*Something is Broken Here pt 1
Here’s an excerpt from my novel…not sure which one though…probably later on in the series…but anyhow two parts because I can’t help it 🙂
***
Kai Winters smiled his oily smile, and I knew he had to want something from me. But there was nothing I could give him. Secrets weren’t my thing, not when truth came so much easier to me. What I think, and what I feel are always out there for everyone to see and deal with as they chose. Tonight I was feeling alone, and I knew it showed plain on my face, even through the blink and blur or strobe lights. I should have ignored him, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away as me slithered through the press of bodies towards me.
My skin prickled suddenly with goosebumps, and the chill they left on my skin was startling against the thick weight of body heat I moved in. But I always reacted this way to Kai . I can’t explain it, this strange physical reaction to his nearness. He moved through me like tendrils of cool wind beneath my skin.
Ambrosia laughed at me once when I told her, and she called it lust. But it wasn’t just that. It was an honest to God metaphysical connection. And it made my pulse quicken.
Kai reached out, when he was close enough, and took me firmly by the wrist. He drew me into the circle of his arms with a quick jerk, and we began to move. Music was everywhere, pouring from the speakers over the sweating, heaving mob, but I almost couldn’t hear it in the shelter of his body. I sank against his body, pressed tight against his chest, and wrapped myself in his false warmth.
My family would have killed me, seeing me like this in the arms of a vampire, but they didn’t matter right now. I just let myself be small, be held, until Kai was supporting most of my weight. And as he held my physical weight, my shoulders seemed to relax for the first time since Phoenix left. The baggage I carried with me like a plague since then shifted off of me, and with it my barriers, carefully build and fortified, came crashing down. The flood gates opened, and spilled from my eyes as I cried silently.
A hand delicately cupped the back of my head. He’d never been so gentle, never touched me this way. Confusion made my chest tight. What was going on?
Kai’s lips pressed against my ear as he spoke, “He was wrong to lose you, and he will always regret it. But don’t hate him. It’s not for him to find happiness in love, but you will, Atlanta.”
“But why did he chose me?” I coughed around my sadness. “Why make me fall for him if he was just going to leave?”
<font face="C
omic Sans MS”>Kai’s grip tightened suddenly, and for a moment my heart went still, as if even it waited to hear what he would say. “Because he couldn’t help but love you.”
Anger hit my like a fist to the gut, and I would have doubled over and fallen, had not Kai held me so securely. What kind of an excuse is that? He couldn’t help it? So what, he thought he would drag my heart through the shards of his broken life for company? Maybe he thought that breaking my heart would help mend his? Lend some meaning to his life? I hated him as much as I’d ever loved him, and it froze my insides with the cold power of it.
And then my face was clasped between two hands, raising upwards. I couldn’t see through the blur of tears, but I knew the feel of lips against mine. I knew the fell of a tongue sweeping gently through m startled slackened mouth. I kissed him back, because I ached, and his cool wind was a soothing caress. Perhaps it could even be a healing one. The skin-hunger blazed through my whole body, and I needed to touch him.
My hands clawed at his shirt, tugging it from his waist, and plunging beneath the fabric to feel the subtle warmth of his skin. Everywhere I touched him, every slight movement of my hands fed his cold wind inside of me. It felt right, and my skin tingled with the perfect pleasure of it.
“We can’t!” Kai gasped, tearing his lips away from mine, leaving me parched still. “We’ll both be killed.” It didn’t make sense.
“Why? What are you talking about?” His hands pressed firmly over mine through the shirt, but they’d stopped moving the moment our lips broke from one another.
Kai shook his head. “We can’t.”
“But you kissed me!” I protested angrily. “You can kiss me and what else then?”
For a moment he was still, then he sighed. “Many things unfortunately.”
“Please!” desperation had taken hold inside me. It was a strange creature, almost unknown to me. I’d never felt so fragile. Born with a knife in my hand, walking the hunter’s path for twenty years, and here I was…begging. Sick.
“No,” he said firmly, and drew my arms away from his body. “I won’t use you the way Phoenix did. I can’t have you any more than he could. But I know it, and I won’t stand in the way of your happiness.”
Kai took a step back, and I could see the strain of the effort in him. It only made me angrier.