His hand on her hip tightened, and he pulled her flush against him. She could feel his body against hers, could smell the whiskey and sweat and the particular musk that immortal males seemed to carry. Her skin crawled everywhere his hands touched.
"Now," he said, his lips close to her ear, "why don't we go somewhere more private? Somewhere we can get to know each other better?"
"The bar's still open," she said desperately. "I can't leave until?—"
"The bar is closed when I say it's closed." He looked over her shoulder at Anil. "Isn't that right, bartender?"
"I—" Anil's voice cracked. "The curfew?—"
"Fuck the curfew." Tarik's hand moved from her hip to her waist, then higher. "We're having a private party. Get lost, human."
Anil didn't move, and for one wild moment, Mattie thought he might actually try to intervene, that he might do something stupid and heroic that would get him killed.
Then his shoulders slumped. "I'll be in the back," he said, not meeting her eyes.
He disappeared through the door behind the bar. The click of it closing was the loneliest sound Mattie had ever heard.
She was alone now. Alone with four immortals and nowhere to run.
Tarik's attention returned to her, his hands roaming with increasing boldness. "Now, where were we?"
"Please." She hated how her voice shook. "Don't do this."
"Don't do what?" His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. "I haven't done anything yet. But I'm going to. And you're going to enjoy it."
She was completely and utterly at his mercy.
And he had none.
23
DIMITRI
As Dimitri pushed the bar door open, his world came to an abrupt stop.
An immortal had Mattie's hair wrapped around his fist, her head wrenched back at a painful angle. His other hand was on her breast, squeezing hard enough that Dimitri could see her wince even from across the room. The immortal's mouth was crushed against hers, and she was struggling—weakly, uselessly, her hands pushing at his chest with all the effectiveness of a moth batting against a wall.
Three other immortals sat at a nearby table, watching like spectators at a show.
Dimitri didn't pause to think.
His hand went into his pocket before his brain caught up, his fingers finding the familiar shape of the syringe he'd filled up this morning with a neurotoxin, the hand of fate prompting him to prepare for just such a scenario. The rubber stopper came off with ease, and he broke into a run.
The immortals at the table glanced up with amused expressions on their hard faces. They didn't see him as a threat. He was human, weak, and harmless.
The immortal assaulting Mattie didn't acknowledge Dimitri until he was close enough to smell the sweat on the guy's big body. He was too preoccupied with his helpless prey to notice or care about the human and the hand holding a syringe until it was plunged into his flesh at the junction of neck and shoulder.
For one crystalline moment, everything was still, and then the immortal tossed Mattie aside like she was a rag doll and spun around with a snarl. His hand went to the spot where the needle had pierced his skin.
"What the fuck?"
Dimitri stopped breathing.
The neurotoxin was supposed to work immediately, dropping the bastard like a stone, but it didn't.
The immortal's face contorted with pain, and a violent twitch ran through his body, making his limbs jerk, but he didn't fall. He didn't collapse into a paralyzed heap the way Dimitri had expected.
He lunged lightning fast, and Dimitri didn't have time to dodge. A meaty hand the size of a frying pan closed around Dimitri's throat and lifted him off his feet.
