asked when he danced his fingers over her left shoulder.
A cold shiver ran over her flesh and skated down her spine.
Lysia flicked her right wrist and hurled him across the room, scattering the crowd and ripping a few shocked gasps from them.
A male further along the bar looked her way.
She froze as her eyes met his, heat pulsing through her, a visceral throb that reached right down to her bones.
The male was handsome, but darkness clung to him, danger that called to her and lured her to him. There was evil in him.
He would know her tongue.
He raised a glass filled with green liquid and tipped his head, causing threads of his silver-white hair to fall and brush his brow. He swept them back and she caught a brief glimpse of tiny horns above his ears. Her belly flipped and heated.
“Kudos for giving Villandry hell,” he said above the thumping music, his deep rumbling voice doing funny things to her insides and turning her knees to rubber.
She presumed Villandry was the name of the vampire now picking himself up off the floor across the busy room. She wasn’t sure what kudos meant though.
Lysia swallowed her trembling heart, slipped off her seat and approached the pale-haired male with all the confidence she could muster when he was staring at her, his jade eyes burning into her body and setting her aflame.
Rousing strange feelings within her.
She halted beside him.
He swivelled to face her, set his drink down on the bar but kept his left hand on the stem of the elegant glass, and raised an eyebrow.
“Why are you naked?”
He held his right hand out and black material appeared in it. He offered it to her.
Lysia took it and stared at it, unsure what to do with it.
The male huffed, released his drink and stood, managing to tower over her despite the fact she was taller than the other females present. He moved closer to her and took the material back, but she didn’t notice it leaving her hands. The heat radiating from his big body washed over her, cocooning her in warmth and strengthening the feelings stirring in the pit of her belly.
She stared down at the strip of cut, hard muscles visible between the armoured plates around his hips and his breastplate. A warrior. Her heart accelerated. Her breathing quickened. She dragged her eyes back up to his face and found he wasn’t looking at her. He busied himself with slipping her arms into the garment he had made for her and she busied herself with memorising every sculpted plane of his face, from his straight nose and strong jaw, to his firm lips as they compressed into a mulish line.
She inched her gaze up higher, to the stunning jade eyes that were focused on their work with an intensity that made her ache inside with a desire to have them locked on hers with the same ferocity.
They shifted to meet hers and then dropped, a fascinating glimmer of shyness in them that lasted only a heartbeat before coldness swept in to wash it away.
He tugged the material closed over her front and tied a belt around her waist, fastening the garment in place.
“There,” he murmured, “now people will stop looking at you funnily, and you can stop looking at me funnily.”
He stepped back, a scowl darkening his striking eyes. She hadn’t been looking at him strangely. She was merely fascinated by him. Now that she was close to him, she could sense the depth of the darkness within him but something else countered it, something she could only describe as good. There was more to the male before her than she had anticipated, and it made the pull she felt towards him grow stronger.
She looked herself over. The sleeves were too long, concealing her hands, and the material reached her ankles. The garment covered all of her, leaving nothing on show. Had that been his intention?
“What do you want?” he said, bringing her focus back to him.
She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Blood.”
He back peddled, almost falling over his seat, a flicker of something dark crossing his