Page 22 of Heathens

“I owe you for those drinks, too, hmm?” He pulls out more money. Another thousand. “How’s this?”

“That’s… a lot,” I choke out.

There isn’t a whole lot left to the economy these days, and Vampires tend to hang on to their money. It’s why we overcharge for pretty much everything here. Not this guy, though. He throws it away with a smile.

“Can I stay now?”

“What for?” I laugh. “You could buy half the bar with that stack.”

“I like what I’m looking at,” he replies, his eyes sliding down my body.

I don’t know why, but I like the attention more tonight than ever before.

“Why don’t you have a drink with me?” He asks.

I chuckle. If we were in a private feeding room, things would be different, but I don’t drink with patrons at the bar. I prefer to keep some level of distance between me and the customers who want to tear out my heart and bite into it like a pomegranate. But this guy is making things very difficult. It’s the way he’s looking at me, his eyes lingering for just a little too long on my lips, my neck, my tits. I’m used to it, but coming from him, it’s different.

Is it because of what he did to Drake? No, it has to be more than that.

“I don’t drink at work,” I reply curtly, but part of me aches as I cut off the possibility.

He gestures to the drink sitting behind the bar, the rim stained with my lipstick.

“Then what’s that?”

I nibble on the inside of my cheek.

“That’s not mine.”

“I see. Well–”

“Dom!” A voice calls over the music, a man pushing through the crowd to reach him. “We gotta go, dude.”

“Why?”

The brunette vamp leans in close and whispers something in Dom’s ear. He looks over his shoulder toward the feeding room, and his face breaks out into a malicious smile that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Thankfully, his friend holds him back.

“Bad idea. We don’t have any backup.”

Just as my eyes follow theirs, I notice the alarm for the feeding rooms go off. It’s a red blinking light carefully hidden behind the bar so we can deal with any problems quickly and quietly.

A vamp in the back has gone too far.

“Sof! We gotta go!” Ruby calls, jumping the bar and heading straight for the feeding rooms with her gun in hand.

I stare back at the two vampires, my eyes narrowing.

“What did you do?” I growl at Dom’s friend.

“It wasn’t me!” He throws his hands up. “I swear, I left that dudeplentysatisfied. And alive.”

“Pretty quick, though,” Dom replies with a smirk.

His friend sighs.

“It was a handjob, dude, I–” He shakes his head. “Look we’vegotto go! It’s gonna get ugly.”

What the fuck is this guy talking about?

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