Authors: AJ Myers
Grams choked on her coffee
and turned to me with eyes so wide with astonishment she looked like she had
been taken over by the pod people and had become an alien. The Alien Grams
picture in my mind was so funny I started giggling. Grams and Nathan exchanged
a worried look, but they kept their mouths shut.
“Ready, Nate?”
I had never called him that
before and it really didn’t sound right coming out of my mouth. Maybe I was
laying it on a little too thick. Trying to tamp down my general feelings of
happiness and well-being, I went for a more somber tone. I failed. If
anything I sounded more cheerful, but I really didn’t care.
“We’re going to be late if
we don’t get on the road, babe. Get a move on!”
“Ember—” Grams began,
sounding even more suspicious than she had before, but I cut her off.
“No time, Grams,” I said,
slipping my arms into the jacket a dazed Nathan was holding for me, “Education
awaits!”
I picked up my backpack and
kissed her cheek again and was already headed for the door before she could
even process what I had done. I grabbed Nathan’s arm as I passed him and
pulled him along with me. I breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed
behind us. That had been way too easy. I half expected Grams to come charging
after us, demanding to know what I was up to, but we made it safely into the
car and out of the garage.
I used the stereo to keep
Nathan from seeing my less-than-pure motives once we were flying down the
road. I didn’t think about anything other than the lyrics playing through the
superior speakers of his car as he drove, and I saw him giving me a suspicious
look every couple of seconds. He looked downright concerned when I started
humming along with the radio, tapping my fingers against my leg in time with
the beat. When I actually started singing along, though, he reached his limit
of patience.
“What are you up to, Ember?”
He asked, looking like maybe he was afraid I had finally gone crazy from the
stress. “What’s with the whole happy-go-lucky bit?”
“What? Can’t a girl be
cheerful every now and then?” I asked, giving him my best innocent look and
actually conjugating French verbs in my head to throw him off. “Were you
expecting serious and mopey or something? Sorry, honeybunch, but that’s not my
scene today.”
To my absolute delight, he
pulled into the parking lot of the local tanning salon—empty since they didn’t
open until ten and it was only a little after seven—and turned off the engine.
“We’re not moving from
this spot until you tell me what’s going on with you,” he said, his voice low
and threatening. “I don’t know how you’re keeping me out of that beautiful
head of yours, but I’m going to find out. I don’t care if we have to sit here
all day. Now, what are you up to, Ember?”
In answer, I leaned across
the console between us and kissed him. The second our lips met, I let him see
my love for him, my need to be alone with him for just a few hours before we
went to war with Bastian, my longing for his touch and his amazing kisses.
I can’t deny that I got a
little carried away. Then, Nathan had always had that effect on me. When the
real world butted in again in the form of blaring horns and a loud screeching
sound that said someone had ran the red light at the intersection next to us, I
was once again in Nathan’s lap with no idea how or when I’d gotten there.
“So, would you like me to
drive you to school now?” He murmured, smiling down at me.
“Uh, that would be a
negative.”
I laughed when his eyes lit
up. I had never thought about it before, but it must really suck to be four
hundred years old and stuck in high school.
“Where would you like to go
then?” he asked, leaning down to place a kiss in the hollow below my ear.
Yeah, like I could really
think of a place to go while he was running his lips back and forth along my
jaw. Actually, I couldn’t think at all. I gave it my best effort, though. Unfortunately,
I hadn’t gotten that far in my planning the night before, and I couldn’t come
up with a single place for us to go.
“Can I make a suggestion?”
he asked with a soft, smoky laugh when he looked up to see the frown forming on
face.
“Be my guest.”
“Can it be a surprise?”
“Sure,” I agreed, smiling.
“I love surprises!”
He laughed and kissed me
again. This time we got more than a
little
carried away. By the time
we came up for air, I was breathing hard and my heart was pounding
erratically. My body felt warm and heavy and tingled from my head to my toes.
I blushed a little when I saw that the windows had fogged up, but couldn’t
really find it in myself to be all that embarrassed.
“All right, back in your own
seat,” Nathan rasped out, breathing almost as hard as I was. “And be careful
how you do it, too. That sweater you’re wearing should be illegal and I’ve had
all the temptation I can stand for the moment.”
Smiling at the idea that I
could have the same effect on him he had on me, I did as I was told—and was
careful to brush against him as much as possible. By the time I was back in my
own seat, my smile was even bigger and Nathan was grinding his teeth together
and clenching his fists in an effort to keep his hands to himself. Yeah, I know.
I’m cruel. But it was so much
fun
.
Nathan started the car and
squealed out of the parking lot the second I was back in my seat with my
seatbelt fastened. He didn’t speak, but I could feel him watching me as I
watched the town fly past us at an unsafe speed. I looked at the speedometer
for about half a second once we were out of the city limits and then decided to
never do it again.
“Nathan, do you know what
happens to the human body when it hits a tree at more than a hundred miles an
hour?” I asked, conversationally.
“That’s an odd question,” he
said, laughing. “I would assume the human the body belongs to dies—painfully.
Why do you ask?”
In answer, I glanced
pointedly in the direction of the speedometer without actually looking at it
for fear that my stomach would give up my delicious breakfast. Nathan followed
my look and chuckled before taking his foot off the gas pedal.
“She’ll fight demons, but my
driving scares her,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head.
I rolled my eyes and then
looked back out at the scenery that was no longer flying past the window in a
multicolored blur. When it started to rain, I followed the pattern it made on
the window as it streamed across it. In other words, I did everything I could
think of to avoid Nathan’s heated gaze. I was nervous enough as it was.
The house he pulled up in
front of was unfamiliar to me, but I liked it instantly. It was small and
simple, but there was something charming about it. I could just glimpse a lake
through the trees and knew we were somewhere near Lei Lake. Kim and I had
spent enough time there over the years at her parents’ lake house that I could
pretty much recognize it on sight. Turning to Nathan, I arched an eyebrow and
he winked at me before climbing out of the car and coming around to open my
door.
“Whose house is this?” I
asked as I put my hand in his.
“Ours,” he told me, pulling
me into his arms. “I bought it last week while you were at the library. I
thought it might be nice for us to have a place to go that was just ours. Not
your grandmother’s, not mine.
Ours
.”
“Private,” I agreed and
cringed when I heard how high my voice had gotten. Clearing my throat, I tried
again. “It was a great idea.”
“There’s no strings
attached, baby.” He smiled slightly as he noticed my hands were trembling. “I
didn’t bring you out here to ravish you, Em.”
Well,
that
was too
bad. If he wasn’t planning on seducing me, that meant I would have to seduce
him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the first clue how to
do
that. I was
going to figure it out, though. This might be my last chance.
The rain that had been
falling lightly our entire drive picked that moment to become a torrential
downpour. In the second it took Nathan to scoop me up and run with me to the
porch, I got totally soaked. So much for perfect hair and makeup. I looked
like a drowned rat.
Did the Bad Karma Fairy
never
get tired of messing with me?
“So much for seduction,” I
muttered, wringing out my dripping wet hair and glaring at the storm clouds
overhead.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nathan
said softly. “If that sweater should have been illegal before, it is now
downright indecent.”
I glanced at him and saw
that his eyes were practically molten with heat. Glancing down at my sodden
sweater, I blushed and crossed my arms over my chest. The sweater had been
tight to begin with, but now it was molded to me in a way that was pretty much
pornographic.
“Come on, baby,” Nathan
said, smiling and coming to take my hand and lead me toward the door. “Let’s
start a fire and get you out of those wet clothes.”
I smiled at that. Maybe the
Bad Karma Fairy had done me a favor, after all.
I let him lead me inside and
then waited as he closed and locked the door behind us. The whole time he
retained his grip on my hand. The house was colder than I had thought it would
be and I shivered as my wet hair continued to drip down my back.
“Wait right here,” Nathan
said, dropping a quick kiss on my quivering lips and disappearing through
another door I hadn’t even noticed.
While he was doing whatever
he was doing, I took the opportunity to look around me. There wasn’t a lot to
look at, to be honest. The entire cabin consisted of the room I was standing
in and the room Nathan had just disappeared into. There was a kitchenette in
the corner with a small stove and fridge and a stacked washer/dryer combo and I
could just see the bathroom through the door to my right.
It was so perfect I almost
couldn’t believe it was real. Everything was clean and sparkling white. Even
the small fireplace was tiled in white. In the center of the room was a
gigantic round white wicker daybed with a mountain of throw pillows that faced
a solid wall of glass that gave me a breathtaking view of the lake. I walked
toward it, awed by the sight of the choppy water beneath the dark, cloudy sky,
and just stared out at the masterpiece Mother Nature had painted for me to
enjoy.
I was still standing there
when Nathan came back through the door a few minutes later, his arms full of
blankets and towels. I turned to look at him and couldn’t help but smile. He
was wearing the same black t-shirt and jeans he had been wearing the day we
met. For some reason, that almost seemed fitting.
Winking, he grabbed my hand
and dragged me over to the daybed. Dropping his bundle, he dug through it and
found a towel and a long sleeved white button-down shirt that obviously
belonged to a man and handed them to me.
“I was waiting until after
tonight to bring some of your things out here, since I wasn’t sure what you
would want, so I brought you one of my shirts. You should still be warm enough
under the blankets and we can throw your stuff in the dryer while we talk.”
Talk? Yeah, right. I had
no intention wasting my day talking to him unless he intended to have a totally
telepathic conversation. I intended to keep those luscious lips busy for the
rest of the day.
Smiling despite my
chattering teeth, I stood on my tiptoes and gave him a soft kiss and then
turned and headed for the door Nathan had gone through to find us some dry clothes,
which turned out to be a bedroom. The white on white color scheme had carried
over into that room, too and, judging by the light, so had that big wall of
windows.
I could feel Nathan’s eyes
burning into my back as I walked and made a point to sway my hips as much as
possible without going overboard. Maybe this seduction thing wouldn’t be so
hard, after all. I mean, the desire was already there. It couldn’t be too
hard to send him over the edge, could it? I closed the door behind me and sat down
on the edge of the bed to pull off my boots, thinking hard the whole time. I
had to come up with a plan to seduce my own boyfriend. That was kind of sad,
when you get right down to it.
I stood up to pull off my
sweater and that’s when I ran into a problem. I had never worn the stupid
thing before and apparently it didn’t like getting wet. It actually felt like
it had shrunk three sizes since I put it on. I almost cried out of sheer
frustration when I got it pulled up and then somehow managed to get tangled up
in it so thoroughly that there was no way I was getting out of it on my own.
“Nathan!” I finally called
out, having no other choice. “Can you come help me?”
The words were barely out of
my mouth when I heard the door open behind me. He grasped the arms of my
sweater and whipped it over my head with such ease that I was even more
mortified. I turned to thank him, but he placed his hands on my hips and held
me still. I sucked in a sharp breath when I felt his lips brush my bare
shoulder.
“It’s cruel to tempt a man
like this,” he breathed, his lips moving across the skin of my shoulder. “You
should wear gold every day. With your hair and your skin tone, it’s fabulous.”
My body went up in flames
when he brushed my hair aside and kissed the back of my neck. I could hear
what he was saying, but my mind simply refused to process it. The husky tone
of his voice and the feel of his lips on my skin were making me feel fuzzy.
Every inch of my skin tingled and my bones felt like they had turned to Jell-O.
I forgot that I didn’t know
what I was doing. I forgot that I was nervous. I turned in his arms and
dragged his mouth down to mine, feeling triumphant when he moaned and his hands
slid lower. I didn’t even break contact when he picked me up so that he didn’t
have to bend so far to kiss me. Instead, I tangled my hands in his hair and
wrapped my legs around his waist, every particle of my being wanting to get
closer to him, to become one person, to love him as only I could.