B00AO57VOY EBOK Read online

  Following Grams into the living room again, I lost myself in magic and mayhem with the realization that’s what my life was. That’s what it would always be. My fate had been sealed the moment Nathan had told me the truth about who and what I was. And, to my surprise, I found I was all right with that.

  I woke up the next morning, D-Day, tired but confident. I dressed carefully that morning in my most flattering jeans and a tight red sweater with an almost obscene V neckline layered over a lacy gold camisole top. I took special care with my hair and make-up and dabbed a little perfume behind my ears.

  I bet you’re wondering why I was making a point to look as beautiful as I could on my maybe last day on earth. Well, it wasn’t because I wanted to impress anyone at Oakhurst, that’s for sure. In fact, I didn’t plan on being at Oakhurst at all. The school colors were just to throw Nathan off until I could get him out of the house.

  The thought of skipping school didn’t bother me as much as it once would have. Between my absences and my preoccupation over the last few weeks, the semester was pretty much shot to hell and back, anyway. Besides, if I died trying to get rid of Bastian, it wasn’t going to make any difference if I was in class or not, was it?

  As Grams and I had been preparing for my upcoming showdown, my thoughts had kept drifting back to Nathan. Since it might be my last day on Earth, I had no intention of spending it sitting next to him at a desk and listening to teachers fill my head with useless information. No, I wanted him all to myself. I would make sure we were back before the demon banishing festivities began, but the rest of the day was going to be all about us.

  I had decided it was time. I wouldn’t be sorry about missing anything else I would miss if I died—not that I planned to, but you never know—but there was one thing I wasn’t willing to die without experiencing.

  It would be so pathetic to die a virgin.

  Before I left the bathroom I sent Kim a text detailing my plan so she wouldn’t totally freak when we didn’t show for school and got a reply I hadn’t been expecting. What I had been expecting was a phone call and a lecture about how I shouldn’t be out without my entire guard, that I shouldn’t be considering doing what I was considering doing with someone I still didn’t fully trust, blah, blah, blah. What I got instead was:

  Go 4 it! B w8ing @ ur house after school so you can give me all the details. Have fun!

  Yeah, because that was going to happen. She would just have to use her imagination.

  I practically danced out of our room and down the hall to the kitchen. I knew I should be trying to look a little bit more somber, but I just couldn’t seem to pull it off. Grams gave me a suspicious look when I took my plate from her—waffles again! Yum!—and gave her a loud kiss on the cheek before going to sit next to Nathan who was staring out the window at the ominously cloudy sky beyond.

  I might not have been pulling off the whole morbid I’m-about-to-die act, but Nathan didn’t seem to be having any problems with it. I didn’t let that get me down, though. I was going to change that very shortly.

  He was looking particularly scrumptious. The gold sweater he wore layered over a bright red tee brought out tiny gold flecks in his eyes. His hair was the usual shaggy mess that tempted me to run my fingers though it to straighten it out—or make it worse. He looked away from the window as I walked over to the table, and I was glad I had taken so much care with my appearance when I saw his eyes flare as he gave me a quick once over.

  “You’re awfully chipper this morning,” Grams said, suspicion thick in her voice, as she came to the table with two huge mugs of coffee, one for me and one for herself. “What brought this on?”

  I shrugged noncommittally and focused on my breakfast instead. I kept my eyes on my waffles, thinking about nothing but the taste and texture of them so that Nathan wouldn’t see what I was really up to in my thoughts. It wasn’t hard to do, to be honest. Let’s face it, if you’re going to kick the bucket, waffles, especially Grams’ waffles, are the best last meal you could hope for. I practically inhaled them and bounced out of my chair without touching my coffee. I was keyed up enough. I didn’t think adding a caffeine infusion would help.

  I could feel both Grams and Nathan watching me as I loaded my plate in the dishwasher and headed for the fridge for juice instead. I drained about half a carton of OJ without bothering with a glass and then turned to look at my audience. I grinned at Grams’ disapproving expression, but she didn’t say anything. I guess the condemned got a little leniency on her last day. Only, I didn’t feel like the condemned. When I looked at Nathan, I was glad to see he had lost the look he had worn when I walked in and was giving me an amused one instead.

  “Time to go to school!” I trilled, happily, glad he wasn’t looking like I had already died anymore.

  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 w
as 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, to
o 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.