Vampire, the voice whispered again in my head.
"Who is the second man? Is that the other owner?" Roxy asked in an excited whisper that barely penetrated the tangle of my thoughts.
Vampire. The word was as soft as down in my mind, brushing at the edges. I tried to squelch that insidious little voice once and for all, but the problem was, he looked just like I'd always imagined one of Dante's Dark Ones: masculine, elegant, arrogant, and so sexy I wanted to rip his clothing off and do wanton things to him with a pair of chopsticks and a large bottle of olives. My thoughts snapped back from where they were wandering with an annoyed exclamation. What was I thinking? A vampire? A real vampire? He wasn't any more a vampire than his friend with the bonded teeth and phony actor's smile.
"No, Milos is away on business. He has many ventures. GothFaire is just one of them. That's Raphael. Dominic hired him after Le Havre. He's in charge of our security."
The man named Raphael watched with an unmoving face as Tanya greeted his employer. Slowly he moved forward, nodding his head when the bartender called out a greeting, accepting a large glass of beer.
Vampire.
"You can just get stuffed, because I'm not listening to you," I muttered to the voice.
"What? Did you say something?" Roxy asked.
"No."
She cocked an eyebrow at me, but quickly turned back to the two men who were dominating the room with their very presence. Or rather one man; Dominic was clearly not up to Raphael's snuff.
"So, this Raphael… is he a vampire, too?" Roxy asked Arielle.
Arielle worried her beer stein. "I'm not sure. I don't think he is, but he moves very quietly, and sometimes I have the feeling he is watching me…"
Was he or wasn't he? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. I smiled a grim little smile at my feeble joke, and tried to decide once and for all if I was A) going mad, B) having a hallucinogenic experience, or C) in the presence of something I didn't believe existed, but given my experiences of the evening, who was I to make any sort of assessment of what was real and what wasn't? I glanced back at Raphael. He was leaning against the wall next to a tall potted palm, nodding his head as the bartender chattered away. When the man moved off for a minute to fill an order, Raphael shifted, accidentally spilling half his beer into the plant. I thinned my lips. No one likes a soused vampire!
"Oh, God, he's sooo gorgeous! I just knew they'd look like that! Joy, are you looking at him?"
I mumbled that I was. Dominic and Tanya were still playing to the crowd, she simpering as he pawed her in a manner I'm sure he thought was shocking and erotic, but was really only faintly tawdry as he nibbled with those doctored teeth on her long white neck, generally hamming it up. I dismissed them as uninspiring and focused my attention on the man who had moved farther along the bar to resume his conversation with the bartender. Raphael had taken off his jacket, and the long line of his back held me spellbound as he leaned forward to speak in the bartender's ear. Like Dominic, he was also in black, but on him it looked elegant and intriguing and…
"Virile," I breathed.
"You can say that again," Roxy agreed, her eyes on Dominic.
Everyone's attention was on the show Dominic and Tanya were presenting as he suddenly whirled her into a waltz around the room, his skin paper-white in comparison to the black of his pants and silk shirt, carelessly unbuttoned to expose half his chest.
"Probably uses pancake as well. And shaves his chest," I said softly.
"You think?" Roxy asked, her eyes alight as the couple swept past us, Dominic's teeth bared for full effect. She gave a lustful sigh. "It sure does look good on him. I wonder if Miranda couldn't have got the Goddess's messages mixed up, and I was supposed to find a Dark One as my perfect man. I could go for a man like that!"
It was on the tip of my tongue to say Dominic wasn't even as remotely intriguing as his companion, let alone a vampire, but as my eyes turned back to Raphael, I was stunned to find him watching me. He held a drink nonchalantly in one hand, his head still bent to the bartender, but his strangely colored eyes were on me. Our gazes met and locked. Instantly I was swamped with emotion: rage, stifled but still an awesome force to deal with; loneliness, such great loneliness that tears came to my eyes in sympathetic response; and finally despair, great waves of it that rolled over me and sucked me under. Almost as soon as the emotion washed over me, it was gone, leaving me feeling curiously bereft if extremely confused.
"Oh, God, I'm in trouble, serious trouble," I moaned, dragging my eyes away from the man who was everything Miranda warned, and so much more. My skin tingled and burned where it was exposed, as if just his gaze had the power to scorch me.