Obsidian (Lux 1)

“That was a stupid question. Can I please close it now?”

“I want to watch it.”

“No!” The idea of him watching me geek out over the books I’d bought in the last week horrified me. There was no way he’d understand.

Daemon cast me a sidelong glance. My eyes narrowed as I turned back to the screen. The little arrow moved over the page and clicked on the play button.

“I hate you and your freaky alien powers,” I muttered.

A few seconds later, the video started and there I was, in all my book nerd glory, shoving cover after cover in front of my crappy webcam. A few bookmarks showed. And I even worked in a totally cool Diet Pepsi product placement. Thank God I wasn’t singing in this video.

I sat there, arms folded, and waited for the inevitable slew of smartass comments. Never in my life did I hate Daemon more than at that moment. No one I knew in real life paid attention to my blog. Books were a passion I shared with virtual friends. Not Daemon. It wigged me out knowing he was watching this.

The video ended. Voice low, he said, “You’re even glowing in the video.”

Mouth clamped shut, I nodded. And I waited.

“You really have a thing for books.” When I didn’t respond, he closed the laptop without touching it. “It’s cute.”

My head whipped around to him. “Cute?”

“Yeah, it’s cute. Your excitement,” he said, shrugging. “It was cute.”

I think my jaw hit the carpet.

“But as cute as you are in pigtails, that’s not going to do anything to fade the trace on you.” He stood and stretched. Of course his shirt had to ride up, drawing my eyes. “We need to get this trace off you.” I was still stunned over the fact he hadn’t made fun of me, rendered speechless by it, shocked to the core. He just earned a few bonus points.

“The sooner we get the trace off you, the less time we have to spend together.”

And there went the points. “You know, if you hate the idea of being around me, why doesn’t one of the others come over here and do this? I actually prefer any of them to you, even Ash.”

“You’re not their problem.” His eyes locked 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.”