One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 Read online

  “Now, you, on the other hand,” Miri said, waving a hand in the air. “I think you should definitely do a little prowling here. I don’t think I’ve seen a non-hot guy yet.”

  Lily shrugged. She wasn’t much for prowling; she preferred to wait for someone to approach her. Of course, that hadn’t worked out earlier at Club Domino, and the guys here were definitely smoking hot. She looked around appraisingly, noting a blond guy with a great body at the edge of the dance floor closest to her. She nudged Miri with her elbow, pointing discreetly in his direction. “What about that guy?”

  “Oh, he’s a cutie,” Miri said. “Maybe you — nope. Scratch that.” Quick as lightning, she moved to Lily’s other side and said, “Now look at me.”

  Lily looked at her.

  “Now look behind me. Dreamboat at 1:00.”

  Lily shifted her gaze over Miri’s shoulder and almost swallowed her tongue. The guy Miri was talking about, who was standing at the bar watching one of the dancers with a bored expression on his face, was without a doubt the hottest guy Lily had ever seen in real life. His hair was jet-black, the kind of hair that looked almost blue under certain lights, and curled appealingly down to his collar in a way that was casual but managed not to look unkempt. He was broad of shoulder and brow, and could have been used as a picture definition of the words chiseled jaw.

  “Am I drooling?” she asked Miri.

  Miri giggled. “Not yet, but I don’t think anyone would blame you.”

  “No, I think — shit!” Lily snapped her gaze away and turned to face out onto the dance floor again. “He caught me looking.”

  Miri shrugged. “I imagine he’s used to being looked at,” she said pragmatically.

  “He looks familiar.”

  “Yeah, he does,” Miri said. “That’s because he’s Superman-handsome. They all start to look alike after a while. You should ask him to dance.”

  “Have you seen me dance?” Lily asked, shaking her head. “If I wanted him to like me, that would be the last thing I’d do.”

  “Oh my God, Lily,” Miri said, shaking her head. “You dance fine.”

  “I don’t,” Lily said. “It’s like an epileptic on ice skates.”

  Miri sighed and repeated herself. “You dance fine. I’d say you were fishing for compliments if it was anyone but you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’d call you a liar, you weirdo. But it’s not lying if you really believe it, which you shouldn’t. Now go ask him to dance.”

  Lily opened her mouth to give another reason why she couldn’t, but the thing was … she could. “Okay,” she said. Maybe she’d been reading too much XOJane, but damn it, there was no reason she couldn’t go over there and ask him to dance.

  She set her mojito down next to Miri, said, “Watch that,” and headed over to the other side of the bar. Superman-handsome was standing on the opposite side of the square, so it took her a few minutes to make her way through the little knots of people congregating along its length. She used the time to run lines in her head.

  Hey, wanna dance? Not exactly scintillating, but sometimes the old standbys got the job done.

  I couldn’t help noticing you look like Superman. Yeah, no. Even though Miri was right, no. He’d probably heard that, or variations of it, a bunch of times, anyway.

  If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?

  Her own silly thought actually made her have to stifle a giggle, and by that point she was approaching him from behind — and quite an approach it was, because the view was pretty spectacular. She took a moment to appreciate it, which turned out to be a very good thing, as it also gave her a moment to overhear what he and the bartender were talking about.

  “—just saying,” the bartender said. “They toss themselves at you like nothing I’ve ever seen and you just turn them all down. What’s up with that?”

  “It’s boring,” Superman-handsome replied, and he did indeed sound bored, perhaps terminally so. “Have you ever gotten sick to death of something?”

  “Sure I have,” the bartender agreed. “Like, the first Halloween in the new house, we didn’t know the neighborhood, right? And we bought three times as many of those little mini candy bars as we needed. So, of course, for every one I handed out, I ate two. Wound up with a hell of a stomach ache.”

  “Yeah, like that. Too much of a good thing.”

  “And then after the kids were in bed,” the bartender continued, “I banged the hell out of my wife, bellyache and all, because you know what never gets boring, man? That.”

  Superman-handsome just shrugged. “Anything can get boring.”

  The bartender noticed her standing there and said, “Sorry, can I get you something?”

  Lily shook her head, avoided Superman-handsome’s gaze as he turned to look at her over his shoulder.

  “No, sorry,” she said. “I have a drink, back with my friend,” and she backed up, carefully, three or four steps, then turned and fled back to Miri’s side, giggling the whole way.

  Chapter 3

  MIRI ARCHED AN eyebrow when Lily turned back up to claim her drink. “That was fast.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say.” Lily filled her in on the overheard conversation, then chugged the last of her mojito.

  “Are you serious? Are you seriously saying you’re not handsome enough to tempt him?”

  Lily snickered at the Pride and Prejudice reference. “I didn’t actually ask,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to bore him to death. I’d rather dance with that grabby old bastard at Club Domino. At least he didn’t think he was too good for me.”

  “He didn’t —” Miri’s eyes narrowed, then widened in something resembling horror as her gaze shifted over Lily’s shoulder.

  Lily opened her mouth to say something, but cut herself off as she heard a man loudly and deliberately clearing his throat directly behind her.

  Oh, no, she thought, and turned to find — no surprise — Superman-handsome himself, standing there.

  Mortified, she felt an almost overpowering urge to look away, at the floor, at the dancers — anywhere — but she’d be damned if she was going to cower like a mouse in front of this guy, no matter how much of a hottie he was, or how much he might have overheard.

  He smiled, and it gave her actual goosebumps. She could feel the skin on her arms tingling. What he lacked in personality he more than made up for in sex appeal and eye crinkles.

  “Want to dance?” he asked her, though she barely heard him over the music and the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. He really was unbelievably good-looking. Up close, his eyes were a brilliant sapphire blue, an intense color she would have assumed was Photoshopped if she’d seen it in the eyes of a magazine model. Maybe they were contacts? The stubble on his chin was the exact right length to rasp along the sensitive skin of a woman’s neck and his even, white smile made her wonder what it would feel like to have those teeth nibbling along the same area.

  Oh, my God, she thought. Stop thinking about him nibbling you!

  His shoulders were every bit as impressive as she’d thought on first glance, broad and strong-looking and tapered to a trim waist. His black T-shirt was skin tight; she could easily tell there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, which made her a little too aware of her own not-trim waist. She tugged at the hem of her blouse, self-conscious, ready to say yes simply because no guy who looked like had ever asked her to dance before.

  Thinking about that pissed her off all over again. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to dance with you.”

  Oh my God, she thought. Rude. But true. Story of my life.

  Her therapist, Dr. Nussbaum, called it a neurosis. Miri called it a quirk. Whatever one called it, it amounted to the same thing: like George Washington with the cherry tree, Lily could not tell a lie. It made her sweaty and queasy and miserable, and the truth always came tripping off her tongue anyway, so these days she didn’t even bother to try. She could try to avoid a question — and poor M
iri had long since learned never to ask how her ass looked in a dress unless she wanted an honest answer — but she simply could not tell a lie.

  Superman-handsome cocked his head at her and gave her a mild look of surprise, as though she’d turned him down politely instead of sticking her foot in her stupid truth-telling mouth. “I thought maybe that was why you came over to my side of the bar,” he said, pointing vaguely back in the direction he’d come. She felt a little vindicated when he looked as off-balance as she felt.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Come on,” he said. “One dance?” He reached out and took her hand.

  It was the oddest thing but the second he touched her, every intention she’d had of repeating her refusal just drained away. She turned to look at Miri and opened her mouth but no words came out. Miri shrugged, then smiled and nudged her towards the dance floor.

  Superman-handsome took her by the upper arm and drew her onto the dance floor, where they were quickly lost in a sea of dancing bodies.

  For a moment, Lily felt awkward about her own limited dancing abilities — even if Miri was right and she was being too self-deprecating, the fact remained she wasn’t much of a dancer. But then he moved in close and slid his arm around her, placing his hand firmly on the small of her back and pulling her just close enough to smell him and feel the heat of his body, but not quite close enough to be indecent.

  Then he started to move … and it was so far beyond indecent Lily didn’t have a word for it. She didn’t really have any words for anything, because all the blood drained out of her head and rushed to answer the summons his body was sending out. He had some serious moves; she forgot to be self-conscious and let him fit her along the length of his body and move her however he wanted, losing herself in the music and the heat and the vibe that rolled off him like pure power. Somehow, her normal approach to dancing — just try not to move too much, and don’t show off — fell completely away as she followed his lead.

  Turns out I don’t do half-bad … with the right partner, she thought distractedly.

  Superman-handsome tilted his head down and put his mouth entirely too close to her ear. “What’s your name?” he said, so close his lips brushed against her.

  She shivered, then shook it off and replied. “Lily.”

  “Nice,” he said, and again his lips brushed against her, this time just in front of her ear where she was incredibly sensitive. “I’m Sebastian.”

  She had been sort of amused thinking of him as “Superman-handsome,” but Sebastian was nice too.

  “Do you like the club?” he asked, moving against her and then backing off, leaving her unsure again whether he was coming on to her or just dancing.

  “It’s nice,” she said. “Loud, but I like it.”

  “Loud’s the best part,” he said, and pulled back so she could see his face. He was smiling again and her stomach did a little spin when she saw the look in his eye. “I like it loud.”

  Is he making an innuendo? she thought, and smiled nervously. “Do you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, and moved in close to her again, set his lips against her ear — more firmly this time, so she knew it was no accident. Her nerve endings sat up and sang the Hallelujah Chorus. “The louder the better.”

  The tempo of the music changed. It wasn’t much of a change — dance music was dance music was dance music, in her experience — but enough that she felt she’d fulfilled any obligation she had to dance. Time for a graceful exit. This guy was some kind of whack-job — women bored him, until he met one who told him no. Then he wanted her.

  No, wait, she thought. That’s not a whack-job. That’s pretty typical.

  And the worst part was, if she kept dancing with him, he was going to get what he wanted. Because every time his lips brushed along her ear, it roused something primal in her and she felt ready to rub herself against him like a cat in heat. What the hell was going on? This was not her. She didn’t grind herself on perfect strangers — even if they were, literally, perfect.

  She took a deliberate step back, out of his arms. “Well, you’re in luck,” she said, raising her voice to be heard despite the distance between them, “because it’s awfully loud in here. I actually think I’m going to head home; I’m getting a bit of a headache.”

  He looked at her with the same look as before, like she was speaking a foreign language. “You’re … leaving?” he asked, moving a step closer.

  “I believe I am, yes,” she said, moving a matching step back, nearly tripping over another dancer. He leaned forward to help her but she practically jumped to get away from him. Better to keep her nerve endings to herself, all things considered. She turned and hurried back to the bar, and Miri, though she could sense him following her.

  “Hey —” Miri began, but Lily cut her off.

  “I’m going home,” she said shortly.

  Miri raised an eyebrow, but she said nothing.

  Sebastian’s voice spoke behind her. “Let me get you a cab,” he said.

  “I can get my own cab,” Lily said, not looking back at him as she practically shoved Miri off her barstool. “I’m fine, really. Just need a little rest.”

  “Come back another night,” he said, stepping closer. “I want to see you again.”

  “Maybe,” Lily said noncommittally as she pushed Miri in front of her, towards the door.

  He reached out and stopped her with a hand on her arm, and with his other hand he grasped her by the chin, tilted her head up so she had no choice but to look directly into those improbably blue eyes. “Tell me you will,” he said.

  She nodded, struck suddenly dumb, and he leaned down as though he were going to kiss her — Lord, how she wanted him to kiss her! — but at the last moment he shifted and brushed his lips along her jawline. Her whole body shuddered and she felt him smile, but it was an odd, grim little smile.

  Then he turned and headed away through the crowd; within moments he was gone.

  ”What the hell was that?” Miri asked, staring at Lily with her mouth open.

  “I have no idea,” Lily said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 4

  SEBASTIAN SLAMMED INTO the back office in a fine fury, and dropped into the visitor’s chair on the near side of the big mahogany desk. By all rights he should have been on the other side, but —

  “Vivienne, why are you in my chair?”

  His mother swiveled away from the bank of security camera screens and gazed at him coolly. Her eyes were blue today, he noticed — fitting for someone as blonde as she’d chosen to be. “I’m keeping an eye on the club,” she said. “Which is more than I can say for some people in this room.”

  “My actual eyes were in the club,” he retorted. “It doesn’t get any more eyes-on than that.”

  “The only thing you had your eyes on was that chubby little redhead,” she said, crossing her long legs and leaning back in his chair. “I’m surprised at you, Sebastian. Such a non-starter.”

  He bristled. “I don’t recall asking you to vet my selections.”

  “You haven’t,” she said. “Nor would I want to. How … unseemly. Still, I don’t have to be holding auditions to have an opinion, do I?”

  “As if anyone — or anything — could stop you,” he muttered.

  “I’m just saying, she’s a nothing.” Vivienne lifted her chin and all but sniffed with disdain. “I stepped out into the club proper to get a sense of her, and I swear, it was like looking at a black hole.”

  Was she nuts? The girl had been electric with energy; he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes — or his hands — off her. Not that she’d returned the sentiment, which was starting to make a horrible kind of sense now that he knew his mother had gotten herself involved.

  “What did you do to her?” he demanded, too offended to even try to keep his tone civil.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You did something to her.”

  “I did nothing, Sebastian.” She turned h
er attention back to the screens, clearly bored. “Why would I? She’s virtually null.”

  “She turned me down.”

  Vivienne turned her face back to him slowly, eyes wide. “She did what?”

  “I asked her to dance and she said no.” He felt humiliatingly close to stamping his foot like a child. “What did you do to her?”

  “What did you do to her?” she countered. “Because when I saw her she was dancing with you. I thought you weren’t going to be enthralling anyone anymore. It felt like cheating, and all that?”

  He scowled at her. “I just gave her a little pull. To get her to dance.”

  “So, your moral fiber didn’t even outlast the first time you wanted something,” she observed archly. “It’s good to see there’s something of me in you, after all.”

  To that, he said nothing. What was there to say? He found her abhorrent, and didn’t want to be anything like her — but he had compelled Lily, when she said no.

  Still, it had been such a small thing. Just a little pull, through the place where their hands were touching. He hadn’t kept it going, and she’d still been almost purring against him.

  And then … nothing. She’d walked away.

  “Some people are more resistant than others,” Vivienne was saying with a small shrug. “You know this.”

  Yes, he knew that. And yes, he’d met people strong enough to resist his aura, his general presence. But he’d never met anyone who had responded to a pull … and then turned him down.

  He thought of it as a pull because that’s what it felt like. As a child, he’d gone fishing with his father — mostly upstate but once all the way to the mountains of New Hampshire — and he’d learned early how to set a hook and reel a fish in slowly, carefully. One didn’t want to dislodge the hook and lose the fish — and, quite probably, the bait. That was what it felt like, to enthrall someone. Before he’d known what he was doing, even, that’s how he envisioned it.