Don’t lie to me, love. It will get you nothing but turned over a spanking bench with a very hot sore ass.
Raven’s eyes turn from bright green to kaleidoscope colors and start swirling. “All right, am I invisible, do my witchy powers mean nothing to the two of you?” she asks with a laugh.
Embry looks at her friend and shows her adorable wide eyes. “Sorry, we were just having a little fun. What did you have to do to convince Master Romano to come out tonight?”
Raven’s head tilts in question. “Absolutely nothing. He’s really social, Embry. He just doesn’t mix business and pleasure when he’s working, which is all the time in Romania. Seriously, I wish there was a way he could work somewhere else. Anywhere else. All we have is constant push and pull trouble with the witches.”
“Because of your aunt?” Embry asks gently.
Raven lets out a huge sigh and downs the rest of the serving size bottle of her wine. “Do you have another one of these for a friendly witch,” she asks me. I reach into the cooled compartment and hand her another bottle after opening it. “I know everyone thinks it’s Auntie Devora, but she has to answer to the high priestess, and she has to make confessions to keep the peace between what the witches want, the vampires need and what’s good for the academy, too. It can’t be easy. She and Romano aren’t in too different of circumstances really. Caught in the middle.”
Raven has proven herself loyal and dedicated to the vampires, and it’s only right that she should feel some sense of loyalty to her aunt, but at some point soon, she may need to take a side because as much as I’d like to think Devora was trying to keep the peace, most of me thinks that’s the farthest thing from her mind.
Especially knowing she knew about Embry and her gramma and let her come into the Mystic Forest, kept her protected, hell almost drawing her in, but exploded when she found out about me. Embry’s got something with the shadow books, and Raven’s on our side or she wouldn’t have stolen them from the witches and brought them to Embry but …
The street is lit up and lined with crowds of people, all standing in line, huddling under their coats, hoping for a chance to get in the most up and coming club in Chicago. Vampires and humans alike. They like what we like when it comes to sex, minus the fangs and maybe a little more.
But that sexual instinct, that primal lust, it’s all the same to all of us and this club offers it all. A regular bar filled with males and females all looking for the same thing, a lounge and dance floor where people can meet and mingle. The red walls, sleek black bar and black shimmering marble floors together with the seductive beat pulsing through the club is only the tip of the iceberg that people see as they walk through the door.
Romano turns from the bar as we walk in, and his eyes latch on to Raven as he closes the distance between the two. I take Embry’s coat and leave it with the coat check along with my own but my eyes don’t leave Embry for a moment. She’s done exactly as I asked, and I know it without asking her or stroking a finger beneath her skirt.
The look in her eyes tells me all I need to know. Embry is more than ready for this night and brings a tease of her own. She’s not just wearing her signature cropped sweater that shows off her dangling navel piercing, she’s wearing an extremely daring purple sweater. The V neck cuts right to the point of her navel and meets that little jewel, exposing the lovely curves of her creamy and voluptuous breasts.
My dick hardens against the inseam of my dress pants. The little seductress is going to learn that teasing me comes with aprice. I lean down and whisper in her ear. “A drink, a dance, and then I’m going to show you what Club Descallia is all about. I’m going to have you on your knees.”
Her purple eyes begin to smoke, turning red around the edges until they’re burning with desire. “Lead the way, vampire,” she says seductively, taking my hand.
18
EMBRY
Everything south clenches as Corvinus settles me in at a table reserved especially for him and his guests. He pulls out the chair at the small round table, and Romano does the same for Raven before the men take a seat. Raven’s eyes circle, all the colors of the kaleidoscope lighting up her orbs as Master Romano places his hand on her nape and draws her close, whispering something in her ear.
I don’t need to look up to know Corvinus is watching me, gazing at the bare skin of my low-cut top because my skin is so hot that I could explode. He leans over while the others are busy. “You like to tease?” he asks huskily in my ear.
That voice and the warmth of his whisper on the sensitive skin of my ear heads straight south. “I love teasing you, vampire. Love it more than you will ever know.”
A topless waitress stops at our table carrying a little white note pad in her hands as she shifts the weight of her seductive hips and looks down at Corvinus with a look that tells me all I need to know. Women don’t look at males like that unless they’ve been personally intimate with them and that’s a fact. I swallow down my jealousy. It’s not like I didn’t know he likes toroam. His billions and good looks almost guarantee he can have any female he wants.
Raven warned me about his past, and I’ve searched the internet and learned even more, but not one of those things warded me off when the sexy-ass vampire wanted to play. And that’s on me, not him.
I give the waitress my best smile as Corvinus orders for the four of us. “Could we have three Descallia Reds and a white wine, please?” he asks.
The bare-breasted waitress with long blonde hair and flaming red lips gets a little too close to Corvinus when she answers his request. My fangs quickly descend, and a low growl comes from my belly and blooms in my chest. “Leave, skank.”
Her eyes go wide and she looks to Corvinus, her bright red lips pursed and fangs showing, but he doesn’t come to her aide or even try to calm her ire. Instead, he places his arm around me and strokes my nape. “The drinks please, Chelise.”
His eyes narrow meeting mine as Chelise walks off in a huff. Raven whispers something to Romano. He stands before Raven. “I’m going to see Raven to the ladies room. We’ll be back soon, but if we’re not back right away, don’t wait.”
Corvinus takes a drink and then places his glass on the table, leaning closer to my ear. “That possessive streak you have just makes my dick hard.”
My whole body is still hot with jealousy, but I’m not telling him that. “If you want to keep the deal, then it’s just me and you for a year, vampire. I’m not into the whole two females for one guy bit, got it?”
Corvinus tries to hide a smile, but the corners of his lips turn up anyway. “Chelise should give you no cause for concern.”
That little smirk just infuriates the hell out of me. “Then why the hell are you smiling, vampire?”
He leans in and draws me close. “Because that possessive streak means you care more than you want me to know.”
