Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
I gently tell her, no, I’m not interested. She looks offended and flings her hair extensions in my face as she swings off the stool to walk away.
My drink finally comes and I sip it slowly. It burns my throat a little. I look around. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the club. Lights swirl from several points in the ceiling, and I can feel the bass of the speakers thumping up through the floor.
As I’m doing a slow scan of the room, I spot eyes on me from across the huge, square bartop. Phoenix gives me a quick wave before looking like a completely disinterested stranger again. Ah, so that’s the plan. The bar is in the center of the club, with people packing on all sides around us.
The night stretches on, and the club gets wilder and more crowded with each passing hour. The lines stretching out from the bartop get longer and longer, more people shouting for the six bartenders’ attention.
I keep sipping my first drink and turn down woman after woman who asks with varying levels of confidence to dance with them. The ones with giggling packs of friends around them are easy to turn down. I don’t even have to glance across the bartop at Phoenix for those or for the women who are all but shaking with nerves.
There are only a few, really, that I need to sneak a peek at Phoenix to double-check, such as a woman with dyed blonde hair and a blinding white smile. “Come dance with me,” she all but orders as she reaches out and puts a hand on my bicep. She certainly isn’t lacking in confidence.
But when I glance across the bartop at Phoenix, she just gives a nonchalant shake of her head.
I frown but tell the woman no.
As I watch her spin and walk away, I wonder if we’ve just let the dangerous spirit slip out of our hands. But then I hear a voice in slightly accented English from my left.
“Well, aren’t you the heartbreak king tonight?”
I spin on my stool to look at the speaker with the sultry voice.
A tiny, delicate, dark-haired woman sits there, blinking at me from behind dark lashes.
“What do you mean?” I have to speak loudly to be heard above the music.
The song finishes right then, so I can hear her sultry voice clearly as she says, “All night, I have watched you turn down woman after woman. Tell me, do you have a sweetheart waiting for you at home?”
If she’s watching me so closely, I don’t dare even glance at Phoenix now. There’s something different about this woman. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she has a different… energy about her. An aura of power. I want to do what she says. It’s not quite on the level of compulsion, but I still want to. Is this just the power of a beautiful woman on a man? Because she is beautiful. Even I have to admit it. My hungry beast wakens even though it knows this isn’t to its particular taste.
I smile as I turn my full attention to her. “No. No one waiting at home. Just no one who’s caught my eye until now.”
Her lips tilt up, and she swirls her tiny cocktail straw in her drink. “Until now, huh?”
“You must know you are mesmerizing,” I say, leaning slightly in. My monster yawns. “But perhaps flattery isn’t the way to your heart.”
“My heart,” she scoffs, grabbing her drink from the bar and tossing her head back, downing it. I take the opportunity to look back at Phoenix whose features look slightly strained. But she nods, and I know I’m right. This is her. The bloodthirsty goddess.
I turn my attention back to her right as her head tips back down. “Let’s not worry about my heart just yet. Let’s have some fun. What do you say?”
“Fair,” I manage.
“Excellent.” The woman grabs my hand in a firm grip and whisks us away from the bar, through the thick crowd, and onto the tightly packed dance floor.
The music seems more… alive somehow as she swings back around to face me. As she grins at me and puts my hands on her waist, I feel overcome with happiness and the certainty that I’m right where I need to be and just stand there dopily in front of her. For once, I don’t feel my hunger; I’m just… floating.
“Like this,” she says, leaning in.
I nod because she’s so pretty, and I can’t think of a thing to say. She laughs throatily, dark eyes flashing at me. “Oh, my, you are a delicious snack, aren’t you?”
I nod again, because I suddenly find myself very agreeable to anything she says.
She lifts her arms around my neck, and we dance to the slow song that’s just come over the speakers. It still has a thumping beat underneath our feet that I feel in my calves, up through my thighs, and in my—