AllFreeNovel
Share Us
While I’m drowning in doubts, my head is thick, and my chest is starting to ache, Kirian appears in the kitchen doorway. He scrubs a hand over his jaw, and the marvelous shadow bristles loudly in response. The sound zings straight to my stomach.
“I’m sorry.” His eyes flash, and they’re so, so blue. “They’re gone. I shouldn’t have subjected you to that. We hold regular family meetings when someone has a crisis, but the family keeps growing, and now that some of them have come around to the curse, it’s getting messy. There are now more in favor of the curse than against it. The tides have turned.”
My stomach drops and tightens. I have to admit I’m terrified right now. I’m terrified of moving forward and having to fall back. Right now, I feel like I’m standing in the middle of something, and it’s either I face ahead or turn back. Both directions are just as terrifying.
I never knew someone could be two very opposite things at once—someone I want and someone I want to run from.
“Uh, yeah. I…they were okay.” I look around desperately, suddenly so awkward that I don’t know what to do with myself. My eyes chance on the cake. “It wasn’t that bad. Your family, I mean. Or the cake.” Wow. Could I say anything more embarrassing?
It’s probably because Kirian did things to my brain and the rest of my body, and I’m still having trouble thinking straight and processing things. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I’m turned on. I feel like I can explode in spontaneous flames, and at the same time, it’s like things can also go very haywire in the gray matter. But maybe that’s normal. I don’t know. It has never happened to me before.
“Maybe we should talk about the curse?”
“We probably should.”
I keep looking at Kirian, and the longer I look at him, the more I want to run across the kitchen, leap on top of him, have him throw me down on the counter or the island, and go back to where we left off, then more. I’m breathing too hard, and I’m pretty sure my jaw is clenched. My pulse is probably leaping, too, while flames are just about literally shooting out of Kirian’s eyes. It’s like blue fire. Isn’t blue fire one of the hottest fires? That would make sense, seeing as I’m being incinerated right in the middle of the kitchen just because he’s looking at me.
I feel flushed. And…holy fuck, I want Kirian. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to turn into a pumpkin at five, and I don’t want to not see him again. But what’s the alternative? We date? We enter into some kind of relationship when we’re both terrible at it?
“Do you like books? I like books.”
“W…what?” I stammer. “Do I like books?”
Kirian grins, and it’s so dazzling that it slays me to the point where I have to grasp the edge of the island to keep myself upright. “Sorry, I just thought I’d fish around for something we have in common. That’s what people do when things get awkward and when it’s hard to make conversation, isn’t it?”
“I…I don’t know. I’m not normally good at making conversation. But yeah, I guess I like books.”
“What kind?”
“I like paperbacks because they’re easier to hold.”
Kirian’s grin grows wider. “I meant what genre. Not the type.”
“Oh,” I mutter, embarrassed. I swear my face has now crossed the line from red into straight-up purple. He’s still smiling, and fucknuts, it’s doing things to me. I think Kirian is adorable, not just sexy, and right now, he has this boyish, rakish sort of charm that is totally undeniable.
Rakish? How very three hundred years ago of me.
“I’ll go first,” Kirian says, saving me from drowning in embarrassment. “I like science fiction, not romance. I mostly read adventure books, although maybe that’s fantasy. I like those too. I like people who can create other worlds because reading about this one gets old. Besides those, I like historical stuff too, and non-fiction. That’s the stuff that’s real, right?”
“Yes. Yes, non-fiction is the stuff that’s real. Although, I suppose it would depend on who's writing it. History is largely based on perspective all around, and I don’t just mean the perspective of the writer.”
Kirian’s lips part, and it makes me want to grasp and shimmy up him like he’s a treehouse with no rope ladder, just a big, thick trunk—dear lord, what a choice bit of wordage there. And then maybe even hump his leg like a…okay, cutting that off right there. What the heck is going on with me? I’m not sure, but I really do want to kiss Kirian again. That’s the long story short anyway.
“I think that…that…you’re right,” he says thickly, his voice doing things to me again. “You’re incredibly talented and smart, you ran laps around my software, and you jumped off my roof. Do you have any idea how hot that is?”
