was almost slaked. She blushed hard enough to teeter, steadying herself on the arm of the couch. And then, to my surprise, she laughed.
I watched her with interest, smiling uncertainly as I tried to figure out what was so funny. Her little face scrunched up, and one hand pressed her lips, the other her stomach.
“I mean, I’m funny, but I don’t know if I’m that funny.”
Another eruption of giggling broke out before she blew out a breath, her face flushed for a new reason—humor. When she caught her breath, she met my eyes and said, “Thomas Bane, you are ridiculous.”
My brows flicked together. “Ridiculous good or ridiculous bad?”
But she shook her head, turning for the door. “Just absolutely ridiculous.”
And inexplicably, I was a hundred percent certain that was a good thing.
The Smirk Factor
Amelia
My entire walk home was spent processing one thought: Did Thomas Bane almost kiss me?
I thought the answer might be yes, as evidenced by the lapse in time when he’d stepped into my space, the way his eyes darkened to blackest ink, his lips parting just a little, just barely, just enough to send an inadvertent radio signal that practically screamed the word kiss.
The memory of his body underneath mine was its own separate catalog of details. He was huge, a beast of a man, hard as stone and hot to the touch. I meant that, too. He radiated heat like a power source. As if something vital and alive existed inside him that couldn’t be contained by skin or muscle or bone, so it waved off of him and over me, intoxicating and arresting.
It was no wonder that he’d found fame. In fact, it seemed that he had been born to be adored, admired. Admonished. Everyone wanted to know everything about him, good or bad, true or false. If they really got their hands on him, the frenzy was so deep, they’d rip him apart like carrion. He was perhaps the most famous author at that moment in time simply because he’d been living in the public eye, making waves, making headlines for six years.
His gravitas was overwhelming under the best of circumstances, something about him so striking and imposing that it captured the attention of anyone and everyone who came in contact with him. When he walked into a room, you knew. You felt it, the tug, the draw, the allure of him too strong to resist.
And yet, he’d found a way to make me feel completely comfortable and at home. Well, maybe not completely, but that was as close as I got to comfort with a stranger. I’d forgotten for a minute who he was. The spell he put on people broke for a moment, and the man underneath was as real as I was.
But then he’d almost kissed me. And seconds later, I was sprawled on top of him with his arms around me. His very large, very strong, very masculine arms.
And with that, the spell was back, and I was reminded just how out of my element I was.
As I unlocked my front door, twenty thoughts were on my tongue, waiting to fly out the second I located my friends. But when I pushed the door open with hope all over my face, I found nothing but an empty brownstone.
I sighed, pulling my key out of the door and closing the noise of the city out behind me.
Claudius, my cat, strutted down the stairs with his eyes on me and mouth stretching in a meow as if to rebuff the insult at the implication that I was alone. I picked him up when he got close enough, holding him to my chest.
“I love you, but you give terrible advice.”
He meowed again, and if I spoke cat, I was pretty sure it would have translated to, Fuck you.
The house was so quiet. Too quiet. Someone should have been home—Rin studying, Val relaxing before heading to work, Katherine…well, Katherine was still at the library. But Rin was probably at Court’s or the museum. Val was at Sam’s.
If Katherine went out to dinner with a guy instead of coming home to relieve me of my thoughts, I really might go ahead and pitch myself off the roof.
Everyone was moving on. Growing up. Finding love.
For eight years, the four of us had been an inseparable unit. We’d met freshman year of college as assigned suitemates, and when Val had sat us all down with cheap liquor and made us get drunk together, we’d forged a bond that