Page 126 of Pretty Poisoned

I laugh and shake my head, then melt into him, burying my tear-streaked face in his chest and breathing in his scent. I missed it all fucking day.

"I like you like this," I tell him. I take another deep breath and then move so that my head is in his lap and look up at him. "When you're wearing sweats and a hoodie and your hat backward—do you know what I call it in my head?"

"No," he says, stroking my hair. "What?"

"Your normal human costume."

His chest shakes with laughter before I hear it. "Teagan, that's so sad!"

"Is it?" I ask. "I don't know; I kind of like to think of you…and Declan…as something different. I feel different, too."

"Well, I like your normal human costume," he tells me. "A lot."

"Thank you," I laugh. "Um, there's one more thing."

I take a deep breath and mentally prepare myself to cross a line and break the rules, knowing he might not want to break them with me.

Brady is going to fucking laugh at me.

"What? What's wrong?"

"I don't want to share you. I'm too afraid you'll decide to love someone else, and I only want you to love me."

He shrugs and says, "That's fine with me. There's a hot tub on the roof—do you want to go fuck in it?"

I smile. "Yeah, okay."

The clock in the room says it's just after three in the morning when I slip out of bed. I've had a hard time sleeping with Blakely's words echoing in my head—something I barely noticed when she said it, but now, I can't stop thinking about it and whatmight happen if she decided to tell them or they found out some other way.

Quietly, I cross the hotel suite in just a t-shirt to Declan's room.

I crawl under the covers with him and brush his hair away from his face. "Declan?" I whisper. "Wake up."

He opens his eyes, groans, and wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me closer to him.

"Mmm…Teagan." He brings his lips to mine, kissing me. "I've missed you so much. It's been so long since I've had you all to myself." His tongue slides into my mouth, and I wrap my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss before he pulls my lower lip through his teeth.

"I love kissing you," I tell him. "You're the best kisser. Your lips are so soft—softer than River's."

"What's got you so soft?" he asks, kissing me again. "Hmm? Are you that mad at my brother that you're actually going to be sweet to me? Does that mean you're going to let me be sweet to you, too?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"You never let me be good to you," he says. "You don't crawl into bed with me and let me tell you how beautiful you are." He reaches for my hair, twirling one of the curls around his finger, and I can't breathe. "You don't let me tell you how pretty I think you look when you let your curls dry like this or that I like the way they look against your bare back when you sleep. Do you have any idea how much I think about you? It's like you came out of nowhere and sucked the color out of everything else, and now there's just you. Everything else is…" He pauses, unfurling the tendril wrapped around his finger. He trails his hand down my cheek and brushes his thumb over my lower lip. "Just…beige."

"Declan…"

I can't breathe when you talk to me like that.

"You're always sweet to Luca, though. What is it he calls you?"

"Um…angel?"

"No, not that one—the other one."

"Black licorice?"

"That's it," he says. "Black licorice." He leans in and kisses me again. "Bittersweet. And dangerous."

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