Sweet Temptation

When we stop for night two, I’m surprised that Anna allows us to share a room again. Naughty possibilities immediately fill my mind, and I have to tamp them down. I will not lose my head again.

I stand on the second-story balcony with my arms crossed while Anna talks to her mum on the phone. And yes, I use my powers to listen through the glass. I listened to all their conversations in Georgia, as well, and they knew it. Sue me.

“Just be careful not to let your guard down,” Patti says.

Good advice. Only Anna doesn’t have a “guard.” She is an unshielded open book.

“Okay. Love you,” Anna says in that sweet voice of hers.

“I love you, too.”

Anna makes a kiss sound, and Patti does it back, and they both laugh.

Their relationship fascinates me. They say those three words every single time. And I get a fucking shiver down my spine each time I hear it. What is that like? To know someone feels that way for you, no matter what, and would do anything for you? Everything I’ve seen about love is fickle. People don’t work for it. They take it for granted. They abuse it. But these two . . . they embrace it.

I listen as Anna lets herself out of the room with a soft click. Her footsteps down the carpeted hall. The whir of a vending machine dispensing. Minutes later she is opening the sliding door and standing behind me. I wonder if she’ll touch me. I wait for it, wanting it. But instead she steps to my side and presses cold water against my arm. She got one for me, of course. Always thoughtful.

“Thanks.” Our arms touch, sending a rush of heat through me. I think about kissing her again, right out here in the fading dusk of light, but I know it’s not time. Her aura is unsure. She’s both happy and nervous, but not lustful, as we lean against the railing together.

She looks sweet in a ponytail that began high this morning but now droops loosely as if it’s had enough of this traveling business. I want to run my fingers through it, let it slide heavily over my hands, maybe give it a tug to make her gasp.

Cripe. Bad Kai.

Anna flinches a little and sniffs, and for a moment I wonder if she can bloody well read thoughts, because she leaves me to go back in the hotel room. I listen as she walks into the bathroom, and it sounds as if she’s touching my toiletry bag. Perhaps she needs to borrow a razor for her legs. Ha.

I smile and go inside. What I see in the bathroom makes me accidentally chuckle. Anna Whitt is sniffing my deodorant.

When she hears me she startles, dropping the deodorant into the sink with a clatter and a scream. Everything about this amuses me. And turns me on. Because, yeah, she’s touching and smelling my stuff. I can’t help but laugh.

“Okay, that must have looked really bad,” she says as she fumbles to put my things away. “I was just trying to figure out what cologne you wear.”

Ah. I see. This is an interesting turn of events. She’s caught my scent.

I cross my arms and move into the room, trying not to show how much I’m enjoying this. “I haven’t been wearing any cologne.”

“Oh.” She clears her throat. “Let’s just forget about it.”

Not a chance.

“What is it you smell, exactly?” Ginger told me what my pheromones smelled like when we were younger, and if that’s what Anna is detecting, that means she’s been opening her senses unknowingly. I move forward, wanting her to look at me, but she won’t. That’s okay. Judging by her mix of anxiety, excitement, confusion, and lust, I’m affecting her just fine.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s like citrus and the forest or something . . . leaves and tree sap. I can’t explain it.”

Ginger said I smelled like sour kumquats and dirt, the cow. I think she just enjoyed saying kumquat. “Citrus? Like lemons?”

“Oranges mostly. And a little lime, too.”

I like her description a lot more than Gin’s. I flick the hair from my eyes. Things are about to get serious.

“What you smell are my pheromones, Anna.”

Her laugh is a shrill, nervous burst, as if she doesn’t believe me.

“Oh, okay, then. Well . . .” Anna tries to leave the bathroom, but I shift to block her. We are not finished yet.

“People can’t usually smell pheromones. You must be using your extra senses without realizing it. I’ve heard of Neph losing control of their senses with certain emotions. Fear, surprise.” Wait for it. . . . “Lust.”

Embarrassment rises up, but there is still a hint of red lining the bottom of her aura as she babbles a lame excuse about her senses. She is far too adorable to be trapped in a bathroom with the likes of me.

“Would you like to know your own scent?” I ask.

Her eyes widen as they dart around the bathroom. “Uh, not really. I think I should probably go.”

I think not.

“You smell like pears with freesia undertones.”

“Wow, okay.” She clears her throat, and her aura pops with lust. “I think I’ll just . . .” She presses herself against the sink to inch past me, as if touching me will set off a bomb. I hold up my hands, far too amused.

She rushes about the room, stuffing her feet into sneakers. If she thinks to escape me, she’d better think again. I’m not letting her out of this hotel without me. And she can be in denial all she wants, but there will be more snogging tonight.

“Going somewhere?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m going for a run.”

Not alone you’re not. “Mind if I join you?”