The New Girl by Ana Vela

~Volume Two:
    The New Girl ~
    The bartender was ignoring him. Again. Andrei ‘Drei’ Lupei narrowed dark eyes at her back. She’d seen him. He knew she had. Even though 5tM was packed to the gills tonight, he was a hard man to miss. He was 6’7, for Christ’s sake.
    “Hey, Red,” he ground out. “A little service?”
    He never had this problem with any of the other bartenders at the bustling club. Just the new girl. Whenever she was working, it seemed like she waited until she’d taken everyone else’s order before coming to see what he wanted.
    Drei rubbed a hand through his short, black buzz cut and narrowed his eyes at the willowy redhead. She was tall for a woman, especially a Mundane, over 6 feet without the chunky four inch heeled boots she wore. Which was another reason he knew she saw him. They could meet each other’s eyes over everyone else’s heads.
    It was an interesting sensation, not having to crane his neck to look into a woman’s eyes. Her eyes were a smoky green, the color of old glass bottles. Her hair was bright red, with blonde highlights, like a flame tumbling around her slender shoulders. She smelled herbal, lightly sweet and green. She was wearing a black leather vest and a pair of worn black jeans that rode low on her slim hips. The vest hugged her breasts, which were high and firm, baring a small wedge of cleavage.
    She had a stubborn chin, a wide, full mouth and rounded cheeks. And her ass. God damn, her ass. At least, if she was going to be turning her back on him all the time, he got to stare at the generous curves of her ass in the skin tight jeans. He’d spent several long minutes imagining just what it would feel like to rub the head of his cock up and down that sweet cleft between her buttocks.
    While she made a pitcher of margaritas for a group of women in barely-there skirts, he imagined dragging those jeans down her hips, baring the pale globes of her ass and bending her over to...
    “What do you want?” Her voice was clear and strong, like a shot of good Scotch.
    Her hands were resting on her hips, head cocked to the side. Drei scowled.
    “Three Stellas and a vodka tonic.” As if Em and Cat would come up for air long enough to have a drink. His brother and his new Mundane mate were constantly tied at the tongue. And that was just in public. They reeked of sex.
    Living among Shifters, it was a scent that you got used to. And it normally didn’t bother Drei. But for some reason, the heady hormone mixture of Em and his mate had Drei on edge these last few weeks.
    He suspected it probably had something to do with Cat being a Mundane. She was the first Mundane mate in Shifter history, as far back as they could tell. No one had yet been able to explain how it was possible. Their best scientists weren’t even entirely sure the pair could breed. Not that it seemed to stop them from trying.
    The redheaded bartender set the drinks down in front of him, her dark green eyes twinkling as if she was laughing, though her face was expressionless. “Twenty-eight.”
    He handed her a twenty, a ten, and a five. She quirked a brow. Drei wrapped his hands easily around the four drinks. “Keep the change.” He wasn’t trying to sweeten her up with a big tip, though he could see she thought so. He always tipped well. Which was another reason why he didn’t get her complete refusal to acknowledge him most of the time. It’s not like he’d ever stiffed her.
    You might try a little charm , the voice in his head, the one that sounded a lot like Grigore, whispered. Drei turned away from the bar, his brows lowering as he moved determinedly through the sweaty throng.
    It’s not that he didn’t know how to lay on the charm, if he had to. He’d been doing it for years. His bed had never been all that lonely a place. It hadn’t seen nearly the traffic that Grig’s had, but he did alright. The truth was, with most women, all he had to do was flash a dimpled smile and say hello and he was