Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #3) - Cynthia St. Aubin Page 0,27
ears, trying to look bulky and sound monotone and morose.
“I do not sound like that,” he protested, perhaps a little too quickly.
“Whatever you say, boss,” I teased.
“Really?” The same voice I had been mocking moments earlier dipped into its huskier registers, dropping the room’s barometer by several points. Abernathy stepped closer to me, body heat and the delicious scent that was his and his alone permeating my senses. “Whatever I say?”
Stepping backward to preserve my sanity, I was alarmed when he followed suit, stalking me like a great, dark, cat.
Or wolf.
My back made contact with the closet door and Abernathy planted his hands on either side of my head as he leaned closer. Slowly and with great precision, he breathed the air next to my neck, my hair.
My lips.
“And what are we doing, exactly?” I asked. Leave it to me to really sex up a moment.
“Testing,” he said, his lips near enough that I felt his warm breath on the skin below my ear.
“For carbon monoxide?” I asked.
“For pheromones. If you wanted him, I would know.”
Suddenly, my stomach felt heavy. My skin feverish. “You would know that?”
“Mm-hmm.” His lips skimmed my neck, releasing a swarm of gooseflesh.
“Just from scent?”
He paused with his mouth just below my jaw. “Just from scent.”
To my utter surprise and considerable delight, his hot, wet tongue, slid along the skin of my earlobe, conjuring an unexpected rush of moisture south of the equator. “Of course,” he breathed across the skin he’d moistened with is tongue. “Taste and scent are closely linked.”
“Is that so?” I held my breath as Mark’s mouth moved from my ear to hover over mine.
He brushed my lips once. Twice.
On the third time, his hand moved from the door into my hair, his fingers digging deep into the unruly waves as he gently tugged.
In that moment. I would have joyfully given birth to an entire litter of puppies if he only kept doing what he was doing.
It was that image in particular, the puppies, that slapped me firmly back into reality.
“This would be significantly more arousing if there weren’t a dead body in the closet,” I said.
“Or maybe if I—what?” The meaning of my words caught up with him all at once and he snapped back as if I’d thrown a drink in his face.
“Dead body.” I jerked my head backward toward the closet door. “Right in there.”
He nudged me aside and nearly pulled the door off its hinges. The head rolled out of the closet and came to rest against my shoe. With the pointy patent leather toe, I inched the purple lip up to reveal the pearly point of a fang.
“You know,” I said, “if there’s one complaint I have, it’s that there’s just too much damned romance in my life.”
“Poor bastard,” Mark said. “Wasn’t enough to get decapitated. Someone had damn near stab him through the ear.”
I glanced down at the head and noted the dark blood oozing over one temple.
“Oops,” I said, glancing down at the exposed metal spike of my stiletto heel. I’d meant to get that fixed at some point.
“Oops?” Mark’s face took on the cold and stony demeanor it so often did when one of my many mishaps threw his planets out of alignment. “What oops?”
“I…um.” Damned if there was any good way to say this. “I sort of kicked it.”
“Jesus Christ, Hanna!” Mark hit the open closet door with the flat of his palm. “What the hell is wrong with you? We have vampires sniffing around here and you’re playing soccer with undead body parts?”
“You would have preferred bowling?” I folded my arms across my chest and raised an eyebrow at him.
Abernathy’s look could have seared the glaze off a doughnut.
“Look, I’m sorry!” I said. “The damn head jumped off a shelf at me and Morrison showed up and it’s not exactly like I had time to knit a cozy to slip over it!”
“Shhh!” Abernathy motioned for me to be quiet and kicked the head back into the closet as a patron ambled down the hall toward us in search of the restrooms.
“See!” I hissed as soon as the potty door was closed. “You did it too! I don’t want to hear another—”
“Okay, okay! Fine! We both kicked it.” He pulled the closet door open to get a better look at the body folded neatly into thirds on the second shelf up.
“Look!” I pointed at the head’s waxy brow. “You put a huge dent in his forehead! I only made a tiny mark!”