Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
He was also sure they’d laugh while disemboweling him, were he ever stupid enough to accept their invitation to “play.”
He made sure the stool he took at the bar was against the plinth at the corner; it protected his back while giving him a view of the entire space. Violence wasn’t welcome at the Boudoir, and those who indulged in it got summarily thrown out and banned for a decade. Harsh, but he’d never seen what would happen should vampires as powerful as the Twins try something.
Better to be prepared.
The two continued to watch him, small smiles on their perfect faces. On any other person, he would’ve called that type of smile smug, but on the Twins, it was just disturbing. Especially when he knew why he interested them. They’d told him.
“You are unlike the others. Unique.” Unblinking black eyes as inhuman as her white twin’s pale gaze. “You were broken, remain partly broken.”
“We usually break things,” the other one had purred, “but you are broken already. We want to see if your bones hurt, if you cry at new hurts.”
Yeah, real sexy talk there.
Fighting off a shiver, he consciously switched his attention to another corner, where a man in a white shirt complete with cravat and snug brown breeches lounged on another old-fashioned settee. His skin was a shade or two paler than Vivek’s, his compact body flawless.
He looked almost normal—until he stared at you and you realized one eye was ice-blue, the other a brown cracked outward with black. It wasn’t the heterochromia that was disturbing, it was the way those eyes didn’t blink except for once every ten minutes.
Vivek had timed it one night.
A woman who Vivek had discovered had been born a long fucking time ago in what was now Cambodia lay with her head in the man’s lap, her black hair silken strands and her gown all air and lightness around her. Her feet were bare where she pushed them against the edge of the settee, her toenails painted a virginal baby pink.
She was . . . doing nothing, just staring vacantly at the ceiling while her companion ran his fingers through her hair. Look without knowing the context and you’d assume she was the merchandise, he the buyer.
The truth was that they were both the merchandise.
That was the thing with the Boudoir—the merchandise was all old vampires who chose this life. No one who worked the private rooms needed to work here. Every single one was ridiculously rich.
Vivek had done the research, and the numbers made his head spin. Turned out if you lived long enough and made a few smart decisions along the way, you could literally burn money every night and still be filthy rich.
That group didn’t, of course, include ordinary staff like Sutrek and the bouncer, both of whom weren’t yet two hundred years old. All patrons of the Boudoir knew that Katrina’s staff was off-limits. No touching. No flirting. Nothing but business.
“Quiet night,” he said to the barkeep after thanking him for the drink. “No other customers?” He’d never been sure about the Twins, but he was fairly certain they were buyers, not sellers.
“Party on an upper floor,” Sutrek murmured, leaning in to chat. The hint of red on the olive brown of his cheeks said he’d fed recently. Probably right before his shift. “Most everyone’s up there. Wild, I hear. Open invite if you want to head on up.”
Vivek shook his head. This was as far as he went in the Boudoir. He was never a customer except when it came to the drinks. What brought him here was . . . he didn’t know. A sense of recklessness? More likely a need to show himself where he could end up if he didn’t get a handle on the part of him that had gone numb a long time ago and that kept whispering ever darker promises to him.
There were no rules here. No one would break down the door to stop consensual violence or bloodletting. Even if it got out of hand. Because the people who worked here were so bored of immortality that risk was the only thing left.
“You’re the strangest customer I have.” The barkeep polished his already spotless bar while giving Vivek a sidelong look out of eyes long and narrow in shape beneath delicate epicanthic folds. “No offense.”
“When have I ever taken offense, Sutrek?” Vivek made a humming sound of contentment at his first sip of the blood. Before his transition, he’d thought drinking blood would be a necessary but nauseating act, but to be a vampire was to be a creature of blood. It was second nature. The rush when it hit the cells, the powerful pump of his heart . . . as good as any sexual experience he’d ever had.
“Powerful vamps can turn on a dime when it comes to emotional reactions.” Leaning muscled arms on the bar, Sutrek nodded subtly at the vampire who was lounging by himself, his long blond hair motionless as it fell to the carpet and his fingers hanging so loosely that he might as well have been dead—except that his eyes were open just a slit. Just enough to watch the Twins.