There were times when I would gladly have traded all my bean sidhe “gifts”—did a glass-shattering screech and the ability to travel between the human world and the Netherworld even count as gifts?—for a little more of what she had. But this was not one of those times. Not while Nash’s hands were on my waist, his taste still on my lips, and the greens and browns in his eyes swirling languorously with blatant desire. For me.
Em drank from her can, and I grabbed the car keys dangling from her hand, then showed them to her before stuffing them into my hip pocket, along with my own. She could stay the night with me, and I’d bring her back for her car in the morning. Emma smiled and nodded, already moving to the music when someone called her name from the living-room doorway.
“Hey, Em!” a voice called over the music, and I turned to see Doug Fuller leaning with one bulging arm on the door frame. “Come dance with me.”
Emma smiled, drained her can, then danced into the living room with Doug’s hands on her already swaying hips. Nash and I joined them, and he returned greeting after greeting from the glitter crowd writhing around us. But then he was mine. We moved with the music as if the room was empty but for the stereo and the heat we shared.
I had stolen Nash from a room full of his adoring devotees with nothing but the secret connection we shared. A connection no other girl could possibly compete with.
We’d combined our bean sidhe abilities to bring my best friend back from the dead and to reclaim a damned soul from the hellion who’d bought it. We’d literally saved lives, fought evil, and almost died together. No mere pretty face could compete with that, no matter how much gloss and mascara she applied.
An hour later, Em tapped my shoulder and pointed toward the kitchen. I shook my head—after a month without him, I could have danced with Nash all night—but after Emma left, Nash kept glancing at the kitchen door like it was going to suddenly slam closed and lock us out.
“Need a break?” I asked, and he smiled in relief.
“Just for a minute.” He tugged me through the crowd while my heart still raced to the beat, both of us damp with sweat.
In the kitchen, Emma drank from a fresh can of beer while Doug argued with Brant Williams about a bad call during some basketball game I hadn’t seen.
“Here.” Nash handed me a cold soda. “I’ll be right back.” Then he pushed his way through the crowd without a backward glance.
I looked at Emma with both brows raised, but she only shrugged.
I popped open my Coke and noticed that Doug and Brant’s argument had become a whispered conversation I couldn’t follow, and Emma hadn’t even noticed. For several minutes, she prattled about her sister refusing to lend her a blouse that made Cara look lumpy, anyway.
Before I could decide how to respond, someone called my name, and I looked up to find Brant watching me. “Yeah?” Obviously I’d missed a question.
“I said, ‘Where’s your boyfriend?’”
“Um…bathroom,” I said, unwilling to admit that I wasn’t sure.
Brant shook his head slowly. “Hudson’s falling down on the job. You wanna dance till he gets back? I won’t bite.” He held out one large brown hand for mine, and I took it.
Brant Williams was tall, and dark, and always smiling. He was the football team’s kicker, a senior, and the friendliest jock I’d ever met, not counting Nash. He was also the only other person in the house I would dance with, other than Emma.
I danced with Brant for two songs, glancing around for Nash the whole time. I was just starting to wonder if he’d gotten sick when I spotted him across the room, standing with Sophie in an arched doorway leading to a dark hall. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, then leaned closer to be heard over the music.
My chest ached like I couldn’t breathe.
When he saw me looking, he stepped away from Sophie and scowled at my partner, then waved me over. I thanked Brant for the dance, then made my way across the room, dread building inside me like heartburn. Nash had ditched me at a party, then showed up with Sophie. Deep down, I’d known this day would come. I’d figured he’d eventually look elsewhere for what he hadn’t had in the two and a half months we’d been going out. But with Sophie? A flash of anger burned in my cheeks. He may as well have just spit in my face!
Please, please be imagining things, Kaylee….
I stopped five feet away, my heart bruising my chest with each labored beat. Yes, Sophie had a boyfriend, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to take mine.
Nash took one look at my face, at my eyes, which were surely swirling with pain and anger I couldn’t hide, then followed my gaze to Sophie. His eyes widened with comprehension. Then he smiled and grabbed my hand.
“Sophie was just looking for Scott. Right?” But then he tugged me down the dark hall before she could answer, leaving my cousin all alone in the crowd. “We can talk in here,” Nash whispered, pressing me into a closed door.
The full body contact was promising, but I couldn’t banish doubt. “Were you talking to her the whole time?” I asked around the hitch in my breath as his cheek brushed mine.
“I just went outside to cool off, and when I came back in, she cornered me. That’s it.” He fumbled for the handle near my hip, and the door swung open, revealing Scott’s dad’s posh office.
“Swear?”
“Do I really need to?” Nash stepped back so I could see his eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp, and I saw the truth swirling in them. He didn’t want Sophie, no matter what she might do that I hadn’t.
I felt myself flush. “Sorry. I just thought—”
Nash closed the door and cut my apology off with a kiss. He tasted good. Like mint. We wound up on Mr. Carter’s burgundy leather couch, and I had just enough time to think that psychiatrists made waaaay too much money before Nash’s mouth found mine again, and thinking became impossible.
“You know I’m not interested in Sophie,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t do that to you or Scott.” He leaned down and kissed me again. “There’s only you, Kaylee.”
My entire body tingled in wave after wave of warm, exhilarating shivers, and I let my lips trail over the rough stubble on his chin, delighting in the coarse texture.
“Oh, blah, blah, blah,” a jaded voice said, drenching our privacy with a cold dose of sarcasm. “You love him, he loves you, and we’re all one big, happy, sloppy, dorky family.”
“Damn it, Tod!” Nash stiffened. I closed my eyes and sighed. The couch creaked beneath us as we sat up to see Nash’s undead brother—fully corporeal for once—sitting backward in Mr. Carter’s desk chair, arms crossed over the top as he watched us in boredom barely softened by the slight upturn of his cherubic lips. “If you don’t quit it with the Peeping Tom routine, I’m going to tell your boss you get off watching other people make out.”
“He knows,” Tod and I said in unison. I straightened my shirt, scowling at the intruder, though my irritation was already fading.
Unlike Nash, I had trouble staying mad at Tod lately because I considered his recent reappearance a good sign. We hadn’t seen him for nearly a month after his ex-girlfriend died in October—without her soul. And when I say we’d not seen him, I mean that literally. As a grim reaper, Tod could choose when and where he wanted to be seen, and by whom.
But now he was back, and up to his old tricks. Which seemed to consist entirely of preventing me and Nash from having any quality alone time. He was almost as bad as my dad.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ran one hand through my long brown hair to smooth it.
Tod shrugged. “I’m on my lunch break.”
I lifted both brows. “You don’t eat.”
He only shrugged again, and smiled.
“Get out,” Nash growled, tossing his head toward the door. Like Tod would actually have to use it. One of the other perks of being dead, technically speaking, was the ability to walk through things. Or simply disappear, then reappear somewhere else. That’s right. I got swirling eyes and the capacity to shatter windows with my bare voice. Tod got teleportation and invisibility.