Page 1 of Glitter

Chapter 1

Flashing, glittering light was all I could see. Even between the pulsing strobes in the club, my eyes retained the afterglow of brightness. I should probably turn away, give my poor eyes a chance to rest—reset themselves and readjust to the relative dimness of the rest of the club’s interior.

I should do that. Really, I should.

It would be the smart thing to do.

I just didn’t want to.

Because turning away would mean turning my back to the packed dance floor. And I couldn’t do that. Not when it meant I’d have to also tear my eyes off the gorgeous, stunning man dancing in the middle of that writhing mass of humanity.

Bright, strobing lights beamed down on the dance floor, beckoning the club patrons to join the throng, to move and grind and sweat to the techno beat underlying the unending stream of pop song after pop song. The illumination, in theory, was cast on all of the dancers in equal measure, and yet, one of them shone brighter than all the rest. A glorious, angelic vision of glittering loveliness.

If he’d had a shirt at some point, it was long gone. Meaning that I, and everyone else in the club, were treated to the sight of slender arms and a bare, slim torso above the waistband of baggy, slouchy jeans precariously clinging to sharp, narrow hip bones. With the rhythmic, filthy bump and grind of his hips as he danced, I could only conclude that the only thing keeping those pants up was magic.

Sweat gleamed enticingly on the subtle curves and dips of his lean muscles and, in the spirit of the club’s name, the pale expanse of his skin was liberally decorated in random swathes of sparkling glitter—vibrant pink to match the shade of his artfully colored hair.

I don’t know how long I’d been watching him—the passing of time had become completely immaterial the moment my eyes had landed on him. I couldn’t even guess how many people were pressed in all around him or what they looked like—all I saw was him.

My sparkling angel.

My glittering, twinkling, dazzling, glimmering, shimmering, dazzling angel of luminosity.

And I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.

My inability to wrench my gaze off the vibrantly beautiful man on the dance floor wasn’t that surprising. How often in one’s life were you lucky enough to be in the same room…the same city…the same state…as somebody who was so supremely visually stunning?

Of course, my eyes were drawn to him. Of course, my sight was stuck on him—his every move, his every breath, and each and every expression that flitted across his impossibly lovely face.

What was surprising was that, at some point…something had turned his attention in my direction. And now…he was looking back.

Time still had no meaning. And if the songs blasting through the sound system had changed from one to another, my brain couldn’t focus enough to latch onto the transition. So, I had no idea how long my glitter-sparkled angel’s pale-appearing eyes had been trained on me.

But trained on me they were.

His hips swayed seductively back and forth, his arms rose and fell to the muddled lyrics I couldn’t make out, and his head bobbed up and down with the beat of the music, but his eyes…those beguiling, intriguing, and strobe light-illuminated eyes…were looking right at me.

No, that couldn’t be right. I knew what I looked like. I was self-aware enough to know that while I wasn’t a hideous troll, I wasn’t…I wasn’t… There was no possible way a man as pretty, as stunning, as out of my league as that glittery angel-on-earth was looking at—

One hand slowly traced up the smooth, pale, pink-sparkled plane of his stomach, then continued up between small, raspberry-blush nipples, up a slender neck, and over the elegantly sharp edge of his jawline, until his fingers caressed the lush plumpness of his lower lip. Gorgeously pink lips pursed, and then, palm-side up, his hand was in front of his tempting mouth as he blew a kiss directly at me.

My eyebrows flew up and my eyes bugged out of my head in surprise. Even though it probably made me look like an idiot, I couldn’t prevent myself from helplessly mouthing the question, “ Me? ” while my own hand raised and pointed at my own chest. At least I did manage not to foolishly turn around and see who else near me he might’ve been aiming the gesture at.

The answer to my silently mouthed question came in the form of a singularly raised immaculately groomed eyebrow and a smirk curling up one corner of his lips.

My heart beat a staccato rhythm in my chest to rival the bass undertones of the club’s music. I was mystified, elated, and downright petrified at this inexplicable invitation to approach the supremely divine, glitter entity in the middle of the dance floor.

Thankfully, my feet were smarter than the rest of me and accepted that invitation, moving me toward the dance floor—and the sparkling angel—before my doubts and insecurities could cudgel my heart and mind into thinking it would be a bad idea.

If the moment had truly been magical, the other people standing just along the periphery of the dance floor and those dancing near my angel would’ve miraculously parted and melted away into the background, easily allowing me to pass. But as it was, I bumped into a few men, wove around a few couples that blocked my path, somewhat politely asked a few to let me through, and outright wiggled and squirmed my way between several more until I could even get close to where I’d last seen the vision of glittery deliciousness dancing.

All the while, terrified that he would’ve lost interest by the time I reached him, or worse, have completely vanished as though he’d only been a sparkling dream.

But when I reached the center of the dance floor—huffing and puffing and covered in a great deal more of sweat than I’d been when I’d begun my journey—there he was. Still undulating and sinuously moving to the thump, thump, thump of the music playing. Still shimmering and sparkling under the dance floor lights. Still wearing a sassy, flirty half-smirk. Still looking as sumptuously pink—from the ends of his curly, dyed hair, to the makeup gracing his eyelids, cheeks, and lips that I could make out now that I was close enough to him, to the several hues of pink, gleaming glitter dabbed and smeared across his chest, his arms, and dusted along the crests of his high cheekbones and the delicate ridge of his elegant nose.

And still looking right at me, with a clear light of interest shining in his ethereally pale blue eyes.

Despite what my own, rather boring and average, dark blue eyes were telling me, I still had trouble believing that this creature, this shimmering angel, could actually have turned his attention on me. I choked out a pathetically garbled, “Hi,” half-expecting that this entire moment would poof away as soon as the sound tumbled from my mouth.

A delicate index finger slipped between his rosy, lipsticked lips— Oh shit. Even his fingernails were painted a pretty peony pink —and I watched as the sharp edges of even, white teeth gently bit down on the tender flesh. As he slowly drew the digit back out—faintly shiny with the traces of his saliva—he dragged it against his lower lip, pulling it down and giving me a peek at the pale pink, shockingly lighter than the erotic vibrancy of his raspberry lipstick, softly supple interior surface.

Want, and need, and something that was almost too pure to be called lust, but that was most definitely lust, roared through me at the sight, and I almost missed my angel’s teasing greeting. “Well, hey, boo. For a minute there, I thought you were going to ignore me.”

The words were said lightly, as though he couldn’t imagine, any more than I could, that I, that anyone , would possibly ignore him. Although, I could’ve sworn I heard the faintest edge underlying all that levity. But I was probably wrong. It was probably just the noise from the music making me hear something that wasn’t there.

“Nooo. No, no, no,” I babbled earnestly. “No. Not at all. Never.”

I still had trouble believing what was going on right now; that I was really in the presence of such an impossibly beautiful and shiny man. And that he was actually talking to me, and I was talking to him… Mind-blowing. The whole thing. But as surreal and as hard to take in as this moment was, how could I have ignored him or his silent summons?

There’s no way.

“Hmmm. Good,” he seemed to purr.

We were roughly the same height, an altogether average 5’8”. If anything, I had perhaps a scant inch on him, which surprised me. He was slender, which was especially obvious next to my own chunky, allover thickness. But he had such a presence, an aura of confidence and personality, that I’d anticipated him being taller than he actually was.

So, there was no need for him to tip his head back to look at me, but tilt his head back he did, with only the barest sliver of his eyes peeking at me from under his eyelashes. While seemingly unnecessary, I won’t deny I appreciated the way it exposed the length of his slender neck, or the way it caused his pink curls to tumble, inviting me to want to touch them and feel their texture with my fingers.

It was only once he casually commanded, “Dance with me, boo,” that I realized I’d just been standing in front of him, still amid a swarm of writhing and swaying bodies, doing nothing but shamelessly taking in his glorious prettiness.

“D-dance. Yes, dance. Sure.”

There’s no way he could know what he was asking for. If my stuttering and lack of saying anything intelligent hadn’t yet clued this bewitching, beglitzed angel that I wasn’t worthy of his attention, then my sad attempt at dancing surely would. But if having me dance with him was what he wanted, then that’s what he would unfortunately get.

I took a halting, jerky step left, then an equally ungraceful step to the right. I then repeated the motions a few times, and after about the fourth, I think I managed to catch on to the beat of the music. Having achieved that feat, I decided to add my arms into the effort, raising them up and bobbing my hands, alternating one then the other, to go along with the shuffling side-to-side movement of my legs.

It was going about as well as it could be, until I made the mistake of taking my eyes off my feet and looking back up at the glittery perfection of the man moving to the music like sensual, flowing water in front of me.

I lost all sense of time, space, rhythm, or how to operate my body parts and promptly tripped on air—or my own feet, or a stray patch of drool that surely must’ve accumulated beneath me that had dripped from my awe- and lust-slacked mouth. Whatever prompted it, I tripped, and, like a complete buffoon, lost my balance and lurched forward at my angel.

A nanosecond slideshow horror of how I was surely about to flatten this delicate, pretty man with my ungainly, oafish, blobby body flashed across my mind’s eye—complete even with imagined screams and gasps of horror, pointing fingers of accusation and derision from those around us, and, the absolute worst of all, tears of pain forming in pale blue eyes to trickle down over glimmering, pink plastic speckled adornment on an exquisite face.

To my vast relief, he was either not as fragile as he appeared or he was used to lumbering, stumbling nincompoops bashing into him, because he managed to stay on his feet with nary a wobble, absorbing the impact and even bracing me from completely falling to the floor.

“ Oouf . Careful there, boo.” A dainty trill of laughter accompanied his words, hinting he wasn’t upset by my clumsiness.

Up close like this, mere inches away, he was even prettier—something I’d never have thought possible. I tried to time my blinks to sync with the flashes of the strobing light, wanting to eke out every possible second of being able to take in this stunning man.

“Sorry. I’m…I’m an idiot. A clumsy, clumsy, unable to dance idiot,” I gracelessly apologized. I was barely aware of what I was saying, too overwhelmed by the beautiful, sparkling angel I almost had in my arms.

His eyes were so very pale, but I could now make out tiny flecks of celadon green mixed in with the blue. And it had been impossible to tell from across the room, but the very ends of his bubblegum-y pink hair faded out to almost white, redoubling my desire to touch the pretty, tumbled strands. Even stronger than that though, was my yearning to press my lips to and taste the raspberry hue glossed onto his full lips, dusted and brushed upon the tender skin of his eyelids and over the crests of his high cheekbones. I’d gladly even endure the unpleasantness of capturing specks of the glitter on my tongue if it meant I could have my mouth on any portion of his skin.

The minimal space between us seemed both too much and not enough—I ached to be as close as possible but, at this distance, his agonizing beauty was nearly blinding, as was the light glinting off the glitter traced over his face.

“Yes, I don’t think dancing is your forte,” he agreed, gently patting my upper arm as if to console me for that failing. Hopefully, he’d think the fleshy mass was the relaxed bulge of muscle and not the squishy pudginess of actuality. I was about to apologize again, when he continued, suggesting, “Why don’t we see if we can find something else you might be more gifted at?”

Not immediately understanding what he was getting at, my brows drew together, my forehead crinkling. But I didn’t need to understand his words when his actions—sliding his hand down my arm, clasping my hand in his, then turning and gently tugging on that physical link—showed me what to do.

Still, I couldn’t help but ask, as my angel neatly and effortlessly sliced a way through the throngs of dancing revelers and led us off the dance floor, “Where are you taking me?”

Briefly turning to glance at me over his shoulder, the lights once more glinted the glitter on his face and torso turning them into specks of pink fire, while his teasing, rosy lips lifted in a playful grin.

“Don’t play coy with me, boo,” he stated. “You know exactly where I’m taking you.”

Except… No. No, I really didn’t.