Chapter 9
Dahlia
Penelope is a fucking mess. She’s gone and gotten herself utterly wasted, and yet still manages to look obscenely hot.
After approximately eighteen million outfit changes, she finally settled on a berry-pink strappy dress that’s sheer over her stomach and most of her back and short enough that if she falls over, everyone will see her pussy because the scrap of fabric masquerading as underwear covers nothing.
Tonight is Morrigan and Stirling’s hen do. They chose to have a joint one seeing as they share a group of friends.
I pull her by the hand off the dance floor.
“I was having fun,” she says.
“You’re drunk.”
“So?”
I tut at her. “You’re drunk because you’re hurting in there.” I point at her chest.
“Fuck off, Dahlia, you don’t know me.” She smacks my finger away.
“Really? So you’re not hurting? And you’re fine with feeling like you’re not a part of that? You don’t feel like an outsider?”
I cock my head at Morrigan’s table, where her group of friends laughs and smiles and knocks back drink after drink together like family.
Her face falls.
“I told you, I know you,” I say.
She folds her arms, glaring at me. “Takes one to know one. Miss my-family-don’t-hate-me-anymore.”
That stings. But she’s not wrong. I know her because I’ve been where she is.
“You think you’re the only one that knows anything.
But you’re not, Dahlia. I see your bullshit too.
You’re only guarding me to repair whatever shitty relationship you had with your sister.
So don’t try and fucking play me at the who-knows-what game.
I might not be a decent magician, but I’m fucking observant,” she snaps and struts back onto the dance floor grabbing the nearest magician.
Some lanky prick with a beard and limbs like twigs.
For fuck’s sake, really?
Her eyes lock onto mine as she grinds up and down his crotch. My blood quietly simmers, frothing and boiling, and she knows it. She picks his hand up and makes them caress her waist, her hips, her arse.
She is exhausting. She is addictive. What kind of fucked up am I that the more she fights back, the more shit she gives me, the hungrier I get for her?
She lets out a little giggle that is far too close to a moan as she gyrates on him. My teeth grind against each other. I want to snap his neck. I want to rip his throat from his shoulders and watch his life force spurt over the dance floor. Who the hell is he to touch her?
A presence looms next to me.
“Dahlia,” my sister says.
“Octavia.”
“That’s not the whiff of jealousy I smell on the air, is it?” She follows my gaze to the princess.
“I legitimately have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m here to do a job. I’m here because I have your back and nothing else.”
“So you’re not fucking the princess, then?”
I stiffen. Even though I’m not looking at her, I can tell she’s smirking.
“So you are?”
“Obviously not. That wouldn’t aide the intercity politics, would it?”
“It certainly wouldn’t if you were to break a heart. And you are very good at that… need I point out the trail of women left in Sangui?”
I glare her. “She’s a grown woman. Whose face she decides to sit on is entirely up to her.”
“She sat on your face?”
“Octavia, dammit.”
She laughs. And I punch her in the arm.
She rubs the spot I landed a blow on. “Thank you. Maybe I didn’t say that clearly enough before, but I am grateful you’re taking one for the team.”
I shrug. “I figured five hundred years of bickering was enough.”
She smiles. “And how is the bickering with little miss princess?”
“She is the most infuriating woman I’ve ever had to deal with.”
“So you’re falling in love, then?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is just a job.”
She raises an eyebrow at me and sucks her lips into her mouth as though she’s swallowed down whatever she was going to say.”
“What?” I bark.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Nothing, nothing. But for the sake of both our cities, don’t hurt her. I don’t want anything jeopardising the talks. This could truly be the first time in a millennium that our cities are at peace.”
I turn to her, trying to hold back a shitty tone. “You think I don’t know that? I just got through telling you I had your back. Hasn’t everything I’ve done since being here demonstrated that?”
She nods and squeezes my shoulder. “It has. But sometimes what we think we’re doing up here,” she touches my temple, “and what we’re actually doing there,” she touches my heart, “are two different things. Besides, she seems like a handful.”
“Yeah, well, handful is my speciality.”
She gives me a solemn look and then strides off, and I relocate the princess in the crowd.
She’s now grinding against some other random guy, a curvaceous girl dry humping her thigh at the same time.
I knead my temples, my fangs dropping. I hate that I feel possessive over her.
It’s not my place. Octavia is right, she’s not mine.
Regardless of what happened last night. This is none of my business. I’m just here to guard her.
My skin bristles. I’m not sure whether it’s suppressed rage at the sight of Penelope dancing with two other people or something else.
I decide she’s had quite enough fun for this evening. I make my way through the crowd. She spots me and her grin deepens. She thrusts her arse into the guy and gropes the woman in front of her. Fuck me. I am going to spank that princess so fucking hard when I get her home.
The back of my neck prickles like someone is watching me. Or maybe not me, but her. I freeze. Penelope must spot the change in my demeanour because she stops dancing. She sprints over and slides her hand into mine.
“What is it?” she breathes, her skin shining. The air fills with the scent of hot skin, endorphins and a cocktail of gods knows what brimming in her veins. It’s delightful. I want to bite her. I want to fuck her. I’d quite like to drown her… or maybe drown in her. But not now.
“I’m not sure,” I say and scan the club. The room is filled with dancers and party goers. “And everyone in here is a friend of Morrigan’s? There’re no uninvited guests?”
“As far as I know. Mother has pretty tight security. Daria nearly made Morrigan cancel the entire hen do because of the threats I’d received. But they agreed they would do a closed-door party.”
My back warms. I spin around but see nothing. The air ripples. I rotate on the spot, turning, turning, turning, completing a full three-sixty of the club. But it’s as though whoever or whatever is watching is always one step ahead. Always out of my line of sight.
“And the security? How good is Daria?” I breathe.
“Good.” She indicates in her direction. Daria is standing like a pillar at the back of the bar.
I agree—she looks as much like a knifepoint tonight as she did the first time I met her.
There’s a rush of wind. I grab Penelope and spin out of the way, flattening her against the wall, my body pressed against hers.
She yelps. But I stand firm so no one can get to her. But even with my vampire sight, I can see nothing out of place.
“Yure squathing ee,” she mumbles into my shoulder blade. I ease the pressure off her body and hold my hand out.
“You’re coming with me,” I say. “We’re walking the room. Stay behind me and do not leave my side. And this isn’t one of those times when it’s a good idea to fuck about. Got it?”
She stares into my eyes. Something about my expression must convey how serious I am because she nods, and her grip on my hand tightens.
She slides in behind me and we walk the perimeter of the bar.
Something is off and yet nothing is out of place.
Only Daria standing in the corner of the bar looks like she’s miserable.
Everyone else is dancing or drinking. Octavia, Scarlett, Morrigan and a bunch of their friends are all sat around a booth table necking shots and enjoying the view of some half naked dancer.
There’s another rush of wind and that’s when I smell it.
The faintest hint of metal on the air, of cool steel and something else. It’s almost as if…
“I think there’s another vampire in here,” I say.
“What?” Penelope gasps. Her grip on my hand tightens so much it hurts.
A figure stands by the back door. It’s too far for me to see clearly, but I spot it. Male, about six-foot-two maybe taller. I can’t make out any more from this distance even with vampire sight. He skulks out the door and vanishes. He doesn’t move like a vampire, though. Maybe I was mistaken.
“Stay with Daria,” I bark, pushing her to the other side of the bar where Daria stands.
I speed through the club. She’ll be fine on her own.
I don’t want to leave whoever the fuck that was out there free to cause trouble later.
If he’s the threat, maybe we can finish this debacle tonight, before the wedding starts.
I’ll put money on the fact Octavia would be high up in some influential magician books if we did.
I’m out the door and on the street in a flash. Thank you, vampire speed. The guards by the door startle and lunge for me, but I swat them off, and they quickly realise who I am.
But whoever that motherfucker was is long gone.
Likely swallowed by the crowd of people thronging outside the club. The people and the paparazzi. I close my eyes and inhale the night air. Try to detect the hint of vampire I got. But there’s nothing other than the stench of booze, sweat and hormones—who the hell was that?
I continue searching the surrounding night, desperate to find whoever is just out of my reach. But I see nothing. He was wearing a long trench coat, but all I see are a bunch of half naked magicians in far too few clothes for how cold the night is.
Maybe it wasn’t a vampire at all? Maybe it was just some overly hench magician. Penelope did mention fucking up some deal with three guys. It could well have been one of them.