he’d done with Casey. Her eyes narrowed as she watched. He was much gentler with this woman. He pulled her close as if she were made of glass and seconds later swept her up in his arms and whisked her out the back door of the club, straight out of a scene from An Officer and a Gentleman.
Only this guy was ten times bigger and a million times hotter than Richard Gere ever was.
Warmth rushed to Casey’s cheeks again as she watched, and envy—the only word she knew to describe that strange tightness in her chest—stabbed at the center of her. What would it feel like to have a guy like that so focused on her?
The door snap closed behind him, leaving only the darkness and thumping base of the club in its wake. With a frown, Casey took a deep breath and turned.
No sense worrying about something she’d never have. No sense worrying about something she didn’t have time for anyway. She needed to finish her shift so she could get home and sleep off this weird virus she’d been fighting the last few days. Then pull herself together so she could do it all over again Tuesday morning.
She crossed to Nick and handed him his Coke. “I’m heading out, Nick. You need anything else, Dana will take care of you.”
He lifted his fresh glass. Long sleeves covered his arms, and the fingerless gloves he always wore kept all but the tips of his fingers from view. “Will do. And Casey?”
She stopped midturn and glanced back. “Yeah?”
“That guy who ran into you? If you see him around town, I want you to let me know.”
Casey’s brows drew together. “Why?”
“Personal reasons.”
Okay, that was weird too.
“And you’d be smart to stay away from him if you do see him,” he added in a low tone. “Far away. He’s dangerous.”
That spot on Casey’s lower back tingled again, and she lifted her chin. There was looking out for her, and then there was telling her what to do. And even though something instinctive told her she’d never see the Greek god again, right now, coming from Nick, she wasn’t wild about either.
“Yeah, Nick,” she mumbled as she turned and headed for the dressing room. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Theron, put me down.” Isadora’s free hand pushed against Theron’s chest, but her protest did little more than annoy him.
He wouldn’t lose his temper. The fact that he’d spent four days tracking her down was inconsequential at this point. So was the fact that he’d left his kinsmen to come after her. He would simply take her home before the Council discovered she was gone and all hell broke loose.
“Theron, I mean it,” she said again, as the door to the human skin club snapped shut behind them and he headed away from the building.
“It’s time to go home, Isadora. You’ve had your fun.”
Isadora glanced over his shoulder back toward the building with a defeated look in her eyes. “You don’t understand. I need her.”
Need her? Like hell. He was the only one she needed right now. If her father found out what she’d been up to…
He gnashed his teeth at the thought and kept walking. If it were up to him, no one would know where she’d been these last few days or what she’d been up to. The last thing he—the leader of the Argonauts and a descendent of Heracles, the greatest hero ever—needed was for his warrior brothers to know his future wife had a human-female fetish.
He cringed at the thoughts. Both “human female” and “future wife.”
Isadora squirmed in his arms again, but finally gave up with a sigh. And that was just fine with Theron. He wasn’t in the mood to play nice.
The air was cool, but Theron barely felt it. A muffled thump-thump-thump echoed from the club behind him as he walked. Quietly, Isadora said, “She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Graceful and tall. I…I didn’t expect her to be so tall.”
More frustrated by the second at Isadora’s strange behavior, Theron picked up his pace. It wasn’t until Isadora sighed again and rested her head against his chest that he remembered how inebriated she was and how tightly he must be holding her.
He loosened his grasp and forcibly gentled his voice, though even he knew it came out rough and stilted. “Isadora, you cannot just run off like this.”
“I…I know,” she breathed against him, her body growing lax in his arms. She shivered and tried to burrow closer. “I just