Recently I finished final edits on The Irish Baker. All that remains is a synopsis, blurb, and to start querying agents!
The other project that has its fangs in me is my Urban Fantasy story, which has a very strong love theme.
So without further ado, I give you the moment the two main characters meet in my current Urban Fantasy WIP.
Enjoy! :)
Ethan had never been one for clubs. Even when he was in the
age demographic where clubbing was essentially mandatory, he was the outlier.
Sure he had gone to a few; well, more what he would consider bars. The woods of
Montana, where he grew up, hadn’t been a
hub of city life.
The
thumping of music felt like an intrusion to his thoughts. But his sister insisted.
His parents, they suggested he go and enjoy spring break with his sister. More
like watch his baby sister’s back while she drank and danced with complete
strangers in Miami for a week.
Thankfully
it was their last night before she headed back home to Montana, and he to his
small office at work, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky. Work
was his passion. It never felt like work, except when he had to grade the term
papers. Those made his eyes cross and his stomach clench. The college wouldn’t
appreciate it if he just passed everyone. Might raise a red flag on his
teaching.
Ethan
Donnelly, professor of Occult Anthropology had officially started his
sabbatical.
At least
the club had some good whiskey. Not many places his sister wanted to go to
carried the good brands. They mostly served vodka and rum mixed drinks. But daiquiris
and “Slippery Nipples” weren’t his drinks of choice.
The music
intruded again as the DJ switched songs and tempos. Spinning on his stool, his
back now to the bar, Ethan could lean back and keep an eye on his sister. Where
he was dark in color, she was light. His dark hair was easy to miss in the
club, but her naturally bleach blonde locks were hard to miss.
He spotted
her quickly dancing with her friends in the middle of the floor.
That’s when
he saw her.
She swayed
and moved with the music—her rhythm was perfect. It looked like the music
flowed through her. Not too skinny, her curves filled out the dress she was
wearing leaving her long, muscular arms and legs bare.
Heels
increased her already impressive height. Without them he estimated her height
to be around five-foot-ten inches, tall for a woman. With the four-inch heels
strapped to her feet, she still came up four inches short of his six-foot-five
inch frame. Red hair, curled loosely,
fell to just above the middle of her back.
She danced,
like all women do, in a group of others. But something about her caught and
held his attention.
“Enjoying
yourself?” Ethan was startled from his inappropriate staring by the words of
his sister.
He met her
bright blue eyes, her eyebrow arching at his startled expression.
“Huh, wouldn’t
have thought you’d go for a woman in a club.” Reaching past him, she picked up
another drink in a hurricane glass complete with an umbrella in the top. “Well,
whoever she is, have fun!” Her tinkling laugh echoed in his ears before being
drowned out by the music once more.
Picking up
his glass, he tried to be more casual about scanning the crowd for the red-haired
woman. His heart dropped when he didn’t see her. Slowly he started to spin
around to face the bar again when a voice made him stop.
“Are you
looking for me?”
He finished
the rotation of the stool to find the blue-eyed stare of the red-haired woman
he had been watching.
He was cute, she had to give him
that. Cocking her head, she extended a hand to him. He met it, and shook it
woodenly. He had dark hair—a bit shaggier than she was used to, but not too
long as to lay in his eyes. His eyes matched his hair, and in the whirling
lights of the club looked almost black.
Something in her stomach clenched,
but in a pleasant way, and she coaxed the wolf that rose up at the sight of
him, back down. That would be dangerous for more than just him if she gave her
full rein.
“Ah, well, yes.” He stuttered to
her. She smiled. It wasn’t that he was drunk, oh no, she had watched him as
well. He sipped the whiskey, instead of downing it like any inexperienced frat
boy.
“Good.” She sat on the stool next
to him, and tapped the bar with three fingers. The bartender knew what she
wanted, and quickly a bottle and glass were provided before the bartender moved
away on silent feet. She poured herself a drink, and offered to top off his
glass.
“How’d you get him to give you the
bottle?”
She met his eyes, and smiled. “Oh,
he knows me.”
“You come here often?”
“Well, now there’s a line if I’ve
ever heard one.” She had to stifle a chuckle with a sip of the whiskey. It was
deep, but with a hint of oak that she liked. Not as good as the stuff she got
at home, but it was better than fruity drinks and vodka.
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—.” He paused,
trying to gather his thoughts. Taking a deep breath he tried again. “I wasn’t
saying a line. Just an observation.”
She waited a beat before smiling
and saying, “I thought so. Just teasing you a bit.”
He smiled in relief and took
another drink before turning to survey the crowd. “You don’t strike me as a
club hopper.” She watched him watch her out of the corner of his eye.
“No, not usually.” She turned as
well; two could play that game. “My cousin owns the bar, asked if I would come
down for some extra help during spring break.” She paused taking a long pull
from the nearly empty glass. “This is my
last night, thankfully.”
“It looked like you were having
fun.”
“I never said I wasn’t having fun.”
Carefully, she set her drink on the counter before turning to him, holding out
a hand. Something inside of her told her to—she didn’t understand it. She
wanted to dance with him. Well, if she was honest, the wolf inside wanted to do
much more than dance. But dancing in the middle of a club should be harmless
enough.
Surprisingly he took her hand, and
she led him out onto the dance floor. Most of the clubbers had left, leaving a
little bit of room near the DJ’s setup. She liked being near it. The speakers
were to their left and right, and when the beat came through them, she could feel
it in her heart.
It must have spoken to the
primitive part of her that would have marched to the beat of a drum in her
grandfather’s time. But this was no war, at least not that type. The only thing
she had to overcome was the wolf inside.
He had natural rhythm. Though not quite as
fluid as she was, he could keep up with her. The wolf inside hummed in pleasure
at having his arms around her, or his hands on her hips. Her head buzzed like
she had been drinking too many coffees, but she couldn’t get enough of him. She
thought about taking him back to her hotel room, but suddenly a hand on her arm
pulled her away from his embrace, breaking whatever feeling she had.
She growled, and then realized it
was her cousin Cyrina who had pulled her away to whisper in her ear.
“Are you mad? He’s not one of us.
You could kill him!” Cyrina’s amber eyes bored into her.
“I know what I’m doing!” She hissed
back.
“Right, and the last human you
mated with was when, exactly?” Cyrina accused with her hands on her hips. Despite
being only five-foot-nothing, and blonde, Cyrina could be intimidating in her
own right. She had an inkling it had to do with her being mated to the Alpha of
the pack in Miami.
Her wolf didn’t want to give him
up, and she could feel him standing there, waiting to see what had happened.
Taking a few breaths, she turned back to him being careful not to touch him
again.
“I have to go. Something’s happened
in the ladies room, and they need my help.”
He looked so heartbroken and sad
that she almost couldn’t take it. Her heart ached, and she felt a howl crawling
up the back of her throat as her wolf started to panic.
He swallowed twice before speaking.
“Okay, I understand.” He glanced around. “It’s almost closing time anyway I
should grab Abby before it’s chaos.”
Her wolf cocked its head as
jealously started to gripped her heart. It didn’t matter who Abby was. She
would never see this man again once she returned home to Chicago tomorrow.
She made to turn away, but electricity
ran up from where he touched her arm. She felt her body shiver as she turned
toward him.
“I never got your name?” He leaned
in and asked where no one would overhear. A quiver ran up and down her spine
when he did so, but not an unpleasant one.
“It’s Bryna.”
