Five minutes with this girl, and I was already addicted to crawling under her skin.
It was almost funny how red she turned. In anger, obviously. But it seemed my words elicited more than just her ire. Well. Little sister had a thing for praise, apparently.
The sweet scent of her arousal tickled my nose, and that delicious hue of pink spreading across her supple flesh was so damn enticing that my mouth watered.
I didn’t think she’d affect me like this.
Fuck.
I quickly grabbed a box from the back seat of their car to hide my hard-on and brushed past her, shoulder-checking her just enough to rile her.
“Asshole!” she snarled at my back as I trudged into the house. Good.
I wanted her to hate me. I could work with hatred, seeing as I was well acquainted with the emotion. Hatred would make her leave all the sooner.
What I couldn’t deal with was thatscent.Feminine. Fresh.Fuck.My senses weren’t as strong as a full-blooded devil, but I knew the scent of a virgin.
I had to tread carefully around this girl. Getting too attached was not an option.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t want her to leave.
That’s what happened with my father. He got too attached to his offering. He’d bred her, abused her and eventually fed her soul to the oldest devil in these parts.
I would not follow in Ezra Leeds’ footsteps. Not on my fucking life.
Lorelei Brooks had to leave Bishop, the sooner the better. She was going to be a huge distraction for me. I could tell by the way her eyes tracked me, and how she wetted her lips when she noticed me staring at them.
I’d waited too long for my revenge to have some human girl fuck it up now.
Pausing at the door, I flung the girl an over-the-shoulder scowl. “Are you coming or are you just gonna stand in the driveway all day?”
Flustered, she hauled a box into her arms and hurried after me. “So, uh, where is everyone? The streets are kind of empty here.”
“People keep to themselves here,” I grunted. “If you’re smart, you’ll do the same thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that the Pine Barrens is one of the most haunted places in all of America. Its history runs as deep as the tree roots here. Dark history that ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.”
She snorted softly behind me. “I don’t believe in ghost stories.”
I whirled around in the hallway to face her, and she almost collided with me. Snickering, I leaned toward her, making the boxes we were holding knock together. “You believe in monsters?”
For some reason, the mention of monsters made her lashes flutter and her lips part. “Monsters aren’t real…”
I searched every detail of her face, noting how she almost seemed sad about her beliefs. Maybe she was one of those horror-movie buffs, obsessed with monster movies and shit.
“Maybe not where you come from, but they are here. And they don’t like outsiders.”
“Yeah…See, I don’t believe in any of that.”
My expression darkened, and a quiver of glee shot through me at the sight of the unease playing behind her eyes. “You will.”
I led us upstairs, and my mood grew shittier yet when I glanced behind me to see her curious little eyes scanning the pictures hanging on the wall. My mom had done her best to make this place feel like a home for the both of us. They were normal enough. The old photos showed me in a tire swing that still hung out by the garage. Her giving me a piggyback ride and smiling at the camera. My dad was even in one, holding my hand and mom holding the other as they hoisted their giggling son into the air. She was smiling in this one. You’d never guess she was a prisoner.
“Your mom has green eyes, and your dad has white…” she murmured, more to herself than to me.
With only a grunt for a response, I took her down the first hall and spun around when we passed a door. I turned so fast, she almost bumped into me. “Uh, excuse you.”
