Page 12 of The HalloQueen

“It’s okay if you want to go with him…” I’d never been with a man who liked men, but obviously, I swung both ways and I was raised by east coast liberal lesbians so there wasn't much about sexuality that could shock me.

“Non.” His face slightly hardened and he put his hand around my waist and held my chin, bringing my eyes to him, “tonight is for you.”

I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “do you want to get his number? You don’t owe me anything, it’s okay.” I felt his grip on my waist tighten and he pulled me closer.

“I saidnon, ma chérie. Look,” He turned me and I saw that the guy he’d been talking with had disappeared into the crowd, “I was just talking to him. It was nothing.”

“Do you like men?” I asked bluntly.

“Oui.”

“Do you like women?”

He lowered his brow and gave me a condescending look.

I held my hands up in surrender, “Just making sure we were on the same page.”

He stood from his stool and dropped a fifty on the counter, “want to go for a walk? It’s very loud here. We could go down by the water.”

I bit my bottom lip again in thought but became distracted when he dragged his thumb over my mouth, pulling it free and caressing my cheek. He pulled me to him and pressed his lips to mine, coaxing me to melt against him again. Thomas’ kisses should be illegal, or at least come with an alcohol content warning because they were fucking intoxicating.

I nodded, “Yeah. That would be nice. I do feel like it’s gotten louder in here in the last half hour. Let’s go.”

“Mon coeur?” He took my hand and stopped me from walking forward.

“Yeah, Tommy?”

He gave me a lopsided smirk at the moniker and pulled me into him, going to my ear and whispering, “I may like men, and I may like women, but you,ma chérie, you are something entirely different than anyone I’ve ever found before. You are in a league of your own.”

“So what you’re saying is that you think I’m a nice lady?” I grinned.

He grabbed a handful of my ass and exasperatedly shook his head, “come on,ma chérie, let’s go for that walk.”

6

THOMAS

This woman was incredible. The citrus and ginger scent swirled around her and I was as desperate to claim her as a fish to a shiny lure. Her energy was delectable- bright and genuine. I’m able to lure mortals to me and soothe them through eye contact, but I needed physical touch to harvest their energy. I was hoping that pulling her aura would soothe the primitive beast in me, but once I'd tasted her on the dancefloor I immediately knew that it wasn’t enough.

I needed to taste her, kiss her, fuck her. She had the most powerful aura I’d ever harvested - it was as if someone took an energy drink and plopped it into a red eye, while somehow also wrapping you in lavender so your heart felt soothed instead of like it was going to explode out of your chest… it was indescribable. She fueled me more in those few touches and kisses than the entire store of mortals today. I needed more.

We walked along the water, talking about her business and the launch of her new line she had coming up. I could feel the stress radiating off of her and, while my typical tastes leaned toward happiness and passion, I couldn't help but take her hand in an effort to take that anxiety away.

She sighed and squeezed my hand, “You’re a good listener.”

I tapped slightly at the wall of her mind and took some of the anxiety out. “I’ve had many years of practice. I’ve found that other people are far more interesting than myself.”

Annabel scoffed, “That can’t be true, you’ve traveled the world and owned businesses and immigrated for crying out loud. I can’t imagine leaving everything I know behind to start over like that.”

“You said you moved from Chicago back to here, didn’t you?” I pulled her closer to me so I could release her hand and wrapped my arm around her waist. The more of her I touched, the quicker I could remove her negative feelings.

“Well yeah,” she wiggled closer to me and the feeling of her soft body contouring to mine made me want to purr, “but I didn’t have to learn a new language or anything. Besides, I grew up in Quaker's Wharf, so when I moved from Chicago back to here it was just like coming home. Not like leaving the French Countryside and moving to Boston.”

“I had to leave France. Things there were not going well politically and it seemed more worth the risk to make the journey here than to stay there and potentially lose our lives.”

She looked up at me, “ours?”

“Oui. I told you I was in a long relationship, right?”

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