“As I was saying…” Tarek elbowed me like we were friends and then winked. “There was this woman—”
“Shouldn’t women be taller?” I wondered out loud.
“Does it matter? Look at her.”
“She’s passable,” I lied.
“Bullshit. She’s gorgeous, and she begged me for a job.”
I jerked my gaze to his. “Was she willing to do anything, then? You’re a dog, a complete mutt, I should put you down…”
“Slow your roll Demon King,” He grinned again. “I’ve got a girl back home I’ve had my eye on for a few hundred years.”
My right eye twitched. “Well, by all means, move slower.”
He lifted two middle fingers. “She’s special.”
“Yes that’s why you should wait five hundred years to hold her hand—she’s special, different. Tarek, I was fighting wars before your people were even gifted with the rule over earth. Believe me when I say, all of them are the same.”
“Hi!” A peppy voice had me craning my neck and then looking down… down… down. The woman was barely five feet tall! “I’m Kyra Apollonia!”
I stared and stared, then crossed my arms and muttered. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
My tattoo seemed to shiver across my palm, the pain dissipated briefly before coming back full force like it was warning me about something.
Fantastic.
“What the hell kind of name is Kyra Apollonia?” I just had to know. Really. Who has the last name Apollonia? It was like Pollyanna but worse.
“Oh,” Her bronzed cheeks seemed to pinken a bit. “So my parents are from this super old Greek family. Long story short, my father was Egyptian, my mother was Greek, and they wanted to combine both traditions. So Kyra Apollonia it is!”
“Kyra.” I repeated her first name. “Or Kyros, like Ra, the sun.” The room tilted as she sucked in a breath and then her jaw went slack.
I turned my attention back to Tarek. “Is she good?”
The infuriating thing waved a hand between us. “Hello? Standing right here? And how’d you know that? Did you study Egyptian mythology or something?”
I barked out a laugh at that. “Your mythology is my Bible, strange, but true.” I rolled my eyes and looked back to Tarek. “If she breaks one glass she’s done.”
Silence ensued between them.
I sighed. “Multiple glasses then…”
“Thank you!” The woman I hardly knew, who barely came up to my chest, wrapped her arms around my body so tight and fast that I couldn’t prepare myself.
I stood there like an idiot while her warmth filled me from the inside out. Every part of her body that touched mine was on fire, the good kind, the slow burn that makes you willing to do anything, say anything, swear anything for more.
And then she was gone, skipping back through the crowd and finding her place behind the bar pouring beer.
> “Still think she’s just like every other woman?” Tarek put a hand on my shoulder.
I was irritated that he put a hand where she’d touched.
He stole her warmth, damn it!
My eyes narrowed. “She’s… there’s something…” I squeezed my hands and then looked down at my palm.
The black seed tattoo.