Scowling behind Valor’s mask, I scaled the fire escape through the pelting rain to its apex.

To the attic window that, shielded from the torrent by its gable, showed me . . . everything.

FORTY-NINE

Stephanie

Lucas. He was kissing me. As in no-holds-barred, no reservations, no hesitation kissing.

And it was . . . amazing.

The rush of his scent, a mixture of sandalwood, peppermint, and sage smoke, sent my mind reeling and my body into autopilot.

I kissed him back, my hands lifting to press his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. Eyes falling shut, I relished the sensation of his seeking lips. Soft and strong as his touch, they sought mine out in slow but fervent strokes.

Then those big hands fell to my hips, where, pulling me into him, they radiated the heat of desire.

It was a heat I felt all too keenly myself—from my toes to the electrified tips of my fingers.

Dismissing the small voice in the back of my mind that kept posing too many questions—and more distantly asking about someone else—I looped my arms around Lucas’s neck.

In response, Lucas’s steel arms enclosed me, wrapping me in a devouring embrace that drew us flush. He deepened the kiss then, obliterating the reserves of my thoughts with a sinful sweep of his tongue.

My blood racing in my veins, roaring in my ears, I sought from that point to keep up with the kiss that began to run off with us both.

That’s when Lucas stepped into me, walking us backward all the way to the wall, where he pressed me into the plaster—and then himself into me.

With no brain cells left to tell them not to, my hands somehow found their way beneath his shirt, fingers trailing over all the muscles I had always known they would find.

His hand cupped my face again, his thumb brushing my cheek, delivering in this heated moment the sweetest of caresses before, abruptly, he broke the kiss.

I blinked up at him, dazed, my chest rising and falling quickly from the run up the steps. And from the kiss, unexpected as it had been.

Lucas stared down at me, his brow pinched, like he was trying to figure out if he really had just kissed me that way. Urgent. Impulsive. Incredible.

In a moment, he would start talking. Why, though, when all I wanted was for him to kiss me like that again? In that insistent, demanding, and sexy-as-hell way that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that, despite appearances, he wasn’t all good boy.

“Do you like Wes?” he blurted, breathless himself.

I froze. And squinted at him, nonplussed. “What?”

FIFTY

Zedok

She stood with her back to me, her arms lifting to wind around the young man’s shoulders—not out of fear, as had been the case when they had wound around mine, but out of longing. For him. This wretch who took with ease what I had known all along could never be mine.