Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,33

day when she was eating a peach. It was such an innocent, innocuous thing and she, such an innocent, relatively innocuous girl. Nothing about the situation called for my attention. We were celebrating some birthday. The women brought the cake, and we brought the booze. Everyone was happy, talking and laughing as classic rock pumped through the speakers of Z’s oceanside home. I was even enjoying myself, talking to Smoke and Bat about the new advances in gun technology.

But then, something about the way she endeavoured to eat that piece of fruit drew my gaze from across the crowded kitchen of the Garro’s house. There was a knife in one hand, a sharp-edged paring knife with an ivory handle, and the swollen fruit in the other. Lower lip between her small, square teeth, Bea methodically cut into the fragile flesh and segmented it into clean sections that fell from the stone center into her palm. It was a shade too ripe, the seam of the skin splitting easily, juice splashing across her fingers to run down the slim, pale underside of her forearm. I watched raptly as she finished decimating the peach, then brought the blade to her full mouth, a small pink tongue flashing out dangerously close to the edge to gather the sweet liquid into her mouth. Greedy for the taste of it, she held her sticky hand bearing the fruit aloft and carefully dragged the knife up her arm, collecting the juice so she could once more lick it, kittenish, from the steel.

I wanted to be the knife.

It was, without a doubt, the single sexiest act I had ever witnessed. I felt like a voyeur standing in the kitchen of a family home lusting after the seventeen-year-old girl with a cloud of white gold hair as bright as a halo around her face as she sweetly ate a piece of fruit.

Then she did something very few people have ever successfully done.

She surprised me.

I watched with my head slightly cocked, alert like a bird braced for flight, as she sauntered across the tile on light, dancing feet with toes tipped in pink. She didn’t make eye contact with me, and it was carefully done. The way someone avoided the eyes of a potentially dangerous animal even as they were drawn closer.

She used that knife, now licked clean, to pierce a piece of fruit and casually, just a lazy rotation of elbow and wrist, extend it my way.

I stared at the peach, the glisten of it mimicked on Bea’s pale mouth. If there had ever before been a moment that felt more like a crossroads, one of those intensely crucial decisions in life when sound and time slow to a molasses crawl, I couldn’t remember it.

The peach had become some forbidden fruit, like Eve’s lusted after apple.

I did not believe in signs, omens, or myths, religious or otherwise. I believed in the power of action and base desire.

And even though I knew it was an idiotic idea, I wanted to taste the same fruit that glossed Beatrice Lafayette’s bowed lips.

So I folded my large, cold hand over her wrist, prompting her to flinch slightly with fright or anticipation. Her eyes flashed to mine, fleeting and silvered like a fish caught in a net, struggling to escape. I let her look into my own gaze, let her see the echoing dark there, and then I leaned forward to pry the peach off the blade with my teeth.

She sucked in a barely perceptible breath and watched as I tipped my head back to release the morsel into my mouth.

Without chewing, I gently took the knife from her and punctured the soft belly of another piece before relinquishing the blade back to her control. To feed her would have been too much, but at that moment, to watch as she ate the same thing at the same time as I did felt excruciatingly intimate.

The feeling scoured through me, fraying my nerves until I felt exposed.

I was not a man who chose to emote.

This was not me.

But I stood there for another moment as I chewed and swallowed in tandem with Bea, and when I turned abruptly on my heel and left the house without another word, I did it with an elevated heart rate.

So, that was it.

The moment I finally saw Beatrice Lafayette and the obsession officially began.

But that was all before she kissed me.

Kissed. Me.

A wry smile tugged the edge of my lips as I thought about her surprising audacity and