The club throbbed with synth beats and artificial pheromones. Crimson strobes sliced through the smoke as chrome-bodied dancers writhed on platforms. Neon veins ran up the walls, pulsing to the rhythm of a bassline that felt like it was syncing with my own heart, what little of it still worked.
I wasn’t there for the music.
His name was Serin. At least, that’s what the retinal scan pulled when I marked him on entry. Six-foot-three, all obsidian leather and smooth, blood-warm skin that shimmered under ultraviolet light. His eyes were lilac irises, blinking between human and hunger.
He was leaning against the bar, two fingers around a glass of synthetic O-neg. Untouched. Watching me.
I pushed through the crowd, my palm brushing over exposed skin and mesh-covered thighs, but none of it mattered—not when I felt his eyes on me. They were scanning me like code. Decrypting my wants before I knew them myself.
"You're not from around here," he said, voice smooth as bio-silk and twice as expensive.
"Does it matter?" I took the stool next to him, letting our thighs touch just enough to tease.
He looked me over with that half-smirk vampires always wore, like he could see the kink in your blood before you'd even undressed. “I can smell that your last hookup was an android.”