Cyrus fumbled beside me for an instant, and I heard the back door of the van swing open. He never let me go, never moved his mouth from mine as he shifted me toward it and laid me back on the horrible gold carpet inside. Maybe he thought if he broke contact and gave me a second to think, I would tell him to stop. I wouldn’t have. I hurt. I wanted for just a moment to feel something that didn’t.

I scooted back as he climbed in beside me and pulled the door shut. There was a second of hesitation on his part where I saw the thought, We shouldn’t be doing this, flicker across his face. I pulled my shirt over my head and grabbed him, smashing my lips across his. He straightened with shock, then relaxed again, laying me back and covering my body with his.

When he shrugged out of his borrowed T-shirt, I forced every thought from my mind, for better or worse. We didn’t speak, but moved in a strangely easy dance of pulled clothing and hurried kisses on reachable skin. It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t tender. It was fucking, in the most disconnected sense of the word.

He slipped inside me easily and I gasped involuntarily at how warm and alive he felt. Vampires were cold, room temperature. He was human. When his hands closed over my hips to pull me harder, faster against him, they were human hands, not the twisted talons of a monster.

I clutched at his back and shoulders, shocked all the more by the warmth of him. When he spilled into me I shuddered, but I didn’t come. He withdrew immediately, not looking at me.

“That was a mistake,” he said, his voice hoarse.

I nodded, trying to find my voice. “Let’s forget it, then.”

We dressed silently, feeling dirty and used without really blaming each other. Only when he pushed open the door to the van and the clean, night air spilled in did I speak.

“You asked me what I would see, if the Soul Eater had put me under that spell. What if it had been you?” I asked, and he looked at me, his face grim. “What would you be living, if it were you under the spell?”

“Fire,” he said without hesitation, and my heart twisted at the thought of the girl in the desert. “I would remember fire.”

Chapter 22
Do-Over

A good, long walk always helped Max clear his head, but for some reason, wandering the streets with the Soul Eater’s goons in town seemed like a bad idea. He’d headed downstairs to the shop, remembering belatedly that Bella was there. So he sat on the steps in the misting rain, paralyzed by the maelstrom of thoughts whirling around his head.