Page 40 of Bitter Sweet Love

I poured everything I wanted to say and should’ve said into the kiss. I pulled him close, breathing him in when he responded, when he took the kiss to a deeper level, sweeping his tongue over mine, drinking me in.

“I love you,” I gasped.

His hands settled on my hips. “Say that again.”

“I love you.”

“One more time.”

My lips curled up. “I love you, Dez.”

And that’s all I said. Dez kissed me, and that kiss—that kiss scorched me. It was everything that I felt given back to me. His hands slid up my back and our lips parted just enough for him to say my name and I knew the sound of it would stay with me to the end of my days.

We ended up on the bed, our limbs tangled together, our hearts pounding in our chests. I didn’t tell him yes. He didn’t ask. It didn’t need to be spoken. Because I had been his and he had been mine all along, and one day we would make that lifelong promise to each other. When we were both ready. And while that was bucking tradition, neither of us cared. Because right now, as his lips moved against mine and he pressed me closer to his body, I felt the way I did when I flew over the mountains back home. During the precious seconds when I was free-falling and there was nothing but that rushing sensation, of not being able to form a thought or breathe. In Dez’s arms, I had found what I’d been searching for every night I took to the sky.

I was free.

I was home.

* * * * *

One kiss could be enough to kill…

Keep reading for an excerpt from

WHITE HOT KISS,

book one in New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout’s The Dark Elements series…

THERE WAS A DEMON IN MCDONALD’S.

And it had a powerful hunger for Big Macs.

Most days, I loved my after-school job. Tagging the soulless and the damned usually gave me a mad case of the warm fuzzies. I’d even given myself a quota out of boredom, but tonight was different.

I had a paper to outline for AP English.

“Are you gonna eat those fries?” Sam asked as he grabbed a handful off my tray. His curly brown hair fell over his wireframe glasses. “Thanks.”

“Just don’t take her sweet tea.” Stacey slapped Sam’s arm and several fries fell to the floor. “You’ll lose your entire arm.” I stopped tapping my foot, but kept my eye on the interloper. I don’t know what it was with demons and the Golden Arches, but man, they loved the place. “Ha-ha.”

“Who do you keep staring at, Layla?” Stacey twisted in the booth, looking around the crowded fast-food joint. “Is it a hot guy? If so, you better— Oh. Wow. Who goes out in public dressed like that?”

“What?” Sam turned, too. “Aw, come on, Stacey. Who cares? Not everyone wears knockoff Prada like you.”

To them, the demon looked like a harmless middle-aged woman with really bad fashion sense. Her dull brown hair was pinned up with one of those old-school purple butterfly clips. She wore velvet green track pants paired with pink sneakers, but it was her sweater that was epic. Someone had knitted a basset hound on the front, its big, sappy eyes made of brown yarn.

But despite her drab appearance, the lady wasn’t human.

Not that I had a lot of room to talk.

She was a Poser demon. Her astronomical appetite was what gave away the breed. Posers could eat a small nation’s worth of food in one sitting.

Posers might look and act human, but I knew this one could snap the head off the person in the booth next to her with little effort. Her inhuman strength wasn’t the threat, though. It was the Poser’s teeth and infectious saliva that were the real danger.

They were biters.

One little nip and the demonic version of rabies was passed to the human. Totally incurable, and within three days, the Poser’s chew toy would resemble something straight out of a George Romero flick, cannibalistic tendencies included.

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