The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,69

I beat you.”

“Me, either.” The door swung closed behind Luc as he stalked forward, his eyes shards of amethyst. My stomach fluttered at the intensity in his gaze.

“How does it feel to not be the best?” I asked, stopping when my calves hit the coffee table.

“I’m a sore loser.” His hands landed on my hips, and before I knew it, I was up in the air and then I was lying on the couch. Luc was prowling over me. “You’re going to need to make me feel better.”

“You’re going to have to suck it up.”

Dipping his head as his hands slid up my shirt, he whispered something in my ear that scorched my cheeks and a whole lot of other areas. “I’m sweaty,” I told him.

“So am I.” He kissed me, and an exquisite pulse shot through me.

I gripped his shoulder and fisted my other hand in the hair along the back of his head. “I’m dirty.”

“I don’t care.” His mouth came over mine again, and his body moved over and against mine. I felt it all in the sharpest, most delicious way. “Before everything, when you were feeling better, we’d run like that all the time. Used to drive Paris crazy, because we’d often be in the house, knocking everything over, and it always ended in an argument between us.”

Now my heart thundered for a whole different reason. “Why?”

“Because you’d get mad when I let you win,” he said, and I laughed at the absurdity of it. He kissed me again, an almost greedy clash. “I missed that.”

“You didn’t let me win this time.”

“No.” His lips curved into a smile against mine. “I didn’t, and hell, you have no idea how relieved I am to know that.”

I knew why he would be. My chest tightened. It was more proof I was no longer sick—no longer dying. Luc knew that, but I imagined it was a lot like me having a hard time believing that using the Source could be that easy. There was still a part of him that couldn’t believe I wasn’t sick.

Pressing my forehead to his, I hoped for once he was listening to my thoughts when I said, I love you.

Illogical as it was, I thought I heard him whisper, I know, but I knew he couldn’t, because his lips were busy with mine once more.

My fingers tightened in his hair, and his hand was slowly tracking northward, reaching the satiny material—

I felt the strange buzz along the base of my neck at the same moment Luc froze above me. He rose, looking over his shoulder, toward the door. Before I could share what I felt, he spoke.

“It’s Dee,” he said, and a moment later, there was a knock—a pounding.

13

There was absolutely not a single thing about giving birth that remotely appealed to me.

Sure, babies were cute when they weren’t competing with your insides for lodging, and the whole circle of life was a miracle in itself, but—

Another scream tore through the night sky, followed by a litany of the most impressive combinations of the F-bomb I’d ever heard in my life. Most were directed at Daemon.

I winced.

Actually, all the curses had been directed at Daemon.

Poor Kat.

There should be some sort of cosmic law that required men to feel everything women felt while giving birth.

I really had no idea what time it was. I had dozed off at some point, before the whole screaming thing jarred me awake. Someone had draped a colorful fuchsia-and-turquoise patchwork quilt over me. I didn’t think it had been Luc, since I figured he would’ve woken me up.

According to the last update given by Dee, which had come hours after she’d showed up at the house, everything was going “typically.”

How typical could it be when Daemon had called for Luc, and I hadn’t seen either of them emerge from the inside of the house? And it was now well past midnight.

Luc would’ve definitely checked on me if he were able to, and while I hadn’t seen Dr. Hemenway with my own two eyes, the old gas-powered vehicle that reminded me of a dune buggy was still parked just beyond the carport. Zoe had told me the all-terrain utility vehicle belonged to the doc and that there were several like that scattered about Zone 3, used by humans who didn’t have the handy ability of running with supersonic speed.

Worry pecked on my shoulder. I didn’t know a lot—okay, I didn’t know anything—about giving birth, but I was thinking something not so typical