All Souls' Night - Renee Rose Page 0,210

beaten out of my chest yet. Reaching forward, I slide my palm up against his chest. His soft sweater feels like a cloud over hard steel. An ache builds up in me, starting at my heart but moving down much lower. There’s such a raw, primal tone in his voice. One that makes me want to cower beneath him, and curl up into his indomitable strength at the same time.

“Look, let’s start over. Hi, I’m Dahlia.”

His lips twitch just a fraction, and the dark intensity starts to leach from his eyes.

“I’m Damiano,” he murmurs, pulling my hand up to his lips.

My breath catches in my throat. Is he seriously going to kiss my hand? What is this, the age of chivalry? His fingers are cool to the touch. How is he so cold when I’m burning up from the inside out? Instead of kissing my knuckles, he turns my palm over and brushes his lips against my wrist. Just a fleeting feeling. If I hadn’t been watching him do it, I might have believed his lips never touched me at all.

Moisture pools low within me and dampens my underwear. Fuck me, and just from a half-kiss. His eyes meet mine and lock on. Slowly, his pupils eat up his irises. Holy cow, he’s getting as turned on as I am. Jerking my hand from him, I step back, just enough so I can think.

His small frown of disappointment spears me, but I can’t be falling for some stranger. That’s how I got into trouble with John. John! My eyes widen as I remember the events that led me here.

“Oh my god! We have to call the police!” I say.

I’ve turned to race towards the door when Damiano’s strong arm wraps about my waist and pulls me flush against him. The fire that started dying immediately flares back to life. I want to melt into that embrace, let him take away my worry and stress. However, the practical part, the loud part, demands that I keep my wits about me.

“The matter has been taken care of, but we do need to talk about what happened.”

“Taken care of? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Taken care of like mob taken care of?”

Damiano’s chuckles vibrate through my back and down to my core. Groaning, I squeeze my legs together in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort. Big mistake. All it does is create an unbearable friction.

“I guess you can say it’s like the mob. But seriously,” he turns me around and leads me back to the couch, “who was he, and how do you know him?”

“He’s some guy I met at The Inner Light. It’s some hippy, witchy store that teaches you magic. He and I were going to do a love spell tonight.”

Damiano arches a brow but remains silent.

“Look, I don’t know if I believe in that stuff, but it’s super fascinating, and he was hot. I figured, why not?”

“Do you make a habit of running off with strangers?”

“Do you make a habit of kidnapping women you don’t know?”

He smirks. “Touché.” However, his eyes quickly turn serious. “But what do you actually know about him? Did anything seem odd?”

“You mean, besides the fact that he tried to rape me? No, that seemed perfectly normal.” Irritation builds up under my skin. I want to scratch it out, but there’s no release. Not when Damiano keeps looking at me with that expression that’s half pity and half lust. My mind starts playing back the events of the night. There were odd things, to be sure, but nothing that I can make sense of as a whole.

Like a stuck record, my brain keeps going back to his fangs. There’s no way they could have got bigger. That had to have been the shadows. It’s the only thing that seems out of place. Like a sore spot in your mouth that your tongue just won’t leave alone, my brain keeps probing at his fangs, trying to make sense of that in light of everything else.

“There is something, isn’t there?” he asks, and points towards my mouth, where my own tongue keeps going around the fangs while I am deep in thought. It isn’t even a conscious movement.

“Look, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Things were happening fast, and the light was making things weird.”

“Try telling me what was weird. I promise not to laugh.”

And I believe him, too. His look is deadly serious, not even a hint of humor lines