Page 26 of Tell Me Why
He introduced himself and Tina to a pair of men standing against the rail, and one of them looked Tina up and down once with a sort of hungry expression, then glanced at Tell and that was the last he looked at her.
Tell was scary.
It was largely the same story. They were new to town, looking for the best places to hang out, looking to meet people, but Tell had thisenergyto him that was just… uncaptured. They weren’t here tomeetpeople so much asto be met, and everyone involvedknewthat even without Tell needing to say it.
The second man eventually turned to Tina to talk to her, asking her what they were going to do while they were in town, how they’d decided to come here, whether she wanted to dance.
“I’ll dance with you,” Tina said when he asked, and he grinned, offering her a hand.
Tina hadn’t been a dancer, before she’d turned.
Didn’t have the reflexes, didn’t have the flexibility, didn’t have theinterest. But after, she’d found that it came easily, and what was more, that she liked the way it made her feel and the way it made people - particularly men - respond to her.
The man she was with now was a decent dancer, as humans went, fit and playful, and very interested in Tina, which was flattering and entertaining, and she had a moment where she recognized, as they were intertwined through a complex motion in a slower point of the song, that she could have bitten him and he probably wouldn’t have ever known. He would have liked it and would have never known it was more than that.
It would have been easy.
And it wouldn’t have even hurt him any.
They parted again and he ran his fingers down the inside of her arm as she slid away, the sense that he would have taken her back in close again if she’d given him any signal she wanted him to, but she stayed loose, making eye contact with another man and dancing more specifically with him for a pair of bars, then going back to the man from upstairs at the rail.
Tell was still up there, leaning on the rail with his elbows, facing away from the dance floor, talking to a group of people who were congregating around him.
Unconcerned.
A scent went past and Tina had to do her best not to jerk her head.
Vampire.
She found her transition and turned, letting the man see her look at him, but without urgency, turning back in to dance with her escort again.
There was enough noise around that she couldn’t track the vampire by footsteps, but she could by scent. He came in closer amidst the sweat and antiperspirant, behind her, and she ignored him. She wasn’t any more involved with her human escort than she had been before, not trying to be exhibitionist, trying to draw attention by ignoring the vampire, but she also wasn’t all that immediately interested in him.
A second vampire came from the bar, and Tina kissed the human man’s cheek.
“Thanks,” she said, turning away, nominally to go back upstairs and find Tell again. She made eye contact with the two vampire men, giving them a little frown of greeting, then went to go upstairs.
All three men followed.
She’d neverin her lifehad a man follow her simply because he wanted to be where she ended up. This was a power thatconfused and wildly amused her, and she had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to care.
Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.
She got back up to where Tell was standing, the group of men and women around him over a dozen now. She glanced over her shoulder as she went past, and Tell held out her drink for her to take as she walked over to the wall and leaned against it. The two vampire men greeted Tell with something approaching familiarity, and Tell nodded to the man that Tina had danced with, and the conversation went back to what it had been just the moment before, casual and undirected.
They stayed for an hour and a half, Tina going down to dance with three other men and drinking two more drinks, and then Tell signaled-without-announcing that they were going to move on and see what else there was to do.
Tina had four bar napkins tucked into her pocket, and she signaled to the first man that she’d danced with as she finished her drink and set it down on a table.
“We’ll probably have a party or two at our place, while we’re here,” she said into his ear, her jaw touching his. “You want to be there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course. Yeah.”
She straightened, jerking her chin at him.
“Need a number,” she said, and he scrambled, borrowing a pen and writing it down.
She tucked it with the others, then followed Tell back downstairs and out the door.
