Rush Me (New York Leopards 1)

I stopped just inside the door.

Usually, I liked Eva’s theatre parties. The people all felt familiar, like favorite books, artsy and open and over-dramatic. Liza Minnelli played between top forty hits, cueing improvisational vocal riffs. But tonight, I could have mistakenly entered an adolescent clothing store. Music pounded through crowded, dimly lit rooms. A hundred perfumes and colognes thickened the air, an extra layer above the sweat and spilled alcohol. Over the heads of dozens of twenty-somethings I took in a wet bar and blasting speakers.

This couldn’t be right. Maybe the host was a very successful Broadway actor? Or had a trust fund roommate? I was pretty sure apartments this large cost a currency of souls.

A guy stumbled by me and grinned. I frowned back at him. He had broad shoulders and an oversized sports jersey. Method actor?

After texting Eva, I made my way toward the bar, scanning the room for anyone I recognized. Everything looked off. A disproportionate amount of large, heavily muscled guys kept company with girls in tight dresses and high hooker heels, their hair long and flowing. I would’ve needed to straighten my curls with an industrial strength iron to fit in.

With damp, nervous hands I took a rum and soda from the bartender, before looking for a quiet corner to hide in and chain-call Eva. I’d made the wrong choice; now that I was on the opposite side of the room from the exit, the mosh-pit had thickened, and the only hope for silence meant going deeper into the apartment. Turning my back on the pulsing bodies, I ducked down the first hall I found, hoping for a side room or bathroom to hide away in.

The bathroom was locked, but the second door I tried swung open. I took a step forward, pausing as my sight adjusted to the darkness. I squinted. Furniture wasn’t shaped that way...

Then I gasped, as the darkness separated into two figures. One tall and standing, the other—rather lower. Holy shit. I stared at the woman.

“Do you mind?” she finally said.

I snapped my eyes away and up, staring at the guy. Then I stopped. He was beautiful, like Michelangelo’s David, or the discus-thrower, and by the smirk on his face—or the girl on her knees—he knew it. I gawked at him, and his amusement deepened.

“Well?” His pale eyes glinted. “Get in or get out.”

I gasped again and slammed the door. Low laughter filtered through.

My cheeks burned. Good God. That was actually shocking, wasn’t it? Get in? Was he suggesting...

My cheeks flamed hotter. Of course he was.

I pushed back into the main rooms, snagging another drink for fortification. The door remained an unreachable goal, blocked by a hundred drunken, swaying bodies. How was I supposed to get out? Maybe I could place my hands together and burrow between people, like a fish. I bit back a hysterical giggle, steeled my shoulders, and took a step. A girl elbowed me backward. “Hey, watch it,” she shot, her Long Island drawl nasty. The guy at her side, who was closing in on three hundred pounds but missing a neck, glared at me with beady eyes. I stepped away, my gaze washing over the crowd. To my right, a fist swung through the air and connected with another man’s nose.

What had I gatecrashed?

A couple girls shrieked. High-pitched, girly shrieks. They teetered away from the altercation.

Okay, definitely not a theatre party. I’d witnessed gossip and drama, but they were meant to be heard and seen. There were no thickheaded guys battling it out, nor whimpering girls with wide eyes acting like wounded deer.

Well, now. This was awkward.

Apparently I wasn’t getting out through the main room. Not with fists flying, and the crowd forming a solid mass. But I couldn’t handle the muddle of cries and music, and strangers. I wanted quiet, and bright lights, and I wanted to be wearing an oversized T-shirt, not a clingy green slip dress

And I wanted my Ben and Jerry’s, damn it.

Someone bumped into me. I assumed it was just one of the crowd, but when I shifted back, a hand followed, running up my side. A slurred voice sounded by my ear. “Hey, baby.”

That was it. I dropped my now empty glass on a table and headed deeper into the apartment, through the hallway and then up a staircase blocked by a doggy-gate with a sign that read YOU SHALL NOT PASS.

Sorry, Gandalf. I would, and I’d collect my damn two hundred dollars, too, thanks-very-much.

Steadying myself on the gate, I swung my legs over and headed up into the off-limit floor of the apartment.

Chapter Two

The second floor held three doors, and I chose the one in the middle. The lights revealed a bright, comfortable bedroom. Jeans and sweatshirts lay crumpled on the floor. Rumpled sheets and blankets were pulled up in a semblance of tidiness. I draped my scarf over the desk chair as I studied the books on the shelves, the knickknacks and pictures.

A young black man showed up over and over, as a child with his family, and later with friends and a stunningly beautiful woman. In those, the man’s face shone with adoration. He grew not only taller but broader, his shoulders hinting at an albatross-like wingspan, muscles rippling down his arms. The room’s owner, I presumed. His laptop sat on the desk and I wondered if it would be wrong to go over and check my email.

Hmm. Yes. Maybe I was tipsier than I supposed.

Instead, I dragged myself to one of the walls to study a print hanging above the bed. A full moon streaked bright across a lake scene. The white and orange of the shore were painted in familiar, wobbling waves, and I studied it for a minute, trying to make a connection. I’d never quite finished my minor in Art History—or my minor in Classics, or the one in Philosophy—but I’d gone through enough classes to recognize the famous ones. Edvard Munch. There’d been a print of The Scream, a ghoulish Expressionist painting, in one of my classrooms.