Chapter 1
Christian
I’ve followed her to three different clubs now. The girl leans in to the bouncer as he checks her ID. A dimple kisses her cheek. Her smile is a perfect shine of pureness. Innocence.
I look away, staring out into the shadows before my attention demands to see her once more. The black dress she wears isn’t tight or short or revealing like the other girls waiting in line.
It’s thin and hugs the curve of her breasts as well as the roundness of her ass before flowing out into a sweet sway of fabric around her creamy thighs.
The deep drag of the cigarette is useless but it calms me all the same as I inhale slowly. It clears the distorted mess in my mind.
Slightly.
I focus my senses to listen in on them from several yards away. Among the blare of horns and noise of the city, he tells her there’s a ten-dollar charge.
She and I both know she doesn’t have ten dollars. So why do we keep doing this, Pretty Pet? Why make me follow you from one shitty club to the next? Do you like being rejected? Do you need a drink that badly? Do you really want to see how little patience I have before I fucking snap this man’s neck and lead you inside myself?
Her hand touches lightly to the man’s broad chest, and the way her big eyes look up at him through thick lashes tells me the club’s charge doesn’t stand a fucking chance.
He shakes his head this way and that... and then unclips the chain and waves her tight ass inside.
Even I smile at her achievement.
I scuff out the cigarette with a quick drag of my shoe over the cracking sidewalk.
He motions to the next group of girls in line, but I make my move quickly before she’s swallowed up and lost inside the sea of swaying bodies. Magic bursts through my veins. A chaotic energy swarms my mind as well as my sight. Cold wind flits through my hair, and then I’m standing in front of the man.
“Get in line, asshole,” he grunts at me.
The soft giggle from the group of girls slowly trickles away as they look up at me.
I pull a mortal hundred-dollar bill from my pocket and hold it up to the bouncer’s face. A curl of his lips is all that he gets out before I focus my intent on him. My gaze locks with his glare, and the will of his own mind slowly becomes as vacant as his eyes. Glassy orbs look back at me now.
“Open the chain for me, asshole,” I ask nicely. Calmly.
The man’s big bald head nods emptily, and with a clatter of chains, I’m invited in.
“Thank you,” I whisper flatly, my hand pressing the mortal money against his chest before letting it float slowly to the ground as I pass.
Music vibrates through my chest the moment I step inside. It’s like a pulse in my veins, and that alone makes me feel uncomfortable in this dark, musky place.
“Where did you go, Pet?” My sight lights up the shadows, clearing the haze of darkness but still not spotting the one face I’m searching for.
“Hey, handsome,” A woman with a sloshing cup in her hand staggers closer to me, her free hand coming up fast between her chest and mine.
My grip snatches around her feeble wrist before her fingers ever get a chance to walk up the span of my chest. A whimper of pain hums from behind glossy lips. I look down at her and her wide eyes. Her wrist is still in my grasp, and I have to consciously release her. Instead of breaking off her limb for attempting to touch me, I smile with concentrated effort, give the stupid girl a wink, and walk away.
“Fuck, he was hot,” I hear her whisper to someone else.
But I’m too busy wiping the scent of her off of my right hand while I sweep through the throng of bodies. Glinting red hair catches my eye. I follow after the girl for only a few steps before seeing her face and finding only disappointment.
A man stumbles hard, and I have to sidestep his dirty, outreached hand that fumbles to cling on to me for support. He hits the floor face-first. He doesn’t get up.
And then among a thousand distractions, I hear her. Her laughter is a low seductive sound that vibrates under the music, calling to my ears, and I turn slowly until I spot her. She leans against the bar, her head tilted toward a man with short, buzzed hair and metal that glints across his eyebrow, nose, and lower lip when the neon lights sway their way.
They take a few steps away from the busy bar area, and his hand slides around her waist as he passes her something between his two fingers.
A cherry-red ember lights up when she puts it between her lips. She inhales. Her lashes flutter. Her breasts press against the thin material before her full red lips purse, and she exhales oh so slowly.