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“Shit, is this glowing?” Kirian lifts the necklace for inspection. “That’s not good.”
“It glowed whenever I touched it.”
Now his eyes are the size of soggy noodles. “Arggh! What? You didn’t say that!”
“Sorry, I just thought it was…”—really freaking strange, and it scared the crap out of me—“heat-activated or something.”
Kirian flicks his wrist, and the necklace coils up in his palm before he jams it into the pocket of his pants. He’s wearing black pants, and the sleeves of his black dress shirt are rolled up, exposing a heck of a lot of heavily corded real estate. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people refer to it as forearm porn. Now that my nipples are twinging, I think I understand why.
“You need to come for breakfast with me. Immediately. We need to talk.”
I know I’ve been doing a lot of jaw flapping lately, but I find my jaw flapping again. “Uh, what? Breakfast? It’s nearly ten-thirty. I have a photo to send and money to collect. Plus, since I’ve been up all night and generally keep odd hours, it’s more like my dinner. So pancakes and coffee are a hard pass.”
“Fine, I’ll find a place serving dinner then. Fries, pizza, stir-fry, whatever you want. I’ll get it. But we need to talk.”
Kirian has a nice face. Like a statue kind of nice, though not the statues in parks commemorating stuff but the kind in greek mythology that were made to be worshipped. His bone structure is enough to make artists, surgeons, and maybe even old-school gods from history weep at the symmetry.
His eyes are blue, but not like the sky or a lake. They’re blue like…I don’t know. They’re blue like gemstones. It’s a crazy, deep, piercing blue that people don’t forget, ever, because it’s such an intense color. There has to be a descriptor out there somewhere. What’s the system that artists use on their computers called? RGB? The one where every color has letters and numbers. I think that would be the best way to describe the color of his eyes.
His lips are entirely kissable, and given that he’s a dude, I feel like it’s kind of wrong. They’re not the thick and full kind of kissable, but they’re not thin and flat either. They’re just in the perfect middle. And his cheeks. Gah! His cheeks have matching dimples, I think. Mhmm, I think they do. I haven’t seen him smile yet, but I’m sure they’re there, hiding out and waiting to dazzle a poor, unsuspecting set of ovaries somewhere. Yeah, the wattage from Kirian’s future smile would probably be enough to give anyone a tan.
Hopefully, I can get out of the way before that happens. I might not get out of the house enough, but I don’t feel the need to soak up harmful UV rays. My complexion is so pale that it doesn’t fare well as far as tans are concerned.
“Talk?” Right. We were talking about talking, which I wasn’t considering. I hold up my hand. “Wait.”
Kirian gapes at me while I bring up the photo of us with the dang necklace and send it off to his granny. I knew the necklace was more than just a necklace. I should demand an extra ten or twenty grand now that I found out the damn thing is apparently cursed and might have rubbed off on me, whatever that means (gulp), but I just can’t bring myself to shake an old lady down for money, however rich she might be. She’s already paid me more than enough. Way more than enough.
As soon as the text goes through, I raise my head. “We don’t have to eat to talk. And I’m not going anywhere private either.”
“Uh, what other places are there to talk other than somewhere to eat or somewhere private?”
“Um, park benches, benches not in a park, benches at the side of the street, while leaning against a building, any store, a coffee shop—” Crap, why did I say coffee shop? Kirian leaps at that.
“Good. Then I can get a coffee.”
“I said I didn’t want coffee.”
“Then why did you list coffee shop as an option?”
“Uh…”
“You can get something without caffeine. There’s a nice place down the block that way.” He points, and I swear even his finger is sexy.
I cross my arms and try not to get distracted by Kirian’s holy heck handsomeness. At least he’s facing me. I don’t want to contemplate what seeing his back and, um, backside would do to me. My body is already doing unrecognizable things, which I chalk up to lack of sleep and the shock of finding out I handled the horrible necklace with bare hands.
I can walk away right now and forget all this, or I can consume some overpriced tea or hot chocolate and figure out what I’m going to do now that I might be cursed. What kind of curse is it? That’s important. There are probably many different curses out there. How do I know if I’m cursed? How will it affect my life? And what can I do to get un-cursed? Those are all valid questions to ask.
