“Maybe,” he hedged, and did his best to give the woman a sultry look. Was that something women wanted from men? Sultry? Whatever. “You see, I have this very handsome friend…”
~*~
Nikita smelled him first; thus was the vampire’s curse. Fresh sweat, bourbon, and his own personal markers. Nikita tensed – he was leaned back against the wall, arms folded, already strung so tight that he hadn’t known it was possible to tense further. He managed, though, as Lanny slipped between two tables and walked up to him with a wide, overdone grin.
“Nik. Dude.” He extended a hand for a fist-bump.
Nikita pretended he didn’t know what that meant, tucking his hands a little deeper into his armpits.
Lanny studied him, a single moment of sharp focus that plainly said, You’re not fooling me, man. Nikita heard it in his head in Lanny’s obnoxious New York accent. Then Lanny glanced over at the hulking George, who stood to Nik’s left. George was a bouncer who, unlike Nik, actually looked the part: six-seven, neckless, bulging with muscles.
“This guy,” Lanny said to him, grinning, jerking a thumb toward Nikita. “Total sourpuss, you know?”
George grunted something noncommittal.
“So, hey, this place is jumping,” Lanny continued, looking up at George–
Looking at him, Nikita suddenly noticed with a start. His dark eyes blown wide, all pupil. The subtle shift of his voice, the dropping into a lower, velvety register, moved across Nikita’s skin unpleasantly, like the buzzing of insects.
“Maybe you should go keep an eye on the dance floor, huh?”
George blinked, and then, slowly, pushed off the wall and shifted away through the crowd, head-and-shoulders above the patrons.
Lanny turned around and slumped back against the wall in the place George had vacated, breathing out a gusty sigh. “Shit. That’s hard. I think I pulled something in my brain.”
Nikita was too disturbed by the realization that Lanny had been practicing to take the obvious joke bait. “You’re getting stronger.” It didn’t leave his mouth as a compliment.
Lanny shrugged with his face and his shoulders. “Alexei’s been showing me some things. Said it might come in useful.” He turned to Nikita, smile wry. “Never know when you might have to storm a castle, you know?”
“Why are you here?” Nikita asked.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have no social skills?”
Nikita turned his head away, faced forward. Beside him, Lanny smelled of Trina, sweat, bourbon…and Sasha. He’d been to the bar first.
Lanny chuckled. “I can smell you getting aggressive. Down, boy. I’m not moving into your territory. I don’t swing that way.”
Nikita growled. A low, threatening, leave-it-alone growl.
But Lanny was an asshole. So.
“If you know what I mean,” Lanny added.
“Everyone always knows what you mean,” Nikita said through his teeth. “Idiot.”
Lanny rolled his eyes, overhead blue neon catching electric in the whites. “Okay, ordinarily, I would humor your raging asshole tendencies. I actually think they’re hilarious. And you tried to fight fucking Dracula with a pocket knife – mad props for that. But this is serious.” He made a face. “Apparently, you’re acting like even more of a raging asshole than usual at home, and seeing Sasha cry is like – well, it’s like looking at a kicked puppy. For real. So whatever’s going on with you, you need to get over it and start being nice to your boy. The world isn’t ready for a crying Sasha.”
The breath left Nikita’s lungs like he’d been punched; it was a familiar feeling at this point. He hadn’t been able to breathe properly in weeks.
Lanny softened, head tipping back against the wall. “What’s going on with you? I don’t care if you hate all of us – you probably do. But what are you doing to the kid?”
Nikita gritted his teeth and glanced away, afraid his face would reveal too much. Even after a hundred years of schooling his features, Sasha-related distress had the ability to strip him bare.
“I have a theory.”
Shut up, Nikita wanted to tell him – meant to tell him – but he couldn’t unlock his jaw and form the words aloud.
“I think, somehow, for some reason, you didn’t realize that the only thing in your whole miserable existence that meant anything was Sasha. And that freaks you out. Because you love him. And you’re thinking, ‘Maybe if I push him away, he can find someone else to get attached to.’ And you think that will make him safer, or better off somehow, or…I dunno. Whatever. I’m not selfless like that, so I’m just spitballing here.
“But I think you know that can’t work out. He’d be miserable, you’d be miserable.”
If Nikita clenched his jaw any tighter, he thought it might crack. Dima had always called him a martyr. He’d said it fondly, usually followed it up with a light smack to the back of his head. And Nikita knew that he was.
Lanny wasn’t wrong, but Nikita wanted to punch him in the face anyway. Maybe because he was right.
“When I first met you guys,” Lanny said, “I thought you were…” He wisely trailed off when Nikita growled. But then: “Are you in denial or something? Or do you really not know that you–”
Before Lanny could finish, and before Nikita could then follow through on the face-punching, the sea of bodies in front of them parted and a woman stepped through. Curves, and a tight dress, and flawless makeup, and a smile that had probably turned the head of every man on her way through the club.
Her eyes moved between the two of them a moment, then settled on Nikita.
She smelled like perfume, fruity cocktails, and, faintly, Sasha.
Black dread filled Nikita’s stomach before she said, “Hi, are you Nikita?”
Nikita didn’t move, so Lanny answered for him: “Yeah, he is.”
Her smile widened a fraction. “I was just talking to your friend at the bar. Sasha.”
Oh shit, oh shit.
“He says you guys might be interested in hanging out later.”
Oh…wait.
You guys. Sasha was always gently steering women Nikita’s way when he was in a bad mood, assuming – sometimes very correctly – that Nikita needed to blow off some steam.
But maybe tonight he wanted to do that together.
Maybe…
“Sure,” Nikita said, surprising himself, and Lanny, too, if the elbow in the ribs was anything to go by. “We get off at two.”
2
Lanny left the club feeling like he hadn’t accomplished what he’d set out to, but he’d tried, and that was what counted, right?
Trina would give him The Look, he knew. Ask him why he hadn’t tried a little harder, expressed himself a little more clearly. “We talked about this, Lanny,” she’d sigh.
As if thoughts of her had summoned her telepathically, his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and answered it with a cheery, “Hey, babe.”
“How badly did you fuck it up?” she asked.
“Hey, excuse you. Why do you assume the worst?”
She didn’t answer; he could envision her face.