Lust And Lies

It was a heart-beat of savage throbbing, the neon veins of the city flushed with crimson and sapphire, every drop dripping into rainy streets, hissing like a secret word, lethal and short. The dive bar was a throbbing wound in the underbelly of the city, the air filled with the musk of body sweat and cheap whiskey and hunger that clawed at every shadowed crevice in the place, oozing at the cracks of the worn wood. Mia was frozen at the brink of this mess and her heart beat was hitting her ribs like a caged bird longing to get free. Her hands shook holding a glass of raw vodka, the drink burning her throat with every desperate swallow and its taste a temporary tether in a world that seemed to be coming apart. This was not her home--this nest of leather, sex, and carnal glances that drew back her clothes, revealing soft spots in the most secret places that she had been sternly denying. She was the virgin, the bookish girl who created a citadel of novels and manners, her life a highly supervised defense against the unknown. Two nights ago, there had been a wildness running through her veins, a feral spark that she had not known the name of, threatening to break the walls that she had so painstakingly built. She ought to have fled. It was dragged here by her best friend Lucas, whose voice was compelling, almost dictatorial, that she had to experience life before her internship in the law office would bind her to a desk and a life full of unimaginable sameness. Lucas, the rogue with the smile that could make the moon fall out of the sky, was over on the other side of the room, playing his magic so easily with a bunch of women that their laughter was as bubbles in the champagne. His laugh of his own was a line of silver on the dark tapestry of the bar, a sound that had always kept her, knitted her to security. he was her anchor in college, the one who goaded her fears into submission, who understood her dreams better than she understood them herself--her secret aspirations of being out of her self-imposed cage, her muffled desires at something more than the safety which she had always clung to. But recently his accidental caresses lingered too long, his fingers were resting on her arm or the small of her back with an intentionalness that made her pulse leap. The hazel eyes were smoldering with a bit of heat that she could not figure out, a look that flushed her skin and scattered her thoughts. It was a fire that excited and frightened her, excited and frightened, creating a yearning which she was not yet prepared to identify. He had pulled at the hem of her crimson dress to-night--a wicked decision that matched the line of her curves as a second skin, and made her feel naked, sore like a nerve, in the clutches of the flickering lights of the bar. Stop pretending to be going to bolt down, he purred, with his low teasing voice, his fingers rubbing over her hip as he readjusted the fabric, and a shiver shot down her spine, which she was incapable of stopping. "You're fucking radiant, Mia. Own it." His words had been a risk, a test of getting out of her shell, and yet they had increased her feeling of defense. She didn't feel radiant. She had the sensation of being prey, her skin tingling as the invisible eyes examined her, and as though the bar residents felt the lack of experience or innocence that she had, like blood in the water. Smoke and desire filled the air, a sickly cloying aroma that swiveled her head around. The vodka helped her sink her teeth again, but it was only burning, and could not quite drown the electricity that was crackling through her, a current that felt like humming under her skin. She was out of place a lamb in a nest with predators she was a crimson dress a beacon drawing every eye. The music was timbering, a savage beat that beat time with her wildly racing heart and implored her to take action, to go, to do something wild once in her well-meaning life. Yet carelessness was not hers--at least not until she saw the intensity of his stare eating the room up. Jace Wilder was lying against the bar and all the time he was there his obsidian eyes were searching the room like a hungry man. his arms wound like snakes with tattoos, dark stains that faded under a black shirt that clung to his sculpted body like a caress of lovers, and that defined each muscle with a sharpness that made Mia gasp. He was as a fire whose name was a wildfire-- disorderly, deadly, and leaving nothing but ashes and shattered hearts in its path. He was the devil who was a threat to the daughters of mothers, the type, who would take your soul, and live to regret that you had been ruined. Mia had heard the rumors--whimpering in the college dorms, sobbing in the bathroom stalls, of girls who had been shattered by his hands, their hearts turned to ashes. But as he stared at her, across the full breadth of the room, it was as though a match made fire, and the molten passion she was not aware of herself that he awakened within her. She caught a gasp, her body a traitor to her with its glow flushing her cheeks to her bosom, and her heart beat like a thunder-tongue against the noise of the bar. He wandered, a gradual, measured creep through the crowd, and they started to jump like scared fish at his presence. The vodka sloshed, Mia shook her hands and the cold rim scraped the palm of her hand again. She ought to have turned, ought to have fled to the protection of Lucas, in his home-grown warmth. Her legs were stuck, her body in the magnetic attraction of the stare of Jace, those black eyes holding her like a butterfly to a board. He paused--too well--the odor of leather and smoke that covered her, a miasmos of intoxicating smell, and her head swam and her knees gave way. "Lost, angel?" His low velvet growl of a voice, every word a caress that licked the skin, aflame her nerves. The title sent chills down her spine, a promise and a threat, and coiled about her like a wave of smoke that she could not get rid of, but was burning her scarlet as the dress, too, suddenly became too tight, too expose, as if it were betraying her to him. She cursed her aching voice, the path her body took toward him though her head cried out to stop, to go find Lucas and cower behind his protection. The lips of Jace drew up into a dangerous curve of a smirk which promised trouble. His gaze was darted to Lucas who was laughing with a brunette on the other side of the room not realizing the storm that was happening on the corner of Mia. Does not seem like he is warming you. His voice was lowered to a dark whisper that was not to be heard by others, every word oozing with purpose. Dance with me. Her heart beat felt like a caged animal, tearing at its bars to be free, her flesh aching with a want she could not comprehend. She was familiar with him- Jace Wilder, the woman-killer who left behind him ruin, the man who lived on conquest. All reason shouted to decline, to stay in the security of Lucas, to the friendship that she had always had to lean on. But the vodka was burning in her veins, a drink that gave her courage, and made her feel drunk, and Jace was looking up at her eyes that she was going to a place of the wild, of the living, of the thing she had never dared to touch. Her lips parted, a reply began, her breath shallow as she wavered on the brink of a decision that would disintegrate her, his fingers digging into her hip with a pain that gave her a shock. She is engaged, he said, and his voice was a sword wrapped in honey and cutting through more closely than it was thick. His body was a wall between her and Jace, his hand was strong, protective but the touch ignited something in her, something that made it hard to know where the friendship and desire mingled. His hazel eyes, which were normally very friendly, were firm now, and were staring at Jace with a warning that made Mia heart drop a notch. Jace himself did not waver in his expression, but continued to stare at Mia, a challenge in their depths like a blade in the sun. Didn't know she was claimed, pretty boy. His voice was derisive, the words were smattering with disbelief, as though he were able to visualize the lie between the words. We blamed me.--My fault,--we blamed me, and he drew her, and his fingers flashed through the dress she wore, scalded her like a brand, and she was trembling. Right, babe? Mia twirled her head, the lie a thread in the tense atmosphere, and it would break with a single glare of Jace. The desperation in the eyes of Lucas was to get her to play along, his warmth being a lifeline of the danger that the man in front of her was posing. She swallowed, and her throat was arid even with the vodka, and her voice was barely stable. "Right. Together. The expression of his gaze turned predatory, Jace calculating the strength of his adversary, his lips coming in with an expression of amusement he did not bother to display on his face. "Sure thing, angel. You have where I am when you are through acting. He disappeared into the press, his exit stirred a trail of warmth and threat that smoldered around her like smoke, and hung in the air. The feeling literally shot through the heart of Mia to be caught between the security of Lucas in his arm and the danger Jace brought with his word. The neon throb of the bar appeared to sneer at her, its beat a torturous whisper that this night was just the start of a reckless, intoxicating game--a game she was not confident that she was going to win.