CH.5 - THE Seductress
1059 Words
Chapter Five
Alpha Creed's Point Of View
The nightclub was exactly as I had remembered it.
The smell of sweat and alcohol welcomed me at the door and brought a comforting sense of familiarity with it. The bouncer recognised me at the entrance and exchanged pleasantries. Not everyone in this town was cold with me and I had a handful of people here I could call familiar if not quite friends. I moved to my usual corner seat, a group of teenagers vacating it the moment they saw me approaching.
The corner was preferable for reasons that were more instinct than preference. A wall at my back meant no possibility of being ambushed from behind. The angle gave me a full view of the club while concealing my presence from most of the room. I preferred watching and observing. People watching with a drink in my hand, tipping well, being on a first name basis with the staff who appreciated it. The music was slightly louder than I remembered but nothing I could not tolerate. Weirdly enough the noise helped me think.
I had just finished ordering a double shot of whiskey when the music cut out without warning.
Complete silence. Then the lights went out entirely.
No one was panicking which told me this was a regular occurrence. Then the crowd went wild with cheers and whistling and I looked toward the stage as a single spotlight fell on a woman standing alone at its center.
Her back was to the crowd. Black thigh high leather boots. A short oversized trench coat. A hat tilted at an angle that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. I barely had time to process the image before the music began, the crowd roared and she turned in one fluid motion, throwing the coat aside.
She was wearing a black latex two piece. High waist pants ripped up the sides and held together by strings that looked unlikely to last the performance. A top that was barely a top at all, more like a long sleeved bra so tight her figure looked like it was testing the limits of the fabric's endurance. A bright matte red lipstick and a small black mask that covered the bridge of her nose and drew every possible piece of attention toward her eyes.
And the way she moved.
My drink was forgotten the moment she started. Slow and calculated, every movement deliberate, the kind of performer who understood that restraint was more powerful than excess. I noticed belatedly that there were other women on stage with her, also dressed in black latex, but I could not have told you a single thing about any of them. She had the full and complete weight of my attention and she did not appear to require anyone else's assistance in keeping it.
For one very brief moment our eyes connected across the room and I was certain she was looking directly at me. She sent a flirtatious smile in my direction, winked, flipped her hair and walked off stage. The lights came back on. The crowd resumed its noise.
I let out a breath I had not known I was holding.
I tried to find her in the crowd afterward and could not. The other dancers were circulating through the room but she was not among them. My eyes kept searching until I heard a voice on my left.
"Are you looking for someone?"
A sultry voice, close enough that I could hear it clearly beneath the music. I turned.
She was more beautiful up close than she had been on stage, which I had not believed was possible. I blinked several times as if that might help me process her properly. She started to turn away, apparently taking my silence as a dismissal.
My hand caught her arm on instinct.
She chuckled and sat down beside me without further persuasion. "Easy there," she said with a coy smile. "All you had to do was ask me to stay."
Her smile did something alarming to my composure. The mask was still on but her cat winged eyeliner and the smoke around her eyes gave her a dramatic quality that suited her entirely. Her eyes were jade green, an unusual and arresting shade, and they had a quality to them beyond their colour. They showed the storm after the calm. Something behind them that went deeper than beauty.
Her skin was a warm tan olive and her pitch black hair curled in a way that brought out her cheekbones perfectly.
"The name's Jade," she said, extending her hand with the blood red nails to match her lipstick. "And staring is considered rude in this part of the world."
I shook her hand and was aware for longer than was dignified that our hands fit together in a way that was not entirely ordinary.
My eyes drifted to her chest for a moment that lasted a beat too long.
"This is the part where you introduce yourself and bring your eyes up here," she said, pointing at her face with the patience of someone who had dealt with this before and had decided amusement was a better response than irritation.
Embarrassment covered me and I redirected my attention immediately.
"I apologise. No excuses. I am Creed. Alvaro Tyson Creed."
"Nice to meet you Tyson," she said.
A low growl left my chest before I could stop it. Animalistic and involuntary, produced by the specific way she had said my name and the very specific reaction it produced in Kronos, who had been silent for hours and was suddenly very much awake.
She raised an eyebrow.
I cleared my throat.
The conversation that followed was unlike any I had experienced in recent memory. She was funny and animated, moving her hands when she talked, laughing at her own jokes with no apparent embarrassment about it. She leaned in periodically and the proximity produced reactions in my body that I spent considerable energy managing and pretending not to be managing. Kronos found her endlessly interesting. So did I.
"Well then Alpha Creed," she said eventually, her voice dropping to a lower register. "Would you like to get out of here? Somewhere a little more private, just the two of us."
I was on my feet before she had finished the sentence.
- Writer
