Must Love Fangs (Midnight Liaisons) (17 page)

“Oh, I don’t know—” Bath began.

Sara rolled her eyes and tugged on her sister’s arm. “No take-backs.”

I watched in amusement as Sara dragged Bathsheba, protesting all the way, to the stage. As Sara bounced and danced to the beat, Bath stood as stiff as a totem pole. She quickly shoved her money at the dancer, then dragged her sister away.

Our boss wasn’t half the fun-loving drunk that her sister was.

Bath deposited Sara in the chair next to me. “I’m heading to the bar to get more drinks. Watch her for me, or she’s going to run out of money.”

Sure enough, Sara had pulled out her wallet and was digging out a few more dollars.

Ryder just grinned. “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

Yeah, but Sara had an enormous, rather possessive boyfriend. I placed a hand over Sara’s, stopping her.

Sara snarled at me, wolflike.

“Save it for the next dancer,” I told her. “I heard
he’s really hot.” I hadn’t heard any such thing, but she was too tipsy to figure that out.

She nodded, leaving her money on the table and sucking the last bit of alcohol out of her glass.

“Well, this was unexpected,” Ryder told me, leaning in to yell in my ear as the bass line thumped again. “Seems like alcohol makes one sister a wild woman and the other one even more of a prude.”

“I heard that,” Sara said on the other side of me.

Ryder just grinned and got up to tuck a dollar into the overflowing G-string of the man gyrating onstage.

I watched him dance, mentally comparing his body to Joshua’s. The man onstage was a big, muscled slab of meat. Josh was muscular, but he was leaner. He had big shoulders but didn’t carry his weight like a bodybuilder. The dancer turned, flexing rock-hard buns, and Sara whooped at the display.

Those were indeed tight buns. I wondered how tight Josh’s ass was in comparison. The man onstage was tanned a rather dark orange, which was unattractive. He was also greased up, and his long hair was pulled into a slicked-down ponytail. It made me appreciate Josh’s clean, if short, hair.

The dancer rocked his hips, thrusting repeatedly, and the crowd went wild. My fantasizing of Josh took an abruptly dirty turn and I shook my head to clear it, reaching for my almost-untouched drink.

“Sooo,” Sara said, leaning over my shoulder.

I glanced over at her.

She nodded at my drink. “You gonna drink that?”

“I was,” I said in a dry voice, but I handed it to her anyhow. “You’re having fun.”

She shrugged, taking my straw in hand and raising it to her mouth. Then she sniffed and gave me a perplexed look. Before I could ask, she leaned in and sniffed me. “Why do you smell like Josh?”

A hot, humiliated blush crossed my face. Thank goodness the strip club was dark. “I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

“I may be drunk, Marie Bellavance,” she said with a wag of her finger at me, “but my nose isn’t. And it definitely smells a horny were-cougar on you.”

How was that possible? I raised my shirt to my nose and sniffed it. I didn’t smell anything.

Sara smacked my shoulder. “Not your clothes, dummy. You. Your skin. You normally smell like a medicine cabinet. Now you smell like a medicine cabinet and Beau’s brother.” And she waggled her eyebrows at me. “So gimme the dirt.”

I didn’t know which part made me more mortified—the fact that I smelled like a medicine cabinet, or the fact that she’d picked up on my strange situation with Josh. It wasn’t even friends with benefits. All we’d done was argue with each other and share a few kisses.

A few really hot, really wet kisses.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “No dirt.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she grabbed my drink. “You going to love him and leave him?”

“Something like that.”

“Ooo,” Sara said with a grin. “High five.” She raised her hand in the air and completely missed mine.

“Yeah, I think I’ll take that back now,” I told her, pulling my drink out of her hand.

She leaned over my chair, throwing her arm around my shoulders and eyeing the drink. I had the sneaking suspicion that if I looked away, she’d grab it again. “Can I give you a word of advice?”

“Oh, please do.” Nothing better than advice from drunk people.

“Josh is a nice guy. Really nice. Big soft spot for women.” She poked at my breastbone as if to demonstrate where that soft spot might be. “But he’s not what you’d call a ‘commitment’ kind of guy.”

She made drunken air quotes just as Ryder sat down again, hands empty of money.

“I know he’s not,” I told her. “But thank you.”

She nodded sagely, then brightened at the sight of Ryder’s half-full cup. “You going to drink that?”

“Get your own,” Ryder said, holding her cup protectively.

Bath returned from the bar with new drinks and began to pass them out. As she did, I glanced up at the stage. A new man had danced out, and my heart skipped a beat at the baseball cap he wore. A moment later, I relaxed, seeing the baseball uniform
he wore and the tattoos going up his arm. Not Josh. Not even close.

You going to love him and leave him?

That was what I was going to do, wasn’t it? Have sex with him and then turn around and seek a vampire to turn me? And if the vampire wanted a blood mate, I wouldn’t say no.

So what did that make me? I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a player. And Josh wasn’t sure if he wanted to be played, judging by the lack of a return phone call.

Why did everything have to be so damn complicated?

One of the dancers sauntered past, wearing a wreath of bills around his waist and not much else. Sara whistled sharply, drawing his attention, and pulled out a twenty. “Lap dance!”

“Oh, no,” Bath said.

But Sara eyed us and then pointed at Ryder, who also shook her head, eyes widening.

The dancer zoomed to Ryder’s side and began to gyrate, shaking his pelvis. Bath looked mortified. Sara bounced up and down with giddy excitement.

Ryder looked . . . terrified? Confident, self-possessed Ryder?

The dancer grabbed her hand and placed it on his pectoral, shining with baby oil. And he gave Ryder a lascivious look, grinding up against her.

She shot to her feet and bolted for the ladies’ room.

The dancer staggered backward, almost knocked over by her hasty exit, and Bathsheba looked shocked.

“What’s with her?” Sara asked.

The terrified look on Ryder’s face was so unlike her. And then I thought of the . . . thing . . . that I’d seen Ryder turn into. I plucked the twenty out of Sara’s hand and stuck it in the dancer’s G-string. “She probably drank too much and had to throw up,” I told them, and pulled out another twenty from my pocket. “How about you give me a lap dance next?” I said to the dancer.

Sara whooped in response, and the dancer grabbed my free hand, rubbing it on his oiled stomach.

Ryder
totally
owed me for this.

• • •

We left the club a few hours later, flat broke and way past tipsy. Well, the other three were tipsy. I’d sipped the same drink all night, letting Sara chug the rest of mine. Alcohol never sat well with the anti-anxiety medication I was on to suppress the panic attacks.

Our designated driver met us outside, and at the sight of him, drunk-but-still-kicking Sara whooped and scrambled for her last dollar. She folded it in half and waved it under the surly were-bear’s nose, gyrating at him.

“Dance for me, baby,” she cooed. “I’ll give you some money.”

“No,” Ramsey said in a flat voice.

Sara just laughed uproariously and danced away, wobbling.

Ramsey snatched her from midair and swung
her over his shoulder like a caveman. Sara laughed and squealed, kicking her feet.

I could have sworn that Ramsey’s mouth twitched in a hint of a smile.

“Oh, boy,” Ryder said at my side. “I hope he doesn’t keep swinging her around like that or she’s going to puke. I might puke just from watching it.”

I snorted. Bath tottered across the parking lot behind the wildly laughing Sara and big, burly Ramsey, and I took up the rear, beside Ryder. When the others were far enough ahead, I tugged at her arm and whispered, “You okay?”

Her face tightened and she nodded. “I just . . . I can’t . . . I can’t process touch. Not well.”

I immediately pulled my hand away. “I’m so sorry.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Not yours, dummy. Men. I . . . ” She exhaled a long, deep breath. “Never mind. This is on the secret list.”

I linked my pinky to hers and nodded, then we followed the others to the car.

W
ell, this was awkward.

I smiled tightly at Andre as he poured me another glass of red wine and I tried to ignore the scowling bodyguard standing right behind him.

Why did my date suddenly need protecting? Who was he afraid of? Was I in danger?

And most of all, out of the entire Russell Security team, why did it have to be Josh? He loomed over our date like a ghastly third wheel.

So very, very awkward.

I downed my wine quickly. Maybe if I got drunk, this wouldn’t be so bad.

“You’re very thirsty tonight,” Andre said, his tone holding affection and amusement. “Long day?”

I nodded and held my glass out for a refill. The truth was, every day was a long day lately. I hadn’t been handling the insomnia well this week. I’d also been stressed about how things were going with Josh, so I’d fretted and checked my phone for messages a hundred times an hour.

But he hadn’t texted.

Part of me had expected it. Still . . . I had thought we were friends. Feeling abandoned, I’d even cried a little. I’d trusted him and he’d run.

And now
he
was glaring at
me
? He could go jump off a cliff, for all I cared.

“You seem distracted,” Andre observed, extending his hand across the table.

I put my hand in his, which was unnervingly cool against mine. “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t even come up with an explanation that would put his mind to rest.

“Is this a bad time for you? Should we cancel our date tonight?” He gave me a concerned look, his other cool hand moving on top of mine. It was like being hugged by clay.

I squeezed his hand to reassure him. “I’m just a little . . . distracted by your bodyguard. I thought this date would be more private.”

“Is that all that’s bothering you?”

Joshua shifted on his feet, frowning fiercely at me, arms crossed over his chest.

“I just worry that you’re in danger.” I had Andre’s full attention, and he was smiling at me again, so I tilted my head, exposing my neck a bit. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“My dear, I am perfectly fine,” he said, his voice husky. “It’s simply a precaution. If he’s bothering you, I’ll see if the waiter can find him a nearby table so we can . . . talk privately.”

“That sounds lovely.” It was hard to be into Andre when the much hotter and far more alive Joshua was looming over him.

I needed to want the
vampire,
not the were-cougar.

Andre turned and flicked his fingers at Josh, indicating that he should scram.

Josh gave a curt nod, and he retreated to a nearby table and sat with a thump, his gaze still on us.

“Better?” Andre asked.

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I want you to be comfortable around me,” he said, his voice low and soothing, almost caressing. “I know it’s hard for some of your kind to relax around a vampire, but I assure you that I’m a man, just like every other man.”

He’s a predator. He wants to chase his prey.
I gave him a slow, sensual smile and tossed my hair. “Just like
every
other man?”

His gaze grew hot with desire. “Not quite. There are a few . . . subtle . . . differences.”

A hot blush crossed my cheeks. “You don’t say.”

“Am I your first?” he asked softly. When my eyes widened, he chuckled and lifted my hand to kiss it. “Your first vampire, I meant.”

I wasn’t sure that was what he’d meant, and I kept my tone flirtatious. “If I say no, will you hold it against me?”

Just then, my cell phone buzzed. Text message. I pulled my hands away and fished out my phone.

Do not go there
, Josh had sent.
Not with this guy.

I clicked my phone off, gritting my teeth. “Sorry. I thought it might have been
important,
but it’s not.” Since Josh had super shifter hearing, maybe he’d get the hint.

But Andre’s flirty chuckle returned and he laid his hand back down on the table once more. Guess I’d have to put mine in his. I did, forcing away the disquiet I felt when touching his skin. It was only because Josh was so close. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been nearly as bothered.

Even if I was, I’d learn to like it. I could hold a clammy hand or two in exchange for eternity.

“Another man?” Andre asked as his fingers curled over mine.

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” I said coyly, startled at how seductive I sounded. Go, me. “It’s not as if we’re exclusive, are we?”

He pressed another light kiss to my fingertips. “Perhaps we should be?”

Yes! Inside, I did a touchdown dance. Outwardly, I gave him a hint of a smile. “I’ll think about it.”

That’s right, predator. Come catch this prey
.

Exclusive. With a vampire. That was one step away from having him turn me, right?

“So tell me, Minnie . . . do you like sports cars?”

“Don’t know a thing about them,” I confessed. “But I’d love to learn.”

“Would you like to see mine?” His eyes gleamed, and his wide, white smile suddenly looked a little . . . toothy?

Was this some sort of euphemism?
Hey, baby, let me show you my Audi? Check out what’s under my hood?

But I was all-in when it came to this, right? And Andre was definitely interested, even though I was
holding him at arm’s length. We hadn’t even kissed, and we’d had two awesome dates.

Sooner or later, he’d want to put those lips on me. I thought of his cool, almost clammy hands and shuddered at the thought of his lips feeling the same. What the hell was wrong with me? It was just body temperature.

I looked at Josh, two tables away, and glared at him. He was a big, good-looking distraction that I didn’t need.