Page 26 of Serpentine Valentine

“Because you think I’m beautiful.” It was a question, but not. She knew she was stunning. How could she not? But there was an edge to her voice, a threat.

There was a wrong answer here, and I had to be careful not to makeit if I wanted to be this close to her (or closer) again.

“I do,” I agreed because even a blind person would feel the warmth of her beauty. “But that’s not it. I think I want to be you when I grow up.”

“Hateful?” she almost snapped at me, white teeth glowing in the low light, a little too close to my throat.

Without thinking, I tilted my head, exposing myself even more to her sharp-toothed aggression.

“Strong,” I countered. “Brave.”

She hummed again, that rich vibration I could feel against my skin because she was ducking, bending her neck to breathe against my fluttering jugular. I shivered so violently that the bookcase rattled.

“You seem pretty brave to me,” she praised a moment before she closed her teeth over my neck and bit me.

It was a hard bite with no mercy. The sharp pain punctured my haze of confusion and arrowed arousal straight through my carotid artery into my bloodstream. I’d never been bitten before, never thought to ask for it, but now,God, I wasn’t sure anything had ever been so heady.

And then I felt a quick pass of wet warmth on my skin in the frame of the pain from the bite, and I realized something was sexier than Lex’s teeth on me.

Her tongue.

A keening sound filled the air. It took me too long to realize it was coming from me. I forced myself to quiet, but I couldn’t make myself move. My hands were pressed palm down on the books, my skin sweaty and sticking to the spines. I let my fingertips curl around the edges of the books as if they could ground me as they had so many times before.

Finally, Lex raised her head, her eyes so close they were all I could see.

“You taste good,” she told me, almost conversationally as if she complimented other women on their flavor every day. The thought mademy stomach hurt. “Have you ever kissed a girl before, Luna?”

“No,” I breathed. “I’m straight.”

Her smile was small and mean, purple-pink lips a hook that seemed to catch between my ribs. “Are you brave enough to test that theory?”

She was even closer, her breath a sweet mint draft across my lips, making them tingle.

I thought she’d kiss me then, but she only hovered.

“Brave girls use their words,” she taunted me, so mean, so sexy that drool pooled in my mouth, and I had to swallow hard against the flood. Her hand lifted, found my throat, and her thumb rubbed at the bruise she’d made on the side of my neck. “Are you brave, Lux?”

“Why are you calling me that?” I whispered, desperate to evade the real question.

Which was,why hadn’t Pierce ever made me feel like this?

“You’re light.” Her nose rubbed along the side of mine. “Bright and cheery. Friendly and sweet. A proverbial bonbon.” She hummed and the noise traveled from her lips to my cheek as she brushed her mouth against me. “I wonder if you’ll melt on my tongue.”

My knees sagged a little before I caught myself.

“And what are you?”

“Dark,” she said instantly, her pupils so blown that they looked entirely black. “Sinful and violent. Righteous and self-important enough to convict the wrongful when no one else will.”

Her tongue slipped from between her lips, slick and pink, curling toward the edge of my mouth to trace the corner of it.

“Do you want to know what sinful tastes like, Luna?”

I didn’t answer her. Not directly.

She’d said bravery meant words, but I’d always been more a woman of action.

So in response, I kissedher.