Breath becomes impossible.
“To…clarify…Ishouldn’tuse my hotness to get what I want from you?”
He’s messing with me. Teasing. But he’s also serious. And I know that he is.
His eyes lower to my lips. “Ishouldn’t…convince you that you’d really,reallylike to take a chance with me?”
The air inside me thins.
“And, just for clearness’s sake,” he whispers, “Ishouldn’tspend all my free time trying to show you how much I care about you, how incredible I think you are, how interesting, how compelling, how beautiful… I shouldnotkeep coming to see you, hoping that I can offer you a piece of me in exchange for some precious moment of you. I shouldabsolutelynot create a curriculum surrounding trust, then follow it to the letter until you depend on me without a second thought. And I should, by no means, seek to take this game we play to the next level. However I possibly can.”
I shiver, as though I am not burning up.
Kyran’s smile keeps me perfectly entranced, perfectly under his spell, and perfectly at his mercy. Conversational, he says, “So.” He closes his eyes, tilts his head down, and touches his forehead to mine. When he speaks next, his breath coasts across my lips. “About that denial…”
Weakly, I say, “I’m not in denial.”
His fingers dance down my cheek, to my neck, and rest there, thumb grazing my jaw. “No?”
“And you—” I swallow. “—are clearly taking advantage of my attraction right now.”
“I love you,” he says, and I lose my knees.
His eyes snap open the second my forehead is off his. His smile vanishes as he swears, lunging to catch me around the waist. Unfortunately, my weight hits his wee, sad gamer arms, and we both go tumbling into the grass beside the driveway. He sucks in a pained breath as he collects himself…on top of me…with his…
Red hot, I stare as the man of my every last delusional fantasy pushes himself up and removes his face from…my chest.
Refilling his lungs, he hovers, above me, around me, on his hands and knees, and staresstraight down. He blinks. His throat bobs in a swallow. He bows his head slightly. He murmurs a reverent, “Thank you, deities.” Then, he drags his attention up, to my face, and the humor leaves him.
My lip trembles as I try to open my mouth, saysomething. I cannot.
Here we are, in the middle of the night, lit only by the streetlamp several houses down, on my lawn.
And FrostPlays is on top of me, his long black coat flared around us and his eyes gleaming with reprehensible lust.
Kyran moves, shifting his body over mine more completely, with something very nearintention. Bracing his weight onto one arm, he frames my cheek in his hand and swipes his thumb across my skin.
I tense, squeeze my eyes shut, and whimper.
His hissed curse fans across my lips, and when I can find the strength to look at him again…
His bright, icy blue eyes…aredarkwith intensity. “Morana,” he says.
I whisper a broken, “What?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to sleep again.”
Yeah, well. Neither am I. Get over it, you big bab—
His lips greet mine.
It’s a touch.
A graze.
Aglimpseof what could be, what should be, what I…needto be.
It changes my brain. It redefines my cells. It adjusts my chemistry.
