“Okay, okay! I’ll do it! Just get off the floor. There is glass everywhere, Tori.”
From behind them, Nolan appeared with a broom and dustpan. “So she can call you Tori? But when I do it, it’s a crime?”
Astoria stood with an icy glare at him. He brought the hand with the dustpan over his heart, shooting her a crooked smile. “That hurts my feelings, Tor.”
“Ugh,” she snapped, stomping her foot once before shoving past him to help Josie with the line of drinks she was pouring. She turned over her shoulder. “Get your cute ass over here, Acelynn. These drinks aren’t going to serve themselves.”
I leaned across the bar top into Acelynn, my hot breath brushing up against the shell of her ear. “You heard her, kitten. Get your cute ass over there and serve me a drink.”
Acelynn turned her head just enough to let her lips skim mine as she replied, voice sugary sweet and lethal, “The only drink I’d serve you is one laced with arsenic.”
“Just how I like them.” I grinned widely at her. “Deadly and beautiful.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
acelynn
The night blurredinto a haze of drink orders and blaring music. By last call, I felt like I could collapse where I stood. Every muscle in my body screamed in protest as I made one final trip between the liquor shelf and the ice bucket. I slid a drink down in front of a nameless man just as Astoria appeared at my side. She had her lip pulled between her teeth, nerves practically radiating off her.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered, almost too quietly to hear her.
I turned, quirking a brow in question and bit back the sarcastic remark as I came upon her pale face.
“I think the only thing I’d kill you for right now is if you told me we were staying open for another hour.” I winked at her, trying to lighten the mood. She began to pick at the skin by her fingernails, causing my brows to furrow at her. “Astoria, what’s up?”
“We…do a last—” The music swallowed her words.
“Huh?”
She sighed, throwing her hands down. “We do a last call dance.”
“Adance?” I asked, my eyes bugging out of my head.
If she thought I was getting up on that bar to make a fool out of myself, she had another think coming. Astoria smiled awkwardly, and I had my answer. I slammed my hands onto the bar top.
“Absolutely not. You’d have to drag me up there kicking and screaming, Astoria Mordred.”
“And the claws have returned,” Kaius’s amused voice called out behind me.
I spun around to find him leaning against the bar, his smile practically glowing under the neon lights. He tapped a finger on the counter, the metal of his Knight’s ring clicking against the wood.
“I guess I was wrong about you, kitten.”
“Wrong about what?” I snapped, angling my body toward him.
“I just figured the girl who came flying into the roundtable without an ounce of fear, and stood up to their king with a mouth that could get her killed, wouldn’t be scared to dance on a bar in front of a crowd that won’t remember it tomorrow,” Kaius said, his eyes sparkling with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. He took a slow sip of his beer and shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”
There was something in his taunts that lit a fire in me. There was no way in hell that I was going to let Kaius think I would back down from a challenge, even if it was over a simple dance on top of his bar. If there was one thing he was going to learn about the true me, it’s that I had a stubborn need to prove myself to others. I turned to Astoria. “Is there choreography involved in this last call dance?”
“Not tonight,” she squealed before grabbing hold of my wrist and dragging me toward the end of the bar. Astoria scrambled up the three steps with practiced ease.
I hesitated for a moment. The knots in my stomach were tightening. My gaze traveled back to where Kaius still stood. Nolan was now talking to him, but his eyes were laser-focused on me. He raised his beer in a mock toast before taking another sip from the bottle. That was the last push I needed to clear the steps and make my appearance on the bar’s platform.
The stage lights were blinding, and I had to squint to get my bearings. Astoria reached out a single hand toward me to beckon me closer to her, hips already swinging to the beat of a remixed pop song. I took a breath, letting the beat of the music fill me with the confidence I was severely lacking. A kaleidoscope of colors spun over the bar top in waves, the wood glowing beneath our feet. Astoria spun me around once, sending me in front of her and closer to Kaius, watching like I was the only thing worth seeing in the room.
“Loosen up,” Astoria shouted over the music. She stepped closer to me, placing her hands on my hips to steer my movements. Her spine pressed against mine as we moved in sync, the crowd erupting with cheers.
A blur of movement to my right caught my eye. The dark-haired girl, who I had learned was named Josie, jumped on the bar a few feet in front of us. Her body swayed with an effortless grace as she threw her head back, hair cascading in wild waves around her shoulders, blue streaks standing out against the dark ink that littered her pale skin as she lost herself to the rhythm. Every roll of her hips was a testament to her way of capturing every eye in this room.
