A Beast For The Eyes: A Steamy Shifter Romance (A Ravenswood Romance Book 2) (4 page)

Callie felt happiness swell in her heart. He was proud of her! Thankfully, she had made up for the other night. But now she was confused. She felt strong feelings for Thorne but what about her vision and the perfect love that came with it? Her visions were never wrong. Callie walked into auction room and stood at the back. She wanted to watch the action but still wanted to be able to get out of the room if things went off the rails.

The auction was exciting. Callie could see the necklace glittering from inside its glass case. It was certainly stunning but Callie couldn’t believe how much the necklace was worth. After an exciting battle the auction ended at a million point five!

Suddenly the fire alarm went off and the roomed filled with smoke. But it wasn’t smoke from a fire, it was fake smoke from a machine or smoke bomb. People screamed and began to rush out of the room. Callie couldn’t see anything and she was pulled out the door by the crowd. Once outside there were police officers calming everyone down and ushering them back into the ballroom.

“It’s just a false alarm, a prank! Please return to the ballroom.” The officers shouted as they corralled everyone into the ballroom. The music started up again but everyone was chatting excitedly about the disturbance.

Callie wondered what had happened. Had they caught him? She rushed out the back door where she saw police cars with their lights flashing. She saw Thorne and had Reginald in handcuffs and was putting him in the back of a police car. Once he was secure, the car drove away, lights flashing. She rushed up to Thorne.

“You caught him! What happened?” she cried out as soon as she reached him.

“Callie!” he took by the arm and lead her back towards the ball. “Covington set off the smoke bomb and was hiding nearby. He managed to knock out a guard and grab the necklace but he wasn’t prepared for us to be outside waiting for him. We nabbed him with the necklace in his possession. I am hoping we can get him to confess to the bank robberies as well. But first I need one dance with my girl. It is a ball after all.” He smiled down at her and led her onto the dance floor.

They swirled around together in perfect rhythm to each other. It was almost a dream come true for Callie. But what about her soulmate? As if in answer to her question the clock struck twelve and glittering confetti burst from the ceiling raining down on everyone below. She looked up and Thorne was looking at her with his wolf eyes. Her vision flashed back to her. The man with unusual eyes with diamonds raining down from the sky! Thorne wrapped his arms around her and she felt perfect love. It was her exact dream come true. Thorne was her soulmate.

“Callie.” He put his finger under her chin and tipped her head up. “I have fallen in love with you. The other night when I said I claimed you, I meant that I want you as my mate. They offered me a job here and I accepted. I love you, Callie. We will never be apart again.”

He leaned down and kissed her softly. She melted into his kiss just like she had that first night. She had found her soulmate.


End.

CHAPTER 1

“Jesus, Simmons! Would you watch where you’re going! Motherfucker, the only thing that would make you more dangerous is if you were born with wheels on your feet!”

I rolled my eyes at my co-worker’s obvious jab at my clumsiness while I kept drying the newly washed glasses in the grimy bar. Everyone who knows me had their doubts about whether I could work successfully as a waitress/bus boy without breaking every single glass and plate imaginable. But here I am in my third month and this is the first glass I’ve broken.

Of course, I’ve done plenty of other stupid shit since I started this job.

Like accidentally bumping into my boss and pouring a steaming hot Americano all over his brand new golf tee; mixing up the drink orders one night and accidentally giving one of the customers hives because the drink I gave him had a cherry in it and he was allergic.

And then there was the time that I actually caused a couple to break up right in the bar. All because I told the guy that I thought I’d seen him come into the bar with a chick who wasn’t his girlfriend. How was I supposed to have known that his actual girlfriend was not only insanely jealous and insecure, but psychotic enough to try to burn the bar down?

I almost got fired without severance pay for that. But in the end, my boss decided to give me another chance since despite my bad luck and timing on occasion, I’m generally good with the customers and I know how to work the bar and mix the drinks too, if our resident bartender couldn’t come in. And I guess it doesn’t hurt that my boss is also my uncle. You gotta love nepotism.

So here I was on just another typical night putting on my best smile and trying not to cringe at all the seedy, drunken guys that were checking out my ass through my jeans while I waited on them. It has been way too long since I’ve met a decent guy that I can just hang out with. Either that or I’ve just missed out on some seriously good lays with how much I’ve been working lately. Of course, it’s hard to find a decent guy when you live and work in Trinity View, a shabby and seedy neighbourhood in downtown Seattle where people and their good sense came to die on a regular basis. Despite the inherent danger of just walking around this neighbourhood, my uncle’s bar still managed to attract more than a few affluent clientele from influential businessmen, infamous drug dealers and gang members to yuppie types skiving off of Daddy’s latest pay cheque. These are the kinds of douchebags I have to serve every single night.

t doesn’t help either that my uber sarcastic co-worker, Roy, was being his usual jackass self. Don’t get me wrong, Roy’s not a total douche, just a little rough around the edges. He’s kind of a perfectionist, so he gets ruffled around the feathers quite easily when he feels like people are making mistakes around him on purpose just to piss him off. For me personally, I’d say that Roy had more of a God complex than a perfectionist idiosyncrasy. Or he just really needs to get laid. This fact was made all the more apparent with the secretively lecherous looks he was throwing at a good looking male customer sitting by the bar. “Dude, if you want that hottie to twist your body like a bendy straw, all you have to do is say so.” I teased with a sly smirk on my face.

Watching the way that Roy’s face coloured over with a deep crimson was pretty amusing to say the least. “Mind your own fucking business, Ginger. Or just your uncle’s business, since that’s what you get paid for. And take these shots to those guys in the back near the TV.” Roy instructed, handing me a tray laden with shot glasses filled with transparent liquid.

I really hate the fact that this asshole I work with actually knows my real name. I’ve never even told him; it must be my uncle’s doing. The sad part is that I’m not even an actual ginger; the closest I’ve gotten to having red hair is when I accidentally broke a glass jar and spilled ketchup all over my head. That’s right, I’m a 23-year old waitress named Ginger with dirty blonde hair. So instead of giving my parents the satisfaction, I called myself ‘Ginny’ because it sounded so much cooler when accompanied with the surname ‘Simmons’.

I sighed heavily at the ceiling overhead with its large oval-shaped light glaring sharply back at me. I headed over to the table in question and cringed inwardly when I overheard snippets of the men’s conversation.

I’m telling you, bro, she wanted my dick so bad, I had to charge an admission fee just for her to go down on me!” the first man chortled with the utmost delight. Ew, he actually made me throw up in my mouth just from his words alone.

“With all due respect, that sounds like a work of fiction, my friend,” A second man chuckled through regular sips of his beer.

“Fuck you, Vick! That is totally what happened!” the first man fumed in a drunken slur, slamming his glass of beer down hard onto the table so that it shook a little.

I cleared my throat loudly to get their attention and starting placing the shots down gently onto the rickety wooden table. “Here are your drinks, fellas. Enjoy,” I said sweetly, even though looking at their repugnant faces made me want to barf.

“Wait a second, beautiful,” the first man slurred. I gasped when I felt a warm and clammy hand encircle my waist and pull me down to sit on a lap. A lap infused with something long and protruding that poked me right in the ass. Is that…what I think it is? “Don’t run off so quickly. Stay and play a little while longer with us,” the first man murmured sensually, his hot and smelly breath fanning the edges of my earlobe.

“That’s super tempting, but I really can’t, fellas. A girl’s gotta put food on the table somehow,” I apologized, shooting a meaningful glance at our surroundings.

If my uncle had been here right now, he would’ve blown his top at any of the male customers giving me a hard time. But I stupidly went and insisted that me and Roy could handle things for the night and that he should take my aunt out for dinner and a movie.
Ginny, you are such a fucking moron!
And Roy was just standing behind the bar with Eddie, the bartender, pretending to be engrossed in mixing drinks and cleaning glasses instead of defending my virtue. I take back what I said – the guys I work with are fucking useless!

“Come on, beautiful, can you really afford to play hard to get?” the first man asked in what was definitely a brazenly insulting way.

Gus, leave her alone. She’s gotta serve the other customers,” a third man with a nice looking face and cool demeanour told the first man whose lap I was inadvertently sitting in.

“Relax, Pete. Besides, I can think of other ways the slut can make her quota for the night,” the man called Gus said in a leering way.
Oh no, you didn’t
.

“Oh snap, did he just call that waitress a slut? He did, right?” a new voice interjected

“I think he did,” another voice agreed solemnly.

I managed to extricate myself from Gus’ lap and stared in astonishment at the newcomers. They definitely weren’t regulars at the bar; in fact, they looked nothing like the men that I usually interacted with, either professionally or personally.

The man who had spoken first was tall with broad shoulders and an impressive build all round. His skin was pale to the point of almost being translucent and he was wearing what looked like a dark blue V-neck muscle T-shirt and a black leather jacket on top. He was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and boots. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his light grey eyes and mop of unruly, curly brown hair that I just wanted to run my fingers through in the moment.

That was the case until my eyes landed on his companion. He was shorter, but he was just as good looking as his friend if not more so. He was pale too, but with traces of formerly tanned skin of the Latino persuasion. I could see this in his face with his warm chocolate brown eyes, a long, angular nose and a delicately chiseled jawline. His hair was short, black and gelled upwards, which somehow reminded me of a shark’s fin. Unlike his taller friend, he was wearing a maroon hoodie, black and white striped tracksuit pants and sneakers.

They seemed pretty harmless just standing there in the middle of my uncle’s bar. And yet…I got this strange vibe from both of them. Like…they were a hell of a lot more dangerous than they looked. So much so that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up at full attention as I kept staring at them.

“Who the fuck are the two of you? The Hardy Boys?” the guy named Gus demanded, followed by derisive laughter from him and his friends.

“You don’t need to know that,” the taller guy answered abruptly.

What you
do need to know
is that we know you, Augustus Prince. We also know you, Vincent Franz and you, Peter Baldwin. We know a hell of a lot about you and your shady dealings.” The shorter man continued.

Gus’ cheeks turned blood red and his hands were shaking badly as they rested on the table as he gazed at the newcomers. “Who are you?” he asked yet again, only more seriously this time.

“You know a friend of ours, Gus-Gus. At least, you were acquainted with her once, before you raped and killed her.” When this sinister announcement was met with more than a few blank stares from me, my co-workers and the other bar patrons, the stranger elaborated: “Oh, you all don’t know? This is Gus Prince, Vick Franz and Pete Baldwin. They’re famous on the news these days; you’re probably more familiar with their work as the ‘Trinity Troika’. Gus over here likes the women a little too much; Vick’s into money laundering; And Pete takes care of the books and keeps his nose clean, with a little racketeering on the side. Better drink up, boys. It’s gonna be your last.” The taller stranger warned, a creepy smile plastered on his face.

At that point, Gus smashed his beer glass on the table and stood up, shaking all over with rage and grasping the jagged shard so tightly in his balled-up fist that it started to bleed a little. “Come try that bold shit over here, asshole,” he implored, his teeth bared like a wild animal.

“With pleasure,” the shorter stranger remarked casually. To my intense horror, his whole face seemed to break out into scaly flaps of skin, crisscrossing with black veins that appeared out of nowhere, along with his brown eyes morphing into blood-red orbs. And I watched with morbid curiosity as he launched himself off the back of his heels and landed squarely on top of Gus’ shoulders. I emitted a scream when sharp fangs shot out from behind his parted lips as he sank them hard into Gus’ neck and drank deeply.

Vick screamed like a banshee and tried to get away while Pete held his ground, retrieving a blade from his jacket pocket. At this point, the whole bar was in a state of total chaos. The other patrons, along with Roy and Eddie, tried to haul ass out of the entrance. But it was like some strange magic was being worked over the bar. The doors which had been unlocked the entire time just wouldn’t open- no matter how much anyone tried. The shorter man was now through drinking his fill of blood and he had left a gaping laceration on the side of Gus’ neck. Gus lay on his back with his eyes wide open. My heart dropped in my stomach while staring at the man’s mouth, which was now rimmed red and dripping with blood at the edges. The taller man grabbed hold of Vick’s shirt and threw him savagely into the jukebox in the corner of the room. Both man and jukebox careened violently onto the side and didn’t move a muscle afterwards.