“Yes, Reaper?” he asked, polishing a glass.
I slammed the cup onto the bar hard enough to make the glass crack. Dariy looked at me with wide eyes, his fear growing before I made a single threat. “When our customers order a drink, serve them the correct one.”
He heard theor elseplainly lining my words. “Got it,” Dariy whispered before his eyes looked at Eva.
I snapped my fingers. “Don’t look at her. Look at me. This girl receives better service than you would give even me. Now make her fucking drink.”
“An amaretto sour, please,” Eva said in her soft, sweet voice. Always an angel, my girl.
When Dariy left to make her drink in a frantic rush, she turned to me, lips pulling down in a frown. “You didn’t have to be mean to him. And youreallydidn’t need to do that. I was fine with the drink I had.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“No,” she began, “but I’m all right with drinking something I don’t like to make someone’s job easier.”
“His job is to make the thing you ask for. If you didn’t get what you asked for, he didn’t do his job.” I stepped into her, inhaling her sweet scent of vanilla and sugar. My favorite combination. “It’s okay to ask for what you want, Evangeline. Demand it, even.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I won’t be doing that.”
“Then I will do it for you.”
A moment later, the bartender passed her the drink, and Eva took a careful sip before nodding.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much.”
I placed my arm on her back, savoring the feeling of her skin under mine, before I realized the skin was slightly raised. Goosebumps. Eva hadgoosebumps.
The club was kept cool on purpose because of the number of people who danced and moved, sweating themselves into a fervor. Plus, liquor always made them warmer. But Eva, who was standing on the edge of the dance floor and barely sipping her drink, was probably freezing. She was built for warmth and sunlight, not dark rooms blasting air conditioning.
“You’re cold,” I said.
She blinked, surprised, then shook her head immediately. “No, I’m fine.”
But I was becoming familiar with the taste of her lies.
I reached out, my hands brushing against her arms. She shivered, skin cool beneath my touch. “Eva,” I said, voice deepening. “Are you cold?”
She sighed, caught. “I… Well, I lent my jacket to Mia. She was freezing in here, so I figured?—”
“You figured that you’d give her yours?”
Of course, she had.
Something ugly twisted in my chest. Eva was always giving pieces of herself away, like they were expendable, like she came second to everyone else in the room when she should have been at the forefront of everyone else’s mind like she was for me. Yet they took and took and took from her, uncaring of how much of her was left.
Well, I wouldn’t let her become hollow. I would make sure she was whole and cared for every day of her life.
I shrugged out of my suit jacket before she could protest and draped it over her shoulders, settling it firmly on her body. My jacket swallowed her, dark fabric against soft skin, my scent clinging to her instantly. And fuck me, my cock hardened at the sight of her in my clothes.
Eva looked up at me, lips parting. “Alek, you don’t have to?—”
“I want to,” I cut in calmly. “And you’re going to let me.”
She stilled, fingers curling into the lapels. A war was going on behind her eyes, and I was afraid she’d make herself the casualty.
“There’s nothing wrong with being kind,” I said quietly, cupping her face and kissing her forehead. “But you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for everyone. Anyone who deserves you won’t ask that of you.”
