CHAPTER NINE
What is this place? Acan had stayed at the gym all night—all right, two hours—okay, okay, an hour and forty-five minutes—but he felt exhausted. Last evening he did more exercise than he had in seventy thousand years, and he was in no mood for stupid games. Okay, also not entirely accurate. He was very much in the mood to put on his tequila shot-glass belt and do the rounds at a retirement home, as was his custom on weekends. If anyone needed to have fun and live a little, it was the elderly, who understood their days were numbered. He also found the older humans to be…well, comforting. He liked that when they smiled, they meant it. When they lectured, it came from heartfelt experience, and when they told you to make every minute count, they said it out of love.
Old people rock. This place does not. Acan looked around the stuffy salon filled with snobby-looking women and wondered why the hell he’d allowed Jill to send him here. Couldn’t he get a trim at the zoo with the llamas like he normally did? Yes, like old people, llamas were cool to hang around. They didn’t judge and found pleasure in the simple things in life. Hay. Chewing. Making fun of zebras. Simple.
“Sir, may I, like, help you?” said a young female with spiked blue hair, standing behind the reception counter, her brown eyes wide with lust.
Instinctively, Acan looked down to ensure that he indeed wore pants. Check! No need for help there. “Yes, I have an appointment to trim my hair.”
The young woman looked over his entire body like a squirrel eyeing a tree it wanted to climb in search of nuts. “We can totally help you with that. What’s your name?”
“Acan.”
She scanned her appointment book and made a pouty frown. “Oh no. I’m not seeing ya.”
Dammit. Jill likely put him under his nickname. “Try Belch.”
“Belch?” She giggled and then looked at her magic book. “Here you are. Under ‘Mr. Belch, God of Wine.’” She looked up at him. “OMG. You a celebrity? ’Cause that’s some name, mister.” She winked at him. “It screams fun. So do you.”
Sure. He was a celebrity in a way, but not in the manner she meant. He was more like toilet paper—people needed it but only noticed its importance when lacking. When fun went missing in their world, the journey of being alive felt more like a burden. Which was why he needed to get back to work as soon as possible. Duty calls.
“Haircut. Now,” he ordered. “And you must cease the flirtation. I’m on vacation.”
She gave him a confused look. “Uh…right this way.”
He followed her into the depths of the chemical-scented girly jungle and took a seat in the chair, facing the mirror. The women—customers and stylists alike—gawked and drooled behind him.
“Linda will be right with you,” said the blue-haired girl. “Can I get you water or coffee? Or meee?”
He tried to hide his impatience. This hair-grooming business was seriously annoying. “No. Thank you,” he said dryly. “I am looking for the perfect woman to dedicate my existence to, and though it pains me to say it, you are not her.”
“Okay. If you change your mind.” She sighed and slinked away.
“Good morning, I’m Linda. Jill said you needed a…” The Asian woman, with lovely hazel eyes and short ringlet hair, stopped in her tracks and stared at his face in the mirror. “Oh, dear god of hotness.”
“No. I am not the God of Hotness.” How ridiculous. No such god existed. Of course, he could not disclose he truly was a god or what his call signs were: Mr. Decap and Mr. Goodtime.
The woman shook her head from side to side, trying to get a hold of herself. “Uh-uh. All right. You’re here for a trim and deep-conditioning treatment, right?”
“Yes. You must make my hair soft and silky so that it beckons a woman’s attention and fills her with the irresistible urge to run her fingers through it as I make passionate love to her body with my enormous cock.”
The woman’s mouth fell open, and she wobbled to the side.
“Are you all right, Linda?” he asked. “Because you do not look all right.”
She swallowed hard. “Um. Yeah. I’m, uh…uh…really—phew! Is it hot in here?”
He understood that humans became a little wild in his presence, but he never recalled them swooning.
“Gods, this was a dumb idea. I should have gone to the llama man at the zoo.” Acan stood to leave, not wanting to waste another moment.
“No. Please, I’m sorry,” Linda said. “I’m not sure what came over me. I’ll have you done in twenty minutes, thirty tops.” She held out a black poncho-looking thing. “Let’s get this on you.” She glanced at the chair, urging him to retake his seat.
“What is the poncho for?” He hoped it did not have a picture of unicorns, clowns, Buck Rogers, or Hannibal on the front, as Cimil’s often did. Her poncho collection was getting out of control.
“It’s to keep the hair off your clothes.” Reluctantly, he sat back in the chair, and the woman quickly fastened the annoying cloth around his neck. She went to work, dousing his hair with spritzes of bottled water and then applying some other stuff. With a giant comb, hand a trembling mess, she raked through his hair. The tangles came out quickly with her magic solution, and she then moved to the trim.
“Not too much,” he warned. “The hair is a symbol of my sexual prowess.” He’d worn his hair short many times in his existence after accidentally lighting it on fire; however, he liked it long the best. As the official party god, his look needed to scream “reckless abandon.”
“No-no-no, sir. Ju-just the ends,” the poor woman said with an unsteady voice. “And might I add how incredible you sme-smell.”
Hell. She looked like she might pass out at any second. Honestly, he did not comprehend why women were suddenly behaving so strange around him.
After about ten minutes, Linda beamed at him from behind, staring at his face in the mirror. “All done. Now let’s ge-get that power conditioner rinsed out.”
Eager to get the hell on with his day, he stood from the chair and accidentally snagged the poncho on something. It fell to the ground and wet sticky hair dropped on his white shirt.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry!” She began trying to swipe the bits from his shoulders.
“Do not concern yourself.” He whipped off his shirt and then quickly witnessed Linda fainting backwards.
“What in the gods’ names?” He crouched to help her while the rest of the women in the salon simply stood there staring at him. “What’s the matter with you women? She needs assistance. Call those ambulance people.”
Nobody moved.
“Now!” he barked with his deep, authoritative voice, jolting them back to life. He looked down at Linda and inspected her head. He saw no blood.
“Linda, can you hear me?” He tapped her cheek, and she began moaning—a good sign because it meant she had not expired.
“So fucking hot,” she mumbled.
Acan sighed with a deep grumble. What was getting into these female humans?
Margarita was in the back room of the salon, getting the hair dye rinsed out, when one of the stylists rushed in. “Kay! Linda passed out.”
Margarita’s stylist, Kay—a woman in her sixties with hot pink hair—stopped rinsing.
“What happened?” Kay asked.
“This guy just came in and—” the woman shook her head from side to side “—I don’t know. But you should see him. He’s so damned hot. I mean hot, hot.”
What in the world? A woman had passed out in the front of the salon and this gal was fawning over a man?
Outraged, Margarita sat up, took the towel from her shoulders, and wrapped it around her dripping wet hair. “Did you call 9-1-1?” she asked.
“I don’t know, actually.”
“Well, go make sure!” Margarita grumbled a few choice words and got up, heading toward the front of the salon. She knew basic CPR and first aid—a necessity when one owned a gym and people got hurt or overexerted themselves from time to time.
Margarita turned the corner and spotted a very large, shirtless man hunched over a woman lying on the floor. His back was pure muscle.
The women in the room sort of just stood there staring at him as if he were the last man on Earth.
Seriously, people?
“Linda,” the man said in a hypnotically deep, sexy voice to the woman on the floor, “can you hear me?”
That voice sounds familiar. Where do I know it? As she approached, the man came into view. First, she noticed those eyes. Deep, penetrating, and turquoise like the Caribbean. Then she noticed those lips, the bottom one just the right amount of fullness to give a woman the urge to suck on it.
Wait. That face. It’s that Belch guy. But as that thought reached her mind, “Belch” stood, her gaze following his face as he rose up, up, up. Then her eyes went down, down, down.
Crap. Look at those abs. The grooves were so deep and perfectly formed that they almost looked fake. And the pecs were two smooth mounds of chiseled muscle. His arms were just right. Not overly meaty, but naturally strong and swelling with power.
Perfect. He’s too perfect. There wasn’t a fake, overly done thing about him. One hundred percent man. One hundred percent ripped. One hundred percent naturally gorgeous. She blinked several times, wondering if she’d been the one to fall and hit her head. In all her years of running a gym that boasted some of the most sculpted bodies in the world, she’d never seen a guy like this.
But he looks like…no! It can’t be! The Belch she knew had a beer belly, flabby arms, and perma-bed-head. This guy was not that. This guy was a god. A sex god.
“Ohmygod!” She covered her mouth with a gasp. “You’re Belch’s brother, aren’t you?”
He frowned down at her as if insulted.
Why would that make him angry? Unless he wasn’t that guy’s brother. No. No way. Their faces are identical.
Maybe they didn’t get along. Wouldn’t surprise her. That Belch guy was a piece of work.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It must be difficult having a brother like that and always having to apologize for him.”
The man continued frowning.
“What? Did I say something wrong?” she asked. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve bumped into him a couple of times—totally random and—”
“What is your name, woman?”
Woman? How very antediluvian. “Margarita.”
“Well, Margarita,” his turquoise eyes twitched with irritation, “this woman is injured and in need of assistance. Are you going to help or simply stand there?”
He was right. She’d been blubbering over this man like all of the other women in the salon.
Without another word, Margarita lowered herself to the woman’s side. She was conscious, but clearly in pain and in need of attention. “Can you hear me…?”
“Linda. Her name is Linda,” he said.
“Linda, the paramedics are on the way. Can you talk? Can you tell me where it hurts?”
Slowly, the woman raised her arm and pointed at Belch’s brother. “So hot,” Linda gasped.