skin crawled, and although I didn’t breathe out snow, my lungs seemed to think I’d been running in the cold, aching and burning down deep. No need to see a thing to know he had a wraith in there with him.
“No, it isn’t.” I tugged my hand free of Asher’s to let him off the hook since he had to be freaking out with the skin contact. “I told him I didn’t know how to dance to this music.” I glanced up at the club owner through my lashes and gave him a weak smile.
He must have bought the act, because he smiled back. He was an attractive guy if I could overlook the evil staring out of him. Stepping in close, he grabbed Asher’s wrist and said something too low for me to hear into the sentinel’s ear, then, out loud, “Leave, or I’ll have you escorted out.”
When Xavier stepped between us, over his shoulder I caught Asher’s stumble backward. Grabbing a chair to steady himself, he shook his head, scrubbing a wrist over his eyes. Had Xavier hit him?
Where had the others gone? Returning my attention to Xavier, I said, “Thank you,” running my hands along the silk of the skirt. My head cleared a little with the tactile sensation, but it seemed a pale replacement for having Asher under my hands. I had a sinking feeling that everything I ever touched in the future would also fall short of him.
“Would you like to learn how to dance?” Xavier leaned against the railing, his white shirt glowing under the lights, all lean grace and sex done up Latin-style.
Hell no, I didn’t want to learn how to dance. I didn’t want his wraith-infected ass to touch me, let alone rub against me like everyone down on the dance floor was doing. “Are you offering to teach me?” I gave a shy smile. Gag me.
He licked his lips as he checked me over. “There’s no need to be nervous of me, cariño.” The last came on a different tone, like Marcus’s 1-900 voice, only much deeper and almost … sinister. Coming away from the railing, he took my hands in his.
I tried really hard not to barf as the heebie-jeebies having a party in my body kicked it up a notch. “Wh-why do you think I’m nervous?” Other than the fact that I was totally stuttering. “And what does cariño mean?” I didn’t pronounce it nearly as prettily as he had. Jeez, I hoped it wasn’t some lame come-on. I’d rather he’d insulted me than said something cheesy. Were they his words? Or the wraith’s? Creepy either way.
He leaned in, drawing my hands down so I couldn’t move away. “I can feel you shaking. Come, dance with me, and I’ll tell you all of my secrets.”
I just bet he would. “Okay.”
Fingers linked together with mine, he led me toward the stairs. I went, stiff-legged, searching the room for Asher. His empty glass sat on the bar, abandoned, just like me, apparently. I cursed under my breath.
I started a mantra of I can do this in my head so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. A wraith was going to teach me how to do the samba, or salsa, or whatever the hell they were doing on the dance floor. How did I go from accounting student at Waterloo to that? My weird-shit-o-meter had never known such altitude.
By some grand miracle, I managed to get down the steps on the dainty heels without tumbling down and taking Xavier with me. Instead of moving us to the edge of the crowd as I expected, he dragged me right into the heat of it. And I meant heat. Oven-worthy, stinking of perfume and sweat.
“Wait here.” He dropped my hand and pushed through the writhing mass to the stage. He said something to the guy with the mike, and a moment later, the song changed to something that a guy would have playing in the background at a candle-lit dinner, sensual and one of those beats that took hold of my feet and made them move. Too bad the rest of me wanted to hide under my own skirt.
His body was already writhing to the music when he returned, holding out his hand. “Come, let me teach you how to tease a man with your body.”
Oh, hell, did he have to say it like that? Did he have a Bugman in him or something else? I shivered again in the human sauna. Sighing, I took his hand and ended up pressed against the front of his body.
“Feel the rhythm of my body, how my muscles move. Don’t resist, just let me control you to begin with.” He slipped his arm around my back, my right hand in his left. With my free hand wrapped around the back of his muscled shoulder, I moved with him. Like I had a choice, being plastered to his front. There wasn’t enough space between us to slip in a piece of dental floss.
He had rhythm, I’d give him that. My body began to anticipate what he would do. Until he spun me away from him and made my skirt twirl up around my waist. Then my supper tried to come back out again.
I caught sight of Remy through the crowd. He pointed at his lips and exaggerated a smile. Right. I needed to encourage the creepy club owner. After all, I needed him to go outside with me, so I had to make him think he might get lucky, which disturbed me on a primal level.
I let out a little squeal as Xavier spun me back into him, relaxing until he held most of my weight in his arms. He smiled, and I knew I had him. Another of those moments like in the shower with Asher, when I understood the power of my new body. Xavier’s expression held heat. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to a guy looking at me that way.
“I’m so hot,” I shouted over the music and chatter after three songs-worth of dance-acting, fanning myself. It wasn’t a lie. Sweat had begun to slip down between the girls. “Do you want to go outside for a minute?”
“Yes, you are extremely hot, and I like the way you think. Let us find some privacy, shall we?”
I almost asked “For what?” but saved myself from looking like an idiot in time to keep my mouth shut. Now I not only needed a shower, badly, but to pour bleach into my mind to remove the image he’d put there.
He let me go, all except for my hand. I let him lead me through the sweaty mob and the sweeping lights, dizzy both from nerves and from the floor that appeared to be shifting with the movement of light and people.
We didn’t go toward the front of the club as I expected, but toward the back. I should have known there would be back doors in case of a fire, but I imagined there would be fewer people around back there. Danger, danger, danger, my internal bell clanged. At least he hadn’t taken me toward any stairs that might lead to the rooms on the second floor.
My pulse did its best to choke me as we neared a set of doors. Calm down. We needed him somewhere nobody could see. Although back there, he could beat the hell out of me and infect me with his wraith, too. Could that happen? Could they people-hop?
Was it polite to tell your own conscience to shut the hell up? I didn’t think so.
Chapter 29
Two bouncers, one with a giant donut for a gut hanging over his belt, and the other tall and thin, stepped away from the doors as Xavier and I approached. They nodded at him and leered at me. I wanted to cover my cleavage, but with my right hand tucked into Xavier’s, my left wouldn’t be enough to go around and would have looked silly. If two slime-balls leering at me was the worst that happened tonight, I’d consider myself lucky.
Once through the doors, we moved down a narrow, black hallway. The door clapped shut behind us, choking off the sound in the club. The pressure on my ears reminded me of the music room in high school. Soundproof. So nobody could hear me screaming. Well, that was just great.
“Where are we going … sir?” I’d almost said “Xavier,” but I’d never asked his name and he hadn’t told me, had he? Where was Izan? When would he reveal what I’d be doing?
Xavier chuckled, lazy and dark. “Sir. You are very cute, cariño.”
Nice that he avoided my question so handily. The way he said it made me think calling him “sir” meant something more to him than just me trying to be polite.
Upon reaching the end of the hallway, just
short of a red exit sign, he opened a door and drew me inside. Shouldn’t we have gone out that other door to get outside? My heart pounded harder, and instead of hot, my mercury went south of freezing.
I tugged my arm back, but he twirled me and pushed me against the door as he shut us into what appeared to be an office complete with a messy desk and a leather sofa. “Oh, hold on, now. I really did need a breath of air. I wasn’t, like, coming on to you or anything.” Yeah, like I knew how to do that anyway.
He smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile but one of a man certain of what he would get from me. Or take from me. I got the feeling the wraith making his decisions wouldn’t care either way. “Of course you weren’t,” he said softly, and then went on to say a bunch of stuff in Spanish that might have sounded erotic if I didn’t know a dead, alternate-reality creature was doing the talking. As he leaned in to kiss me, I thought of the wraith with its empty eye sockets and wasp legs. I shoved hard against his chest and rushed to the far side of the room when he stumbled back. My first kiss would not be with a bugman.
“Oh, that’s the game we’re going to play, is it?” He licked his lips. “You are an exciting slip of a thing, aren’t you?” Laughing, he came at me like a freight train. My instincts kicked in, thanks to all of my training. I moved left, grabbed his arm, and used his own momentum to send him crashing into the wall. My exertion shoved the lid off my box just a little, and energy hummed along my arms, through my heart, and sent mini twisters of wind curling out from my hands. Oh, sweet relief.
Xavier had been growling and cursing, but he went still. I breathed out snow as the wraith did something inside of him, as if it had been hiding itself and had crawled the rest of the way into the man’s body. Whatever he had inside him was something way the hell scarier than Mr. Bugman or what had been inside my roommate. Nothing I could see or put my finger on, but whatever malignancy stared out at me induced an urge to scream.
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