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I laughed and poured us each half a tumbler of Belvedere. I liked a girl who could drink. I pushed hers across the bar to her, and she took it from me.
She lifted it for a second, and I did the same before she took a sip.
“Oh,” she sighed. “This is the good stuff.”
“I don’t have anything other than the good stuff,” I said.
“Hmm.”
I studied her as she studied her glass of vodka. She really was beautiful. And powerful. I could feel her magic throbbing like a pulse, even when she wasn’t trying.
“How long have you been in the medical field?” I asked.
“What, you didn’t get your people to find that out about me, too?”
I shook my head. “I’m just making conversation.”
She eyed me before she answered. “I studied to be a doctor, and it’s all I’ve done since I had to make my own way. It’s always been rewarding work.”
“I don’t understand it. You focus on weakness all the time.”
She frowned at me. “Compassion and being able to help isn’t focusing on weakness. It’s strength, being able to look past the bad and find the good in it.”
I thought about it. “I don’t think I could do it.”
“We all have our place in life, I guess.”
She was right about that.
Aster had been like that, too. She’d always wanted to help others, reaching out when they’d been sick or hurt, trying to give them a better life. When I thought of her, a pang shot through my chest, and I looked at Rory. They were very alike in some ways.
What I felt for her was different, though. I felt a pull toward her I’d never felt toward Aster. Aster had been sweet and loving, and that had been endearing, but Rory… she was wildfire. She drew me like a moth to a flame. I was Icarus, and she was the sun, and no matter how much I told myself I was going to get burned, I couldn’t stay away from her.
Some kind of fate drew me to her, and it fucked me up because I wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t get this close to someone—closer than I’d ever been before.
“What?” she asked when I stared at her, and she shifted on her stool.
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
Rory studied me for a moment. “A dangerous thing for a man to do.” A smile played around her lips, and I chuckled.
She was a piece of work, and not just in a fated kind of way. Rory Holden was an anomaly. Hot and funny and powerful. An alpha’s alpha.
What the fuck am I thinking?
Her face sobered.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your loss,” she said.
My chest constricted. “What would you know about my loss?”
“I know what pain looks like. And whatever it is you’re thinking about, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I shook my head. Rory had an intensity about her that made it hard to think.
