“I’m not dressed to go in there. When you said you wanted to go out, I figured you meant one of the thousand casual, somewhat dodgy bars this city has to offer. Not this place.”
“What’s wrong with this place?” He presses, looking from me to the double doors and back.
“I mean, It’s a bit pretentious don’t you think?”
He licks his lips, a smirk pulling at the edges of his mouth.
“What?” I ask.
“I own this place.”
I comb my fingers through my loose waves slowly, pressing my lips together. If invisibility were a vampire ability, I would use it right now, I’d sulk off into the shadows and disappear. Unfortunately for me, I’m fully visible, completely mortified, and still dressed like a college student. Bane smiles as if he can read my mind. He reaches out and places a hand on my hip, looking into my eyes.
“One drink,” he says. “One drink, and if you want to go somewhere else, we can go wherever you want.”
I take a deep breath, exhaling slowly. My eyes shift back to the doors and the hulking man standing beside them.
“One drink,” I repeat, looking down at his hand, still resting on my side. He starts to move away, but I catch him, pulling it back. He smirks and wraps his arm around the back of my waist, leading me into the club.
The place is packed and poorly lit. No offense to Bane, but it’s as bad as every other nightclub I’ve ever been to. Some people are all about clubs, getting dressed up, overpaying for drinks and bumping and grinding on anything that breathes and moves. That’s never been my scene. I may have grown up with more money than anyone in their right mind could spend in a lifetime, but you’d never know it now. These days I’m more of a chucks and whiskey kind of girl. Low-key life, low-key problems, right? At least that was the case until the night I met Bane. Now I guess I have some serious reevaluating to do.
We make our way to a massive bar in the center of the room. As soon as the bartender sees us, she hurries over, leaning across the bar with a huge smile.
“Who’s this?” she asks excitedly, nodding her head toward me with wide eyes.
“One scotch, and…” he ignores her question, tilting his head and signaling for me to order a drink.
“Jack and ginger,” I say, offering the bartender a smile.
“You mean a Jack and Coke?” She says, squinting her eyes.
“Nope. Jack and ginger. Different soda, different drink,” I counter.
“But that’s not a drink,” she insists. Her smile disappears, a crooked pout appearing on her perfectly round face. For a second, I consider asking how old she is. Her full cheeks, pouty lips, and braided pigtails make me doubt that she’s old enough to be working at all, let alone at a bar, inside a club, after ten. But I’m worried she’s the crying type, and I really want that drink. Instead, I try a different approach.
“Ok…so, could you just fill a tall glass about three-quarters of the way with whiskey, and then top it off with ginger ale?”
“Oh! That I can do,” she says. Her smile reappears almost immediately, lighting up her golden-brown eyes. She pulls two glasses from beneath the bar and then turns toward the shelves of liquor bottles on the opposite wall.
A few minutes later, she slides two glasses of amber liquid across the bar. I scoop mine up, taking a sip immediately, thankful she went heavy on the whiskey, and just a hint of ginger ale is detectable on my tongue.
“Thanks, Candy,” Bane says, sliding a few folded twenty-dollar bills toward her. She tucks them into the pocket of her pinstripe black shorts and heads toward a group of men at the other end of the bar.
“Candy, huh?” I smile mischievously.
“She’s a nice girl.”
“How nice?” I ask, combing my hair back with one hand and taking a long sip from my glass.
Bane smirks and raises the glass of scotch to his lips. He leans against the bar, silver eyes smoldering beneath the dim club lights. He finishes the drink and licks his lips. His eyes never leave mine, and I can feel my stomach beginning to flutter with warmth beneath his gaze. He reaches out for my hip, tugging me against his body, and the breath catches in my chest. He slides the empty glass across the sleek bar top and leans down. His stubbled face brushes against my cheek.
“You are the only woman who has my attention,” he whispers. His cool breath tickles my ear, and the intimacy of his words sends a shiver through me. I lean back, looking up into his hooded eyes. He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. The music and the crowd all but disappear, my attention is entirely his. I curl my fingers into the hem of his shirt, the same way I did the night we met. Tugging him toward me until our lips meld together. The kiss is slow and seductive. The connection I worried was a result of alcohol, and venom is still there. Deep and electric, just the way I remembered it.
A tapping sound fills my ears, jolting me out of the moment, back into the noisy club. When we pull apart, Candy is leaning across the bar, patting her palm against its top.
“Trouble in the back, boss,” she says, snapping cinnamon bubblegum between perfectly white teeth.
Bane lets out a heavy sigh. He traces small circles on the skin just under my sweater with his thumb.
“This will only take a minute,” he breathes.
I nod my head and watch as he disappears into the crowd. Then I claim the nearest bar stool and finish what’s left of my drink.
“You want another hon?” Candy asks, beaming at me from across the bar.
“Sure, why not.” You don’t have to twist my arm when it comes to a stiff drink, besides, what else am I going to do to kill the time?
“It’s nice to see him taking some time off. Sure, he’s still here, but he’s spending time with someone a little warmer than the broody bouncers,” she says, placing a fresh glass in front of me.
I look around to make sure Bane hasn’t returned without me noticing. I know it’s wrong, and sneaky, and really wrong, but I’m dying to know more about Bane than he’s willing to share, and something tells me Candy might be the girl with the inside scoop. I inch toward the edge of my stool, leaning closer.
“Tell me something I should know about him, just one thing,” I say, flashing her a warm smile.
“Hmmm. One thing?” she says, pressing her lips into a pout again. Only this time, the expression seems to mean she’s deep in thought. “Oh. I got it. If there’s just one thing, you should know about Bane. He’s basically a saint.”
Her answer catches me off guard. I snort, right as I was swallowing a gulp of my drink, sending me into a coughing fit. Candy hurries out from the bar, patting me on the back several times before she’s convinced I’ll survive. The bar seems calm, and she takes advantage of the opportunity to climb onto the seat beside mine.
“What did you mean, ‘he’s a saint’?”
She props an elbow up on the bar, leaning her temple against her hand.
“I moved here a few years ago,” she begins. “I’m originally from Florida, but I was looking for a different life, so I packed everything I owned into my little red buggy and started driving. I stopped in Philly, planned on staying one or two nights, but I never left. I had one hell of a time finding a job, and when I did land a gig cleaning motel rooms I wasn’t making enough to make ends meet. I sold my car and used the money to offset what I was making, but it didn’t last long. I was walking home from work one day when I noticed this place, the sign is dark during the day, no crowd or doormen. The place was almost empty when I came through those doors, just Bane behind the bar and one girl half asleep on a bar stool.” Candy pauses, smiling to herself before taking a deep breath and continuing her story. “He asked me what I wanted, and I said ‘I’d love a good job, but I’ll settle for a mimosa,’ he stared at me for a minute, you know like he was really struck by what I said. Then, after a beat, he asked me if I could start that night. I said yes, and I’ve been working here for over two years now. I make more in a night here than I was making in a week cleaning rooms. But it’s not just that. He was the first person in this city to really look at me. He saw that I was struggling, and he gave me a real shot to turn things around. He’s a little rough around the edges, and he keeps to himself for the most part, but I’m telling you the man is a saint. Hell, if it weren’t for him, Cam and I would have ended up on the street by the end of that week.”