Holly shook her head, but couldn’t come up with anything better, so quickly slipped the idea into the man’s mind and then withdrew from his thoughts.
“Splendido, piccola!” Gia congratulated, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her into a hug. “Very good. Superbo! I’m so proud!”
Holly laughed with relief and hugged her back, but then pulled back and said, “It was much nicer than bagged blood.”
“Si,” Gia agreed with a smile, but then her expression turned serious and she added somberly, “But remember, we feed like this only in emergencies.”
“And in training,” Holly put in.
“Si,” Gia agreed. “But if you do it at any other time you will be punished.”
“What’s the punishment?” Holly asked curiously.
“Death,” Gia answered. “Feeding off mortals is risky. It raises the likelihood of our existence being discovered. It is not allowed except in emergencies . . . and training.”
“Right,” Holly breathed. Blood bags were suddenly looking more attractive.
“Again,” Gia said now. “We must find you another to practice on.”
“Your fangs are showing.”
Justin glanced to Dante with a start, and then became aware that he was snarling, and his fangs were indeed out. Forcing them back in, he snapped his mouth closed and took a deep breath as his gaze shifted back to the dance floor where Holly seemed to be dry humping every mortal in the place as she fed on them. That was an exaggeration, he acknowledged. She’d only fed on four so far, and on a sensible level, he knew a certain amount of contact happened when you fed, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch.
She was dancing with a girl now, her face buried in the woman’s throat while the woman moaned and ran her hands up and down her back. Gia was an equal opportunity picker it seemed, since he was quite sure the other woman was the one who had pointed out each of Holly’s targets. Justin had wanted to tear into the two men, and even the women Holly had fed on. He would have thought he’d enjoy seeing her with another girl at least. He’d certainly enjoyed threesomes in the past, but not with Holly. She was his. He didn’t want anyone touching her that way.
“More than a couple of the donor hosts Gia picked were a little the worse for wear, it seems,” Dante said suddenly and Justin narrowed his eyes as he noted the way Holly stumbled as she stepped back from her latest donor. Drinking from a drunk donor resulted in a drunk immortal, if only temporarily. The nanos would clean it out of her system quicker than the mortal would sober up. Even so, it was as dangerous for her to be feeding in this shape as it would be to drive.
He’d barely had the thought when a mammoth of a man almost as big as Dante and Tomasso approached the girls. Justin expected Gia to send the fellow on his way, so was surprised when Holly turned wide-eyed to the woman and then back to the man, her mouth making a round O. She then slid into the man’s arms, looking like a sylph stepping into King Kong’s embrace. When she slid her arms around his neck and tugged him down and still couldn’t reach even the vicinity of his neck, Justin almost smiled. But he immediately lost that urge when she slid from his arms and started away, crooking her finger at him to follow.
Justin recognized that gesture from the first night they’d shared dreams . . . and she was heading for the bathrooms, or at least the hallway to the bathrooms. Amusement turning into the green dragon that was jealousy, Justin lunged out of his seat and hurried after them.
Holly led her latest donor off the dance floor, down the hallway with the bathrooms and past both doors to one marked employees only. She expected it to be an office or a broom closet, but it was a third bathroom she found when she pushed through the door. She’d expected to have to use her new skills to control whatever employee was inside and send them out, but the room was empty. Smiling at that fact, she paused and turned to face her donor.
“Pick me up.” Holly hadn’t meant to say the words aloud. She’d intended to slip them into his brain, but she did both. That or the man was just happy to do as she requested. Moving forward, he clasped her by the waist and lifted her until she was at face level.
“Closer,” she mumbled, unable to reach his neck from where he held her. She put the image of what she wanted into his head and then sighed with relief when he pulled her close, one arm under her behind and the other around her back, cradling her against his huge body so that she could reach his neck.
“Thank you,” she muttered, and then took a moment to concentrate on his thoughts, sinking herself into them as she bent her head forward to run her mouth over his neck. She’d barely started when her eyes popped open in surprise as her back suddenly slammed into the tile bathroom wall. A quick check of his thoughts told her he was just a little unsteady on his feet and was using the wall to help him stay upright.
Relaxing, she wrapped her legs around his waist—well, more like his chest, God the guy was huge—and turned her attention back to his neck until she found the vein. She’d just sunk her fangs in when the door to the room opened.
Opening her eyes, she spotted Justin and hesitated. He looked pretty grim, like she was doing something wrong. She frowned around King Kong’s throat as she tried to recall where she’d been with her thirty count, and then sighed with exasperation and retracted her fangs from King Kong’s neck and made him put her down.
Once she was back on her feet, Holly sent King Kong out of the bathroom and on his way with no memory of what had happened.
The silence that fell in the room once the door had closed was rife with tension and Holly peered uncertainly at Justin. “Is something wrong?”
Justin smiled suddenly, the tension sliding out of his body. “Yes, actually,” he murmured, moving closer and reaching toward her head. “You looked better in that outfit with your hair down.”
Holly glanced down at the black leather vest and mini skirt she’d borrowed from Gia. It’s what she’d worn that first night in the dream at the nightclub. Only then she’d had on Gia’s thigh-high black leather boots too. Holly had foregone those for flat sandals tonight only because she liked to dance and her feet would have been aching like crazy in five minutes of trying to dance in them.
“And with the boots,” Justin added. “Those boots were sexy as hell.”
Holly’s head came up just as he released the banana clip Gia had used to put her hair up for tonight when they were getting ready. She stared at him blankly as her hair fell around her shoulders. “What boots?”
“The thigh-high ones you wore to the nightclub the first night we had our shared—” Justin stopped abruptly, something flickering in his eyes. She would have called it a silent “oh shit.”
“Our shared what?” she asked grimly. The only time she’d ever worn this outfit was in a dream. Gia had worn it that day and she’d admired it and wished she had the courage to wear something like that even just once . . . and then she had, in her dream. The dream and what had happened in it were what had given her the courage to wear it tonight when Gia had suggested it. Although she suspected Gia may have given her courage a little nudge too to help her along, because she’d been about to say a definite no when she’d suddenly found herself saying yes.
That didn’t matter right now, though, of course. What did was that Justin was claiming to have seen her in it before, and since the only place she’d worn it was her dreams, she suspected— “You can read me.”
“What?” Justin said with surprise.
“You’ve been lying all this time,” she accused. “You can read me and you read that memory from my mind.”
“No, Holly, I didn’t,” he assured her quickly.
“Then how could you know about the dream I had?
Justin hesitated and then ran a hand through his hair with a deep sigh. Turning, he paced a couple steps away and then turned back. “Another symptom of life mates is shared dreams.”