“You make it sound almost like a drug.”
His laughter is warm and drips all through my chest until I’m smiling right along with him.
“Oh, it absolutely is,” he whispers.
Vuitton watches me from the corner of his eye before rolling over again, and then his body heat is spreading across my arm in a tingling sensation of hyperawareness.
“Why do you ask about the mark?” His hand props beneath his head, fanning his honey blonde hair in the slight breeze as he stares down on me.
The thought of Prey and the wildness in his eyes creeps up in my mind once again bringing a heavy wave of uneasiness clinging to the memory.
“No reason,” I say instead of word vomiting all my problems to this one man who already has more issues than he deserves. “How do wolves leave a mark if they can’t feed the way vampires do?”
That sexy smile of his brightens until a dimple appears.
“They fuck,” he says with a hard emphasis on the K, and I don’t know why my thighs shift together at the sound of that dirty word on his sweet tongue. I don’t know what he sees in me, but his laughter grows louder, shaking his whole body. “Some don’t. Most supernaturals don’t need any contact at all, really. I just wanted to see you blush. I love when your humanity shows.”
I turn my head when I realize that I’mshowing, and I try my best to calm that part of me. I’m supposed to be deep undercover in this world, aren’t I?
When I look back at Vuitton, his gaze feels heavier against my skin. The sun seems to amplify the jade colors within the warm whiskey of his pretty eyes. And I’m all too aware of his attention when it falls from my eyes to my lips.
The breath in my lungs pauses, as if afraid it might be seen were it to slip out. I swallow hard, and still he’s staring like…
Like he just might kiss me.
Again.
A sharp inhale seems to cut off his trance as he looks abruptly back up to the sky and my heart finds its regular beat once again without all that attention making me squirm.
“It’s a full moon tomorrow,” Vuitton’s hand lifts and he points to the pale moon peeking out over the morning sky.
“It’s our birthday tomorrow,” I shake my head hard at that foolish wording.
There’s only one of us left to celebrate. Not that Kyra celebrated for the last two years, anyway. So now it’s justmybirthday. Not ours, we don’t share it any longer.
His head turns back to me and those dimples are there at his lips once more. “It’s your birthday tomorrow? On the night of a full moon? How old will you be?”
I nod, trying to shake the thoughts of my sister out of my head for a single moment of my day. “Twenty-One,” I try to keep my voice steady when I reply, but it still dips a little anyway.
It really does feel like I’ve been alone without my other half for three years, rather than just a few short days.
“Twenty-One! You should have a wild party for a wild night. What do you want for your birthday?”
I look up at the perfect and charming man leaning over me. I have a nearly naked man alone right in front of me, yet all I can think about is Kyra’s ghost.
She’s all I ever think about these days. Her problems are my own now. They have been for the last three years, and if anyone really wanted to know what I want for my fucking birthday, it’s to feel some kind of normal.
To live for myself more than I live for my twin sister for once.
At that thought, I study the faint five o’clock shadow kissing Vuitton’s hard jaw. I follow the trail down to the curve of his chin and then over the soft line of his lips.
And suddenly my hand’s there. My palm brushes over the course texture of his stubble while my thumb hovers over his full lower lip. His bright eyes remain locked on mine all the while.
I don’t know when I lifted up toward him… but I’m just one bad decision away from pressing my lips to his and tasting that all-consuming euphoria I know he can give me so easily.
“What do you want, Kira?” It’s the way he says my name that breaks my will. He speaks it like it’s spelled heartbreak and remorse, one after another.
I know exactly what I want.
