She spun on her heel and scurried away. Then I searched around the large ballroom, hunting for the reason goose bumps popped on my arms. Because I knew she wasn’t the reason. There was something or someone else here. It was the same feeling I got at the university when I saw the man who vanished each time.
Tracking my eyes around the room for him, squinting as I searched through the heavy laser lights. Waiting for the glimmer of the dark dust that lingered whenever he’d been around.
“What happened there? Your hand was so quick I missed it?” Polly asked.
“A stroke of luck. Emotional girls are so predictable,” I said, giving her a quick glance.
Polly smiled, and my skin warmed up as the goose bumps disappeared. But he was here somewhere, and I shut myself off from the dancing and dulled the tune ofRadiohead’s Creepas it played in the background. Scanning the different areas as I zoned into the sounds of talking and tried to listen for anything strange.
I held my breath as I waited with an expectation he would reappear, but part of me wished I could be invisible like him, but it wasn’t one of my abilities or if it was, I hadn’t learned it yet.
My eyes widened as a large arm draped around my waist and a hand grasped my hip. I didn’t stop to think as I twisted my body and flicked the top of my foot around an ankle, slamming my elbow into a hard muscular stomach and with my arm wrapped around his, I flipped the person onto their back and swivelled into a fighting stance.
My eyes widened seeing him on the floor.
“Oh shit, Jack. You can’t sneak up on me like that.” I held out my hand and helped to pull him up. “Are you okay?”
He took a breath and held his stomach as he stared, open-mouthed. “Are you?” he finally said.
I rubbed my hand over his. “Sorry about that. I’ve just had Blake’s girlfriend threaten me. She tried to hit me, so I guess I’m a little on edge.”
She obviously wasn’t the reason I was on edge, but I needed an excuse of why I used a move on him.
“Blake doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
“It’s none of my business if he does, but I don’t need to have random women accusing me of stealing their men,” I said.
Jack laughed and leaned into my ear. “You’d be mine, not his.”
I smiled at him. “Anyway, how did you know it was me? I thought my disguise was foolproof.”
He stared at me as he pressed his hand on the back of my head as his thumb stroked the side of my face. He leaned close to my ear again, he whispered, “you can wear a mask but you can’t hide those eyes.”
I laughed. “I had my back to you.”
“I saw you dancing.”
“You were…”
Jack ended the conversation, pulling me closer to him, and gave me a kiss that knocked the air from my lungs. Then he stopped and looked at me with lust-filled eyes. “You’re like a drug. I want to wrap this cloak around us and fuck you over the table.”
I low whistled. “Now that is a thought that I’m going to struggle to get out of my head,” I whispered into his ear as the music died down.
His mouth turned up on one side. “Don’t leave it as a thought for too long. The beast in me is hungry for you, but he isn’t so nice when he needs feeding.”
I laughed and cocked one eyebrow. “Maybe I like the sound of your beast.”
Jack went to open his mouth, but he leaned his head to one side and stared behind me. I rubbed at my neck and turned as a blast of dark dust in the air fizzled to the ground below. I grimaced as Blake strode through it.
“We need to get you home,” Blake said as he strode to me.
“No way, there’s still two hours to go,” Polly said, her voice defiant.
“Polly, go home or we’ll take Lacey back to ours,” Blake said.
I sighed at Polly’s annoyed face. She’d looked forward to this evening out since she’d told me about it. But I had a feeling I needed to get out of the place too. Something was happening around me.
Blake narrowed his eyes at me, flicked his gaze to Jack, then held my arms as he pulled me closer to him. He leaned his mouth to my ear and whispered, “you’re not safe here, we are taking you home.”