Wicked (Eternal Guardians #9) - Elisabeth Naughton Page 0,4

trench coats?” Her gaze shot that way. “Vampires. And the long-haired dude in the booth back there by himself knocking back shots?” She looked toward the u-shaped booth in the shadows. “A lycanthrope.”

“Really...” Interest flared inside Talisa as she eyed the werewolf. The blood suckers didn’t do it for her, but a werewolf had promise. He was muscular, with dark hair that fell to his shoulders in waves, and a face cast in shadows she couldn’t quite see.

“Then,” the bartender said, “there’s that guy.”

From the corner of her eye, Talisa saw the way the bartender nodded in the other direction, toward the opposite side of the club. Her gaze followed, and when she spotted the dark-haired, muscled male standing just inside the pulsing lights of the dance floor, every ounce of heat inside gathered in her core as if ready to detonate.

“Oh my...” she muttered.

He had to be seven feet tall with jet-black hair, piercing dark eyes, and a chiseled face that looked as if the gods had carved it themselves. His shoulders were broad and muscular in the dark Henley, his pecs strong and straining through the thin fabric, his abs and hips trim and mouthwatering. He wore dark pants she couldn’t really see, and some kind of fancy boots, but her gaze kept sweeping back to his face. His tempting, gorgeous, hypnotic face that was so enticing, she couldn’t seem to look away. Especially when his mesmerizing eyes were locked on her as they were now.

She licked her lips, her body already on full alert.

At her back, the bartender said, “He’s one you definitely need to stay away from.”

That got through the sex-haze trying to take over Talisa’s mind. She looked back at the bartender. “Why? What is he?”

Vampires and shapeshifters didn’t scare her. She was stronger than both thanks to her herculean gift. Magickal beings didn’t even worry her because her warrior skills—the ones she’d been born with thanks to her link to the ancient heroes—could best any attacker. The only being that gave her pause was...

“Is he a god?” she asked in a low voice.

“Don’t know.” The bartender shrugged. “He’s using some kind of glamour, though. One that’s masking his true identity. Be careful with that one. Something tells me if he weren’t casting that glamour, we would all know exactly who he is. And we’d all run like hell.”

The bartender stepped away to take another drink order at the end of the bar, and as Talisa turned to look back at the mystery male, still watching her with those piercing dark eyes, a shiver of foreboding rushed down her spine.

There were plenty of gods she knew to run from, the most prominent being the Olympians. Zeus had no use for her aunt, the queen of Argolea, or her father, the leader of the Argonauts, and he was searching for one of the Horae’s offspring, which included Talisa, because he needed their sacred abilities to control the Orb of Krónos—a magical medallion created by Prometheus that was rumored to hold the power to unleash the Titans from Tartarus.

The King of the Gods wasn’t a being she’d ever consider tangling with on a good day, and this definitely wasn’t a good day for her. If that really was Zeus in disguise, the smart thing for her was to get the hell out of this club as fast as her legs could carry her. But for reasons she couldn’t explain and suddenly didn’t care to question, her legs wouldn’t move.

The mystery hotty continued to watch her the way she was watching him, and as the seconds ticked by in time to the pulsing beat, something in her gut told her he wasn’t Zeus. Something else whispered he wasn’t even an Olympian.

He could be Hades, the god-king of the Underworld, who’d also made it clear he couldn’t wait to see the people of her world wiped off the map. But the heat growing even stronger in her veins and gathering between her legs as she stared at him told her he wasn’t Hades either.

He was someone else. Something different. Someone powerful, yes. But something enchanting. Magnetic.

Seductive.

She hadn’t realized she’d pushed off the barstool until the bartender called out at her back. She didn’t turn to look at him. Didn’t slow her steps. Her body moved as if it had a mind of its own, drawing her through the grinding bodies on the dance floor toward Mr. Dark and Dangerous. Until she was steps away and he was all she