Chapter 3 Wren #2
I’m not a skeptic, but I have common sense. He’s not some mythical monster, he’s a Visconti, not to mention, my best friend’s soon-to-be brother-in-law. I survived that night unscathed, didn’t I? That’s proof enough that it’s all bull.
I break out of the routine, spinning around to face the back wall, and slip into a clumsy two-step and stare into the void, waiting.
When the strobe light frames his cold gaze again, I’m shaky but ready.
I smile and wave.
He glares back.
Hmm. Okay, well, he obviously didn’t see that. The light is probably shining right in his eyes. But jeez, I’m too antsy to wait for the chance to try again, so screw the “Macarena.”
“Wren, are you insane—”
Priti’s protests are swallowed by the rapid Spanish verse as I step out of line and to the edge of the dance floor.
“Hi!” I yell, cupping my hand to my brow as if doing so will give me night vision.
Nothing.
Well, I guess the music is pretty loud.
I step off the dance floor. “Hey! Remember me?”
No answer.
Blame it on being an only child, but I loathe being ignored. A spark of annoyance lights a flame under me and drives me forward.
With the stomp of my fluffy socks, darkness brushes over my toes.
Another, and it swallows me whole.
I’m immediately uneasy. The air feels different in this corner of the club. A few degrees warmer, a few inches thicker. I hover, pulled thin between wanting to turn around and seek safety in numbers and wanting to stay and find out more.
Before I can decide, the strobe light circles back around, and now I’m the one in its path. When it brushes my spine and stretches my shadow up the jagged wall, my heart sinks to my stomach.
The shadow next to mine is all-consuming.
It’s huge in contrast, in both height and width. The type of shadow that doesn’t trigger your fight-or-flight response but paralyzes it. My gaze feels as heavy as my limbs as it reluctantly follows the path of light to the left.
“Hey.”
A flash of green; no response. Well, I practically squeaked that greeting, so of course he didn’t hear me. I clear my throat, clench my fists, and try again. “Hi! Remember me?”
Nothing.
Is he … okay?
And then it suddenly dawns on me. The blood, the gurgle in his breaths. Yes, he survived that night, but at what cost? It doesn’t mean he made a full recovery.
Fear is only a short road to morbid curiosity, and I cross it with a small step forward.
Well, I try to. My sock skids on something wet, then I’m falling.
Forward, deeper and deeper and deeper into the abyss, like Alice plummeting down the rabbit hole.
I reach out to grab something, anything, to steady myself, and my fingers brush over something hard and hot, but before they find purchase, I’m spinning.
My back slams against something solid and knocks the air from my lungs. What the hell?
We’ve traded places. Him with his back now to the dance floor, mine pressed against the wall. I glance down at my socks as if they’re the culprit here, but the ghost of a too-tight grip on my shoulder tells me otherwise.
I look from my feet to his. Now backlit by the disco lights, his outline is sharper, and I can make out the shape of combat boots.
Weird choice for a nightclub, but okay. At least he’s committed to the look with the black cargo pants.
I skim up the side of his bulging quads and drink in the broad lines straining against his matching long-sleeve crew neck.
The first inch of visible skin starts at the trunk of his throat, which is wrapped in intricate tattoos I can’t make out the details of. They spread across a wide jaw and disappear under a thick, dark beard.
I lift my gaze to meet his.
I wish I hadn’t.
Those eyes. They’re not green up close, they’re black. Black and bottomless, as if they swallow the light instead of reflect it. All my pulse points throb out of sync as I scan his other features for a part of him I recognize from that night.
But his mouth, his nose. The hollows of his cheekbones and the depth of his scar. They’re all wrong. He’s all angles and no soft edges. Deep crevices and dangerous terrain. There’s something strikingly inhuman about him, as though he’s clawed his way out from the underworld.
Time has a way of distorting memories, sure, but I’m certain of two things—those eyes would have never softened at my cheesy, badly timed jokes, and they belong to a man I should have never been on a dark road with.
I seek relief by turning my attention to his mouth. As I’m wondering what the hell will come out of mine, his lips move.
My gaze flicks back up. “What?”
Despite the heavy baseline and the blood roaring in my ears, I heard him. Each word was deep, slow, and unmistakable.
And his wavering stare tells me he meant every syllable.
It’s not often I’m lost for words, so my mouth opens on instinct, but I clamp it shut when he steps toward me.
Crap, he’s close. Fibers-of-his-shirt-grazing-my-chest kind of close. My bare skin tingles from the heat, and I swim in the hot, dizzy feeling it gives me.
He stoops to meet my ear. I hold my breath and palm the wall behind me, anticipating the scrunch of his beard against my cheek, but it never comes.
“If you stick your tongue out at me again, I’ll cut it out of your head.”
What?
Shock freezes me in place. I’d heard him the first time and, of course, thought he was joking. Not everyone was blessed with a good sense of humor. But there’s no lightness in his tone; it’s flatline, factual. He could be reciting Pi to the tenth decimal point.
As the strobe light touches our corner of the club again, I follow its path.
It reveals his fist clenched tightly at his side, and the letters on his knuckles dance with the movement.
I track it up his neck and tilt my chin to meet his eyes.
Maybe that’s where the humor lies. But he’s too close and so damn tall that all looking up does is brush my nose over his beard, bringing me the scent of charred firewood and well-worn leather.
The dizziness heightens.
Then as quickly as he closed the gap between us, he backs off. Fists still clenched, he steps to the side and glances tightly over his shoulder. It feels like a dismissal, and Christ, he doesn’t have to dismiss me twice.
Cheeks burning and legs shaking, I resist the urge to break into a run.
Instead, I walk stiffly onto the dance floor, where it’s warm and bubbly and the sound of bad singing soothes me.
Each sweaty shoulder that brushes against mine thaws me a little, and by the time I’ve reached the other side of the club, the shock has melted, giving way to something else: irritation.
Did he really just threaten me? For something as innocent as sticking my tongue out at him?
Oh, I know his type. They’re a dime a dozen on the Devil’s Cove promenade: bouncers and security guards drunk on the dribble of power they possess. He guards the keys to the Visconti kingdom instead of the entrance to a nightclub, but the attitude is still the same.
Irritation fizzles into anger. He’s not the Boogeyman of Devil’s Coast, he’s the local bully.
And there’s only one way to deal with bullies.
When I reach the far side of the dance floor, I spin back around on my heel. I catch his eye just as the strobe light hits him and stick out my tongue again.
I’m tempted to stick my middle finger up too, but that’d be rude.
And Wren Harlow is never rude.