Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,51
in discussion with Jenks and a few other club members. He glanced up at her and smiled, and the men around him fell silent with varying looks of shock on their faces.
Guess he wasn’t the type to smile much.
Or ever.
She didn’t know how to feel about that. About any of it. So she decided to ignore it.
“Maybe you’re right,” she finally said, turning back to Marisela. “What do you do when you’re not here?”
“I’m a professor at SCAD. Painting and portraits.”
“That’s wonderful! Maybe I’ve seen some of your work at one of the shows?” The Savannah College of Art and Design was an integral part of the city, and Ryan had always loved the annual film festival and attended as many of the art shows as she could.
“I had a self-portrait in the Perspectives show a couple of weeks ago,” Marisela said, suddenly looking a little shy. “I’m sure you didn’t—”
“Oh my God! That was you!” Ryan put her mug down, studying the other woman’s features. “The six-foot-long nude of you reading in the window seat? I loved that painting. You’re so talented.”
Marisela’s smile was blinding. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Not me,” Jenks called across the room, but he was grinning. “I don’t love other men looking at my beautiful naked wife.”
Bane met Ryan’s gaze and started prowling toward her, dangerously graceful. She suddenly realized that his eyes, although still beautiful, weren’t glowing anymore. He must be able to control that, to hide it from the humans?
“You love it, you Neanderthal,” Marisela told Jenks, laughing. “He kept saying, ‘That’s my wife,’ until I made him leave,” she confided to Ryan.
“He should be proud. It’s amazing, and you’re so beautiful in it. I could almost feel the sadness—”
Marisela’s eyes clouded.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Ryan stammered. “I didn’t mean to bring up—”
“No. You pour your soul into your art, and if you’re brave enough to put it out into the world, your truest wish is to make people feel when they encounter it. Thank you for telling me.” Marisela lightly touched her arm.
Bane didn’t stop his approach until he was standing only inches from Ryan. “I would not be happy if other men saw your nude body,” he growled.
Ryan blinked, speechless. This was not the kind of conversation she’d ever had in her life.
Marisela shook her head. “Peeing on shoes again, Boss?”
That snapped her out of it. “You—” She elbowed Bane in the side. Hard. “You don’t get a say in anything I do with my body, nude or otherwise.”
He leaned closer and put his cheek on the top of her head, inhaling deeply. “You smell like sunlight,” he murmured. “It makes me want to do many things with your body, naked and otherwise.”
Jenks, who’d walked over to join them, grinned at Bane. “So, you’re letting us meet your old lady?”
“Hey!” Ryan narrowed her eyes. “I’m not old!”
Most of the people in the room, many who’d been watching Ryan surreptitiously or openly, started laughing, and she was caught off guard for a second, but then she started to laugh, too.
Bane, however, didn’t. His hand shot out, and he grabbed Jenks by the shirtfront and lifted him so high into the air that the man’s shoes barely touched the floor, as casually as if he were picking up a napkin. Then he locked his gaze on Ryan.
“He insulted you. Do you want me to kill him?”
Chapter Twenty-One
A red sheen washed over Bane’s vision, and he had to turn his head so the humans wouldn’t see it. The humans other than Ryan, who was looking at him with some concern, her lovely eyes gone dark and questioning.
She put a hand on his arm—the arm that wasn’t lifting one of his trusted club members into the air; what the fuck was happening to him?—and shook her head.
“Seems a little extreme,” she said dryly. “Maybe you could just arm wrestle.”
He released Jenks, who, luckily, took it as a great joke and started laughing. “I always knew that when you finally fell, you’d fall hard. No insult to your lady, my friend.” He clapped Bane so hard on the back with one giant hand that the blow would have knocked a human a few feet across the floor. “Been working out, huh?”
“Men. Am I right?” Marisela’s expression was wary as she flicked her gaze between Bane and Ryan. “Can’t live with them, can’t take them out back and beat some sense into them. Wait! Maybe we could…”
Ryan smiled and moved subtly to position herself between Bane and