THE MUSIC CUT OFF AND the lights brightened, illuminating the kerfuffle that had erupted.
An enormous Krinar male with a completely shaved head and striking greenish-yellow eyes was holding a tall, clean-cut-looking young human man up by his throat with one hand. As huge as Vair was, this bald K looked even bigger—maybe a few inches taller and packing another thirty pounds of muscle.
If I had seen him on the street in broad daylight carrying a bag of groceries, I might’ve been alarmed enough to walk briskly in the opposite direction. As it was, seeing him holding a struggling human being in the air with ease was positively terrifying.
“Who the cusack let this guy in here again?” the scary K demanded. His eyes—more yellow than green now—casually scanned the room in accusation before returning to regard the man in his grasp with renewed disdain. “Last call. Any Krinar want to claim him?”
Those stark yellow eyes, set amid perfectly symmetrical, sharp features, and so pronounced against his deeply tanned skin, reflected zero compassion for the victim in his grasp who was turning purple for lack of air, clutching desperately at the massive hand around his throat.
And I mean zero.
I tugged Jay’s elbow. “We have to do something.”
“I know, but what? Get ourselves killed?”
“Tauce won’t kill him,” Zyrnase reassured us, his voice devoid of concern.
That was Tauce? The K whom Vair had elected to “look after us” was this crazy-eyed killer alien choking a man to death in the middle of a dance floor?
Thrown to the wolves, indeed.
“Are you shitting me?” Jay exclaimed. “That’s the guy she’s supposed to interview? Alone? Where’s Vair? I wanna talk to him.”
“There’s no need for that. Tauce!” At Zyrnase’s sharply spoken call, the giant K let the poor human man drop to the floor in a semiconscious heap.
“Don’t come back,” Tauce coldly told the man, who was now twitching and coughing on the ground and holding his throat as he struggled to take in air again.
Those three words held the promise of certain death should the man be foolish enough to come back to Vair’s x-club.
But why?
What on earth had the man done? He didn’t look much older than early to mid-twenties. And he was obviously no match for a K. What could possibly have gone down to warrant such treatment?
Pushing my fear of the yellow-eyed K aside, I took a step forward as Jay and Zyrnase proceeded to argue over Vair’s choice of babysitter and interviewee for me.
Other Ks came and removed the human man from the dance floor, the lights dimmed, and the music resumed as Tauce stomped off, heading over to the bar, a disgusted, angry look still etched on his face. Though it occurred to me it might’ve been his normal expression.
My heart fluttered in my throat as I took a second step, and then another.
I told myself it was because I was curious. That it was simply the reporter in me driven to know the facts of the situation—to understand what a human could have possibly done at an alien sex club to deserve to be attacked and threatened with his life the way I’d just witnessed.
It wasn’t because I felt challenged by Vair’s “play nice with the other aliens” remark, or because I wanted to show Vair that I was brave enough to confront whatever scary alien dares he was willing to dish out.
And it certainly wasn’t because his influence called to the subconscious thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie in me who lacked the good judgment to gauge true danger when faced with it. This was about getting the facts straight and having my interview questions answered by a K for my next article.
Summoning all of my nerve, I ambled cautiously closer until I was standing in front of the great beast of a K who was angrily stewing behind the bar. He glanced up at my approach and smiled. And somehow managed to look even more frightening when he did.
“Well, hell-o there, sweetness.” Lascivious green eyes had my wrap dress off in seconds flat. “I’m Tauce.” He reached across the lit bar between us, offering me his ginormous throat-choking hand. “First time at the club?”
“Yieeeccch!” Zyrnase released a bizarre-sounding distress cry from behind me, where he’d been arguing with Jay. “She’s Vair’s human!”
Tauce withdrew his hand at unnatural speed, exclaiming something that sounded like “fuck,” but with more syllables. His eyes were wide and disbelieving as they looked over my shoulder in Jay and Zyrnase’s direction and asked, “Charl?”
“Uh, no, name’s Jay.” Jay rushed forward to stand protectively next to me. He extended his hand to Tauce. “I’m assuming you already know Zyrnase?”
Tauce didn’t take Jay’s hand. The scornful look he leveled at my friend made me like him even less than I had ten seconds ago. “I was referring to the lady,” Tauce said, his wide, square jaw jutting in my direction.
“Her name’s not Charl, either,” Jay told him. “It’s Amy.”
Tauce’s eyes turned a shade that was almost neon yellow as his annoyed glare transferred from Jay to Zyrnase. “Don’t even say it, Z. Not tonight.”
“Vair wants you to look after them.”
“Aw, cusack!”
I decided “cusack” must be the Krinar equivalent of “fuck”—or something along those lines. In any case, it wasn’t a happy word.
Zyrnase and Tauce argued in Krinar. It didn’t last long, and I knew the moment Tauce had lost his case when he scrubbed an enormous hand over his face and groused “cusack” three times in rapid succession.
Zyrnase left us in Tauce’s capable killer hands. Tauce spent the better part of the first twenty minutes with us serving drinks and ignoring our presence as we stood idly behind the bar, keeping out of his way as much as possible.
When he wasn’t procuring a beverage for someone, he was tracing things into his palm with his pointer finger—usually with his nostrils flared and his upper lip curled in contempt. Sometimes he appeared to be reading things from his forearm. I couldn’t decide if he was still pouting over his missed homicide opportunity on the dance floor or if all his emo alien ire was for us.
Jay attempted to engage him in conversation to no avail. It wasn’t until we decided to leave him sulking by himself in favor of exploring the room on our own that he chose to interact—to stop us.
He corralled us back behind the bar, and let it be known that we were not to leave his presence. It became clear that Vair had designated Tauce as our bodyguard-slash-babysitter—a revelation that was somewhat reassuring in the sense that it meant Vair seemingly did want to keep us safe while we were in his club. And yet it was also disappointing.
Hanging out with Grumpy K while he was working and moping was all very anticlimactic after the amount of speculating and stressing that Jay and I had done in the past twenty-four hours.
“We walked through twenty wall dissolves for this?” Jay complained.
He pointed out that if we had to watch angry paint dry for the rest of the night, we had better start drinking. Unfortunately, the x-club bar wasn’t stacked with Jay’s usual vodka shots. In fact, it wasn’t stacked at all—it was literally an empty bar.
Tauce would simply wave his hand or ask for a certain drink, and it would appear—rising up from hidden compartments below the white glass surface of the bar. Making his “bartender” role seem a tad superfluous, in my opinion.
The exotic purple fruit juice mixed with mild alcohol that Vair had given me the last time I’d been here seemed to be the most popular choice for the human clubgoers. Jay began referring to it as an “alien Shirley Temple” after he consumed two glasses and failed to catch a buzz.
“I think they do it on purpose,” Jay said, noisily slurping down the remains of his second glass in vain while Tauce brooded and kept watch over us from the other end of the bar.
“Do what?”
“Serve such mild, benign drinks that after a while you’re so desperate to catch a high you’ll willingly sign up for a vein tapping by any K available. Makes sense, right?”
I laughed and shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m still on my first glass, and I can feel the alcohol a little. I definitely feel something … like some kind of warmth or energy flowing through me. Maybe it’s just the music.” Or my waning adrenaline rush.
“I think it’s Tauce’s laser eyes burning into your rear. Seriously, I’m about to throw down in your honor if he doesn’t quit staring.”
“Shh—keep it down; he’ll hear you.”
“That’s the point. I’ll tell you, the very last thing I expected was to be bored tonight.” He set his empty glass onto the bar. “It’s literally the only scenario I never contemplated in coming here.”
I had to agree. But it felt wrong to be disappointed about that. We should’ve been relieved to be bored—because we were safe.
“Hey, at least we’re safe,” I reminded him. “That’s the most important thing. This is a way better outcome than any other scenario.”
“Speak for yourself. Not all of us value safety above all else in life, baby girl.” Jay waved his hand over the top of his glass the way that we’d seen Tauce do. Nothing happened. When Tauce had done it, the bar would open up and pull the glass down below the surface. “I command you to take the glass away,” he intoned in a ridiculous voice, loudly enough to garner a scowl from Tauce.
“Cut it out. He’ll think we’re making fun.”
“Good. Vair implied we’d get to work the bar. He said we’d get to look around and gain a better sense of the inner workings of his club. Nothing we’ve done with Tauce so far remotely qualifies.” Jay shouted the last part in Tauce’s direction. “He also said we’d get to interview Tauce, but the guy won’t even speak with us. He just stands there pretending to doodle on his palm and read things from his forearm.”
I swore I could hear Tauce’s teeth gnashing from ten feet away as Jay continued his tirade. He looked like he was angry-tracing on his palm now.
“And anytime another K or human tries to interact with us, anti-soc baldy over there scares them away. Vair’s treating us like children, Amy. Either we get some real drinks and a real interview with a K, or I say we get outta here.”
Right. Like it was that easy. Vair was up to something with this arrangement; I just couldn’t figure out what. In the interim, I needed to calm Jay down and get him to shut the hell up before he pushed the limits of our alien babysitter too far.
But then Jay stopped talking on his own, his eyes riveted by the sight of a statuesque brunette K approaching the bar.
Her glossy, shoulder-length hair fell in loose, natural waves, and she was wearing a body-hugging white, short, asymmetrical tank dress that was the perfect, effortless marriage of casual sexy and haute couture chic. Her gaze paused briefly as it swept over Jay before meeting mine. She smiled and extended her hand to me, and I noticed how her brown eyes had striking shades of amber in them.
“I’m Shalee.”
I took Shalee’s proffered hand and gave it a firm shake. Tauce made no attempt to stop me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Amy.”
“I know. I work very closely with Vair. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amy.”
My heart sped up. Something in my gut twisted at her words, even as I kept a pleasant smile on my face. “Oh? How nice. For how long?”
I hadn’t meant to voice that question, but seeing as I couldn’t take it back, I decided to expand on it. “What kind of work? What do you do with him?”
Are you sleeping with him?
“Research.” She canted her head, studying me with squinted eyes as the right side of her mouth curved up. “Mostly.”
Bitch.
“I’m Jay.” My best friend thrust his hand forward, practically shouldering me out of his way in order to get directly in front of Shalee.
I took the hint and stepped aside.
Shalee’s smile widened. “Hi, Jay.” She took his hand, and I watched as normally suave, socially sophisticated Jay just stood there, speechless, staring at Vair’s gorgeous coworker Shalee like he might begin to drool on himself at any moment.
“We’re not together,” he finally spoke up with a nod in my direction. “In case … in case you were wondering.” He was still holding her hand.
“I know.”
“This is going to sound like the world’s cheesiest pick-up line …” Jay began, then paused to catch his breath.
I thought about shoving him back out of the way to save him from himself, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to break the hold he had on Shalee’s hand. And some small, evil part of me did want to hear Jay’s cheesiest pick-up line for humor’s sake.
“I swear I had a dream about you last night,” Jay confessed in total sincerity.
Lordy.
Shalee’s brow lifted—in apparent genuine interest, too, not in a “you gotta be kidding me” way.
“Really? What were we doing?”
She wasn’t serious, was she? She seemed way too smart to fall for that. Had they never heard that tired line on Krina?
“In my dream, you were a nurse.” Jay cleared his throat. “And you made … a house call.”
I coughed. Loudly. But Jay didn’t look away from Shalee to catch my signal.
“You don’t say?” She sounded legit intrigued. There was no way she was going for this. “What was the treatment?”
“You gave me some kind of hangover prevention medicine.”
She bit her lip, assessing him with a sexy smile. “Did it work?”
This was like watching bad porn. She had to be messing with him.
He nodded. And blushed. I had never seen my friend blush before!
“Very well, actually.” He gestured to the dance floor. “Would you like to—?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I would.”
No way.
She looked to me. “You don’t mind if I borrow him for a bit, do you?”
Yeah, I did, actually. I pinched Jay’s elbow to gain his attention. He didn’t even flinch. It was as if he was hypnotized by Shalee’s face.
“Oh, well, I think Tauce wants us to stay—”
“Take him,” Tauce intervened, shutting me down. “It’s fine.”