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Everyone looked at me.
“Politely, fuck all of you.”
Sam laughed.
Kalon’s smile faded. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“I’m fine.” The lie came out weak. The shop tilted slightly.
Heat crawled up my spine. My skin tightened. Every feeling in the room rushed me at once. Sam’s anger. Mandi’s curiosity. The line of customers shifting near the register. Kalon’s concern, warm and too close, threaded with the cold, heavy pulse of his power.
Deathdrinker.
I knew he was strong. I had always felt the edge of him in a room, the calm danger under all that blond kindness. Now, my body noticed it. My body wanted it. I grabbed the counter.
“Liv?” Sam’s voice sharpened.
“I need to go to the back.” I turned before anyone could answer and shoved through the swinging door.
The hallway smelled like cardboard, coffee grounds, and cleaning spray. The walk-in hummed at the end. I reached it, yanked it open, and stepped inside. The cold wrapped around me, but it wasn’t enough. I pressed both palms to the metal shelf and tried to breathe.
The hunger inside me twisted, confused and greedy. It wanted touch, power, and lust. It wanted something my brain didn’t approve of but my body had already started reaching for. The walk-in door opened behind me.
“Kalon, don’t,” I said.
He froze. “Liv, you’re shaking.”
“Leave.”
He stepped closer anyway, because he was kind, stupid, and had apparently learned nothing from his luxury kidnapping sabbatical.
His hand closed around my arm. The second his skin touched mine, my control snapped. I gripped his shirt and yanked him close as hard as I could. He stumbled forward, his chest meeting mine, arms shooting out and pressing against the cold wall behind me to stop himself from falling.
“Liv,” he breathed. “Wait.”
I kissed him. My hands fisted in his shirt and pulled, dragging him closer, while some hungry, awful part of me opened wide. He became more complicit, his muscles relaxing around me as our kiss deepened.
Kalon made a rough sound into my mouth. His aura flared, big, lethal, and delicious. It filled the walk-in and shoved against my senses until my knees almost buckled. My lips tingled. My whole body arched toward him, drinking it in before my mind caught up.
Power slid into me. I kissed him harder.
His breath hitched. The cold force of him shuddered, and I felt the deep, delicious taste of his lust spike. I needed more.
Kalon’s knees hit the shelf behind me as he stepped closer.
“Liv,” he said again, weaker this time.
The walk-in door swung open. Cold air shifted. A hand shot out and fisted in the back of Kalon’s shirt.
“Out.”
Kalon got yanked away from me so fast the loss of his power made me gasp. He stumbled, hit the floor outside the walk-in on one hand, and scrambled back, pale, mouth swollen, eyes dazed.
My stalker . . . boyfriend? stood in the doorway, mask on, his black shirt half buttoned under a suit coat and fresh bandages visible at his collar and across his left shoulder where the enchanted round had torn through him. His hair and shirt were damp like he had just showered. A bruise darkened one side of his jaw below the mask, fading at the edges.
He looked like Death had come to collect and left with a stab wound instead. He also looked furious.
“Kalon,” he said, voice low.
