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He was the most level-headed of all the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and when push came to shove, he had a way of making enraged, off-the-chain fighters listen to common sense, even when the knuckleheaded, dagger-handed f-idiots were on the verge of a colossal killing spree—
Jesus,she thought with grim humor. If she was thinking like this? Her mate really was back.
“It’s good to see you after all this time,” Wrath said hoarsely. “Brother mine.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Bathe Nightclub
16th and Market Street
Well, at least they got the memo on the water theme.
As Nalla took another step forward in the wait line, she made it to the start of the LCD screen that ran across the front of the single-story building. Pixels of blue and green undulated through a descent, creating a neon glow that from a distance spelled out B-A-T-H-E. Up close, it was a migraine aura on steroids.
Another step forward.
Blowing out her breath in a cloud, she stamped her cold feet and zipped her parka up a little higher. Ahead of her were three women who had on less clothing than you’d wear to a beach. Behind her, more of the same. Interspersed among all theBathe-ing beauties—har, har—were lean men in snazzy suits that looked like knockoff repros of what Uncle Rehv and Uncle Butch wore on the regular.
With a tilt out of the lineup, she tried to gauge how much farther she had to go. Thirty yards? Maybe more. At least the two muscle mountains at the entrance seemed to be fairly efficient out-and-safe’ing prospective drinkers. They were choosy, though. More were sent packingthan got in, and she glanced down at her blue jeans. If she was allowed to pass, it would be because they decided she was part of the after-hours cleaning crew.
Just as she eased back, a strange sensation went up her spine. Part warning, part… something else.
She twisted her head around. Nothing but human cattle in front of a trough that thumped with music and served up amnesia in a glass with a fruit garnish. Across the street, a Thai restaurant and the cafés on either side of it were closed for the night, so nothing there. Traffic was just a pickup truck and a sedan coming down the—
Her eyes narrowed. From out of the shadows, two men jaywalked right across the intersection, ignoring the traffic light, paying no attention to the vehicles that swerved around them and blew horns. Then again, they weren’t men, they were vampires—and the pair were in an argument with each other, the beautifully dressed one on the left slashing his hand through the air as his mouth spit some obviously choice words, the one on the right ignoring the theatrics.
Shuli. And… Nate.
It was easy to ignore the former. The latter? Harder. Much harder—and she told herself the way she measured the male was because she so rarely saw him out. Even back about ten years ago, when she’d been making more of an effort to socialize, Nate hadn’t made many appearances—and when he had shown up, he’d always stood back from everyone like he was a judge at the asshole Olympics and it was hard for him to decide who was taking home the gold.
He was doing that now. Even as his buddy ranted and raved next to him, Nate’s stare was straight ahead, his stride thrown out as if he had somewhere better to be and all that noise directed at him wasn’t going to slow him down in the slightest.
Her eyes dipped to his shitkickers. And took their time going up his leather-clad legs and his leather-jacketed torso. He was built like all the fighters were, with heavy shoulders triangled onto a lower body that wasalso thick with muscles, and try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the way he moved.
There were a lot of things he could do with all that weight, and killing was only one of them. With the shaved head, and that hard, hawk-like face? He looked like an assassin closing in on his next target…
But maybe he was also a male ready for some rough sex with a partner who liked it that way—
Without warning, Nate stopped in the street and looked down the line at her.
As she sucked in a breath, the quiet sound was like the blare of a car horn—
Oh, wait. That was a car almost mowing him over. Not that he gave a shit. As the front grill of an EV stopped a foot from him, and the driver leaned out of his window to start shouting, all Nate did was meet Nalla’s stare.
Not that he seemed any more happy to see her. Did he ever smile?
And now that she could see him like he was on center stage, he was bruised and battered as if he’d already been fighting—Shuli, too. The other male had blood on his fancy suit.
Somewhere, off in the very far distance, she heard the women directly in front of her laugh at some joke, and behind her, there was a whispered curse that may have been a shout. But her ears weren’t working right as her eyes took up all of the bandwidth of her consciousness—
Shuli stepped in to the pissed-off driver, all kinds of calm-down motions making the male look like he was trying to fan out a fire with his palms. Which she supposed he was. And then he hooked an arm through Nate’s and dragged him away.
With the departure, she felt as though something vital in her had been unplugged, and as a sagging occurred, she realized… that she didn’t like the guy.
Because she didn’t like how she felt when she was around him.
Rubbing her face and trying to convince herself that nothing had justhappened, she hated the way she had to recalibrate back to normal and resented the hell out of the male—and herself. Who was he to her? Nobody. And she sure as shit wasn’t the kind of female who lost her mind and her own life at the foot of some black-leather’d fighter she didn’t know and didn’t give a crap about.
