Page 88 of Bite Me

I checked my blind spot and changed lanes. “I feel a question coming.”

“It’s about siren blood.”

“Ah. What about it?”

“Have you heard of it?” he asked. When I glanced at him, he bit his lip, his cheeks heating.

“Not until recently,” I replied. “But after the night I fed from you the second time, I asked a friend about the effect you had on me. He mentioned siren blood.”

“Is my blood like that? For you?”

The traffic was chaotic this close to the city, and I had to watch the road, but I could feel his anxious eyes on me. “Maybe. But I decided it doesn’t matter.”

“No?”

“Yes, it was your blood that drew me in at first, but then I got to know you.”

“I didn’t bring this up to ask for reassurance. I’m just curious.”

“So you don’t want me to tell you how I feel about you?”

From the corner of my eye, I could see how he smiled, suddenly a little coy. “Sometimes, you can tell me.”

I took his hand over the console and brought it to my lips. “I love everything about you, Eddie. Your blood is just a bonus. A delicious, tantalizing bonus.”

“I can live with that. I feel a similar way about your venom.”

“Good. Then we can love each otherandhave wild, all-consuming sex.”

Eddie chuckled. “Not dating.”

“Ugh. No.”

In fact, I hoped I could convince him to move in with me before the summer was over.

When we exited the car and the protection of my tinted windshield, Eddie handed me my sunglasses, which he’d meticulously wiped. At first, I was taken aback by the strange gesture. But then it hit me. It was what couples did, right? Me taking care of him was almost instinctual—I didn’t have to think about it. And now he was taking care of me. As if I could be any happier.

At the exhibition, he stood before every painting, studying them in detail and asking questions. I answered the best I could.

We lingered in front of a watercolor of a barley field dotted with bright red poppies when Eddie asked, “Would the scene really look like that to you?”

“Color-wise, yes.”

“But if you see colors differently than I do, you must see the painting differently as well. It’s nearly impossible for me to find out how things appear to you.” He sounded frustrated.

“Let me show you something.”

I grabbed his hand and led him to the adjacent room. There were no paintings inside, but one wall was just a floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking the grassy sand dunes on the coast and the ocean in the distance. A white-painted lifeguard tower with a red roof was the only man-made structure in sight. I took a pair of augmented-reality goggles from a nearby stand and handed them to Eddie.

“Have a look.”

Frowning, he put the goggles on, adjusting the strap. “What now?”

I found the discreet button on the side and turned the goggles on.

Eddie gasped.

“It’s not entirely like that,” I said, “but I’ve heard it’s close.”