Selena's POV

The bar was jammed full with sweating bodies when we arrived.

The music from the speakers were as loud as the stench if alcohol and sex.

The bar had colored lights which flashed over everywhere.

People were everywhere on the dance floor with laughter echoing through the room in every direction.

Dani dragged me around the room and purchased a pink fizzy drink for the both of us.

The drink hurt just hard enough to remind me that I was infact having one.

I drank it slowly and cautiously.

But she just kept coming at me with more drink and patronizing smiles.

I was running around my head with excitement by the third drink.

I felt so light.

It was as though I was shedding some burden that I had been taking about.

I leaned back on the counter.

My vision began to blur slightly at the edges when the sensation wrapped around me in an embrace.

Someone was looking at me.

My eyes searches the crowd until my gaze fell on the culprit.

It was a man.

He was tall with broad shoulders and too handsome to be real.

He had dark hair that looked so smooth to the touch.

This was coupled with a sharp jawline and piercing eyes.

I instantly wanted him to pin me up against the wall with him not moving at all.

He never smiled, not even once.

I noticed that he wasn't trying to be cool.

He just stared at me like I was the entire universe and the rest of the universe didn't matter.

My breath stuck in my throat.

He moved towards me until he was finally standing afore me.

The other patrons at the bar had parted for him without his even needing to ask them to move.

It wae as if he had some sort of secret power that kept them away from me.

He was standing close enough for me to catch the smell of expensive leather, smoke and sandalwood.

There was something else that was even darker that I couldn't identify.

But it made my heart start to pound once again inside of my chest.

"You drink too much," he said to me when he leaned down.

His voice was low and felt soft and warm over the curve of my ear.

He leaned back.

I stared at him blankly.

"Do I know you?"

"No. But I know enough."

His gaze came to rest on the bracelt circling my wrist.

The stupid metal bracelet that I had picked up in a fraction of a moment before I had left for work.

I couldn't leave behind Iris's birthday gif to me no matter what.

I grinned.

He strongly reminded of how much farther he invaded my space.

"Wow."

He quirked a brow at me.

He looked sexy doing it.

"That is absolutely not in any way in the slightest creepy at all."

"Maybe not."

His full lips curked into something that resembled the smile of a minimalist.

It altered the entire contour of his face. "But you are still talking to me."

"Only because you invaded my personal space zone uninvited."

"And yet," he began.

His voice dropped to a virtual whisper as he crept closer.

"You are getting aroused."

He was correct.

I felt a shiver run down my spine and it wasn't from the alcohol.

There was something about him that would not allow me to move from where I was standing.

My heart was racing.

Yet, I wasn't afraid.

I was drawn to him like a fly was drawn to a glass of wine.

I was drawn to him just the way the planets were held by gravity.

"What is your name?" I asked in an attempt to sound braver than I was.

"Damien," he said.

His voice was calm.

"And you are Selena."

I glared at him.

Several red flags began waving weakly inside of my drunken mind.

I ignored it.

"How do you—" I began.

He cut me off with a jerk of his head down the bar where Dani was dancing with some baseball cap guy.

"Your friend has been screaming your name across this whole bar all night. I can't help but hear her."

I smiled, relief flooding over me.

"Right. That's it."

Dani was never subtle.

His face eased a bit.

But there was something feral that still continued to wrestle in his piercing eyes.

"You don't belong here."

I shifted my head.

I could not help it.

"And where do I?" I asked.

He smirked.

"Maybe somewhere quieter, safer."

His eyes flashed with something that curled my stomach and informed me he did not mean the bar.

"Perhaps I am unsafe tonight," I told him before I could listen to any more from him.

The drunken angry words spewed out.

It came from the vanity of my birthday and drink and something about him that dared me to be angry.

We didn't speak for a minute.

The rest of the world gradually dropped away into white noise as we stated at each other.

Desire and passion rose and filled the atmosphere around us in thick suffocating layers.

And then he leaned in against the bar.

His body was so close to mine that I ended up pressing my back against the counter behind me.

He was just so close for me to smell the sweet scent of the sweat that was erupting up out of his skin.

"You should be careful what you wish for," he said softly, his voice dipping down lower.

I swallowed hard.

My own heartbeat was thudding so terribly that I was sure he would have no difficulty hearing it.

"Maybe I enjoy danger."

He sneered.

But this one felt like a slash edged knife.

He did so in a fashion that should have made me want to run away from him for my life.

But instead, it maddened me.

I wanted this man.

I wanted him pressed against me.

I wanted his hands on my skin.

I needed his length buried in me.

"Let's go then."

I knew better.

Iris had cautioned me.

I heard her nagging whisper at the back of my head

I was overcome by a feeling about all the horrible things I had ever heard about bars and bad men.

But I ignored it.

I pushed it aside by the fire that consumed me.

The way he looked at me like I was some beautiful and wild animal made me lose common sense.

There was no convincing me.

There was no thinking.

I nodded at him.

Damien took my hand.

His grip was firm and my arms filled with goosebumps as he pulled me into the throng.

We fled the back door into night air.

The only thing that illuminated the alley was light grom one tall street light.

It rippled across the broken sidewalk and kept part of the darkness away from both of us.

The music and laughter pursued us, lessening now in the ring of cars racing off into the darkness.

Soon all of the superficial sounds had been diluted by the pounding of my own heart.

I was standing before him in the alley with the tension knotting my muscles with excitement.

"So what then? This where you kill me?" I attempted a joke even though my voice did break a little.

His eyes flared into mine.

They were wild with hunger.

"Not kill."

He moved closer to me.

His hand began tracing over my cheekbone in a gentle way that left my stomach twisting hard.

Want pooled in my pelvis.

My core tightened with wetness.

"It is something else altogether."

My breath closed like a door when his face came nearer to mine.

"The word should be Devour."

The world froze, all other things flowing into this moment.

I knew this breath, this decision.

And when his soft lips finally met with mine in a kiss—it was fire.

The kiss was blazing hot in a way that took my entire breath away.

His hand came to rest on the small of my back, tugging towards him.

His grip was like a tell tale sign that he didn't want to let me go.

The kiss expanded.

His tongue pilfered my mouth as his hands did same to my body.

My body was warm with heat and a need that nearly crippled me.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't surrounded by defense.

I wasn't cowering and small and scared.

I was alive.

My feelings were untamed.

And his too.

The rule breaking night began with that sumptous kiss that left me giddy.

And when the sun would come up after that, I had no concept that my life was forever going to be altered.