Fading Darkness (Bloodmarked #1) (35 page)

“Like you would have any problems with that,
tough guy,” I shouted.

We took a seat at a dark round table by the
brick wall. “What exactly are we doing, anyway?” I asked, unsure of his plan.

“Watching for suspicious vampire activity,”
he replied, vaguely.

“Well, that’s specific. Glad we have a game
plan.” He never struck me as the type to not make plans, so a tiny seed of
suspicion planted itself in my head. I knew he had a plan. He always did, so
why wasn’t he letting me in on it?

“Just hang back and relax. Blend in for a
while until you notice anything.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to ask around, try to find out
more about the VIP section. Stay here,” he said before melting into the crowd.

“Perfect,” I mumbled. I watched his figure move
across the giant space talking casually to different people, even smiling and
flirting with groups of girls who swooned and threw themselves at him like they
were vying for a spot in his bed tonight. Gross.

I barely recognized him like this. The look
on his face was not the same intense look he got with me, but a shallow, fake
look of arrogance and boredom. Wow, what was it about bad boys who looked like
they would use a girl up and toss her to the side that made girls so crazy? It
was like the more uninterested and cocky he seemed, the more they wanted him.
It was all about the chase for some girls and getting what they couldn’t have.
Before I became too disgusted by that kind of behavior, I turned my attention
to the rest of the room.

For about twenty minutes, I stared at the
normal club scene laid out in front of me and briefly felt a pang of guilt.
Holly would be so pissed at me if she knew I was here, but I felt much better
that she wasn’t. I caught sight of Gavin weaving toward me through the crowd
carrying what looked like a glass of white soda. As he approached, he set the
glass in front of me and sat down next to me.

I took a sip and didn’t realize how thirsty
I had been until I sucked it dry, making that gurgling straw sound. He waited
for me to finish before taking me by the hand and leading me out to the dance
floor. I choked on a laugh when I realized he actually intended to dance, to
club music. This, I had to see. “Do you even know what you’re doing out here,
old man?” I joked.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he said, with a
devilish smirk.

One of the girls he was talking to earlier
approached him, completely oblivious to me. “So did you change your mind about
that dance?” she asked, with a pouty expression. She then noticed his hand
attached to mine and sneered at me.

“You couldn’t handle him,” I stated plainly,
as I spun to face him, placing my arms around him. One hand was on his neck and
the other trailing down from his collar bone to his glorious pecks. He wore an
amused expression as I eyed him, perhaps a little too possessively. He refused
to break that contact and his gaze began to grow much warmer. It felt almost
carnal the way my eyes responded to him. I just wanted her gone, and it worked.
She knew she didn’t have a chance and spun on her heel while giving a disgusted
snort as she departed.

Still not breaking eye contact, he pulled me
close, and I automatically responded to the seductive music surrounding us by
swaying against his body. He instantly followed suit, and matched my movements
perfectly. Of course. He had to be good at this too. I already knew he could
slow dance, but he didn’t exactly come from this era so he shouldn’t know
anything about sexy dancing. Or at least, I secretly hoped he wouldn’t because
yet again, he would be proving the ridiculous effect he has on my
concentration.

“So, you think
you
can handle me?” he
asked, flirtatiously. His hands were hot against my hips and were greedily
gripping me harder with wanting, tensing from his restraint. It really was more
difficult for him to keep his control around me, but I still had a much harder
time than he did masking my loss of control. Especially now.

I spun around in his arms to break that
heady gaze. But that only seemed to enhance the physical contact. My body
became perfectly molded to his and he held me even tighter to him as we swayed
to the rhythm. I turned my head to the side to answer his question.

“I might be the only woman strong enough to
handle you and your bad temper,” I said.

He laughed low in my ear. “If I didn’t know
any better, Miss Masters, I’d say you enjoy handling me and my bad temper.”

All I could do was shrug my shoulders. I
wanted to disagree with him, but that would be an outright lie considering I
was standing here dancing with him while engaging in our typical back and forth
banter, instead of actually doing what I came here to do. I did sort of look
forward to our little disagreements, and that scared the hell out of me. I
tried miserably to get back on track. There was still lingering disappointment
in my voice when I asked, “So what did you find out?”

His lips, again, brushed against the back of
my neck just behind my ear and the sensation made me shiver and tilt my head
further back to give him better access. That sensation was divine. But my
reaction to a vampire with his mouth near my neck should have been much
different than this, which scared me even more. I was so exposed to him. I
could feel those lips spread into a wide smile against my skin, sending more
shivers down my spine.

He felt the change in me. He knew I was
vulnerable and in a weakened mental state, but he didn’t gloat about it.
Instead, he wrapped his arms tighter around me and just held me protectively,
like he knew I was terrified of these feelings and he was trying to erase those
fears. Whether he knew it or not, he was replacing my vulnerability with
courage and strength, and that earned him a few points in my book.

Maybe it was that change in me that inspired
my next words. “Gavin, that night, that we… you know?” my voice wasn’t audible
over the heavy thump of the bass. I knew he would have no problem hearing with
his super senses.

I craned my neck further to see his eyes
boring into mine, which put our lips so close together that our noses were
touching. He searched my expression trying to figure out where this was going.
I wasn’t even entirely sure. Maybe it was when he showed me his true emotions,
all the worrying he did when I was in danger, or the empathy he had for my
situation, or maybe it was somewhere in all those intense looks he gave me. I
wasn’t exactly ready to dip down into the dark depths of the sea of my
emotions, but I needed to at least acknowledge or accept that there was
something there between us and always had been. “I had never felt so alive in
my life, and it was like you filled some sort of emptiness in me for that brief
time that I opened myself up. No one has ever been able to get as close as
you-“

“Lucy, don’t,” he interrupted, squeezing his
eyes shut like he was in pain. His jaw tightened and the muscle in it worked.
Was he rejecting my incredibly personal and emotional confession? What the
hell? I was starting to get very angry. Then he continued. “Please, not here,
not yet. If we do this now, I’ll be lost to you. I’d be a goner.”

My heart was racing the speed of hummingbird
wings at that point, and I turned my head forward again so he couldn’t see my
goofy grin I was sure was plastered on my face. He placed a soft, lingering
kiss on my neck that tickled my entire nervous system. I felt lightheaded and
tingly all over.

“I knew you wanted me,” I said, a little
breathy.

I felt his light chuckle against the skin on
my neck and there was a low rumble in his chest. “Likewise,” he whispered, his
voice a little shaky.

 He kept his arms tight around me as he
answered my original question about what he found out. He didn’t want to let
go.

His lips brushed against my ear. I was going
to need some distance soon before I forgot the reason we were even here. “Apparently,
the VIP is invite only, but there’s a tendency among the bouncers to pick the
most beautiful girls in the club,” he said pointedly.

“Ah, so this is where I come in?” I asked,
already knowing the answer.

“I figured you could attempt your own invite
by approaching the guy who lets them upstairs. It’s worth a shot. And if you
can get up there, maybe you could collect more clues.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m on it,” I said, trying to
regain some professionalism. I pulled away from him, even though my body
resented me for it. I turned to look at him again.

He smiled, and there was something wild in
his expression. He was just as affected by me as I was by him, but then his
features hardened before saying, “Hey. If you do get up there, be careful.
Don’t let them near you with that substance. It’s deadly to humans, but we
don’t know what kind of effect it could have on you.”

“I got it. Stop worrying so much. You’ll get
worry lines on that pretty face, and then how would you get clueless bimbos to
feed you helpful information?”

He smirked, but before I could walk away, he
gripped the side of my waist spinning me to face him. His face was close, and
the smirk was gone, replaced by that infamous intensity. I was lost in it and
his scent. He held my chin with a feather-light touch as his thumb brushed over
my bottom lip.

“I’m serious,” he whispered.

All I could do was look into his eyes and
nod. When he released me, I turned and walked slowly toward the stairs to the
VIP section in a daze, nearly running into people on the way. How did he do
that to me?

There was no real game plan involved with my
strategy. I was pretty much the opposite of Gavin, so when I approached the
bouncer at the bottom of the stairs, I tried using the same sort of technique I
used with the doorman, taking cues from the girls I saw flirting with Gavin. I
did the whole batting my eyelashes and seductive smile, which seemed to be
working for the most part. He was completely into it. He was more like an older
version of a frat boy with shaggy blond hair and lines on his face from several
years of partying. Maybe he used to be a frat boy, and he was just here trying
to relive part of his glory years.

“So, what do I have to do to get upstairs?”
I asked with a smile.

He moved his hand to his belt, tugging it
suggestively as he licked his lips. “What are you willing to do, sweetheart?”

“Eww,” I said in a natural reaction to
horny, disgusting pigs. I knew it was bad, because I needed to be convincing,
so I cut myself off from finishing that thought.

“Hey, we don’t just give VIP spots away.
What do you say we discuss payment somewhere more private,” he said, stepping
closer.

I did everything in my power not to cringe,
and to hold my ground without punching this guy out. “How about we go somewhere
after I see the VIP section for myself?”

“There won’t be an after,” he said darkly.
So he knew these girls were missing, possibly that they were being murdered. I
wanted to kill him.

“What does that mean?” I asked coldly.

“Just that you’ll be too far gone by the
time you leave,” he said as he snaked an arm around me, moving his bony, grubby
hand down my backside.

That was too far. “Back off,” I said,
pushing him away with enough force to bruise his back against the rail post
behind him.

“I thought you wanted upstairs?” he asked,
coming at me again.

“Whoa, stop right there if you know what’s
good for you, dude. Or it won’t end pretty,” I warned.

He didn’t stop, and I was forced to break
his nose.

“Ow, bitch!” he screamed. By then, another
bouncer approached.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he said,
glaring at me. Then, one of the bartenders came over. Really? Did I look that
threatening?

“Hey, he had it coming. He came on to me,” I
said in my defense.

This was feeling more and more like a dead
end, or possibly a detour. Something in me told me to back off. It wasn’t worth
it. That seed of suspicion was growing, and I wondered why I should be
investigating the part we already knew existed. We already knew that people go
up to VIP only to be taken somewhere else. What would be the point of looking
into that further if there were no more answers to be found there? It was like
beating a dead horse.

Suddenly, I glanced back to the table where
Gavin was sitting, but found it empty. My eyes instantly scanned the stage
area, but he wasn’t there. My guess was he was already down there. That son of
a bitch used me as a distraction so he could get down there. I take back those
points he earned, and then some.

“You should leave now,” said the bartender.

My attention snapped back to the three men
eyeing me with contempt and I was no longer interested in doing things the slow
way. “Whatever, I’m going.” I turned toward the exit before they recognized me
as either Lucy, the murderer, or Lucy, the vampire hunter. Once out of sight, I
raced out of the club, into the blistering cold night and rushed around to the
side door.

I was a little hesitant when I approached
the side door because I knew they would have replaced the broken lock from the
last time I broke in, but breaking it again just meant they would be tipped off
to my being here again. Then, I realized, they probably would have figured that
out anyway, if they haven’t already. I didn’t sense any vampires nearby, but I
knew they had to be around.

Quickly, I bent the latch on the door handle
until it buckled and finally snapped. It wasn’t the quietest entrance, but
luckily, I had the music to drown out my break in. I slipped in closing the
door behind me and blended into the crowd near the front of the stage.

When I pushed through all the bodies pressed
firmly against each other, I got crammed up against a bar that served as a railing
or barrier from the stage. The stage was directly above this rail, and a thick
black curtain hung from it. My gaze followed the curtain down to the floor, but
the end of it fell past the level where I was standing. There was a sunken
level below the stage that the curtain was hiding.