Page 32 of Moonlight & Mayhem

“I’m not staring at you,” he lied.

“You are,” she insisted.

“You’re facing the window, so how can you tell?” he asked.

She sighed. “I can see your reflection.”

Mayhem grinned. “Well, that means that you were looking at me in the reflection. You were checking me out, weren’t you?” he asked.

“I was checking your color,” she insisted.

“My color?” he asked.

“You’re pale,” she said.

“I’ve lost half my blood. I think that I’ve earned the right to be pale,” he said.

“You didn’t lose half your blood,” she mumbled more to herself than to him.

“Felt like half,” he complained.

Moon shut the cabinet. “You’re impossible.”

“So you keep saying.” She came toward him and reached for his wrist. Mayhem automatically gave her his arm. That was another thing that had changed. He’d stopped fighting every damn thing she asked him to do—well, mostly. Moon checked his pulse. The second her fingers touched his skin, his wolf settled. So did the black veins beneath his forearm. Mayhem watched them fade, and Moon did too. Neither of them said anything, but they didn’t need to. Whatever was inside him wanted their bond—or hated it. Mayhem still hadn’t decided which possibility was worse.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like someone carved me open with silver, poisoned me, then watched you restitch me twice.”

“Three times,” she corrected.

“Right,” he breathed, “three times.”

“You forgot about your awful decision to shift,” she reminded.

Mayhem frowned. “I was hoping you had forgotten too.”

“I remember every bad decision you make,” she said.

“Then you’re going to need a bigger notebook to write it all down, honey,” he said. Her lips twitched, and that tiny smile did things to him he didn’t want to examine too closely. Moon released his wrist, and the darkness under his skin deepened slightly. Mayhem’s humor disappeared, and she seemed to notice that too.

“We’ll figure it out,” she promised.

“You sure?” he asked.

“No,” she breathed. That surprised him. Moon looked at him. “But I’m done pretending I’m sure when I’m not.”

Mayhem nodded slowly. “Good.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Good?”

“Means you’re finally trusting yourself,” he said. Her expression changed.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway—heavy ones. Christmas appeared in the doorway. Chris was Dark Chaos’s VP and a professional pain in everyone’s ass. Mayhem was starting to like her, and that probably meant something was wrong with him.

“You still alive?” Chris asked.

Mayhem looked down at himself. “Apparently.”