with mine. "You're my problem." My laugh was harsh. "I'm not your problem."
"But you are," he reasoned gamely. "If I had managed to convince Dee not to get so close to you, none of this would've happened."
I rolled my eyes. "Well, I don't know what to tell you. There isn't much we can do in here that's going to make a difference, so we might as well count today as a loss and spare each other the pain of breathing the same air." He shot me a bland look.
"Oh, yeah, that's right. You don't need to breathe oxygen. My bad." I shot to my feet, itching for him to be out of my house. "Can't you just come back when it stops raining?"
"No." Daemon leaned against the wall, folding his arms. "I want to get this over with.
Worrying over you and the Arum isn't fun, Kitten. We need to do something about this now.
There are things we can do." My hands curled into fists. "Like what?"
"Well, the jumping jacks for...an hour or so should do it." His gaze dropped. Something flickered in his eyes. "You may want to change first."
The urge to cover myself was strong, but I resisted. I wasn't going to cower from him. "I'm not doing jumping jacks for an hour."
"Then you could run around the house, up and down the stairs." He paused, his smug grin turning wicked as his eyes met mine. "We could always have sex. I hear that uses up a lot of energy."
My mouth dropped open. Part of me wanted to laugh in his face. There was a part of me offended that he would suggest something so ridiculous, but there was another part that liked the idea. Which was so, so wrong it wasn't even funny.
Daemon waited.
"That will never happen in a million years, buddy." I took a step forward, raising my pointer finger at him. "Not even if you were the last -
wait, I can't even say last human on the face of this Earth."
"Kitten," he murmured lazily. A clear warning in his eyes.
I ignored it. "Not even if you were the last thing that looked like a human on the face of this Earth. Got that? Capiche?"
He tilted his head to the side, and several locks of hair slid over his forehead. Daemon smiled, a wealth of danger in the tilt to his mouth, but I was on a roll now.
"I'm not even attracted to you." Lie. Ding!
Ding! Lie. "Not even a little bit. You're - " Daemon was in front of me in a flash, not an inch from my face. "I'm what?"
"Ignorant," I said, taking a step back.
"And?" He matched my step.
"Arrogant. Controlling." I took another step back, but he was still in my personal space and then some. "And you're...you're a jerk."
"Oh, I'm sure you can do better than that, Kitten." His voice was low as he inched me backward. I barely heard him over the pounding rain and the thundering of my heart. "Because I seriously doubt you're not attracted to me." I forced a laugh. "I'm totally not attracted to you." Another step forward on Daemon's side, and my back was against the wall. "You're lying."
"And you're overconfident." I inhaled, but all I smelled was him, and that did funny things to my stomach. "You know, the whole arrogant thing I mentioned. Not attractive." Daemon placed his hands on each side of my head and leaned in. A lamp was on one side of me, and the T.V. on the other. I was trapped.
And when he spoke, his breath danced over my lips. "Every time you lie, your cheeks turn red."
"Nuh-uh." Not the most eloquent thing I'd ever said, but it was the best I could come up with.
His hands slid down the wall, stopping beside my hips. "I bet you think about me all the time. Nonstop."
"You're insane." I pressed back against the wall, breathless.
"You probably even dream about me." His gaze lowered to my mouth. I felt my lips part. "I bet you even write my name in your notebooks, over and over again, with a little heart drawn around it." I laughed. "In your dreams, Daemon.
You're the last person I think - " Daemon kissed me.
There wasn't a moment of hesitation. His mouth was on mine, and I stopped breathing. He shuddered and there was a sound from the back of his throat, half growl, half moan. Little shivers of pleasure and panic shot through me as he deepened the kiss,