Hunted By The Others Read Online Free Page A

opening.
    “Alone, are we? You don’t seem like one of the usual crowd. What brings you here tonight?”
    The directness of his question was what caught me. I took a quick sip of my water to hide my indecision. Well, I didn’t think it would hurt too much to tell him the truth. It’d probably work to make him move on to greener pastures.
    “I was hoping to catch the club owner for a few minutes. I would’ve asked one of my friends who works here, but he was busy. Just killing some time until some of the bodies clear out.”
    On closer inspection, I saw he had thick dark hair that hung down to his shoulders and partially obscured equally dark eyes, though in the dim lighting I couldn’t tell if it they were pure black or simply a dark brown. His features were strong, as were those well-defined shoulders and taut, flat stomach I could see through the netted black shirt he wore. Those leather pants seemed painted on, showing equally muscular and painfully well-defined legs. He was, dare I say, devilishly handsome?
    He arched a brow at my answer, his gaze shifting from mine to the cross. It was a brief glance, not lecherous, simply speculative. I flushed a little anyway. Come on, the guy looked at my (albeit small) chest. Also, knowing I was coming to speak to a vamp with the cross on was pretty much blatantly stating that I was either a White Hat or the closest thing to it. Very cliché, and, depending on who you asked, very rude.
    I didn’t mind committing the social faux pas as long as it meant Royce would keep his fangs to himself.
    He surprised me further at his next words. “I can help you with that. Follow me.”

Chapter 5
    Follow a stranger in a vamp-run bar? I hesitated, but only for a moment. Figuring it beat waiting around to try to spot Royce myself or for James to have a spare moment to help me, I did as he asked. As I followed him toward the back of the club, I managed to take note that he looked almost as good from the back as he did from the front. My, my. If these were the sorts of people in Royce’s entourage, maybe I needed to come by more often, if for nothing more than the eye candy. I wondered if the guy was security or vamp chow.
    We weaved through the crowds, working our way to an elevator hidden around a bend I’d never cared enough to explore before. Once inside, he pulled out a key and used it to unlock the button for what I noted was a heretofore-unknown fifth floor. Even in the elevator, I could hear music pounding through, making it seem somehow uncomfortable to start talking just yet. As the elevator “pinged” almost imperceptibly, he reached forward to hold the doors and gestured for me to precede him.
    I stepped into a silent, well-lit hallway with a number of thick mahogany doors leading to what were presumably management offices. It felt like stepping into a different world. The austere design would have looked more at home in a well-to-do law firm than a nightclub. There was no music once the elevator doors slid shut, only the soft burble of water flowing over rocks from a little fountain sitting on a low table.
    The man slid past me and led the way to the last of the doors at the end of the hall. There was no sign to indicate whose office it was. He opened the door, flipped the light switch, and stepped inside.
    It was a pristine white-carpeted, white-walled space, with two chrome-and-leather chairs facing a sleek black desk, and two black leather couches surrounding a gleaming marble table. He gestured for me to sit on one of the couches, which I did, a bit stiffly, holding on to the bottle of water since I didn’t see any coasters and wasn’t about to chance pissing off the vamp by getting spots on his nice, shiny table.
    As I sat, I noticed a little wet bar in one of the corners, with two gleaming chrome barstools set before it. There were no papers on the desk, nothing but a pen, a desk calendar, and a silver paperweight shaped into a little pyramid. No computer? No phone?