Page 37

"Take your time," said River Blackman, his tone raw and full of need.

So, I took my time.

Six seconds to be exact. Long enough to get through my whole life, apparently, because that's what went past.

A plot of land with a shifter pack I cared about behind it. A bathroom floor when I was eleven with blood dripping from my face. A book that told me my father was alive. A grandmother who has never once in my life asked me what I wanted.

Then I reached over and put my hand flat on the side of his face without a warning.

He flinched. Then he went absolutely still, the way you freeze when you're afraid of scaring off a skittish creature.

"Keep your focus, Blackman, I'm not ready to die just yet," I murmured while staring at his lips.

And I kissed him.

Here's what some idiot corner of my brain had been expecting all night. Fire. Some cataclysm. Golden light coming through the walls and the Starlit Motor Inn on the evening news.

Here's what happened.

He made a sound against my mouth. Small and broken, like it had been stuck in his throat for months and finally worked loose. Nothing like a male with four hundred years of practice at keeping quiet. Every scrap of that smug self-assurance he wears like cologne, gone in one breath.

His hand came up and stopped short of my jaw. Hovering. Shaking. He couldn't make himself touch me.

He was still asking. Even now. Even with my mouth on his.

Then he settled his palm along the line of my face, so light it was more suggestion than weight, and his thumb moved once against my cheekbone like he was making sure I was real.

Four centuries old. Falling from grace. Shaking against me like a boy.

The cold should have been awful. I'd braced for it, the way you brace before you jump into a lake. But it went through me like a struck match and lit up everything it touched instead of snapping me out of the daze. It came off his mouth and off the hand on my jaw and it poured down the side of my neck. My whole body answered it eagerly. Everywhere the cold landed, something underneath my skin came up hot to meet it.

I chased it. This whole time of telling myself I didn't want him and it took about four seconds to find out I was a liar. My hands were in his shirt pulling him closer before I had any say in the matter, twisting the fabric in both fists like he might change his mind and I'd need something to hold on to. He made another one of those sounds and my answering growl was more animal than witch. My knee was on the carpet between his but I don't remember putting it there. Every place his skin found mine came up burning and I still could not get close enough to him. Twenty-six years of keeping everybody at arm's length and I'd have climbed inside River's skin if he'd let me.

And underneath all of it, every second, River was choosing not to kill me. Again. And again. Holding that door shut with everything he had while I was in his arms.

Nobody screamed. Nothing came through the window. No demon, no wolf, no grandmother sifting into the middle of the room to ruin it.

Two years of the world interrupting every time something good got started with River, and it finally just let me have this one.

He pulled back first. Of course, he did.

"Hazel." My name sounded like a warning and a plea on his swollen lips.

"Don't ruin it, River."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were absolutely going to."

"I was going to say you still have demon guts in your hair." His hand hadn't moved off my face, as if he worried I might disappear if he stopped touching me. "Which is the truth, by the way."

A laugh escaped me unbidden and I put my forehead against his collarbone. He went very still but relaxed after a while and let me stay there. The TV threw blue light over both of us while a couple in a house by a lake argued silently about tile.

"Let me just hold you for a while," he muttered under his breath, rearranging my limbs until both of us were as comfortable as we could be on the hard floor. "I just want to hold you," he whispered.

I fell asleep before he finished the sentence.

I jerked awake at three in the morning with my heart in my throat.