Nathan was a good dancer. With him as a partner, it was easy to feel like I was too. It took less than two songs before my movements smoothed out as I let myself become lost in the music. My body swaying as I threw my head back, my hair spilling down my back as the dance carried me.
Nathan was in front of me, Caroline at my back doing the same. The club goers pressed in around us.
Time slipped past, several songs coming and going before I realized.
To my surprise, I realized I was having fun. The dance floor provided a release for some of the stress and tension that had accumulated. I didn’t have to look back to know Caroline felt the same, her dancing a lot more relaxed than it had been when we started.
Nathan was jumping up and down to the current song, managing to look elegant instead of like the jack in the box he should have resembled.
A short while later Caroline tugged at my elbow while fanning her face.
“It’s hot in here. I think I need a drink of water or something,” she told me with flushed cheeks. A few strands of hair sticking to her neck and face.
It was only then that I realized how dry my mouth had gotten. My body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat while the muscles in my legs and core trembled from exertion.
“Me too,” I said, a little puzzled.
Vampires didn’t typically have to worry about hydration, but right then I’d give my left arm for a gallon of cold water.
“Break time,” Nathan shouted, ushering us toward the bar.
This time I didn’t resist, feeling like I might actually perish unless I got some liquid in me.
Lifting my hair off my neck for relief, I scanned the crowd for Deborah and Anton. A second later, my gaze stopped on Drake and refused to move past him. The hunter leaned against a table and was engaged in conversation with Connor.
Seeing my approach, Drake tipped his chin at me, saying something to the other man. My brother looked at me as Drake walked away, the crowd swallowing him before I could reach them.
My gaze moved from Drake’s back to Connor, a question in it.
Before I could comment, Connor extended a pair of yard drinks toward me and Caroline. Made to hold over a hundred ounces of liquid, their shape was distinctive with a bulbous bottom and long neck that joined the rounded top. There was a strap that we could slide over our necks for ease of carrying.
Caroline made a pleased sound, taking the brightly colored slushie from Connor and sucking on the straw. “Yum. Mango margarita. My favorite.”
“Where did you find these?” I asked, taking a tentative sip of the red one he handed me.
It tasted like the best strawberry margarita I’d ever had.
He nodded toward the entrance, gesturing with his own bright blue yard drink. “I noticed them being sold outside.”
“Where’s mine?” Nathan demanded.
Connor didn’t remove his lips from his straw, simply rolling his eyes toward Nathan, the scathing look in them all the response he needed.
Deborah emerged from the crowd, Anton at her back, sashaying toward us while waving her own drink, this one green, in the air above her head.
I was betting she was the culprit behind Connor’s sudden interest in brightly colored alcoholic concoctions.
Actually, it was an inspired choice. The large volume meant the alcoholic content wasn’t high. I could drink all of it and probably not get drunk. I might throw up from all that sugar, but I’d remember everything afterward.
More and more, I was beginning to like this companion of mine. She was low key wily in that way you had to be when you were always the weakest person in the room.
Nathan’s gaze locked on the drink Anton was sucking from as he joined us. “You too?”
“I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“What do you think?” Deborah asked with a flirtatious edge to her voice that made me wonder what these two had been up to while Caroline and I were dancing with Nathan.
Anton gazed at her from beneath lowered eyelashes. “It’s not bad.”
