Jesus fucking Christ.
That’s it?
Just two bedlam-scented females?
My ancient ass got excited over this?
Am I that horny and desperate?
Still. No harm in waiting a moment, just in case I hear it again.
As they pass, the one with the bright blue pixie haircut laughs like a dying mule.
See? Fucking nothing.
I drift back toward the shop, annoyed and ready to retreat into the quiet comfort of its walls.
Until I hear it.
The other woman’s laugh? It’s different.
People call laughter musical. Hers isn’t. It’s cracked and wicked, like spot fires sparking against her vocal cords—and holy fuck, it lights up every nerve in my ancient, goddamn body.
Her laugh doesn’t burn—it burrows. The sound crawls into my chest, and something in my shadow twists tight, confused by the heat.
Is that my blackened heart? Twitching pathetically inside its hollow cage? Is it … trying to remember how to beat?
That stupid organ keeps stuttering behind my ribs as the woman with burnished copper hair and haunting dark green eyes glides past.
Her presence alone ignites a desperate spark in me, and when her pace slows, my breath catches.
Those otherworldly eyes glance my way as she comes to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
When she turns toward me, my breath halts altogether.
She can’t see me. But what if she did?
Wait, why the fuck do I care?
Christ, Ezra, you’re a primordial bastard carved out of nothing, and you care what this copper-haired meat sack thinks of you?
The little female stands less than a foot from me, talking and wildly gesticulating.
I glide closer, the awning’s shadows curling around me, and drink in the sharp elegance of her features, savoring every edge.
I’ve seen billions of humans during my long life, all unique in their own way, but never special.
Not like her.
My shadow lunges for her, drawn like a starving brute to blood. It takes everything in me to leash it before it tastes her.
When my focus returns to the street, a slight panic fills my chest when I can’t find her. The anxiety subsides, though, when I hear her smoky laughter behind me.
It’s only then that I realize that her strange behavior is because she’s excited about the bookshop.
My bookshop.
I desperately try to clear my head of the hedonistic thoughts forming, then approach the woman currently fogging up my shop window.
