One Hell of a Guy: The Cambion Trilogy, Book 1 Read Free Page A

chugged the last of her mojito.
    “Are you serious ? Are you seriously saying you’re not handsome enough to tempt him ?”
    Lily snickered at the Pride and Prejudice reference. “I didn’t actually ask,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to bore him to death. I’d rather dance with that grabby old bastard at Club Domino. At least he didn’t think he was too good for me.”
    “He didn’t —” Miri’s eyes narrowed, then widened in something resembling horror as her gaze shifted over Lily’s shoulder.
    Lily opened her mouth to say something, but cut herself off as she heard a man loudly and deliberately clearing his throat directly behind her.
    Oh, no , she thought, and turned to find — no surprise — Superman-handsome himself, standing there.
    Mortified, she felt an almost overpowering urge to look away, at the floor, at the dancers — anywhere — but she’d be damned if she was going to cower like a mouse in front of this guy, no matter how much of a hottie he was, or how much he might have overheard.
    He smiled, and it gave her actual goosebumps. She could feel the skin on her arms tingling. What he lacked in personality he more than made up for in sex appeal and eye crinkles.
    “Want to dance?” he asked her, though she barely heard him over the music and the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. He really was unbelievably good-looking. Up close, his eyes were a brilliant sapphire blue, an intense color she would have assumed was Photoshopped if she’d seen it in the eyes of a magazine model. Maybe they were contacts? The stubble on his chin was the exact right length to rasp along the sensitive skin of a woman’s neck and his even, white smile made her wonder what it would feel like to have those teeth nibbling along the same area.
    Oh, my God, she thought. Stop thinking about him nibbling you!
    His shoulders were every bit as impressive as she’d thought on first glance, broad and strong-looking and tapered to a trim waist. His black T-shirt was skin tight; she could easily tell there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, which made her a little too aware of her own not-trim waist.   She tugged at the hem of her blouse, self-conscious, ready to say yes simply because no guy who looked like had ever asked her to dance before.
    Thinking about that pissed her off all over again. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to dance with you.”
    Oh my God, she thought. Rude. But true. Story of my life.
    Her therapist, Dr. Nussbaum, called it a neurosis. Miri called it a quirk. Whatever one called it, it amounted to the same thing: like George Washington with the cherry tree, Lily could not tell a lie. It made her sweaty and queasy and miserable, and the truth always came tripping off her tongue anyway, so these days she didn’t even bother to try. She could try to avoid a question — and poor Miri had long since learned never to ask how her ass looked in a dress unless she wanted an honest answer — but she simply could not tell a lie.
    Superman-handsome cocked his head at her and gave her a mild look of surprise, as though she’d turned him down politely instead of sticking her foot in her stupid truth-telling mouth. “I thought maybe that was why you came over to my side of the bar,” he said, pointing vaguely back in the direction he’d come. She felt a little vindicated when he looked as off-balance as she felt.
    “I changed my mind.”  
    “Come on,” he said. “One dance?” He reached out and took her hand.
    It was the oddest thing but the second he touched her, every intention she’d had of repeating her refusal just drained away. She turned to look at Miri and opened her mouth but no words came out. Miri shrugged, then smiled and nudged her towards the dance floor.
    Superman-handsome took her by the upper arm and drew her onto the dance floor, where they were quickly lost in a sea of dancing bodies.
    For a moment, Lily felt awkward about her own limited dancing abilities — even