Dismissing them as carelessly as he summoned them, Dahlia was relieved to be free. She didn’t make it three steps in her black pumps before she felt him breathing down the back of her neck.
“Hold on a minute, Dahlia,” he purred. Devon didn’t touch her, but he didn’t need to. She knew better than to disobey.
Gritting her teeth, she counted her blessings that he was talking to her in the main bar, where servers and bartenders ran around getting everything ready for opening. “Yes, sir?”
“Stick close to me tonight, okay? I want the prettiest woman by my side.” He offered her a slow, sensual smile. It was the same one he’d been giving her for months. Why he still thought it worked on her, she had no idea.
Bracing a hand on the bar behind her, he leaned in as close as he could without touching her. Vampires, like most predators, were picky about scents. But like everything else, they took itto an extreme. A server who smelled like a vampire sold fewer drinks. They hated the scent of each other near their food. It had something to do with the fact that vampire venom was toxic to their own kind, meaning no two people could feed from the same source.
If the bar wanted to sell synth, they needed their servers to smell fresh and unclaimed, which meant Devon had to restrain himself from laying his hands on her.
How long that restraint would last, Dahlia didn’t know. Devon had been slowly but surely encroaching on her life since he took over the bar. He texted her at odd hours, demanded to know who she spent her days off with, and she was pretty sure she’d seen him — or one of his men — outside her apartment building more than once.
All the signs pointed to his patience running out. She just hoped it wouldn’t happen tonight.
“You know I love having you around,” he breathed, too close to her ear, “but I hate seeing you work so hard. When are you going to let me take care of you, baby? If it were up to me, you’d be in my penthouse right now, wanting for nothing.”
Her skin crawled. Like all the creeps who’d come before him, he made it sound like he wanted to take care of her, to save her from a life of drudgery and poverty with his sky-high credit limit and mediocre pussy petting. He didn’t mention what he’d expect in return: her entire life.
If he’d just been after her blood, shemighthave been able to see the appeal in an arrangement, but when vampires fixed on someone, they never settled for something so simple.
Dahlia had seen a lot of bad relationships, but she didn’t need any of their examples to know that letting Devon into her life was a terrible idea. Not that he’d get that far. There was a very real reason she’d stopped dating and it wasn’t just her lack of free time.
Devon was an asshole, but she didn’t want him dead. Yet.
Putting her tray between them like a shield, she slipped away from the bar. “Doors are open. I better get to the lounge.”
Devon let her go with a smug half-smile. “See you there, baby.”
TWO
It wasin her best interest to tune out everything the important guests said. If it wasn’t a drink order, a request for directions to the bathroom, or a shitty compliment that might result in a fat tip, Dahlia let it wash over her in waves.
Anything she learned about the vampire underworld, crime, and politics was strictly involuntary. She’d never admit that she knew the Vance brothers had been dealing in unlisted firearms or that over half the regulars were smugglers, mercenaries, or money launderers — each of them a gristle in the meat grinder known as the vampiric syndicate.
It was important to rinse all that from her brain, or at least appear to have done so, just like she’d been doing since she was a little girl listening to her mother’s friends talk about stealing cars and scamming casinos.
She’d perfected the art of the serene, subdued server. Her eyes stayed down and her expression neutral no matter what was said or done around her. Mostly no one noticed her beyond the passing hungry glance, and the really bad guys weren’t stupid enough to talk about the top tier confidential stuff in front of waitstaff.
Usually.
There’d been one extremely notable exception, but she tried not to think about that night from three years ago too hard.
Unease tightened that knot in her gut again. Not because she vividly recalled the body bag on the floor and the stench of sour blood that rose from its parted zipper, but for a far more foolish reason. The itch to check her phone made her gloved fingers curl around the edge of her tray.
What’s he doing tonight?
Trying to focus without appearing like she waslistening,Dahlia locked her gaze on the back of Devon’s head. A warm breeze ruffled his hair. He was several cups of alcoholic synthblood deep and it showed. He kept trying to make toasts every few minutes, despite the fact that no one else around the table seemed to be in a particularly celebratory mood.
If anything, the atmosphere in the luxurious rooftop lounge was all business.
There were three distinct groups of vampires spread out across the roof. One was headed by a stern-looking old man she’d heard called Mr. Bowan. The other was the security — Devon’s goons and the much more professional-looking people who came with Mr. Bowan.
And of course, there was Devon.
They were waiting on someone, and with every passing minute, Mr. Bowan’s severe expression got darker while Devon got drunker.
She’d been ordered to stand behind Devon and be his personal server. Whenever he snapped his fingers, she ran to get him a new bottle of expensive synth. He always offered one to Mr. Bowan, but the old man hadn’t touched the elegant glass bottle she’d served him when he came in.
