AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You know the effect you have on me,” she said. “Are you… is it… mind control or something?”
Ansel laughed, a quiet laugh, and shook his head.
“Your crush on me, which is very charming, is just a crush, Saber. No mind control required.”
She felt her heart flutter.
“It doesn’t feel like just a crush,” she said, still looking into his eyes. “It feels more intense than that.”
He picked up her hands in his.
“You’re a lovely, lovely girl,” he said, “but—”
Then she kissed him.
She couldn’t have stopped if she wanted to. She knew she was embarrassing herself, but she didn’t care. She kissed him, not hard, soft and insistent, one hand on his arm, on the stone of a bicep underneath the sleeve of his coat.
For a moment, he kissed her back, and she flicked her tongue into his mouth. She felt him shudder, and it made her feel swollen with heat and power. When she felt something impossibly sharp against her tongue, she became dizzy witha strange excitement. She kissed him harder and felt that sharpness prick her.
She tasted blood.
He made a sound like a low, rumbling growl, pulled her close to him, kissing her hard, then pushed her against the closed door of the car.
“Saber,” he said, shaking his head as he forced himself to pull away, “you don’t understand what you’re doing. I really don’t know what to do with you.”
She looked at him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes narrowed in a kind of challenge.
Shelikedthat they had secrets.
Nothing had made her feel this good in a very long time.
“I couldn’t help it,” she said, and he’d shaken his head, taken her by the arm, and led her trotting into dinner like a teacher leading a naughty student to the principal’s office.
“You still owe me an explanation for everything,” she whispered to him as he led her into the restaurant.
“I’d like to explain, but you’re not making it easy for me to be around you.”
But all of that had fallen away, and they had had a very lovely, very normal dinner. Saber had almost enjoyed the game of it, faking it in front of her dad, and had blushed every time she thought of the moment when her tongue grazed Ansel’s wickedly sharp fang and had flooded their mouths with the taste of her blood.
“Well,” Ansel said, drumming his white fingers against the ivory tablecloth, “you’ve got some travel coming up, Jim. Are you bringing Saber?”
“What travel?” Saber asked, looking at her father.
“Today I got confirmation that I’ll be speaking at a conference in San Diego, right on the ocean.”
“Random,” she said. “Can I come?”
Jim shrugged.
“Depends on if you want to, depends on school. I won’t be there long, and I won’t be able to get out much.”
Saber nodded and took a big bite of her steak, looking at Ansel.
“Are you going?”
“I doubt it,” he said, looking at her with a smirk. “I don’t really like the beach.”
16
