“Another, please. Make it a double.”

The bartender, an ebony-skinned man with a shiny bald head and thick, ropy arms, nodded his agreement.

As he shifted to grab the bottle of rum from the shelf, Laela caught his arm. “Never mind that. Champagne. The best you have.”

He grinned, showing even white teeth in the neon light swirling across the dance floor in front of the bar. “You celebrating?”

She smiled back, a tremor of excitement sweeping down her spine. “New job. I start tomorrow.”

He lifted the bottle in a silent toast, then tipped it so the bubbly liquid flowed into a flute glass. “Good luck.”

She took a sip, wincing a little as the carbonation hit her tongue. “Won’t need it. I’m gonna knock ’em dead.”

An hour later, Laela Léa was still nursing the same glass of flat champagne. She twirled round and round on her bar stool, letting her legs hang over the edge. On each full turn, she peered out into the darkened dance floor. Bright laser beams bathed the Friday-night crowd, highlighting pink streaks in black hair, colored contact lenses that glowed florescent colors and more metal hooks, rings and studs than she’d seen in the entire tattoo and piercing parlor across the street.

The frenzied beat of the techno music that flowed through the hottest night spot in San Diego soothed Laela’s restless nerves in a way the alcohol couldn’t. She stopped spinning, her heart fluttering madly in her chest at the thought of what tomorrow might bring. Her head spun, partly from the alcohol and partly from going around in circles for the last five minutes. She caught her breath, swung her hand back toward the bar to grope for her glass and used the back of her other sleeve to wipe away a stray bead of sweat that dripped down her temple.

It was in the middle of that awkward move that she spotted him. From fifteen feet away, she could make out the hard line of the man’s jaw, the broad shoulders, the wavy black hair that barely brushed his shoulders. But as much as his appearance struck her, it was the way he seemed to stand apart from the rest of the crowd that had her stomach doing a quick flip-flop. Even surrounded by a hundred people who bounced, hopped and grooved all around him, he stood alone.

He looked as out of place among Club Surge’s typical crowd as a nun at a burlesque show. Aside from his hair, which was a little too long to fit the rest of his clean-cut image, he looked… normal. While the other men took obvious pride in their leather jackets, rough tattoos and spiky hairstyles, the newcomer wore beige pants, black shoes, and a polo shirt.

A polo shirt, of all things!

And yet, somehow, he seemed to blend in. It made no sense, but there he stood, in the middle of the gyrating crowd, looking for all the world as though he’d just stepped out of the pages of Town & Country magazine, and no one gave him a second glance.

No one but her.

His posture, stiff but somehow resigned, spoke of weariness, perhaps even disinterest. His eyes, however, betrayed him. She couldn’t make out their color from this distance, but she could see the intensity in that determined gaze as it swept across the room and zeroed in on the bar.

Without warning, that ardent gaze caught hers. And held.

Laela lost her balance. The three-legged stool tipped and wobbled precariously. As she groped for the edge of the bar and hooked her foot around one of the stool’s spindly legs, he began winding his way across the club. Heading straight toward her.

Heat pooled between Laela’s legs. It curled across her clit, sending a jolt of sensation deep into her pussy. She pressed her legs together and clenched her hands around the edge of her stool. Her breath halted in her throat as he came closer. The crowd seemed to part for him, though no one brushed against him or uttered the slightest disrespectful word. In fact, no one paid any attention to him at all.

She couldn’t begin to fathom why. For her part, if she hadn’t been hanging on to the stool, she’d have fallen off long ago. And all because she couldn’t take her eyes off this one man. A man, for Pete’s sake.

Laela didn’t go for men. She liked vampires, werewolves, even elves. Men were so… plain.

Only there was nothing even remotely ordinary about this man. He oozed sensuality from every pore. It dripped off him in waves, wrapped around her and scrambled her thoughts until she was entirely focused on nothing but him.

The woman who’d been sitting beside Laela stood, vacating the stool. The newcomer slipped into it as though he’d known all along it would be there, waiting for him.

“Bourbon, on the rocks,” he said in answer to the bartender’s unspoken question.

Even his voice made Laela’s pussy clench in anticipation. Low and husky, it sent a shiver down the length of her body.

The space between stools was much too narrow for his wide shoulders and broad chest. His knee came within touching distance of her thigh. His arm brushed her elbow.

Laela had stopped breathing the moment he’d sat down, but the unexpected contact kick-started her lungs. She gulped in a big breath of spicy male odor. Not sweat, but not cologne, either. Something else… something entirely unique. And altogether much too irresistible.

She shifted slightly, rotating the stool so she was facing him. After that brief moment when their gazes had locked, he’d ignored her outright.

Laela cleared her throat, gathering up the courage to say something. What, she didn’t know. Something that would get his attention. Something that would make him want to pick her up in those powerful arms, deposit her on the sleek surface of the bar, hike up her skirt, and bury his head between her legs.

Yeah, that would do nicely.

“Come here often?”