2
My skin was crawling, and I felt sick to my stomach. I looked at my best friend who was making eyes at a Vepar a few chairs away before turning to scan the rest of the crowded room. Now that I was looking at everyone in the room it was impossible to miss the fact that they were more than just humans. Every single being in the room looked like they had marched off the cover of a high fashion spread of supernaturally gorgeous individuals. Standing among such beautiful beings in the dress that I had thought was so good-looking before, I now felt like a dowdy child that had shown up at the wrong party.
As my gaze skipped across the room, my eyes got caught on three Vepar seated at a booth a few feet away. I pushed my hair behind an ear, nervous as hell. While everyone in the room was beautiful, these three were enough to make me forget how much I hated the Vepar for half a second. While two of them were gazing around the room disinterestedly, the third was staring right at me. His hair was tousled, but not in an artificial way like was the current style. The dark blonde locks were cropped close on the sides, but longer on top, and had enough wave that I suspected they were impossible to tame. Sitting on the far side of the booth, I could see his sexy broad shoulders, emphasized by the perfect cut of his suit. He would have looked almost too perfect if it weren’t for the fact that his tie was askew, as if he’d been yanking on it, and the fact that his body seemed to hum with a kind of restless energy like he was looking for something even though he was at a club. His icy blue eyes seemed to see right into my soul and coupled with the hard-as-steel jaw, he was very intimidating. Everything about him was intimidating. And sexy. Really damn sexy.
“Ella, I need twenty dollars,” said Cherry, yanking my attention from the blonde predator.
“What?” I asked, my brain a little scrambled from the intense stare down I was just engaging in.
“I ordered us shots. I need to pay,” she said in an annoyed voice, gesturing at the Vepar waiter who was impatiently waiting for us.
I looked at her wide-eyed. “Um sure,” I said, cringing as I got a twenty out of my wallet. A twenty that I couldn’t afford to part with after the debacle at the diner today. She had at least the decency to offer me an apologetic shrug as she grabbed the money.
“I guess I forgot my wallet at home,” she said, handing the money to the bartender who then pushed what looked like four candy apple green shots towards us. Alcohol had managed to stay available despite the health restrictions. Apparently the Vepar were just as fond of drinks as us humans were.
I tried to push away my annoyance at the fact that I was paying for my own birthday shots by draining my two shots as quickly as I could. If I was going to get through this night, it was going to be because I was drunk. As I gasped at the burn, I could immediately feel myself relaxing. My muscles unflexed, and my breath slowed down.
“Those were just regular shots, right?” I asked, as the room began to spin a little bit.
“It’s a Vepar bar,” she said to me haughtily. “Of course, I was going to have us try Vepar liquor.”
She slid off her barstool ungracefully, her almost non-existent dress briefly flashing the fact that she wasn’t wearing underwear, and I hurriedly averted my eyes as she nonchalantly adjusted herself.
“I think it’s time to see if the Vepar men like me as much as human men do,” she said, tossing her long blonde hair behind her and doing a shimmy. She scanned the room before homing in on a target, a well-dressed Vepar with slicked black hair who was making eyes in our direction. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like he was looking at me rather than Cherry.
Unperturbed, Cherry grabbed my arm and began to drag me behind her, completely forgetting that this was my birthday and I might have something else that I wanted to do besides be her wingman for the night. Cherry was already getting sloppy from the shots we’d taken at the bar and she narrowly missed running into a waiter who was hustling by with a full tray of glasses. Unfortunately, her narrowly missing the waiter meant that I couldn’t swerve out of the way in time and the tray knocked me in the head, sending me falling backwards, the back of my knees hitting something hard. I stumbled into what felt like a rock-solid seat that I realized belatedly was someone’s lap.
My cheeks burned from falling into someone, and I sat frozen. I looked up into a shocking green gaze that I immediately recognized as belonging to one of the men that I had noticed earlier, and then I immediately averted my eyes. That wasn’t much better as I could see that the Vepar all around me were staring at me, the clumsy human.
I shook my head, telling myself to turn my head and face the situation. Turning, my breath caught a little. He was a damn good-looking man...alien...Vepar...whatever they were called. I could fall into his gaze, and I suddenly found myself picturing us naked with me beneath him. I trembled at the thought, yet I couldn’t get his face out of my thoughts. So gorgeous it would stop anyone in their tracks. I’m sure he was used to that kind of attention, based on the little smirk on his face. I’m sure females of both species froze when they crossed his path. He had the greenest eyes I had ever seen. They had a haunting twinkle to them that just added to his allure. He looked like he could see all of my inappropriate thoughts. Heat crawled up my neck, and I prayed that wasn’t the case.
Looking around for help, I caught a glance of Cherry walking out the door with what had to be one of the only other human males in the club. Tears gathered in my eyes and my throat thickened at the fact that my so-called best friend was leaving me on my birthday in a Vepar club of all places. And we’d just arrived too. I squirmed to get up, but the arm around my waist held firm.
“What’s the hurry, my pet?” he whispered in my ear, his breath sending tremors down my spine.
“I saw someone I know. I should go say hello,” I responded weakly, not wanting to let him know that I was now all alone at the club.
“I can hear your heartbeat, pet. I know you are lying.” His words carried a light growl, and while they should have scared me, I found myself becoming intrigued. I twisted around, still trapped in his lap, and tumbled into those stunning eyes again that were too pretty to be human. They reaffirmed I wasn’t sitting in the lap of a human.
He was most definitely a Vepar.
My breath hitched all the way down to my lungs, and as if sensing my fear, he smiled. His upper lip lifted slightly, a dimple crinkling on his chin. Warmth radiated from his expression, and his gaze fixed on me as if a secret lay between us. Then he gave me a knowing nod.
The blush burning my cheeks was a dead giveaway of the way he affected me. My mouth twitched, and I fought a smile, reminding myself whose lap I sat in.
The monsters who came onto Earth and took over. The ones that were most likely responsible for all the missing people, missing people like my parents.
I’d heard people say to stay hidden when a Vepar made an appearance. If they don’t know you exist, they can’t take you.
And I’d ruined that royally by landing in one’s lap. Frantically I looked around again to see if there was any way out of the situation. I needed to run, get away as fast as I could. I needed to forget tonight, forget Cherry, forget my birthday.
I wriggled in his grasp. “You can let me go now.”
“What’s the rush?” he said, his voice velvety smooth against my ear, and the shivers returned to my skin from his breath on my neck. If my body reacted that quickly from his closeness, I had no hope of saying no to him. He’d somehow get me in bed with him, and before long, I’d vanish from society and probably end up in a prison on another planet. Or so the rumors insisted.
I glanced down at his strong arms, the corded muscles beneath the tanned skin. His shirt was the color of midnight and was rolled to his elbows, giving him a casual look despite the fanciness of the club. Around us a mix of Vepar and human women danced, cheered, and drank. I didn’t see any sign of the Vepar’s two companions that I had seen him with earlier. Had they separated so they could study the humans and select their prey?
I twisted in his lap to look at him again, and it was a terrible mistake. My heart skipped a beat and I lost my words being this close to someone so incredibly handsome. My fingers tingled with the urgency to reach over and touch his face to see if he was real.