“I came to this party with you, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t do that for me,” he growls. “You want to be here with me. You want to be dancing with me.”
“So do you,” I retort.
“Of course. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Never?”
“Fucking never.”
I’m jealous. The freedom, the confidence to be that selfish . . . I envy Cole. No one owns him. No one controls him.
“Do you ever get lonely?” I ask him.
“No. But I do get bored.”
“I’d rather be dead than bored.”
“So would I,” he says, after a moment’s pause, as if he hadn’t realized that before. “An eternity of boredom sounds worse than death. And heaven sounds pretty fucking boring.”
I laugh. “You can only stand so much plucking on a harp.”
“We lack creativity when we describe heaven,” Cole says. “The Greeks had more interesting mythology. Medusa, for instance. A beautiful woman with a head of venomous snakes . . . that’s a powerful image.”
“No one could look at her, or they’d turn to stone.”
Cole stares into my eyes, his already as dark as wet, black rock.
“You don’t want to be looked at?”
I hold his gaze. “Men never just want to look. I’d like the power to do something about it.”
More and more people arrive, cramming into the already crowded space. The more people want to dance, the tighter Cole and I are pressed together by dozens of bodies on all sides.
I’m sweating off the green makeup, and Cole’s chalky stone is rubbing all over me. Neither of us cares. Soon we’re both covered in muddy paint, our bodies sliding together.
Cole rubs his thumb across my cheekbone, over my lips. Then he licks the paint off my mouth.
I kiss him back, the earthy paint coating my tongue.
The heat, the scent of Cole’s skin, and the chemical taste makes my head swim.
“How have I never tasted paint before?” I murmur.
“Probably because it’s made of awful things . . .” Cole says.
“Like Mummy Brown?” I say. “They used to grind up real mummies . . .”
“You don’t want to know what I used for my paint . . .”
I can never tell if he’s joking.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he never jokes at all . . .
The pounding beat throbs through our bodies. I’m so dizzy I doubt I could stand up if Cole weren’t holding me.
I shouldn’t have downed that drink so fast.
I’ve never felt this level of attraction to someone. I know without a doubt that Cole is taking me home tonight. Fuck, I might not make it to his house . . . I might not make it to his car . . .
I’m grinding against him, feeling the thick swell of his cock pressed against my hip.
I let my hand graze over his cock, my fingertips stroking the head with only a little fabric between us . . .
“Bad girl . . .” he growls in my ear. “You can’t keep your hands off what you want . . .”
“Why should I?” I whisper back, squeezing his cock hard. “You’re the one who says whatever I want must be good . . .”
“That’s true for me. It might not be true for you . . .”
I look up at him, and I do what I’ve been wanting to do since that ink-black hair first brushed against my skin. I thrust my hands into it, filling my fingers with those soft, thick locks, gripping and pulling hard to yank his face toward mine.
“I don’t care if you’re good for me,” I say.
I kiss him deep and hard. I kiss him like he kissed me at the art show—like I’ll eat him alive.
I fuck his mouth with my tongue like I wish he’d fuck me with cock: deep, filling his mouth all the way up.
We only break apart to breathe.
Cole’s eyes blaze darker than I’ve ever seen them.
“Come with me,” he orders.
His hand is locked around my wrist, dragging me toward the door.
We’re leaving together, and we both know where we’re going.
Until a broad, beefy figure steps in front of us, blocking our path.
I don’t recognize him at first. He’s dressed as Rambo with jungle camouflage on his face and a black mullet wig covering his sandy blond hair. Still, the size should have tipped me off. Not many people can fill a whole hallway with their bulk, blocking us off like a cork in a bottle.
“Shaw,” Cole says, giving Alastor a curt nod while trying to slip past, my wrist still clamped tight in his grasp.