Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel (22 page)

A smile played about his lips. He was no doubt having a good chuckle to himself imagining me doing that exact thing. “I figured you wouldn’t. And on the off chance that you dressed for the occasion I brought my car instead.”

“You have a car?”

“I don’t like driving it, but yeah I do. Sometimes it’s more practical than my bike. Like when it’s pouring down outside or when I’m taking a pretty girl on a date and she chooses to wear a dress.”

“This isn’t a date,” I sputtered out.
 

“I was speaking in general,” he said cooly but if I didn’t know better I would have sworn I’d seen a hint of a flush in his tanned cheeks.
 

The elevator doors opened and we headed for the exit of my building. Directly in front of it, illegally parked beside the strip of curb painted red that warned “NO PARKING” in large white letters, was a burnt orange 1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS.
 

“Holy shit!” I squealed and ran to the car. “Is this yours?”

“She sure is. I restored her myself a couple of years ago. She’s the first and only car I’ve ever bought.”

“Can I- Never mind.” There was no way in hell he would let me drive the car. But oh my God it was so sweet to look at one in flesh. I wasn’t much of a car person either, but I had an obsession with the Fast and the Furious franchise and after listening to Dominic Toretto go on and on about american muscle cars, I kind of wanted to get behind the wheel and drive one myself. See what all the fuss was about and if they handled as bad-ass as they looked.

Chase walked around to the driver side and opened the door. For a second I was hurt that he didn’t open my door but then mentally smacked myself for being ridiculous. This wasn’t a real date. We weren’t a couple. What reason did I have to expect him to be chivalrous and why in the world did I suddenly want him to be? I had never been on of those girls before who needed a man to open doors for them or pull out chairs.
 

“Catch.”

The abrupt instruction pulled my attention away from the door handle I was about to put my hand on. I looked up in time to see a set of keys flying over the roof of the car towards my face. My hand shot up and caught them.
 

“If you want to drive, knock yourself out.” His grinned at me, flashing me his dimples and making my insides do disconcerting little flip-flops.

I walked around to his side of the car. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, but it’s a stick shift. Sorry, I should have mentioned that first I guess. Can you drive one?”

I was suddenly glad that when Bennett had taught me how to drive he’d done so with a used up Mazda Miata that he called his throw-away car. It was a stick shift and the transmission was already on its last leg. I complained to Bennett why I couldn’t learn on a normal, automatic car and he’d told me because the ones he owned cost more than me. His cars were his toys.
 

“Yeah I can drive one. It’s what Bennett taught me to drive on.”

His hand remained on the driver’s side door handle until I got in. He closed the door behind me and walked around to slide into the passenger seat. I turned the key in the engine and the powerful car roared to life underneath and all around me.
 

I regrettably put the car in park and cut the engine off a block away from Fusion.
 

“I love my Ducati, but I might have to get me one of these. She’s going to be jealous as she should. It just might replace her,” I told Chase as I handed the keys back over to him once we were out of the car.

My skirt was so short I felt the draft of the night air in places too intimate for me to be feeling it in public as we walked from the parked car to the club.
 

The bouncer at the door gave us a once over when we walked up to it. I expected his gaze to linger on my exposed skin but it was Chase’s bare chest that his eyes were glued to. Well. Well. It seemed like some males were just as infatuated with him as the females we passed seemed to be. He nodded his approval at us and unhooked the velvet rope that along with his WWE built body barred the entrance.

The inside of the nightclub was dimly lit and swathed in muted red light. A DJ played house music from the second level. It deafeningly boomed out of the speakers beside him. A sea of bodies covered every inch of the dance floor in front of us. They were moving, dancing, jerking violently and in some cases even yelling from the pure exhilaration of the music pumping through their blood. The dance floor looked like a scene you’d see in any other club except for all of the leather, metal spikes, toy chains and whips that splattered across it.
 

“What do you want to drink?” Chase shouted to me over the music.

“We’re playing the part of clubgoers here to have a good time remember,” he said less loudly when I looked at him weird.

Oh, right. I guess it would make since to have a drink in my hand then. “Whatever you were going to order for yourself, just get two.” It didn’t really matter what he brought back. It’s not like I would actually be drinking more than a convincing sip or two of it.

“Be right back.”

He disappeared into the bodies as he made his way to the bar at the opposite end of the dance floor. I stared after him, noticing that they all seemed to be humans. I could tell by their carefree laughter, their relaxed postures, and the unburdened way with which they reveled in the bass of the music.
Where are all the Brethren?
 

No sooner than I thought it one popped up in front of me. Literally. There was nothing but open air and the edge of the dance floor in front of me one minute and silver ringing turquoise eyes in front of me the next.
 

“You look delicious,” he said as his eyes roved over my exposed flesh.
 

He took the liberty of reaching out and closing his hand possessively and not so gently around my forearm. He wore leather pants and nothing else, putting his hardened chest on display for the world to marvel over. Spiked wrist cuffs were fastened around both of his wrists and the way the metal gleamed when the light hit it, made it look suspiciously like polished silver. The metal chain wrapped around his forearm and the unsheathed knives brazenly secured to belt loops around his waist gleamed in the same manner. He tugged roughly on my arm. “Come. Accompany me to the second floor where the real party is at. We can get to
know
each other better. It’ll be fun.” His eyes flashed sinisterly when he said the word know and I had no doubt his ideal of getting better acquainted would no doubt be fun for him but excruciatingly painful for me.

I snatched my arm out of his grasp. The spot his fingers had been curled around throbbed and I knew it would leave a bruise resembling his handprint.
 

“No thank you.” I kept the acid and disgust out of my tone that wanted to creep in. If I offended him or bruised his ego, this could go south very quickly and very badly. Those same rules of caution applied to human men so I could only imagine what the Brethren would do if I pissed him off. “I’m not a masochist. Something tells me you aren’t either.” I looked pointedly at the chain then the knives hanging around his waist. “So unless those are there for
me
to use them on
you
I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.”
 

He answered my subtle rejection with a lecherous smile. Lust flared in his eyes at it, having the exact opposite effect as I’d intended. Apparently, he preferred unwilling prey.
 

The arm that didn’t have the chain curled around it shot out and jerked me against him, holding me in place as if it were a steel bar. “You are
exactly
what I’m looking for.” His breath was sickeningly hot against my ear. I knew the silver knife strapped to the inside of my thigh wouldn’t do me much good against him, but my fingers itched to shove it into him.
 

I spied Chase walking towards us. His hands tightly gripped the drinks they held and an almost imperceptible faint glow had started to outline his frame. The murderous look in his eyes said he was well past beyond the point of pissed. Shit. He was going to kill the Brethren where he stood and blow our cover. We’d have to flee the club and then coming here would have been for nothing.
 

“Are you sure? Because I think I might be more your speed,” a red-head with massive boobs and a skinny waist eyed him covetously then me dismissively. I bristled at the insult even as I silently thanked her for the derailment her exposed breasts covered in nothing but two strips of red tape slapped over the nipples in an X pattern were about to cause. He might have been a Brethren but he was still male, and men no matter their species could never resist a pair of double D’s being paraded in front of their noses and offered up on a silver platter.
 

Exactly as expected, he stepped back from me and turned to her. She offered him her hand and he took it, jerking her into his side and draping an arm possessively around her shoulders. His hand rested on the swell of her breasts as his fingers grazed back and forth over the soft flesh. “You’ve just been given a reprieve, but I’ll come find you after I’m done with her.
 
I would tell you not to go too far, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll track you down either way.” His following smile was of the sadistic sort.
 

Chase stepped up to my side as they departed. “You were about to blow our cover,” I hissed at him.

He folded his arms across his chest in a very me like gesture. “I was.” He stared after the Brethren. “In fact, I still am.” His eyes narrowed and he took a step in his direction.

I grabbed his hand only to stop him. I don’t know how our fingers became laced within each other. It was then that I noticed he’d ditched the drinks. “That’s the only Brethren I saw on this first floor, but I think the rest are on the second floor. He said that’s where the real party is.”

Curiously as we watched the Brethren step into the glass elevator at the back of the club with the red-head, they didn’t go up. It traveled down to a basement level instead.
 

I looked back to Chase. He looked like he was grappling with two conflicting desires.
 

I tugged at his hand moving us in the direction of the staircase that led only up, not down as well. “We’re here for a purpose, remember?”

“Fine,” he mumbled almost like a sulky child who’d been denied having his way.
 

My lips twitched but I fought the urge to laugh at the utter adorableness of his behavior. It might only make him that much more surly.
 

Humans were on the second level too, but so were all of the Brethren that were supposed to be gathering at the club. It was easy to tell which half of the second floor was being used to celebrate and which half was being used to talk strategy. One had Brethrens and humans alike doing a lot more than mixing it up with each other and the other contained only Brethren speaking to each other in hushed tones. As we walked passed the shadowy alcoves and darkly lit booths apart of the celebratory half, soft noises of pleasure commingled with groans of pain and they both had my cheeks heating at the couplings going on that the dim lighting only partially hid from view.
 

Chase stopped in front of an open booth situated on the invisible line that divided the two portions of the room. Adjacent to it, were three hulking Brethren gathered in a booth with death in their eyes that stared straight ahead, as if they were waiting for someone or something to appear before them in answer to their summons. Ancient, undiluted, and immeasurable power oozed off of each of them. They were each more massive, more scarier, and undoubtedly more deadly than any of the Brethren I’d encountered so far. If any one of them had happened upon me that night in Five Points, I doubted I’d still be alive. I wouldn’t have lasted against them a full second. And if Chase had been tracking them…I shuddered and did not finish the thought. Some primal, instinctual part of me knew that it would take more than someone with the abilities of an Archangel to cut them down. It would take an Archangel himself. Perhaps only
the
Archangel himself.
 

Chase slid into the booth and having never let go of my hand, our fingers still laced together, pulled me in beside him. A waitress walked up and asked if we wanted anything to drink. Her presence at our table drew the attention of the three Brethren nearby. They frowned and I thought I realized why. Most of the humans around were coupled with Brethren partners. The few human-human couples scattered about were deep in…activities. Then I looked around me more and realized that
all
of the couples were in the throes of one form of lust or another. Maybe our lack of engagement with each other was what made us stick out rather than our humanity.
 

Chase ordered us two new drinks and the waitress left. Once she was gone he circled his arm around my waist and tugged me in closer to his side. “Play along,” he softly murmured into my ear.
 
“There are curious eyes on us and we need to make this look convincing. The aphrodisiac they’ve scented the air with should have all of the humans up here worked into a mindless frenzy.”
 

“It’s one of their abilities,” he whispered more softly. “It allows them to lull humans into complacency by tempting them with lust. They use it when they want their victims to be willing instead of putting up a fight. In a public space like this, they’re sure to want to stay under the radar.”
 

My mind had only begun to process what playing along meant when his tongue snaked out and teasingly brushed the outside of my ear. “Would you prefer to play the dominant role in this exchange or should I?”

The question sent shivers of anticipation that should not have been present given the situation racing down the length of my body and straight to my core. I couldn’t control the tiny tremble that resulted. “You…you can take the lead,” I breathed out because truthfully, I wouldn’t know what the hell to do. I was so very limited in my experience.