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His throaty voice buries itself in my chest, making my heart pound and my thighs chafe at my core.
“What do I smell like?” I ask quietly.
“Like…hm.” He pauses, licking his lips, and even the sight of that tongue is enough to make me quake. “Like honey and oranges. And heat and desire and high expectations. And like…like Charlotte.” He raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know how else to explain it but to say you smell like you, and it’s the prettiest damn thing to ever fill my lungs.”
“I have high expectations?” I ask, blushing. It’s getting dark enough that he wouldn’t be able to see me if he was fully human, but I know better than to think he doesn’t catch a glimpse. His eyesight is better than that.
“Sure do,” he says. “It’s gotta be all those romance novels you’ve read.”
“They gave me a lot of ideas, too,” I say.
“Oh, did they?”
He laughs, and I let out a yelp of surprise when he scoops me into his arms, slinging me around until my legs are wrapped around his hips. The clasp of his jeans instantly presses against my aching core, and I inhale a sharp breath, biting my lip.
“Tell me about them,” he says in my ear as he keeps walking, the unbearable heat of him everywhere. “I’m starting a list.”
“Of what?” I whisper.
“A list of all the things I’m gonna do to you, if you ask me to,” he says. “And hey—even if you don’t, I can keep it as a souvenir from our little roadtrip.”
“You’re writing these down?” I ask, mortified.
“Don’t have anything to write with,” he says. “But it’s not like I could ever forget.”
He doesn’t put me down as we pass into a clearing, and I arch against him to feel him closer, my eyes finding the stars. They glitter white on dark blue in the skies overhead, those big, expansive skies that I’ve never really seen beyond the city, skies that stretch on and on…
And themoon.
A silver disc in the sky, diamond bright and glorious. I feel my heart pick up a beat at the sight of it, and my legs tighten around Elijah, evoking a growl. His stride slows as he lowers his lips to my throat, and I let him kiss me and kiss me, my arms locked at his neck.
Wait.
Silver and blue?
“Elijah,” I croak. “The moon…the sky.”
“They’re pretty, I know,” he says. “But notnearlyas pretty as you, Sunshine.”
“That’s not” —I gasp as he grazes his teeth over my pulse, my hips thrusting toward him instinctively— “what I mean. Look up!”
He finally does as I ask, tilting his head back to gaze toward the heavens. His eyes widen when he sees what I see, the stars reflecting in those strangely luminescent eyes.
“It’s clear,” he whispers. “There’s a hole in the Celestial Curtain.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
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CHARLOTTE
We stare up at the moon together, my legs wrapped around Elijah’s waist, my whole body throbbing with desire. I amfully alivein a way I’ve never been before, my nails skating across the back of his neck.
And something is happening inside me.
My senses sharpen, the sound of a distant waterfall rushing around me. I hear something moving in the brush—something tiny with fluttering wings. I smell the earth, and the air, and water, and the smoky hint of an old fire.
I smellElijah.
