Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,36
water flooded my mouth and I swallowed, closing my eyes and moaning at the decadent taste. It was amazing! The cool, foreign feeling rushed through me, making me feel alive and awake.
“Easy.” Easton pulled it away. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
He took a long pull himself, never taking his eyes off of me as he drank. I licked the last bit of moisture from my lips and looked away. When he looked at me like that, I felt like I was falling. God…if Sky could see me now. Wanting things I was never supposed to want. Wanting them with my father’s most feared Hell’s reaper. She’d be furious. Who was I kidding? Furious was putting it mildly.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Sky.” My throat closed up around her name. As angry as she might be right now, she was still my Heavenly sister. Even if Father had put us together with the intent of her keeping me out of trouble, she was still my best friend. “I was just thinking about all of the ways she’s going to punish me when I get back.”
He smirked. “The blonde, right?”
“She’s my best friend.”
He smiled and shook his head seeming far away. “Yeah…best friends can be a real pain in the ass. Though I have a feeling you’re the pain in the ass in this equation.”
I laughed. “I wish I could say you were wrong. But you’re not. Sky’s perfect. She never makes a mistake. She’s not like me at all.”
“Perfect is boring,” he said. “Trust me. She’d be lost without you around to keep her on her toes.”
“You say that as if you know from experience.”
He reached down and wrapped his hand around his blade, choosing to stare at his legs instead of me. “I used to have a pain in the ass of my own.”
“Who?”
A brittle branch broke off the tree, and we both looked out at the thin layer of sticks protecting us from the storm. I was finally starting to believe what Father had been telling me all along. Nowhere was safe in this place. At best, you could hope for a few inches of space between you and the danger, but it was never really gone. Easton scrubbed his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead.
“Finn,” he said. “He might have pissed me off to no end. Made terrible decisions every chance he got…but that’s Finn. You can’t tell him anything. Hell, if he’d listened to me, he wouldn’t be happy right now. He’d just be another miserable dead guy. Just goes to show…he’s better off without me.”
The air was dark between us, but it was thick with regret and pain. I swallowed and curled my reaching fingers back against my palm. He didn’t want my comfort. In fact, if I hadn’t coerced him into this, he wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I searched my mind, trying to think of a way to make him happy without touching him. A way to make him smile. Even if it was just for a moment. Humans managed to do it for one another every day and they didn’t have an ounce of the power I had. I chewed my bottom lip and peeked up at him.
“Why did the skeleton cross the road?” I asked.
Easton squinted at me “What?”
“Why did the skeleton cross the road?”
“Are you trying to tell me a joke right now?” He raised a brow. I sighed, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Fine. I give up. Why did the skeleton cross the road, Red?”
“To get to the body shop on the other side.”
His lips twitched as he sank back, resting against the bark, watching me. He lifted a finger and waved it at me. “Another.”
“Okay…” I sifted through the endless supply of jokes I’d collected from humans over the years. Sky always thought they were stupid, but I liked them. How a few simple words could bring a laugh or smile where only tears existed before. I settled on one and looked up to find Easton watching me, a small grin on his face. The fact that I’d put that there with nothing more than the sound of my voice and a few lines I’d learned from a nine-year-old filled me with glee.
“What kind of room does a ghost never need?”
He shrugged.
“A living room,” I said, smiling when a small chuckle slipped past his lips. A tiny flare of joy lit the space between us. I closed my eyes, basking in its