Page 2 of Branding the Bat

"Lioness," Sero said. Everyone's was. It was the club's universal safe word, the one that stopped everything, no questions, no negotiation. Lady Leo's rule. Sero had never used it. He'd also never needed to. He'd been careful about who he played with, and he'd never gone far enough to feel out of control.

"Good boy." Amani patted the bar in front of him and moved on to the next customer, a thick-necked man who looked like a bull and ordered a cosmopolitan with no apparent irony.

Sero sipped his drink. The bourbon was sharp and warm, smoothed by something sweet, honey, maybe, or brown sugar. It spread through his chest and settled there. He wasn't a bourbonguy. He was a fruit-juice-and-Shirley-Temples guy, which he knew was ridiculous for a grown man, but his body ran on fruit. Bat metabolism. Bourbon hit differently when your usual intake was mango and dried figs.

He drank and he watched.

Trevor wove through the crowd like he was cataloguing it. He'd stop at one group, say something that made them laugh, then drift to the next without committing. A hand on someone's shoulder. A whispered word in someone's ear. Sero tracked the reactions: a flushed face, a bitten lip, a straightening of posture. Trevor left a wake of attention behind him wherever he went, and he seemed to know it. Seemed to enjoy it. There was an arrogance to it that Sero recognized, the confidence of someone who knew exactly how attractive he was and had learned to use it.

There was also, Sero noticed, a duffle bag. Black, nondescript, slung over Trevor's shoulder. He never put it down. Even when he stopped to talk to someone, even when he leaned against a wall with one hip cocked and his head tilted like the most dangerous person in the room was also the most relaxed, the bag stayed with him.

That was interesting.

By the time Trevor made his way back toward the bar, Sero was on his second drink and feeling it. Bourbon really was a bad idea. His head was warm and loose, and the music had gone from pleasant background noise to something he could feel in his teeth. The mask was on the bar next to Amani's discarded vampire fangs, and the whole scene felt appropriately unhinged for Halloween.

Trevor stopped in front of him. Up close, he was even more striking: blue eyes bright against dark lashes, a mouth that looked like it had never said anything boring in its life. The catears swiveled toward Sero again, and this time Trevor's actual eyes followed.

"I'm Trevor," he said.

"Sero." He took another sip. "You're a black cat?"

"Amani's been talking." No annoyance. If anything, he looked pleased. "What are you?"

"A bat."

Trevor's whole face changed. The casual interest sharpened into something specific, something hungry, but not in the usual way. It was closer to the look Sero had seen on scientists in documentaries, right before they discovered something. "I've heard that bats have a high tolerance for pain," Trevor said. He leaned in, close enough that the warmth of his breath danced over Sero’s skin. "Care to test that theory?"

And Sero wanted to say yes. The word was right there, sitting on his tongue like a cherry from one of his Shirley Temples. Trevor was exactly the kind of man who worked for him: lean, confident, a little dangerous, and interested in him specifically rather than generically. The arrogance that had been off-putting from across the room was magnetic up close. Trevor's energy was a low vibration that made his skin prickle.

But then he breathed in, and the word died.

Salt water. Rich dirt. Two distinct scents layered beneath Trevor's own, which was warmer: cedar shavings, maybe, or black tea. Two other men, at minimum. Recent enough that the scents hadn't faded. Trevor had already been with people that night. More than one.

Sero tilted his chin away. The gesture was subtle, instinctive, turning his nose from a scent he didn't want. He'd done it with the pronghorn too, at the end, when the guy had started smelling like the waitress at the diner he claimed he'd never been to. Shifter noses didn't lie. People did.

"Another night, maybe," Sero said. "When you haven't already been so busy."

Trevor pulled back. The sharpness in his eyes flickered, replaced by something harder. He wasn't used to being told no. That was obvious.

"I'm not used to being turned down," Trevor said. Not threatening, more genuinely baffled, as if Sero had been offered a winning lottery ticket and tried to hand it back.

"There's a first time for everything." Sero couldn't help the smirk.

Trevor held his gaze for a beat, then another. Sero could practically see the recalculation happening, the moment where arrogance tried to decide whether to double down or walk away. Trevor chose to walk away, but slowly, as if giving Sero time to change his mind. When Sero didn't, the slow retreat became a stomp. The duffle bag swung against his hip as he disappeared into the crowd without looking back.

Sero turned back to Amani, who was watching from behind the bar with a grin that could only be described as delighted.

"I don't think anyone has turned him down that easily before," Amani said. "You might have hurt his feelings. If he had any."

Sero laughed. In the mirror behind the bar, between the bottles of amber and green, he caught Trevor looking back at him. The cat turned away fast, pretending he'd been looking at something else. The fake ears, however, were still pointed directly at Sero.

"I'm sure he would've been fun," Sero said. "But I like the guys I'm with not to smell like other men while they're screwing me. I don't think that's too much to ask for."

Amani shook his head. "It's not. You should stick around for a bit. Don't run off like you normally do. It's Halloween. There's plenty to see."

"Sure. What the hell." Sero drained the last of his second drink and pushed the empty glass toward Amani. "Give me a Shirley Temple this time, though. That bourbon is going to my head."

"Already?" Amani's eyebrows shot up. "We're switching you to virgin drinks from now on. Consider yourself permanently downgraded."