Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,24

expecting a full-blown grenade to the face right off the bat. I mean, I kind of thought he would ease into it, you know, get to know each other first.

Shifting uncomfortably on the bed, I toggled back and forth between my options. I could either skip the question altogether, which would both tip him off anyway and land me sitting in my bra and underwear, or I could admit what he probably already knew anyway.

Doing my best not to shrink away from his stare, I answered his question. “Yeah…I was in love with you.”

“Was…” he repeated quietly, his probing eyes all but liquifying me under their weight. “As in, you’re not anymore?”

“That’s another question,” I reminded him, because two could certainly play that game.

He dipped his head in a nod, but there was something dangerous brewing in his eyes now. Intrigue. Determination. Like he’d spotted his mission and was gunning straight for it.

A crash of thunder exploded outside the windows, making the lamp flicker on the desk behind him.

Enjoying the charge in the air, I wet my lips and asked, “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” he said, eyeing me with purpose, as if to let me know he expected me to follow suit again.

“Are you able to see the future?” I asked with bated breath.

He filled up both shot glasses and my shoulders sagged, assuming he was going to dodge my question. “Not everything and not always. It comes and goes, usually just bits and pieces, but enough to know it’s a vision.”

“Wow.” Mindlessly, I scooped my hair up and pulled it to one side of my neck. Trace watched, his eyes bouncing below my neckline before returning to my eyes. “And you saw us together? Like, what? Married or something?”

“My turn,” he said, making it clear he wasn’t going to be giving me any freebies. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” I answered fervently, wanting to keep this part of the game going. This was, after all, the purpose of agreeing to play it in the first place.

He leaned forward on his knees and pinned me under his fierce gaze. “Are you still in love with me?”

My pulse exploded in my neck, throbbing so wildly that I was sure he could see it.

I had no idea how I was going to answer this question without calling open season on myself. Of course, I was still in love with him. You don’t just stop loving a person because they died. Sometimes, you don’t even stop loving a person when you fall in love with someone else—something I once thought impossible until it happened to me.

But this truth…it was too much to speak aloud. Too much to explain. Too difficult to revisit. I didn’t have the words to speak my truth to him nor was I confident that he was ready to hear it.

Deciding to take the cowardly way out, I leaned forward and picked up the shot glass.

Trace winced as though my refusal to answer the question physically hurt him. But it was better this way. Better that he didn’t know why I was choosing not to answer. As far as he knew, it could have gone either way. I could be refusing because I did in fact love him and was too scared to tell him so, or because I didn’t love him, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying as much to his face. Hopefully, he was hanging onto the latter one.

For both of our sakes.

I stood up and unbuttoned my jeans as Trace’s melancholy gaze flicked up to my waistline. Strobes of hunger lit up his eyes as I dragged the zipper down and then pushed my jeans down over my hips.

Sinking back in his chair, he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth as he fixed his gaze on me like I was some long-buried treasure chest about to be cracked wide open. Feeling emboldened, I shimmied the rest of the way out of my jeans as he ran his hand along his jaw again and cursed, his eyes all but lapping up every inch of my skin.

“Truth or dare?” I asked as I sat back down, crossed my legs and smiled. At least he wasn’t thinking about my answer to his last question anymore.

His eyes climbed up from my bare legs to my eyes, but the transition looked painful, like it took an enormous amount of effort to tear his eyes away. He cleared his throat and examined me for a moment before saying, “Dare.” There