And maybe, just maybe, he’d let them.
I slide a cocktail to a girl who doesn’t say thank you, and a ribbon of syrup sticks to my knuckle. I lick it off without thinking, my gaze drifting back toward the door.
He’s still watching. A shiver slides up my spine, vibrating through me at the possibilities.
That night, I go to bed thinking maybe, maybe, everything’s changing.
Until morning.
I wake with a sharp, molten spark low in my belly.
Hunger.
Chapter 13
Snack Time at Work
AURORA
My hands push on my lower belly and the flame of arousal flares a little brighter as my throat turns dry. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.
No.No no no no.
“Aura?”
My eyes snap open as I jerk up in bed. Talon stands in the doorway in nothing but his black boxer briefs. His dark, deeply tanned muscles glisten with beads of water from the shower. They drip down the fine, dark trail of hair that disappears under his waistline, and I force myself not to focus on the bulge it leads to. Instead, my gaze catches on the striated muscle that flexes in his heavy thighs.
Hunger yawns in me. Then it cries out like a child about to descend into a tantrum.
Sex. Touch. Salty tasting skin.
I want it.
Catching myself in the ogle, my gaze snaps back up to Talon’s face.
Though his wet black hair hangs even lower in his eyes than normal, they see straight through me.
“You okay?” Talon asks, voice low, as if he already knows the answer.
“I’m fine,” I say too quickly. I jump up and run past him into the bathroom before setting the shower in a cold blast and dousing myself.
Shivering under the painful icy streams, it still pulses. The need. The hunger.
“No,” I whisper to myself as I wrap my arms around my body. “I don’t need it.”
I’m a Lost Girl. I go to work. I craft cocktails. I hang with my friends.I feel all the bone deep satisfaction of the life I wanted.
I force myself to feel it so completely, so deeply, and eventually, the insidious spark dims.
When I come to my senses, I’m taking deep steadying breaths and rocking myself back and forth. A shocked laugh escapes me as I realize I’ve done it. I’ve muscled the need down.
“I can do this,” I smile to myself.
In ten minutes, I’m dressed and ready to meet the girls for lunch before we go to work. With barely a goodbye to Talon, I’m out the door.
It’s not the hunger, I insist to myself.
It’s the attraction I have to Talon. Totally normal. Nothing to do with a feeding frenzy I need that leaves corpses in its wake.
