Maybe Fate: A Novel (New Adult Paranormal Romance) (13 page)

Then
she was gone, sashaying her way through the gyrating masses like she
was a surfer on the waves.

Gripping
the glass, I eyed Nethiun, debating my next sentence carefully. “How
are your eyes, you know, not freaky anymore?”

“
Freaky?”
He mouthed the word, clearly not liking it. “Ah. It seemed
prudent to blend in a bit more, so I simply took note and changed
them.”

Simply
changed them, as if it's so easy. It does help, though, I suppose.
No one will notice how inhuman he is, looking as he does.

Lowering
the drink Becky had given me, I studied him warily. “Asking
why you're here, that'd get me the usual answer I assume.”

“
Correct,”
he replied, grinning that infuriating way of his. “However,
why are
you
here, my dear Gale?” Arching an eyebrow, he looked me up and
down without a hint of subtlety.

The
swath of exposed skin across my chest went hot with my discomfort
under his curious stare. Placing a hand over my smear of cleavage, I
frowned. “That...! Look, it isn't your business. I'm just here
to try and have a good time, okay?”

“
Oh,
it's fine. This is an interesting change of scenery, is all.”
Turning in place, he folded his hands behind his back. “A lot
of different energies here, it's intriguing.”

Intriguing?
Blinking
a few times, I waited for him to look my way again. “Is that a
figure of speech, or can you really feel the energy in here?”

Nethiun
smiled, like I'd asked if the sky was really blue. “Of course,
you wouldn't know.”

“
Wouldn't
know what?”

Tilting
his head down, his breath sliding over my earlobe, he whispered.
“Twaelin like to feed off of human emotions.”

Jumping
backwards, I stared at him in abject horror. “E—excuse
me? You do what now?”

“
Almost
exclusively negative emotions,” he explained, not seeming
bothered by such a clinical admission. “Though the ones in
between, the types that mix, those can be just as good.”

Placing
a hand over my thumping heart, I felt my eyes starting to hurt from
lack of blinking. “You're eating my feelings as we speak?”

Laughing
gently, the blonde man hooked his thumbs in his hip pockets. “Does
that bother you?”

“
Of
course it bothers me!” Remembering the drink in my hand, I
lifted it for a long sip. I could see my fingers shaking,
white-knuckled around the glass. The liquid burned, making it clear
that Becky had succeeded in fooling the bartender about her age.

Nethiun's
smile faded at the edges. “It isn't something you should even
notice. Once those energies leave your being, they might as well not
be yours. Think of it like... shedding skin.”

That
isn't helping the image,
I
thought, disgruntled. “Everything I learn about you bothers me
more and more.”

“
To
be fair,” he said, raising a finger, “you know very
little about me.”

I
couldn't argue that.

Sipping
more of the cold drink, I made a face. “I wish she had just
gotten me soda.”
I
hope this doesn't go to my head.

The
tall man reached out, suggesting he wanted to see the glass. Unsure,
I held it out, giving it to him. “Not a fan of alcohol?”
he asked, sniffing it curiously.

“
Kind
of, mostly I don't like breaking the law. Speaking of which, am I
risking trouble by letting you have that?”

“
Hardly,”
he snorted. “I'm plenty old enough?”

“
How
old are we talking?”

Narrowing
his eyes, he tilted it back and took a demure mouthful. Biting my
tongue, I watched him mill over the flavor. “Oh, around a few
hundred, give or take. Hmn, not terrible.”

Around
a few hundred... somehow, that seems the tamest fact, considering.
Taking
it back with some hesitancy, I made note of where his lips had
touched. “You can taste regular food, then.”

“
Of
course. Why wouldn't I be able to?”

Because
you suck up emotions, apparently,
I
thought to myself. I didn't have the guts to say it out loud. “I
should go find Becky and Ethan.”

His
nod was sharp. “Certainly, let's go.”

“
Oh,
no, you aren't coming.”

His
smirk indicated he knew I couldn't stop him. “And why not?”

Scrubbing
my eyes, smudging the mascara Becky had painted on me, I groaned.
“Because my silly roommate is already giving me enough trouble
tonight.”

Shrugging
into his ears, he stared at me. “So you assume I'll make more
trouble?”

“
Yes!
Of course you will, lord knows she's already got her mind made up
that—guh.” Covering my mouth, a shot a quick, worried
look up at him.

Nethiun
blinked, his mouth twisting into a thin line. “Her mind is
made up about what?”

Shaking
my head, my braid a dangerous weapon that smacked a random guy
behind me in the close quarters, I said nothing.

Slow
as molasses, his lips turned up higher at the edges. “Oh my.
She's really convinced that there's something going on between us,
isn't she?”

Again,
I just shook my head.

Chuckling
for a good long moment, Nethiun slipped around me like smoke in a
breeze. Easily, his arm circled my waist. Again, I regretted the
thin dress.

Shivering,
I was too shocked to fight. He guided me a few steps before I found
my voice. “Hey! W—what are you doing? Nethiun, hey!”

I'd
never had a man touch me like that. Thinking about it, that weird
tall blonde man who was entirely
not
a man, or a human one, anyway, was becoming a lot of my firsts.

This
has to stop.

But
I didn't dig in my heels or argue. In hushed awe, feeling his palm
holding me tight by his side, I followed him back towards Becky.

She
was stuffed like a sausage into a silver casing; bursting out of her
top, grinding her hip against Ethan while he spoke into her ear.

The
instant we arrived, though, those bright gold eyes bounced up at us.
He looked at me, then glared at Nethiun.

It
was a look that, initially, I could have passed off as some weird
machismo stand-off. Even if it didn't fit, even if the very idea
that two men might play a game of chest bumping to win my affection
was so far from my everyday experiences, I still could have
rationalized it away.

It
certainly would have made things much simpler.

My
life didn't like letting anything be easy, not lately.

Liquid
heat roiled in Ethan's eyes, gold shifting to a yellow so crisp it
was like egg yolk. Then I felt it, just as my guts were twisting
with the rising electric charge of perception.

I
couldn't have placed
how
I knew it, just that in my deepest of senses, a place that poked at
the back of my brain in screaming warning... I knew who Ethan was.

“
Are
you alright, Gale?” Becky said, concern flashing across her
face. “You look super pale.”

Nethiun
gave me a small squeeze, enough that it drew me to look up at him.
Nothing in his expression indicated that he knew what I knew, or why
I was ready to start hyperventilating. When he offered me my drink
back, I took it without a peep.

Can
he feel my emotions right now? If he can, he's got to realize all
this awful fear is because of... because of this guy. This guy Becky
is with, how did I not notice it earlier?

How
am I noticing it at all?

Unless
I was wildly mistaken, a fact my intuition seemed to think
impossible, the handsome fellow Becky had dragged to the club was
the same person I'd seen Nethiun fighting last night.

How
do I know this? It doesn't matter, dammit, this is bad! Becky has no
clue how dangerous this guy is, that he isn't even human!

Motioning
at me to drink, Becky unwound herself from Ethan with a grin. “You
two haven't met yet, sorry for Gale being weird and not doing it for
you.”

Lifting
my head, I stared at her in muted disbelief.

“
But,”
she went on, hands grabbing her curved hips tight, “this
strapping young man of mine is Ethan, and this,” she pointed,
giving me a wink that made my belly jump, “is Gale's one and
only, Nethiun.”

My
one and only, holy shit, Becky. You might manage to freak me out
more than the fact two god damn monsters are standing in front of us
without anyone but me knowing.

With
a budding level of coolness, the anger I'd seen in his eyes melting
into something more like forced indifference, Ethan reached out to
shake the blonde's hand. “Nice to see you, Nethiun.”

“
Wonderful
as ever,
Ethan
,”
he replied, teeth flashing blue in the sudden burst of black light.

Oh
god, what do I do? Are they going to start fighting right here? Even
if I'm wrong, and there is NO way I'm wrong about this guy being the
same twaelin as last night, I can just feel the hatred brooding in
the air between them.

Around
us, the speakers blared the rolling beat of a new song. It was loud,
but Becky was louder. “I love this one! Ethan, come dance with
me!”

Ethan
wasn't taking his unblinking gaze off of Nethiun. However, he hadn't
faced the determined wall that was Becky Rivera. Gripping his upper
arm, she tugged him towards the crowd. “Dance with me, please!
Come on!”

The
spell was broken, Ethan turned away from the blonde man and gave
Becky a look of chagrin. “Alright alright, let's go do this.”

Laughing
cheerfully, she melted with him into the wall of dancers.

Beside
me, Nethiun chuckled, his arm still firmly planted on my middle.
Free of the presence of what I was sure was the man who had, last
night, looked at me with such boiling fury, I wrenched away.

Blinking,
the twaelin squinted down at me. I was sure I had to look petrified
still. “That was him.”