“Er . . . what is—?”

Eve waved an urgent hand. “Shh, shh, I like this part.” She grabbed her phone and turned up the music. A dreamy expression took over her face and all the breath trickled out of her. She’d been doing this periodically—shutting him up at the crescendo of this or that song, closing her eyes and humming along like she felt it. Like every note ran through her blood and some hit her heart harder than others. Since Jacob could be obedient, when he felt like it, he shut his mouth and watched her in the moonlight—watched her tip her head back, watched those wide, warm eyes slide shut, watched a dreamy little smile curve her lips.

What he didn’t expect was for her to sing instead of hum.

He’d heard Eve sing before. Of course he had. She sang all the time, especially when she wasn’t wearing her AirPod—repetitive snatches of this chorus or that refrain, tongue-twister lines she repeated over again, instruments she imitated with unnerving accuracy. If anyone asked him, Hey, does Eve Brown sing? he’d roll his eyes and say, Only all the fucking time.

But he would’ve been wrong. Because apparently, all those other times, she hadn’t been singing at all: she’d been playing. She’d been messing around. She’d been entertaining herself absent-mindedly, kind of like a knife-wielding assassin spinning a blade harmlessly between her fingers instead of filleting you alive in twenty seconds.

She wasn’t playing this time.

This time, Eve opened her mouth and moonlight came out. Like the silver-dark of her skin, like pearlized smoke, like the siren he’d heard that night in the garden because for God’s sake, Jacob, she’d been the voice in the garden, obviously. The voice so sweet and sharp at the edges, so husky and effortlessly strong—strong enough to easily seem fragile—that he’d assumed it was just his imagination.

She drew out the last, long note in the chorus like silk between her fingertips, and then she gave a breathless little laugh, opened her eyes, and took a bite out of her Mars Bar like nothing had happened. If Jacob was cool, he’d probably act like nothing had happened, too. Jacob was not cool.

“What the shit was that?”

She chewed chocolate and caramel and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. Nothing. You’re not going to be weird about it, are you?”

“Do you know who you’re talking to?”

She snorted, then slapped a hand over her mouth. “Look what you’re doing. I almost spat Mars Bar at you, and then you might have died. You might have gone into antigerm shock and died.”

He kind of wished the thought of her spit freaked him out. If it did, the idea of swapping various bodily fluids with her might stop lurking at the edge of his consciousness.

And shit, now he’d faced the thought, he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there anymore: he wanted to kiss Eve Brown. Very, very badly. In a few different places.