Avriel Kaplan: Well dressed, well groomed, beautifully handsome, quiet and brooding and exactly the kind of man Ariel Declan doesn't need to know. But, that is not for her to decide.
Alexander Kirk: wickedly handsome, well known and well liked, egot...
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Avriel looked away before it was noticed that he was even glancing in their direction. It was never his intention to draw attention to himself. He preferred anonymity and solitude, yet he watched Ariel with a keen interest in his heart and mind. As he let his focus drop from Esther and Scott it shifted inward and then inadvertently to Ariel, Ari, as Esther had called her. He found that it made him feel, was that happy, to think of her and to watch her work. He hadn't known happy in such a long time that he had almost lost the name of the emotion. He was grateful that Ariel never had to work the upper levels. He was happy that she ran the bar he could sit at. In a club with three bars, this one was his. It was his bar. It was Ariel's bar and that made him happy.
Scott and Esther shared a bar and enjoyed, if you could call it that, sharing the space with each other. The uppermost level of the club had become their dominion. Anya's bar. They were two of the most elegant and beautiful creatures alive on that level, she was the third.
The third bar in the multilevel club was actually on the second level. It was Alex's domain. He was too vain and too in love with himself to share it with anyone else, so he didn't. Frank ran the bar on the mezzanine. Frank, handsome by every standard, yet not standout handsome, was less competition for Alex, not that a superiorly beautiful woman such as Anya would be a problem. It just kept the women away. Frank was no competition at all really, not for Alex. Alex preferred it that way, but wouldn't see it that way at all.
Avriel turned some of his attention, just a small portion of it, to the bodies that were all around him. He could see beautiful women all about him, handsome men and feel genuinely good people having a good time. One couple was sitting in a booth snuggled close together. They assumed a relative amount of privacy, secured in that booth, but it was clear to anyone that might have strayed a glance in their direction, more than a moment, that what they were doing to each other was quite a bit more than just kissing. The state of undress the woman had the man in under the table bordered on the line of indecent exposure. What they were doing was sexually deviant. Avriel turned away disgusted and closed off the part of him that was drawn to such powerful emotion. He didn't need those thoughts or feelings flowing through him at the moment.
Avriel picked up his highball with more than half the golden liquid still in it and drained the glass. He set the glass down on the bar loud enough for Ariel to hear and thus summoned her to him.
"Are you alright, Avriel?" He smiled into her eyes and lied.
"I'm fine, thank you. You can call me Avi if it's easier." Her hand was hot on his skin as she placed it on his wrist and over his hand. Her eyes locked with his. They filled with honest concern. Was it really that unusual for him to finish his glass in such a manner and since when did she pay so much attention to him? She placed her hand on his as she spoke. He had long since forgotten that there was nothing more powerful than the power of human touch. When those warm fingers met his skin, he felt an old familiar pull. How long had it been since he allowed someone to touch his skin? Had it really been that long? It must have been. The feeling was foreign yet eerily familiar to him. As her fingertips graced his skin he felt her energy slowly begin to move and pulse through his body combining with his own. It was a warm and soft sensation. Far more soothing than he remembered.
