FULL NOVELXO Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Brooklyn
The music pounds in the club and, I have to admit, I'm really starting to have fun.
Lena is even loosening up a little bit, and she's not as on edge as she has been the past few days. Though, she absolutely keeps throwing up images of Kenwood in my mind.
Jolie dressed me tonight, which would usually make me uncomfortable, but for once, I let her take charge and decided to step out of my comfort zone and just go with it. What she calls a "dress" is more a sheet of silver fabric that falls across my front and then wraps low around my hips. It's strapped together across my shoulders with a spiderweb of silver strings.
Gotta give it up to that wolf shifter metabolism...I'm showing a lot of skin, but I know I look good. Despite spending the last couple of days drowning myself in Ben & Jerry's.
She also curled my long red hair into waves and gave me shadowy makeup and full red lips. Looking at myself in the club's mirrored walls, I feel...well, I blush to admit it, but I feel really sexy.
It's a strange feeling.
I'm not sure what I expected when Jolie took me to one of "her" clubs, but this feels nothing like a strip club. In fact, so far every woman dancing on the stages is fully clothed. I look around from my spot in a round corner booth, curious as to where everything else happens.
Jolie sits down next to me then, laughing. She waves goodbye to the man she had been talking with, then turns her attention to me. Her eyes are a little glazed.
"You having fun, baby Brooklyn?" She gives me a wide, inviting smile. I can't help but smile back. "Yes," I say, laughing. "Though I'm curious...where does...all the oth-"
Jolie stiffens next to me, and I stop talking.
Lena scents fear.
I follow Jolie's gaze. There's a man standing across the VIP area, his arms crossed, staring at her. When I look, he starts to walk over.
Jolie quickly jumps to her feet, reaching out her arms to wrap this big fat potato of a man in a hug. I grimace a little he looks like he hasn't showered in a while.
Smells a bit like it, too. Definitely human.
"Davis!" she says, and I can tell her voice is falsely cheerful. "How you been, gorgeous?"
"Jolie," he says, wrapping his hands around her upper arms and pushing her way from him. "We've got to talk."
"Have you met my little sister, Brooklyn?" She gestures towards me with a big smile. "Brooklyn, this is Miguel Davis, an old friend. He's the manager of the club."
Davis's eyes rove over me, taking in the generous portion of my thigh exposed by the little dress I'm
wearing. I wasn't uncomfortable before, but now I try to tug it down lower with my fist.
Lena growls low inside me at this creep, but I have to keep her leashed. We're not allowed to shift at all in establishments where humans go.
"Um, hello," I say, hesitant.
He takes Jolie by her elbow. "Come on. We're going to talk around back."
"Okay," Jolie murmurs, suddenly serious. She leans down to whisper to me. "It's just work stuff, don't
worry. Plus, wolf versus human. I got this."
I give her a little smile and nod, even though I'm not sure what her wolf can even do for her right now. Between the laws we have to follow and how glazed her eyes are from...whatever she took...
Jolie follows Davis into the back.
They're gone for a long time.
Anxiously, run my hand over the
underwire of my bra, feeling the tiny switchblade hidden there. The only possession my mother left to me in her will. I tucked it into my bra tonight, just in case.
Without the ability to use my razor-sharp claws or my wolf, I like having it with me. I don't really know how
to use it, but it calms me to know that it's there.
Half an hour more and the door opens. My stomach drops. There's Davis, but where's my sister?
Davis's eyes catch on me as he starts to move farther out into the club. I see him mouth the word "shit," and then he walks over to me.
"Jolie's sister, right?"
"Yes. Where is she?"
"She got sick. She's just throwing up, but she's a little green around the gills right now," he says, gesturing towards his own neck.
Alarm bells ring in my head. Wolf shifters don't just get "get sick."
I stand and turn towards the staff door, intending to go find my sister, but he stops me.
"No, listen," he says. "She won't want you to see her like this. Come with me, I'll take you someplace
where you can wait more comfortably." He pulls me forward.
I follow him, confused and worried as he pulls me quickly across the club to a black door, pushing it open.
The inside is barely lit—a dark room
with mirrors on the ceiling and tiny pinpricks of light coming up from the floor A wide velvet bench wraps itself around the room with little black cocktail tables lined up in front of it blink, trying to let my eyes adjust, as Davis settles me into a little table by the door.
"Wait here for a bit," Davis says, looking beyond me. "I'll have someone bring you a drink. Your sister will
be fine soon." Then, he walks away.
Someone does bring me a drink, and
I take a sip of it. But then I realize that it might be laced with something, given what I'm being told about Jolie. I push it away from me. As my eyes adjust, I look around the room and realize that I'm not alone in here.
Bodies, mostly in couples, writhe together on the black velvet seating. Some of them are dancing, but
some... Well, that girl is on her knees. My eyes go wide as I realize what she is doing.