under his touch.
“You’re trying to ignore it,” he continued, his fingers spreading wide before slipping into my hair. “To pretend he has no idea what he’s talking about. That he’s making assumptions based on my apparent devotion to helping you.”
I moaned as his deft fingers massaged my scalp, and all the blood in my body headed south. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was the way my nerve endings were igniting under his touch.
“Piper, look at me.”
That statement brought me back to my senses, and my teeth released the bottom lip I didn’t even know I was biting. My vision cleared, and I met his gaze as he used his grip on my hair to turn me toward him.
“I know I look like a teenage boy, but have no doubt that I am a man who knows what he wants. I don’t play games, and I am not afraid to express my feelings.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat and nodded, acknowledging that I heard what he was saying.
“You evoke something in me,” he continued, his voice softer than before. “Something I’ve never felt, neither in my vampire life nor my human one before it. There’s a strong urge to help you. To protect you. To make sure you’re okay. Safe. Happy.”
My breath shuddered out of me as his fingers started massaging my scalp again. I was finding it physically impossible to speak, but that was okay. Levi didn’t seem to expect a response as he kept talking.
“But even more than that, I have a constant desire to touch you. I have since the beginning, which is why I kept my distance. I didn’t want to add vampire-lust to the already long list of things stressing you out. I tried to stay away.”
And Hussy Piper was back in full force as his words sent a shock of pleasure straight to my core. My body begged me to climb over and straddle his lap, but I was frozen in place by his voice and the look in his eye. He needed me to hear what he was saying.
“I am done holding back from you, Piper.” His free hand reached over and grasped my hand, pulling it up to lay it flat against his chest. “If my heart were to beat, it would only beat for you.”
He pulled me forward, his mouth pressing to mine as if to seal his words with a kiss. My own heart pounded against my chest, thumping hard enough for the both of us. The kiss was both sweet and electric, and I felt like a live wire ready to explode.
But it didn’t matter what, exactly, he made me feel. What was important was that I felt it. For the first time since my father’s murder, positive, hopeful emotions outweighed the despair, the remorse, and the guilt.
I didn’t need to pretend to be Bubbly Piper as true giddiness bubbled through me. I saw a sliver of a chance for happiness, and Levi Kass gave that to me.
And I was never going to let him go.
“Shut the front door!”
I slapped a hand over True’s mouth before it woke up everyone in the entire camp. We were sitting on Saka’am’s porch in the middle of the night, and she’d done a good job of keeping her voice down until I got to the part about Levi and me on the side of the road.
I left nothing out. I really wanted her opinion on whether or not I was overreacting, reading things wrong, or making a huge mistake. Her excited shout told me I wasn’t doing any of those things.
She nodded her head, prompting me to remove my hand from her mouth. As I pulled it away, her lips pulled up into a wide, Cheshire-cat grin.
“He lo-o-oves you,” she sing-songed, her whole body shimmying with excitement.
“Shut up, True,” I hissed, my eyes probing the darkness around us. Anyone could be listening. “He never said that.”
“Not those exact words, maybe. But Piper, don’t kid yourself. That was a declaration of some strong-ass feelings.”
I pressed a palm against my chest, hoping to keep my heart from beating right out of it. True took what Levi said the same way I did. That he cared about me. No amount of modesty or self-deprecation could take that away from me.
A smile tugged my lips upward, and True laughed. She threw her arms around me, hugging me tight before pulling away and staring into