Chapter 6
It’s easy to blend into the crowd on Bourbon Street on a Friday night at eight p.m. My hands are in my pockets and I have no destination.
People drift in clusters, drinks in hand, enjoying themselves in that loose, unfiltered way I’ve never quite mastered.
The night is balmy, alive with sounds and scents.
New York City has been stuck in a cold snap for over a month, so the warmth tonight feels like some kind of cosmic gift.
As always, the bars are open and loud. Music competes from every doorway. New Orleans parties like it’s fully aware of its own precariousness, being located six feet below sea level, and is trying to get as much joy out of each day while it still can.
Piano music wafts from nearby and it gets my attention. Whoever the player is, he’s fucking good. Bluesy and talented. I walk closer to listen and the crowd moves around me.
I step inside.
It’s an old hotel that’s seen better days but still oozes with unpretentious old-school charm.
It’s the kind of place that has looked exactly like this for fifty years and will probably look exactly like this in fifty more.
Old photographs on every wall, a chalkboard menu, a dozen or so tables with flickering candles in small red lanterns, mostly occupied by people who seem to have come for the music.
There are a few suits here and I pull my hat a little lower in case they’ve come from the conference. I take a seat in the darker corner at the end of the bar. The piano player is fully in his groove. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard live music this good.
It’s then that I notice a flash of golden red behind the bar.
The bartender is mixing drinks. She’s surprisingly young, with long, wavy, outrageously light-catching reddish blond hair.
She serves two of the suits further down the bar and they say something to her, shoving crumpled dollar bills at her with leering grins.
The music is too loud for me to hear their comments, but it’s obvious they’re drunk and obnoxious.
Which causes a deep and unfamiliar flare of warmth in my chest that’s hard to identify.
Rage.
It’s a brimming, jagged kind of rage I’ve never felt before.
The girl pockets the money. From her body language it’s easy to see that the men’s comments are nothing new to her. She barely lifts her chin, gives them a polite but sassy, staged reply and moves on to the next customer.
She’s being run off her feet and every single man in this bar is ogling her from afar.
As I watch her, a million reactions sizzle, like a lightning strike in slow motion is channeling directly from that golden light she’s emitting into every cell in my body, electrifying me.
She’s impossibly gorgeous. Her face is stunning and absurdly mesmerizing.
She’s exotic-looking, like she might be part gypsy, or the Spanish branch of the Creole line is slightly more pronounced.
She’s cute and sexy as all fuck but completely unaware of it.
She’s wearing tight-fitting black pants, worn black sneakers and a tight little black t-shirt with a pink Hotel Thibodeaux logo on it, which is a pink drawing of the front of the hotel.
There’s the slightest gap between her shirt and the waistband of her pants, offering a minuscule and wildly tempting glimpse of the pale, smooth skin of her stomach.
I have the most feral urge to both pull her shirt down, so no one else can see that insanely alluring offering—and to taste it.
To run my tongue over every inch of her, with a hunger that’s exponentially maddening.
I’ve never craved a single thing in my life as much as I crave this.
Mine.
It’s the word that’s reverberating through me with an absolute insistence I’ve never experienced before.
There she is.
I don’t know what the fuck’s going on but I’m already addicted to the fucking draw of her.
The vision of her is blinding me and stunning me.
She’s slim but curvy with long legs. Her dazzling hair hangs almost to her waist and catches all the light in the low-lit room, somehow amplifying it.
Even in this old, character-infused bar on a dark January night, she’s radiating pure, uncut sunshine.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
She’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.
I want her.
The thought fire-brands itself with scalding certainty onto my soul and I am no longer the same person.