Page 9 of Damian’s Conquest

Naomi hadn’t dropped off her cape at the coat check, wanting to have all her belongings with her, particularly her phone so she could take photos of anything that looked suspicious. She’d draped the cape over her shoulders again to avoid men leering at her. She felt uncomfortable enough in the tight outfit and worried that any moment her boobs could pop out of their cage, and she’d have an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. With her cape she attracted much less attention, since many of the men who were in vampire costumes complete with fake fangs also wore capes.

At first, she familiarized herself with all entrances and exits, then scouted out the restrooms. In the same corridor as the restrooms, she found a door marked Employees Only. It wasn’t locked, probably because it also led to a fire exit in the back of the building. She walked through the door and found herself in a much quieter area of the club. Several doors lined the corridor. She opened them one after the other. Only the door to the breakroom was unlocked, the other two were locked. She assumed that they were storage rooms, or perhaps one door led into a basement.

When she reached the end of the corridor, she opened the door leading outside. This was the area where the nosy neighbor had claimed to have seen people with blood on their clothing. Naomi glanced around. Apart from three large dumpsters and cigarette butts on the ground, there wasn’t much to see. She went back inside, and made her way back into the public area of the club. Somehow, she had to figure out how to find out what was behind the locked doors, because if there was really a satanic cult operating in this nightclub, it would be behind a locked door. There had to be keys somewhere.

Naomi let her gaze roam over the crowd, then to the bar, and suddenly recognized one face: Damian LeSang, one of the club’s managers. He stood at the bar, dressed in a vampire costume, and was flirting with a girl with model looks. The young woman threw her head back, sending her long dark hair flying, before placing her hand on Damian’s chest. Damian took her hand and clasped it, pulling her closer to him. By the looks of it, he would be busy for a while. This was the perfect time to check out the manager’s office. It was easy to find. A set of stairs that was partially hidden behind a mirrored partition led up to the room.

To her surprise, the door wasn’t locked but ajar. She peered in through the slit, but the office appeared to be empty. When she pushed the door open wider, she realized why the door wasn’t locked. A small piece of cardboard lay on the ground next to the doorframe, preventing the door from closing fully.

Quickly, she entered the room, removed the piece of cardboard and made sure the door closed. She heard it click shut. There was only low lighting in the large room. She understood why: one wall consisted entirely of glass, or rather, a two-way-mirror that allowed the occupants of the office to watch the goings-on in the club below. If the light in the office was too bright, people on the other side of the two-way mirror would actually be able to see into the office. There was a curtain that could be pulled in front of it, if more light was needed in the office, but privacy was required at the same time.

There was a large desk with a computer, a printer on a shelving unit behind it, several filing cabinets along the wall, a seating area with a coffee table close to the two-way-mirror, a refrigerator as well as a coffeemaker and other odds and ends. Naomi headed for the desk. Maybe the manager kept the keys to the storage rooms in there. She started opening a drawer and rifled through it. When she closed the drawer again, her cape got in the way, and she took it off and laid it over the office chair, before continuing.

She went through all the drawers of the desk, but apart from notepads, files, and writing implements, she found nothing that would have helped her to figure out what was hiding behind the locked doors on the first floor.

Naomi turned around and looked through the shelving unit that housed the printer and a few decorative items, then moved on to the coffee machine. It stood on top of a small refrigerator. She bent down to open it, when she heard a sound behind her and whirled around.

The door fell shut behind Damian LeSang, his black cape with red lining flapping as if a draft had caught it. His fangs peeked from between his lips, and even his eyes shimmered golden. She hadn’t noticed the color of his eyes when she’d seen him from afar.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

The timbre of his voice reverberated in her chest, and she let out a tiny gasp.

Fuck! What now? He’d caught her snooping around in his office. How was she going to get out of this mess? Why hadn’t he continued flirting with that skinny model when she’d looked like she’d wanted to jump his bones right there at the bar?

“I asked who you are and what you’re doing in my office,” he repeated, his eyes narrowing as he took a few more steps toward her.

“Uhm, uh… I… I’m Naomi,” she said, stalling. Fuck, what now?

“That’s only a partial answer.”

He looked like somebody who had ways of always getting answers to his questions. She had to come up with something, anything.

“I’m here on a dare.”

He tilted his head to the side, but didn’t say anything.

“My… my girlfriends said I wouldn’t have the guts to go up to you and kiss you… And I, uhm, I told them I would,” she lied. Her entire body heated, and her palms were sweaty. She wasn’t good at this, at making up stories. That’s why she was a reporter and not a fiction writer. “But I see now that it was a really stupid idea. I mean, you’re clearly somebody who can have any kind of woman, a model, a supermodel even. So I’d better leave. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t even have tried.”

She tried to walk past him, but he held out his arm, blocking her.

“A kiss? You came here for a kiss?” He raised his eyebrows, while he looked her up and down, before his gaze settled on her cleavage.

“Yeah, but, as I said, it was a really bad idea. I’m just gonna tell my girlfriends that the bet is off.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to lose a bet.”

Naomi took a step away from him, but he put his hand on her waist and shook his head. She could have easily pulled away, and his hand would have slipped from her, but the way he looked at her, his eyes shimmering even more intensely golden than when he’d entered the office, made her hesitate. When her gaze dropped to his mouth, where his plastic fangs peeked from between his parted lips, her heart suddenly beat faster.

She barely noticed that she stepped closer to him, and that Damian put his arms around her waist, drawing her closer. Her breasts touched his chest, and she heard him suck in an audible breath.

“I think we can do better than just a kiss,” he murmured and lowered his lips to hers.

She didn’t stop him, even though she knew she should. But when she smelled his intoxicating scent, and felt his firm lips capture hers, all inhibitions flew out the proverbial window, and she parted her lips to allow his demanding tongue inside to explore her.

Damian tasted just as good as he smelled and looked. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Her lie had been meant for her to throw him out of her office without suspecting that she’d been snooping around. She’d never in a million years expected that he would actually take her up on her supposed dare. Why, when he could have any woman? She knew for certain that the skinny dark-haired model he’d been flirting with five minutes earlier would have never rejected his advances. So why was he kissing her, and kissing her as if he enjoyed this kiss as much as she did?

And it wasn’t just a kiss. All of a sudden, she felt the floor under her feet gone, and a moment later, Damian was pressing her against a wall, kissing her passionately, while his hands were roaming her torso, his fingers stroking over the exposed flesh of her breasts.