Chapter 3
Blaise
Sitting here at a front-row, center table at the Twinkling Meadow, waiting for Aimee’s friend’s number to begin, it’s almost as if there’s no war looming above all our heads.
The atmosphere is electric, buzzing with male pheromones and unbridled excitement. These males don’t care about what’s going on outside these gilded walls. They’re here for a good time, not a long one, and they hoot and holler in anticipation.
I sip some fresh, warm blood mixed with the most decadent faerie wine I have tasted in ages, taking in every detail of the main stage.
The hardwood floors are polished to perfection, the walls adorned with deep red velvet drapes and garlands of golden-tipped flowers.
Opulent chandeliers hang heavy with gleaming candles, and in the air all around, the cloying aroma of burned incense and expensive perfume wafts between patrons.
Doe-eyed servers in see-through garments glide between the tables on nimble limbs, smiling coyly at the males who promise them sweet nothings.
So this is where Aimee worked for five years. It reminds me of Saignée, but in an over the top, in your face kind of way. Leave it to the fucking Fae to be obnoxious, even when dealing in pleasures of the flesh.
I’m almost bored, playing with the rim of the crystal flute when the lightning dims in the parlor, several candles being blown out to create this eerie, semi-obscure atmosphere.
Uh, uh, finally the show is about to start. I sit just a little straighter, intrigued to see Aimee’s little Fae friend. From my very central vantage point, I should be able to see everything on display, and I mean everything.
Everyone assumes spies slink in the shadows, never seen, never heard, just ghosts wrapped in darkness and silence. That we hide away in darkened corners, witnessing all, but never taking part.
Yeah, no, thank you very much. That’s not how I roll.
I’m too Godsdamn good-looking to conceal myself. Some call me vain. I’d say I’m just self-assured and not afraid to admit it.
Confidence is sexy. I have not yet met the creature that could argue against that.
The blaring orchestra brings me back from my wandering thoughts just as a kaleidoscope of colors explodes all around the dimly lit establishment.
Bright reds that soften into pink hues, accompanied by vivid violets and swirls of cerulean melting into silver, envelop my senses.
It feels like stepping into a surreal painting that dissipates to make way for the devastatingly blond beauty on stage.
Fuck me.
My target tonight is simply stunning.
Blond waves so pale they almost gleam silver cascade down her back, while the prettiest cyanic eyes I’ve ever seen—after my own, of course—take in the crowd gathered tonight to worship her every movement.
Scratch that.
They’re prettier than mine, I realize with a start, as mischief gleams in them, lighting them up from the inside to incandescent levels.
Her svelte body is wrapped in a shimmering, almost see-through, opalescent unitard that catches the flickers of light her fingertips emanate. It’s like she’s a ray of moonlight personified.
My jaw slackens as I stare, flabbergasted, as Aimee’s friend whirls her body on stage, sending beams of liquid starlight in every direction. She undulates her body in rhythm with the orchestra, swaying her luscious hips as if she were born to do this. To mesmerize gullible males, myself included.
The music swells to a maddening tempo, and she’s caught in a perpetual pirouette of delicate carnality. I’ve seen nothing like it before.
Just as the song reaches a dramatic peak, she leaps mid-twirl from the stage and, for a perfect moment frozen in time, she floats through the air towards me, her long limbs like silk ribbons in the wind.
Oh, how good she’d look all tied up in said ribbons, all at my mercy.
No, Blaise, focus.
I’m here on a mission.
Frolicking can come later.
I gulp as she lands on the table adjacent to mine, and she wastes no time in curling her body lasciviously around a wide-eyed Fae male that looks as if he’s about to piss himself from the attention.
What a buffoon. A girl like that needs a male who will bring her to the peaks of pleasure repeatedly, not a scared little boy who wouldn’t know what to do with her.
She needs a dominant. Someone like me.
She giggles, the sound so crystalline and pure that my pants tighten instantly down there, before she jumps from the tabletop, blowing the dazed male a kiss.
As she passes by my table, a whisper of a barely-there touch caresses my shoulder, and luminescent sparkles linger way longer after she disappears in the throng of exuberant patrons who clap and chant her name.
Sariah.
Sariah.
Sariah.
I adjust my straining cock, and watch as she vanishes out of sight in an explosion of pastel hues.
What the fuck did I just witness?
There is a time for spying out in the open, gathering intel about your target, and there’s a time when you make yourself one with the shadows, waiting to strike when they least expect it.
That’s what I’m doing right now. Leaning in a dark corner of the Twinkling Meadow’s facade, I await my clueless little prey. She should be out any minute now, ready to call it a night and go back to her home that she previously shared with Aimee.
I contain my wandering thoughts about that tight body of hers as I scent the crisp night air around me.
Winter is well upon Annerough, not as blisteringly frigid as in Wrahta, but not much warmer either.
It’s a good thing the cold doesn’t affect us vampires like it does humans and Fae alike, or I’d be freezing my ass out here, waiting to snatch her.
A wave of tingling trepidation sings in my blood, and it has nothing to do with the kidnapping.
She’s a slim pixie Fae girlie with no fighting skills. This mission is as easy as they come. Nothing to trepidate about.
No.
The adrenaline coursing through my body has much more to do with the prospect of getting my hands on that alabaster skin and wrapping my fist around those pale locks in a tight grip.
Aimee asked me not to be brutish about this endeavor, yet I’m feeling anything but gentle right now.
After all, a little bit of roughhousing is good for the soul.
Extraordinary in the bedroom.
I lick my fangs as I imagine just how well she could take me.
Boisterous laughter breaks the midnight silence as light spills onto the street from the personnel entrance of the cabaret, and a group of gorgeous females steps out of the building.
Sariah is among them.
“Babe, are you sure you don’t want to come with us tavern-hopping?” a petite brunette asks, and Sariah shakes her head no.
“Not tonight, Brea. But next time the faerie wine’s on me,” Sariah answers, and I lose my focus for a second at the sound of her sultry voice.
Fuck.
Is there anything about this female that I don’t find enticing?
I hope she has crooked toes or an ugly belly button. Something to even out the playing field. But probably every inch of her scrumptious body is deliciously perfect.
The females hug each other goodbye, unaware of the vampire watching them from not that far away, before they disperse in different directions. I wait only a heartbeat longer before slinking through the shadows in pursuit.
Sariah glides effortlessly through the empty streets, humming a low, throaty tune that carries towards my hypersensitive ears. She rounds a corner and another one, and I prepare to emerge from the night like a devilishly handsome predator and sweep her off her feet, quite literally.
However, when I catch up to her, the alleyway is completely empty. She’s nowhere to be seen.
Huh?
How the fuck did I lose her? I was two steps behind her the whole time.
I whirl around, scanning the alley, but nothing’s amiss. There are no hidden passageways where she could have disappeared, no intersecting streets.
Did she go inside one of these houses?
Does she have a lover around here waiting to pleasure her until the crack of dawn?
I grit my teeth at the thought.
Nobody should please that little pixie in the near future besides me.
As I stand and sweep my surroundings for any sign of her, a sharp pain explodes in my neck. I gasp and grab my throat, a thin stick jutting out from my skin.
What the…
My thoughts turn sluggish, and I sway on the spot, unable to hold my weight any longer.
My knees hit the gravel just a second before my whole body goes limp, and I can’t even feel the gravel under my cheek.
“Oopsie, handsome. You okay there?”
I strain my eyesight to stare unfocused at the figure grinning widely from above me.
She’s a blond vision wrapped in starlight and exuding a danger I did not see fucking coming.
“It’s not nice to stalk beautiful, defenseless ladies in the dead of night, you know?” she tuts in a singsong voice.
“It’s not safe out here, pretty boy.”
My tongue is heavy as lead in my mouth, no words forming properly.
All I can manage is an undignified “oomph”.
Her tinkling laughter wraps around my confused brain, and I can’t hold on to my consciousness any longer.