Chapter 5

Nadia’s POV:

I was still at the bar when he arrived beside me.

My head was spinning in a way that felt like I was floating. The music in the club was so loud I could feel the vibration shaking the glass in my hand.

Then I felt him. I kept my eyes forward for exactly two seconds before I turned.

He was taller than I had expected from across the room. Standing next to him was different from watching him from a distance. He smelled good. His scent made me want to lean closer.

His eyes were even better up close. The lighting in the club was dim, but they still managed to be that unusual blue. They were like deep pools of water that you wanted to jump into even if you couldn't swim.

I looked at him and he looked at me. Neither of us spoke first.

I decided I liked that about him.

“You have been staring at me for a long time,” I said. My voice was dry from the whiskey. “And you didn't even buy me a drink yet.”

He laughed. It went straight to my stomach.

“I think you have had enough drinks for one night, beautiful. But if you want another, I will buy the whole bar for you.”

“I don't want the bar,” I said. I put my glass down on the wood and turned to face him fully. I felt like a different person tonight. Like the last three years had been a costume and someone had finally helped me take it off. “I want to move my body to the sound of the music.”

I reached out and took his hand.

His palm was warm. His grip, when his fingers closed around mine, was solid. He didn't look startled. He just looked at me with the same steady, interested attention he'd had from across the bar… like I was the only specific thing in the room.

“Dance with me,” I said. It wasn't a question.

“No names. No talking about where we come from. Just dance.”

“Alright,” he said, his voice low and close. “No names. Just this.”

~~~

The dance floor was packed. Bodies moved together in the heat and the noise, sweat and perfume mixed together.

He put his hands on my waist and I put mine around his neck, and we found the beat of it within the first few seconds. He was a good dancer. He paid attention to how I moved and adjusted to it rather than leading me somewhere I hadn't agreed to go.

After a while, he leaned his head down toward my ear.

“You seem like you are trying to escape something,” he said. His breath was warm against the side of my neck and it made me shiver. “Reality, maybe.”

“Maybe I am,” I said. I leaned my head against his chest, his heartbeat was steady and strong. “Tonight seems like the beginning of my life. I feel like I died today, and now I am being born again.”

“That sounds like a very long story,” he said. He spun me once, and for a second, the room blurred and I felt weightless. “Are you a ghost then? Because you feel very real to me.”

I laughed. I actually laughed. Not the careful, contained kind I had trained myself to produce at Vivienne's dinner parties. This one came from somewhere real. My whole chest moved with it.

“I am not a ghost. I am a woman with five million dollars and a very big grudge. But you aren't supposed to know that.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” he said, smiling. There was a dimple on one side of his face. It made him look younger, kinder. “I don't care about your money, and I don't care about your grudge. I just like how cute you look in this oversized hoodie and sweatpants. You look really comfortable, and it's unusual for me to find such things attractive.”

I looked up at him.

I couldn't remember the last time someone had said something like that to me without it containing a but. You look lovely tonight, but the neckline could be lower. You look beautiful, but the dress isn't quite right. You look fine, but maybe sit a little straighter. Always a correction attached to the compliment.

This man had no corrections. He just said what he saw.

We danced and we talked. The conversation was strange and easy… he said something about ghosts that led to something about aliens, and I said something back that made him laugh, and then he told me a joke about a goat that was so absurd I had to grip his arm to stay upright. My whole body shook with it.

I could not remember the last time I had laughed like that. With Dorian, every conversation had a temperature I had to monitor. Say the right thing. Don't be too loud. Don't be too much.

With this stranger, there was nothing to filter. There was no one watching. There were no consequences for being exactly what I was.

It terrified me, a little. I didn't want to like anyone, I wanted to be cold and heartless.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. He stopped moving and just held me still in the middle of the dancing crowd, looking at my face with so much attention. “You look like you are seeing a monster.”

“No,” I said. I reached up and touched his face. His jaw was rough under my fingers. “I'm looking at you because you are being nice. And I don't know what to do with ‘nice.’ I only know how to deal with ‘mean.’”

Something changed in his expression.

“Well,” he said, his voice dropping a little lower. “I can be mean if that's what you want. But I think you have had enough ‘mean’ for one lifetime.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

The pull between us had been there from the beginning, from the moment he raised his glass across the bar and I winked back. But standing here, this close, with his hands warm on my waist and his eyes on mine and the music moving through both of us, it wasn't just attraction. It was recognition. The feeling of finding something you hadn't known you were looking for.

I didn't want to examine it. I didn't want to name it. I just wanted tonight to be tonight.

“Take me upstairs,” I whispered. I closed the last of the space between us, my body against his, both hands flat on his chest. “My room. Now, please.”