Page 1 of Marked by the Demigod

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The clock clicks over to eleven at night, and she's still alone.

Well, not alone alone. The dimly lit bar's still crowded, but hotel bars always have people in them when conventions are in town. Especially conventions as unexciting as the National Convention of Librarian Sciences.

But Aimes is just alone enough that her head throbs a little bit and her shirt tends to the silly side of cleavage.

With another critical glance at the crowd, Aimes turns back to the bar and accidentally catches the bartender's eye. Who of course takes it as an invitation to come schmooze.

"You here with the library group?" Because of course that's his opener.

"It's the most exciting convention I've been to all month." Aimes deadpans, twirling her now-empty champagne glass.

"Another?"

She sits back on the stool, somehow doesn't overbalance. "Sure. Why not."

He turns back away, and she pulls out her phone. No new texts, and definitely no new texts from Rocky.

She still can't believe she dated a guy named Rocky.

She still can't believe she's still hung up on a guy named Rocky.

Which is why she’s decided it'd be a good idea, on the last night of the most scintillatingly boring convention she's ever attended, to see if the hotel bar has anyone worth fucking. Or, if not fucking, at least worth drinking with.

Not that work conventions are usually too much fun. Data adaptation courses for library science was never going to be a life of excitement.

"Another librarian?" Someone slides onto the stool next to her, jarring her out of her thoughts.

"Hardly," she quips back, looking up, blinking with shock.

He grins at her, tall and striking with a shock of dark hair, longer than is in fashion but not too long to be obstructive. His gray eyes seem to sparkle from within, the shade of wet concrete, if that could be a romantic color.

"Me neither, just passing through town. Jake," he extends his hand. His suit cuts close to his shoulders, and he’s slender. Exactly the opposite of Rocky, but in a way that she doesn’t mind at all.

He’s the best dressed person in the bar, and yet, no one is looking at him. It's as if their eyes slide over him, as if they want to look anywhere else.

"I'm here for that convention, but definitely not a librarian." She smiles back, as wide as she can make it, grateful that she isn’t wearing any lipstick to get on her teeth.

"Not that I have anything against books, just...not the crowd I thought I'd be playing with today." He fake shudders, and Aimes takes a second to admire the movement of the close cut fabric. It looks luxurious, and she wants to spread her fingers over it. “Here alone?”

She nods, pushing a curl back so she could get a clearer look at him. He’s pale, his face sharp and defined, like he doesn’t spend too much time outside. "You?"

He hesitates a brief second, and for that second she prays he's not married. “I don’t know many people who’d spend the night in a hotel bar who’d have someone to go home to. What are you drinking?”

“Sparkly. You?” She raises an eyebrow at the champagne glass.

“I was hoping to not spend enough time here to get a drink.” And he looks at her, and his eyes burn deep inside her. Like he can see down into her, see all the secrets and the longing and the loneliness...and that he wants to fuck it.

It’s been a while since someone’s looked at her like that. She had had relationships with people who had never looked at her like that.

Rocky hadn’t, for the last six months of their relationship. Maybe longer. But she didn’t notice.

He shifts ever so closer, a bare heat radiating off of him in the close cut suit. An intoxicating scent envelopes her, a cologne worth more than the hotel rooms at this dinky hotel. She turns towards him, swiveling on the stool.

"I could be convinced." A glimmer of satisfaction - or panic - crosses his face, before it gets smoothed over by a smile.

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