Chapter 2

Two

You're dangerous, Beatrice.

I could almost hear my father's voice in my head, stern, flat, and unmovable. If you go out there, among them, before you're ready, you could get someone killed. He never gave me an explanation beyond that, and never explained when I would be considered ready.

It was always no; we stay away from them.

I had to admit, the first time I snuck out of the mansion, I felt a little fear. The way my parents had set things up, I was convinced I would accidentally turn someone to dust if I so much as bumped shoulders with them. It took a few trips and crashing almost face first into someone busily looking at their phone, to get that concern out of my head.

Even now, standing in this frigid line, with people pressing around us on all sides, I still felt mildly anxious. They had no idea how different our lives were, and maybe they were lucky for it.

They also had no idea that there were two of us in the line with them, and with this being Max's first outing I could only imagine he was struggling with the same thoughts I once had.

We were surrounded by people. Many of them smelled good and looked good. For a few of them, After Dark wasn't their first club of the night. Some of them were already well on the way to being drunk, shouting their talking points at the person standing next to them because they had limited control over their voices.

I watched them, listened to them, overheard their conversations. Max was doing the same, only his eyes were a lot wider than mine were. He looked almost afraid to move, like a deer in headlights. It fell to me to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.

I placed my hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "This is just a little surreal."

"They're just people, Max."

"I know, but mom and dad?—"

"—they like to exaggerate so they can keep us under their thumbs. Family above all, and all that."

"Family does come above all else."

"Right," I nodded, "Exactly. That's why I'm here with you right now, on your birthday, trying to give you the best night of your life."

A drunk girl staggered and bumped into Max. He got a little jostled, but he managed to stay upright. When the girl spilled all over him and laughed her apology, he looked like he didn't know what to do with himself. When she ran her hand over his stubbly beard and called him cute, it was like he was screaming help me with his eyes.

I left him to it, grinning at him while the girl righted herself and went back to her group of equally drunk friends.

"I think she likes you," I said.

"I think she may have thrown up on me a little," he said.

I shook my head. "We need to get you to loosen up, but this line is taking forever."

There was one bouncer at the front door, and a ton of people between me and him. At this rate, we wouldn't get in until the wee hours, and we needed to be back at the mansion way before then if we wanted our little excursion to remain undetected.

I scanned the faces of the people around me. No one was paying me much attention except Max.

"Oh no," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I know that look."

"What look?"

"The—I'm about to use magic—look," he hissed. "You can't! There's too many people around."

"I have an idea."

"An idea for what? We can just wait in line, Bee."

"Just follow my lead."

I grabbed Max's hand and pulled us both out of the line. Confidently, I walked right past it, heading straight for the bouncer with the tablet by the door. I ran a hand through my hair, shook it out, and roused the power inside of myself to attract his attention. In an instant, his eyes were on me, watching me as I made my way toward him.

I wanted him to look at me and believe he was about to come face to face with someone important, someone he probably shouldn't put too many obstacles in front of. It was a simple bit of magic, nothing fancy, or terribly overt, but the presence of so many humans made things a little complicated.

I wasn't sure why, but the more humans were around, the harder it was for a mage to use their magic. There were a few factors involved, namely how loud or how covert a piece of magic was. If you could keep your spells subtle, and quiet, they generally worked, even in big crowds.

Influencing the minds of a handful of people wasn't too difficult—hurling a fireball down a busy main street was more problematic.

Lucky for me, I wasn't the kind of mage interested in throwing fireballs.

This kind of magic was way more my speed.

Even with the heightened attention Max and I were getting for leaving the crowd and walking toward the door, my magic managed to take hold. I saw the bouncer's eyes flash purple for an instant, as if a beam of light had shone past them.

When I got to him, he was staring at me, his mouth slightly agape.

"You know who I am," I told him, glancing at the two couples standing at the front of the line. They looked about ready to kick off and complain, but the same purple hue igniting the bouncer's eyes began to glow behind theirs. My spell was working better than I had intended it to.

The bouncer nodded. "I absolutely know who you are… how, uh, how are you?"

"Doing great, thanks! We don't have to wait in line, though, do we?"

"Oh, uh, no. Not you. Come on in."

The bouncer stepped aside, unhooked the velvet rope, and let Max and I through. The people in line didn't complain—they just watched, enraptured; awed. I kept my eyes front and center as Max and I stepped through the club doors. He was about to tell me off for using magic in front of people, but the music was already too loud for me to hear him.

"What?!" I yelled at him.

He said something about crazy, and trouble. I smiled at him, threw my arm across his shoulders, and dragged him to the bar. The music in here was loud, the air thick with sweat, cologne, and perfume. Lights strobed and glided over the mess of writhing bodies dancing beneath them.

In here, I felt a little bit less like a sore thumb than I did out there. In here, I could melt away into the crowd, let it embrace me, and absorb me. By the time we got to the bar and ordered our first drinks, Max had already relaxed. I even caught him bobbing his head to the beat once or twice.

The barman mixed our drinks in front of us. It was bright, and colorful, and fruity, and each came in a fishbowl. Max stared at his while the barman finished it off by plopping an umbrella inside it. He had a look on his face of, what am I supposed to do with this?

Against his ear, I yelled, "Happy birthday. Drink up!"

The rest was a bit of a blur… at least until he finally showed up. Not only was Max well on the way to being legless after only one drink, but he had also reunited with the girl who had bumped into him outside. She had a hand on his lap, and he was talking her ear off about something or other.

I was lucky Max was busy with his spontaneous date… otherwise I wasn't sure how I could've given him the proper attention.

Even in this crowded club, despite the darkness, and the haze in the air, I had noticed his entrance. I had felt it. He had come alone, like he always did, and he had searched for me from the moment he'd entered the club—like he always did. I was the sole reason he was here, and there was something incredibly exciting about that.

A final glance over at Max… he was lip-locked with that girl, and that meant my work here was done.

I stole away from the bar and carefully chose my path to meet him on the dance floor. He was taller than I was—easily six foot—and muscular without being obnoxious about it.

Approaching him made my heart race, and my chest tighten. His presence alone was enough to excite me and disarm me like nothing and no one else could, and that was what made him so dangerous.

Gingerly I walked up to him, locking eyes with him; eyes that flashed, and shone, and sparkled whenever the overhead lights hit them. I watched his throat work, saw his tongue dart past his lips to whet them. I knew what he wanted, and I wanted it too.

That slight movement of his tongue was all I needed, though; our cue to collide like stars falling into each other. He wrapped one hand around my waist ran the other through my hair. I slid my hands into his shirt to feel his skin underneath and pressed my lips against his, drinking deeply of his mouth and sucking in a breath of air at the same time, kissing him like my life depended on it.

He wrapped his fist around my hair and tugged on it.

I dragged my nails across his back hard enough to draw blood.

He moaned into my mouth.

I bit his lower lip.

It wasn't long before we were dragging each other away from the dance floor, past the club's darkest corners, and racing into the bathroom. I didn't care which bathroom we went into or who was inside, and neither did he. We collapsed into one of the stalls, and while I worked at his belt buckle, he slid his hand up my skirt and between my legs.

"You came prepared this time," he groaned into my mouth.

"Shut up," I sighed, as his fingertips worried their way into my already soaked underwear.

In here, we didn't have much time, but we didn't need time; what we needed was to fuck like animals, because if we didn't do it right here, right now, we were both about to die. That's what it felt like, anyway. The urgency. That dangerous need.

"Don't take them off," I whispered against his lower lip. "Slide them aside."

He moaned as I finally got his zipper down and held him in my hand. He was warm, and hard, and throbbing; ready.

I sat on top of him, sliding onto him without a moment of preparation. I didn't need it, and neither did he. The exultant sound he made as he slid into me set my skin alight with pleasure. He slid his hands into my t-shirt, pulled it over my head, and tossed it aside. I wrapped my hand around his mouth, pressed my cheek against his, and sighed into his ear as I found my rhythm.

There was nothing glamorous about fucking in a nightclub bathroom, but there was something primal about it. Maybe it was the musky, heady aromas in the air, or the cracked tiles, or the writing on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Everything about this was about as wrong as it was right.

I heard someone else come into the bathroom while I was riding him. Whoever it was started instantly giggling and whispering. This wasn't their first rodeo, and it wasn't ours, either.

He shoved his foot against the stall door to keep it closed while I bucked, and panted, and loved every second of what was happening right now. I was so close, so close, the friction of our hips pressing together almost enough to bring me to the point of climax, if only he could—I felt him tighten, heard his breath hitch, and when he grabbed my hips and held me firmly against him, I knew, he was done.

I gasped against his ear as he let loose.

Tingles.

There was a moment, then, when I worried I wasn't going to get there, but then he kissed me, and he worked his hand into the warm space between us. With his fingers he brought me to climax. It was quick—I was already almost there—and when I was done, he kissed me again.

"Good?" he panted against my mouth.

"Too good," I said.

"There's no such thing."

"There is," I whispered, "That's why we can't do this again."