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Scene #81
Werewolves Prefer Blondes
Rich Asshole Quarterly. If
ever a man deserved to be on the cover of so revered a publication,
it was Savion Ardennes. The mask he wore was one of bored
affectation, but there was an inherent animalistic intensity that
radiated from the man, at war with the pristine veneer of ice that
he presented. He shrugged the overcoat from his massive
shoulders, not bothering to notice who took it- as though it were
beneath his consequence. But nevertheless, the garment never
touched the floor, carried away by unnoticed hands. As the
god entered the room, his very presence sucked the air from the
space around him, an entity in itself. The halogen lights that
hung overhead were harsh with their propensity for truth, though
they fell on him with a fey softness; an incongruity to the
sculpted line of his jaw- the almost hawkish profile and the hard,
set stare of a predator. His eyes glittered under those
lights, flickering. As if for a moment, he was someone else,
something else. And Fallon felt like she’d just been thrown
into a wood chipper. That face he wore so carelessly, Fallon
didn’t know how she could have forgotten. It had been so long, and
while Ian’s face was stark and hard in her mind, she’d forgotten
Savion, forgotten that he was identical but for the platinum mane
that marked their blood back to the time of Northmen and the
Bastard Conqueror. She wanted another drink, though she was
sure that there wasn’t enough alcohol in all Christendom to get her
drunk enough to face him. After all, it was her fault that his
brother was dead. Part of her demanded that he would
remember her, how could he forget the face that damned his beloved
twin? But then again, Savion had always been pragmatic, cold and
efficient. Clinging to a memory was not something that he would be
comfortable with. And she was different now. Her eyes
weren’t bright and wide with innocence, her dress not that of the
proper nobility in days of old, those days when he knew her… Her
body itself had changed after her death, becoming lush and full in
a way that she had not been in life. Then, fate intervened.
She wasn’t given a chance to debate her position further. A hand
closed over her upper arm and she spun around to look into an
unfamiliar face. “Mr. Ardennes would like you to join him at
his table.” It was not a request. Arrogant bastard.
Screw you. “No thank you.” All of the old truths were
sour on the end of her tongue and she didn’t want to blow it before
she could get him alone just because she couldn’t shove all of that
down where he couldn’t see it. The fingers that had closed
around her arm released her hesitantly. “Are you sure?” As
if he’d never heard a woman say “no” before. “Yes, but thank
you. Maybe some other time.” Fallon was grateful that he let go of
her when he did, the contact stirred the hunger. It wouldn’t do to
suck him dry before she’d even had a single conversation with
Savion. No, that wouldn’t do at all. She didn’t want to
watch him walk back to Savion. She really didn’t. But she found her
eyes following him and her breath indrawn, awaiting the reaction to
her refusal. Fallon snapped her eyes in front of her, trying to
find something else to look at, anything but the man at the table
behind her. She let out a breath, almost like a sigh. But Fallon
was not prone to sighing or any similar nonsense. She could
feel eyes boring into her back. It was time to make an opportune
exit. But that wasn't to be either. She was looking behind
her, like she said she wouldn't, but she hadn't completely caved-
she wasn't actually looking at his table. Which would have been
more opportune all around if she had. Because then she would have
seen that the man himself, the one she sought to avoid, was not
positioned where her mind had unwittingly pictured him. Or she
would have thought to look where she was going and she would have
seen the exit was blocked. Instead, she collided with a solid wall
of hard muscle. She raised her head slowly, knowing somehow
who she had run into, because that was just her luck, but she was
unwilling to raise her eyes. Almost as if she didn’t look, that it
wouldn’t be him. Fallon steeled herself. This reaction to
him was unacceptable. She didn’t know where it had come from, but
it needed to go away. Now. Succubi were not affected so.
She was not affected so. It was enough to set
her teeth on edge. And she refused to apologize for running into
him. After all, he had to have seen that she was headed for the
door. He should have moved. Chivalry was indeed dead. Of course,
one could argue that to curse one’s supposed true love should have
been the first clue. You could never accuse a woman in love, or
infatuated rather, to be the brightest of creatures.
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