As Brayden launched into a play-by-play account of exactly how much fun he’d had with the couple he’d gone down to level three with, I found my mind drifting back to what had happened after I’d left the club. All night I’d tossed and turned, still seeing those eerie eyes staring out of the darkness, and I could still feel the prickling sensation on the back of my neck as though I’d been watched. I’d felt it the whole way home, but every time I turned to look back, I saw nothing.
I tried to shake off the unease that had settled into my stomach and focus back on what Brayden was saying.
“…I think I may even become a member.”
“That’s great, Bray,” I said, even though I’d missed most of what he’d said. “Seemed like your kind of place.”
“Could be your kind of place too, if you’d loosen up a bit.”
“I could never afford somewhere like that.”
“You will soon enough, Mr. College Graduate. Wait…did you have to cab it home last night? I’ll pay you back for that—”
“No, you don’t need to do that,” I said. Brayden had always been overly generous with his fortune—family money, courtesy of his inheritance from his Rockefeller-esque grandparents—but I never wanted to take him up on even his small attempts at making my tight funds spread a bit further. The only reason I’d even gone last night was because I knew how much it meant to him. After turning down his attempts at getting me to move in with him and out of my shit-tastic apartment, he wouldn’t have taken no for an answer anyway.
“Yes, I do. I drove you there, it’s the least I can do for you having to leave. I’ll drop it by work today.”
“No, you really don’t. I didn’t take a cab.”
Brayden was silent for a long moment. “Please tell me you didn’t walk your ass through downtown in the middle of the night by yourself.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” Just almost died, that’s all.
“No big deal?” Brayden said. “I’m the shittiest friend ever.”
“Yeah, I guess getting mugged while you enjoyed a good suck ’n’ fuck wouldn’t have been the best trade-off.”
“That’s not funny.”
No, it wasn’t funny. But I knew Brayden felt responsible in some way for me. Compared to him, I was the naive one, the poor kid with a scholarship and a crappy job at the local café, and I knew him well enough to know how bad he was already feeling. Telling him I’d been freaked out the whole time and had almost been mauled by a dog? Yeah, that would send him over the edge, not to mention it sounded ridiculous, so best to keep it to myself. I still wasn’t sure I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll let you make it up to me by asking Charlemagne to make some of those spinach and feta triangle things for movie night.”
I could almost see Brayden rolling his eyes. “That would’ve happened anyway, since she loves you. Once you’re a rich asshole, you’ll steal her away, and I’ll have to find another cook who can make beef wellington half as well as she can.”
“Nah, I’d still invite you over for special occasions.”
“See what I mean? It’s starting already.”
I laughed and then checked the time on my cell. “I need to shower and run a couple of errands before my shift. Are we still on for next Saturday?”
“Yeah, I’ll pencil your ass in. And Jesse? I’m really sorry about last night. If I’d known that would happen, we never would’ve gone.”
“Don’t worry about it. You had a good time, right?”
There was a smile in his voice as he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“Then that’s all that matters.”
After I hung up and made my way into my tiny bathroom to turn on the shower, I wondered how things would’ve gone if I’d stayed at the Wolfe’s Den all night. Would I have found someone under those purple lights, or even several someones? Or would I have been the odd man out, watching as everyone else’s fantasies came to life?
Would I always be happy sitting on the sidelines instead of playing the game?
For a hunter to capture its quarry, it was imperative to understand who they were tracking, and I was beginning to understand Jesse Clark better than he understood himself.
I had followed him the entire way home the night before. Down every road, up every side street, and when we’d ended up in front of an old brick building that had a drainpipe barely attached to its side, I knew exactly how to get him.
The key here was to lure him into the dark, to make him come to me, so I could hear the kick and throb of his heartbeat. And the best way to do that was to give him something he wanted to follow. Give him someone he found irresistible.