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Up close at night, his eyes appeared to be endless wells of inky liquid. The low light shone on their glassy surfaces and sparkled. His hair was the rumpled mass of jagged peaks that it always was and his jaw was dark with five o’clock shadow.
He smelled wonderful, too. I could tell it wasn’t cologne. He just smelled clean, like soap and something tangy, spicy.
“Need some help?”
Though his voice was not much more than a whisper, I heard him clearly. It was as if his soft words resonated somewhere deep inside me, causing a little thrill of pleasure to vibrate through my body like a tuning fork.
I could’ve just answered his question. I should’ve just answered his question. But I had questions of my own and they seemed far more important at that moment.
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching you,” he confessed, as if that was the most natural thing in the world, to be lurking in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you watching me?”
“Why does everyone watch you?”
“Everyone doesn’t watch me,” I rebutted.
“Yes they do.”
“No they don’t.”
“You just don’t see them watching you. But they do,” he said, his lips twisting up into what might’ve been a tiny grin. I couldn’t be sure since the shadow of the door frame fell across part of his face.
“But why? Why would anyone watch me?”
“Come on. You have to know how beautiful you are. You don’t need me to tell you that,” he said, making it sound as if I was fishing for compliments.
“I guess that’s just your opinion,” I responded sharply.
He eyed me suspiciously, determining whether or not I was being sincere.
“You really don’t know, do you?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
I shrugged, wishing that I could tear my gaze away from his and look anywhere but into those eyes.
“But you are,” he declared softly. “You shine like the sun and you move like water. Your eyes are the perfect mix of gray and brown, like fog in the woods, and you smell like lilacs in the summer. I think if you laughed, it would sound like music.”
If anyone else had said something like that to me, I probably would’ve smiled and written them off as either a total dork or a total nut job. But not with him, not the way he said it. He was enchanting and I was enchanted.
Even though his poetic words stirred something inside me, bringing long dead things to life, it was his eyes that told the real story. They promised that he meant everything he’d said and that he was just as intrigued by and attracted to me as I was him.
My lungs seized, trapping air inside the painfully tight walls of my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I had no such elegant prose to explain the way he made me feel when he looked at me with those hypnotic eyes. I couldn’t even really make it make sense to myself, so telling someone else was hopeless.
But I could feel it. Oh, how I could feel it.
“Your battery’s dead,” he stated flatly.
“I-I know,” I admitted.
“Let me walk you home. You can get it fixed tomorrow.” He stood, holding the door open wide.
He held out his hand and I took it. It was cool and a little rough, but attractively so. When I stood, we were less than a foot apart. The words of gratitude I’d been about to speak died on my tongue. My insides were warm and tingly and tightly focused on him, and I fell mute in the face of his nearness.
Though he was a few inches taller than my five foot six frame, he was not so tall that I would have trouble touching my lips to his. All I’d have to do is stretch up on my toes and lean forward just a little bit…
Logically, the thought ended with our mouths locked in a kiss, a fiery one that made my knees weak. Shaking off the image, I was flustered by how much I wanted that kiss to happen, exactly as I’d seen it, passion and all.
As if he could read my thoughts, his eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there for a nerve-racking minute before they rose once more to meet mine.
“Let me get your bag,” he said, leaning past me to reach inside the car.
His body brushed mine and gooseflesh broke out all along my arms and legs. I held my breath and closed my eyes against the onslaught of sensation that followed the simple contact. But closing my eyes was not the wisest choice.
On the backdrop of my lids, I had no trouble imagining where a kiss like that could lead—his endless eyes staring down into mine, his bare skin pressed to mine, desire rising hot and wild between us. It was so clear, this scene, that I might’ve seen it before in reality. Only I hadn’t.
Embarrassed, I forced my eyes open and shifted to the side so he could pass without touching me. When he straightened, duffel in hand, he was grinning.
He tipped his head and said, “Come on.”
When I turned back to the car and hit the lock button on my remote, I caught sight of my reflection in the driver’s side glass. For the first time since I-don’t-know-when, I didn’t see the too-pointy chin or the too-thick hair. Instead, I saw something else, I saw someone else. I saw what Bo saw, like a curtain had been drawn back and she’d been magically revealed to me.
My sable hair had fallen from its confines and hung in wisps around my face. My lips were partially open, full and trembling. I looked like I’d been kissed already.
“You coming?”
Bo’s voice startled me into action. I closed my car door and we set out across the parking lot.
“Aren’t you afraid to run around by yourself at night like this? I mean, Southmoore’s not that far away,” I said, referring to the Southmoore Slayer.
“I like the night.”
I resisted the urge to comment on his answer, which was not an answer at all. Instead, we walked in silence for a ways before the need to speak overwhelmed me.
“So, how are you liking Harker?”
Bo looked over at me before he responded, his eyes scanning my face. “Much better than I thought I would.”
I felt my cheeks heat and I was glad that he couldn’t see my reaction in the darkness.
“What brings you here?”
He shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
Though we obviously had plenty of time, I figured that was his way of saying he didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t press.
