Chapter 4
Bryce
“So, let me guess. You drove the Ferrari tonight.” Hunter gave me one of his rare smiles as we sat down at the quietest end of the bar, several feet apart.
“No, no.” I tugged at the cuffs of my dress shirt to try to cover as much skin as possible, regretting not bringing my gloves tonight. “The Ferrari never leaves the garage these days. Like the rest of them. I’m getting boring in my old age.”
“So, you had Gerald drive you?”
“You know me well.”
Hunter shrugged, his bulging shoulders bunching in his tight T-shirt. “Glad you still have him. Someone you can trust.”
“He’s like you. I don’t have to worry you’re only sticking around for my wallet.”
“Yeah. I’m not a woman either.” He shook his head. “I bet you’ve still got gold diggers begging for your attention?”
“More than ever before.” I shuddered. “When I can’t even touch the scantily clad, and admittedly beautiful, bodies they throw at me. Makes me feel pretty pathetic, to be honest.”
“Hey, at least any girl you asked to dinner would go. Can’t say the same about the one girl I want.” Hunter scrubbed a hand over the scruff on his face and I took a moment to wonder who the girl was.
Could it be Serenity?
He gave me a commiserating look. “Are we moping tonight? If so, we both need a drink.” He waved over a vamp bartender who’d just finished helping several guests at the middle of the bar. “Vance, my usual for me and our best whiskey for my friend, please.”
Vance’s eyes widened as he clearly recognized who I was. But thankfully, he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and walked away. Annoyingly, a lot of people often did the opposite, wanting to take photos and generally get too close.
As the bartender went back to the main area of the bar for our drinks, I glanced around the club and its plush furnishings.
My eyes caught a booth full of wolf shifters, a reminder this club hadn’t always been so pleasant.
Hunter had turned things around so masterfully these past years considering the nasty reputation it had held before.
I was proud to call him a great friend. And perhaps even my only real one. But who was counting?
The music and lighting were low, and the booths and tables were packed with paranormals of all sorts.
Guzzling champagne, blowing puffs of spicy tobacco smoke from cigars, they spoke in quiet voices, many of them with their eyes focused on the still empty stages.
The poles were gleaming and showtime seemed imminent, but no dancers were out yet.
From the last time I’d been here, which had been quite a while—I really had been neglecting my role as Hunter’s friend and was an even worse loner than him—I knew they liked to start off with a featured solo act.
Whatever was coming tonight, I was extremely grateful Hunter had asked his hostess to place a couple of signs in front of our corner, cordoning us off with a thick red rope tied between them.
He also had a hulking bear shifter bouncer standing guard, sporting enormous biceps—even larger than Hunter’s impressive ones—in an unwelcoming fold.
All the precautions would hopefully protect me from any drunken stumbles or, much more likely, businessmen thrusting their hands out, trying to ingratiate themselves.
I was pretty sure my particular condition was common knowledge across New Nebraska, but booze and ambition had a habit of causing forgetfulness.
“Anyway, it’s good to see you.” Hunter smiled again, which was refreshing to see.
He’d really been in a bad place emotionally for far too long.
“And nobody messes with Franco.” He motioned to the bouncer then gave a nod to Vance as the vamp returned with our drinks.
“For tonight, you can rest easy. Drink up and forget you’re the biggest catch in the city. ”
I chuckled. Having fame and fortune wasn’t torture, but the attention it brought, and people wanting to reach out and lay hands on me, had the potential to cause it. Literally.
“I appreciate it.” I drank my whiskey, feeling it mix pleasantly with the smoldering blood running through my veins.
Not wanting to broach the subject fully if it wasn’t welcome, but not wanting to ignore it either, as we were missing the third person in our longtime friendship tonight, I pondered openly.
“Feels strange being back in a place like this. Remember when we were all a little bit younger and wilder. Remember Dagger before he got his badge? Man, he was—”
“Dagger?” Hunter grimaced. He gave me a hard look and sighed.
“Yeah, he was…” He paused and stared at his beer, then shook his head and looked back up at me.
“So, let’s talk about the present not the past. I’ve barely been able to restrain myself from calling you today.
” Whatever he was thinking about lit up his eyes.
“Serenity. What did you think of her for that job opening?”
Of course, he wanted to talk about Serenity.
She probably was the girl he liked. The human girl I’d been thinking of nonstop, ever since she’d walked into my office looking vulnerable but so determined and strong, and mustering so much courage and enthusiasm for an interview that many applicants seemed to struggle with.
Hopefully I could hide from Hunter that she was the real reason I was here tonight, eager to learn more about her and maybe even be around her lovely presence.
Though I think she worked in the kitchen, and not like anything could happen between us anyway.
“Oh, was that the human girl who works here? Applying for the logo designer or something?”
He laughed. “Yeah, the one I specifically talked to you about. Like you’ve ever forgotten a name or a face.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes I think you know me too well.”
He reached over and patted me on my covered shoulder, being careful with the movement, which I appreciated, as well as the momentary sense of normal human interaction. “Twenty-five years of knowing each other will tend to do that.”
I swirled the amber liquid of my drink, taking a gulp and a moment to consider my response. “In answer to your question… she seems like a very talented young woman with a lot of potential.”
“She sure is. She’s the best worker here. She’s also a human alone in New Omaha who needs a break. You get what I’m saying?”
I nodded. I rarely drank these days, and the strong liquor was already starting to loosen my inhibitions, and my words alongside them.
“I get it, brother.” And we had grown up like brothers, all three of us, even though he and Dagger were the ones actually related.
“She’s certainly got a passion for design, but I haven’t decided yet. ”
He tilted his beer again, leaning forward and resting his thickly muscled arms on the bar. “I was really hoping she might catch that break at Midas. You know, considering she’s got my personal recommendation. She needs the chance. Badly.”
I held up my palm gently to interrupt. “Chance, yes. And she is talented. But there are a lot of applicants—”
The music grew louder and abruptly changed to a dance song with country and western vibes. The lights on stage glowed brighter as the crowd quieted, all eyes focused on a broad pair of cherry red curtains from where the dancers must wait to make their entrance.
Hunter looked a bit pale of all sudden. “God, I hope this goes well,” he mumbled.
And from among the velvet curtains burst the sexiest cowgirl I’d ever seen in my life. With beautiful auburn hair and a beaming smile.
Serenity.
My mouth gaped and I almost dropped my glass.
She skipped across the stage toward the pole in her knee-high leather boots, cowboy hat and cute outfit.
And the fires within me sparked to life too.
Heat washed through my body. What the hell was she doing up there?
She was a dishwasher, a cleanup girl. I always logged details mentally, even minor ones, and Hunter had definitely said that.
Taking a large gulp from my drink and tearing my eyes away for a moment, I looked at the man in question, whose eyes had a wild look about them as he shuffled awkwardly on his bar stool. “Hey, you said she was a dishwasher,” I said.
He clunked his beer on the bar and swiveled on his stool to face the show fully.
He spoke from the side of his mouth. “This is how badly she needs the money. She begged me for a chance on stage. The first human dancer I’ve had.
” He paused, his face mesmerized, fixed in a frown of surprise.
The next words came out softly, slowly, in a way hard to describe, as if it were speaking about his own wife up there. “And, uh, she’s a quiet girl too, she…”
She wasn’t acting very quiet right now. The rhythmic bobs of her hips and slinky leg movements weren’t those of a wallflower.
She had a toy six-shooter in a holster, and was pointing it out into the audience playfully, pretending to target individual guys, shooting off imaginary bullets before dancing the revolver barrel across her neck, chest, down to her slender abs which she’d revealed by pulling up her tank.
Super sexy and classy.
The response came in a tsunami of clapping and whistling.
Men and even some women were stumbling out of their seats, bills in their hands, beckoning her to lean forward so they could thrust money into the waistband of her short denim cutoffs or holster.
One guy, looked like a tiger shifter from his red hair, had a whole fistful of cash.
Gazing upward at the edge of the stage, he pointed at her hat and waved his money.
She took it off in a graceful bow and he dumped the wad into it.
She put the hat back on and blew him a kiss.
The tiger’s eyes were alive with desire.
And he wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
My fingernails were starting to glow. That hardly ever happened these days.
I flapped at the collar of my shirt, my cheeks and forehead pulsating as Serenity held the whole club in the palm of her small human hand.
Holy shit. I couldn’t believe it was the same girl who’d been sitting in my office. Just yesterday.
I looked at Hunter again. The guy was drinking it all in, I couldn’t see his face properly because he’d turned his focus so intensely to the cowgirl show everyone was going crazy for.
My heart was thumping, fire in my blood pulsing, raging. Maybe I could stop interviewing other candidates at Midas after all. I couldn’t stand the thought of other men seeing her this way—
A sickening, terrifying pain coursed across my hand and up my arm. Like it had been smacked with a sledgehammer. Gasping, dizzy, I turned to see a waitress lying on the floor, writhing, screaming. Oh fuck. She’d touched me.
I stumbled off my stool, steadying myself on the bar with the hand she hadn’t touched, my knees near to giving in from my own agonizing pain.
The bouncer’s attention, like everyone else in the room, had been captivated by Serenity’s dance. The waitress must have just thought the cordon was a regular VIP one, slipped past it, and not known about my condition. Now she was wailing and shuddering violently for her mistake.
The music stopped and all eyes turned in our direction. The poor girl, suffering what I knew would be pain like she’d never felt before, screamed so loud she could have had a knife buried eight inches into her chest.
Hunter looked horrified. I tried to stammer out some words, to tell him to help the waitress, get her to a hospital, get her some morphine, but my own burning agony from us touching had now spread across my torso, pummeling me like a dozen thugs swinging electrified hockey sticks.
I dropped to my knees, suffocating under the relentless pulses of malice my own body was punishing me with.
My vision slowly blurred, but it didn’t stop me from seeing Serenity still on stage, staring straight at me with wide eyes. A look of horrified shock on her face.
All I could hear was Hunter screaming at people, shoving them away, as they instinctively reached out to help me. “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him! Franco, Stratos, get these people away from here!”
Swimming in pain, I managed to catch something more about Serenity’s terror. It wasn’t just what I’d unintentionally done to the waitress that had her frozen in fear.
She was looking at a vamp sitting alone in one of the booths. With the club lights now all on fully, I could just about make out his pale and pock-marked face. Lengthened fangs poked down from a broad, smug smile as he stared at Serenity.
Like food.