Hellbound With You

The man who approached Abi looked confident and authoritative. His suit, the expensive looking watch and shiny, well polished shoes all screamed that he was probably quite a rich man compared to the men Abi saw inside this bar so far. Most of the men on the second level were also wearing suits but there was something about this man that stood out from the crowd. Maybe it was the perfect cut of his jacket or the expensive diamond cufflinks by his wrists or his perfect hairstyle which looked like a whole tub of gel had been used to hold it in place. Or maybe it was the confident, arrogant air about him which seemed to be something that rich, entitled men naturally gave out.

Her observation was proven true when the man gave her a business card and she saw the words CEO written on it. Taking her acceptance of his business card as a positive sign, he sat down on the seat next to her and started a generic but polite conversation with her. She studied him carefully. His eyes weren’t cold as ice, unlike Alexander Qin’s. When he smiled, it looked like it reached his eyes; he didn’t smile wickedly at her, unlike Alexander Qin. His words were polite and well mannered; he didn’t threaten her, unlike Alexander Qin.

Why was she even thinking of that guy right now?! Why was she comparing this man to him? That was unfair to this man in front of her.

She then smiled back at this smiling CEO before her and made polite conversation. This was what she came here for after all, right? To be less ignorant about things and to get more experience? He looked harmless enough, even nice, so why did she feel completely different from how she felt when she was with Alexander Qin?

He spoke politely but for some reason, Abi felt a little uncomfortable. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as if it sensed danger. She shivered, but not from the cold, and when he tried to touch her hand, she couldn’t help but want to pull her hand away from him. There was something in the way he looked at her, like he had some hidden agenda that she felt wasn’t quite right, even though he tried to act pleasant and interested in her… unlike Alexander Qin.

Abigail quietly sighed as that man’s name popped in her head again, she took another sip of her bitter drink and winced from the terrible taste. She thought she was probably overthinking things because of how things ended up last night.

So she persevered and pushed all thought of Alexander Qin to the back of her mind along with the strange feeling she had. She looked up at the man again, as she pretended to have heard the words he just said.

It seemed that the man noticed that she seemed to wince everytime she took a sip of her drink so he suggested that she try a different one. A waiter instantly hovered near them the moment the man clicked his fingers, showing her the difference in how people treated the extremely rich compared to the normal people in this place. He was also probably a regular customer and the owner looked like he made sure this man was kept happy by giving his own personal waiter when he entered the premises.

He said something to the waiter and the waiter immediately left to do his bidding. A few minutes later, she saw the waiter walk back towards their table with 4 different drinks in fancy shaped glasses and he carefully set these down on the table. The man beside her then gave the waiter a generous tip to make him promptly go away.

”Here, try these. They taste much better than that drink you’ve got there,” he said, persuasively. ”This is a mojito, a cosmopolitan, an apple martini and a long island iced tea.” He first pointed to the drink that had lime and mint in it, then to the pinky red one, then the green one and then the one that looked like its name, the tea.

Abi was hesitant at first, but she decided to try it out, because this was exactly what she came here for, to gather experience, and this fitted with her goal. She took a sip of the pinky red one because it looked pretty and, surprisingly, the man was right. Compared to the drink that she thought Kelly had bought for her, this drink was much better! Curious to find out what the others tasted like, she also took a sip of each of them and found that they all tasted as good as each other, but she liked the pinky red one the best. So she took that drink and started sipping through it as the conversation went on. She had now gained some knowledge of some girly drinks that were on offer at bars and not all of them were disgusting like the first drink she had.

She seemed to relax slightly after finishing the first cocktail and then she moved to the next. The man smirked as he saw her reaction to the first drink she just finished. Her face was flushed and her eyes were starting to glaze over. She also seemed to be having some trouble forming her thoughts and her words were becoming a little slurred. ’She’s quite a lightweight! This is going just as planned,’ was the thought that came with that smirk.

As she sipped her second cocktail, the apple martini, a thought popped into the slightly drunk Abi’s head. ’I have to tell Kelly about these drinks! These are so good! She needs to try them, too!’

As her friend’s name rang through her head, Abi looked up, her eyes zooming at where Kelly had stood a while ago but to her surprise, she couldn’t see her friend anymore. She frowned as she looked around.

Where on Earth had Kelly gone off to?