Page 188 of Hunters and Prey

Angel and I critiqued fight scenes and laughed at the cheesy dialogue, chewing on junk food and discussing whether certain fight moves would be more practical in the ring versus a fight on the ground.

We didn’t talk about anything remotely important.

We didn’t mention the hole where Nick would normally be in our weird movie-watching tastes, but made appreciative noises about the shoulder, foot and leg massages we were receiving, ate tortilla chips and Angel stole some of my fries, and took a bite of my cheeseburger.

Black didn’t just order a masseuse for each of us––he ordered five masseuses.

Two for me and Angel’s feet and legs, two for our shoulders, arms and hands, and one woman who seemed to be there primarily to massage the back of my head and comb out my long hair.

I knew Black had done that, too.

I realized I could feel his light hovering around me, even now, worrying.

I’m fine,I assured him. And thank you for this. For giving up Angel for a day. Thinking about that, I added after a pause. Of course, this is ridiculous. Not only am I useless, I’ve taken one of your employees. And you’ve got everyone looking at my light instead of looking for Nick and Jem––

Ignore me,he sent, gruff. Stop thinking about that shit. Just relax, Miri.

In the background, I heard his mind grumble,

…you didn’t tell me you didn’t sleep last night.

Louder, he sent, Did you eat that damned burger? All of it?

I laughed for real at that, sending him a plume of warmth.

I felt it affect him, in more ways than one.

I felt separation pain on him, in addition to the worry, and realized he’d been suppressing that around me, too. I knew seers instinctively wanted physical contact when their mates got hurt. They wanted to touch them, be near them, be in their light.

They also wanted to have sex with them, maybe because it was the most intense version of all three things.

Black hadn’t let himself go near me because of what Nick had done––which I completely understood––but that probably wasn’t helping us communicate, either.

I forgot sometimes, that seers really were different.

Unlike Black, I’d thought I was human most of my life. I was still playing catch up with the whole seer-human thing, in terms of all of the differences.

When I looked over at Angel, I found her watching me.

“Black?” she said. “He was talking to you, wasn’t he?”

At my pursed lips, she smiled, motioning towards her face.

“You get this look on your face, Miri,” she informed me. “And you cock your head sometimes. Like you’re listening.”

“What kind of look?” I said. “Like I’m about to strangle a cat?”

She laughed, throwing some of her seaweed crackers at me.

“No,” she said, still smiling as she tossed one in her mouth, crunching on it with her back molars. “The opposite.” She knocked into me with her shoulder. “Whenever you talk to him in there, your whole face relaxes. You look relieved, Miri.”

For some reason, that didn’t make me laugh, or even smile.

It brought a pain to my chest instead.

It also made me think about that night on the roof, and Black firing a bullet through Nick’s chest while he was still on top of me.

Black had seen that. He’d seen me and Nick together.

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