Song for the Dead (Ada Palomino 2)

“Would be a big fucking book.”

“I’d read it.”

He opens his mouth to say something, when he suddenly stops dead in his tracks, his mouth snapping shut.

I stop too, trying to orient myself.

“What?” I ask him quietly, waiting.

Then his eyes begin to flame.

Oh fuck.

I look down the lane at the other ravers, but the group keeps moving toward the concert. Then I look up the way we came and see two figures approaching in the dark.

Max is far from his sword.

And I don’t know if I have it in me to try and fight right now.

I look at Max, hoping he can read my mind, and fast, before they do.

Max doesn’t even look behind him.

He just walks right over to me, his eyes brimming with a mix of determination and panic, and puts one hand back in my hair, making a fist, the other reaching down underneath my ass and lifting me up.

I don’t have time to react before he’s moving me backward until I’m placed right on someone’s hood.

He gives me another look, the look that tells me that I’m in for something and I have to prepare myself and before I even can…

He kisses me.

Not a neat and tidy kiss.

A kiss that buries me.

Swallows me.

Devours me.

His lips against mine for the first time, the energy, the sparks going haywire as his mouth moves, hard, powerful, and I’m just this helpless clawing thing in the dark, trying to hold on, trying to ground myself, to make sense of this.

But I can’t.

There’s nothing but this.

His mouth matches mine as it moves, stirring up something from the depths of me, and I’m alive now. I’m alive and I’m hungry and I’m wondering where a kiss like this has been all my life because right now, this is my life.

And then his fist in my hair tightens and a gasp escapes my lips against his and his mouth moves beside mine, to my chin, to my jaw, the place where my jaw meets my neck, sinking into the softness there, and I’m gasping for air, breathing for him, for more.

My hands move up into his hair, taking hold, and I give myself to him, like I’ve been wanting to before I was even conscious of it. There’s grinding music inside me, heavy bass, and it builds and builds as my hands move to his shoulders holding him there against me.

Holy shit.

I mean, holy shit.

What the fuck is happening?

His lips find mine again, pressing against my mouth with strength and lust and desperation, his tongue tangled with mine, stroking me in a decadent rhythm until I’m one combustible fireball ready to explode. My fingers dig into his jacket, my other hand goes to his lower back, wanting him up against me, wanting to feel him, all of him.

I’m fucking aching for it, lost to this kiss, to him, to everything I’d been holding back from and everything I’m drowning in and, and, and…

He pulls back abruptly, resting his forehead against mine, breathing hard, and my heart feels like it’s about to punch right through my ribcage. I can only stare at him, breathless, speechless, the knot of tension inside me at a breaking point.

“Do you think that worked?” he asks, his voice low and thick, his eyes lingering on my lips, my lips that feel bruised.

“What?” I manage to say, my voice barely audible. Why are we even talking? Why aren’t we kissing again? Why haven’t we always been doing that?

“Yeah, it worked,” he answers, even though I haven’t said anything. Then he straightens up and looks down the road toward the concert. He clears his throat and then reaches down and lifts me off the hood of some stranger’s car, placing me on the ground.

I shake my head, trying to get my brain cells back in place because I am fucking lost.

“What…”

“The demons,” he says, nodding his head down the road to where the two dark figures are, walking away. “If they were reading minds, I figured I’d empty ours.”

Empty my mind? Well, he did a bang-up fucking job.

“I never knew you could kiss like that,” I tell him, still breathless.

He winks at me, pleased as fuck. “You never asked, darlin’.” He grabs my hand and pulls me toward him. “Now come on. We can’t leave now.”

He tugs me down the road after the demons, and it takes everything in me to try and get my head on straight but, honestly, I’m having a hard time.

Because, holy shit.

I wanna do that again.

And again.

And again.

Every single cell in my body is turned on and I can’t shake it.

Fuck those demons.

That kiss was the big development here.

I’m not sure I’m going to recover.

“Ada,” Max says from beside me, squeezing my hand. “The sword is back at the car. I can’t use it here with this many people. We have to handle this ourselves.”