Page 110 of Stone Cold Touch

I thought of the club of sorts under the Palisades and all the demons there that weren’t supposed to be walking among humans.

“Want to join?” he offered as he finished wrapping his knuckles.

“No. Ate too much. I’ll just watch.” I tugged on the hem of my shirt and the moment I let go it popped back up, revealing half of my lower stomach. Probably should’ve revisited my wardrobe choices. After dinner, I was rocking a bit of a belly.

Zayne strode past me, settling both hands on the sides of the punching bag. “I really wish you’d reconsider eating with everyone.”

“I really wish you’d stop bringing it up.”

He looked over his shoulder at me, brows raised. “You don’t need to feel like you don’t belong in there. You do. And you’re missed at the table.”

I laughed at that. “By who?”

“Me.”

My lips parted and I really had no response for that. I watched him turn back to the punching bag. He fell back into position and raised his arms. “How have you been enjoying your time off?” he asked, throwing a punch that knocked the bag back several feet.

“I’ve been bored out of mind.”

Expression concentrated, he swung with his other arm. “And you have the rest of the week.”

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me.” I sat down on the mats and crossed my legs.

A slight smile appeared as he moved around the bag, targeting different sides with different hand techniques. Sweat dotted his brow and dampened the blond hair at his temples. “We heard back from a contact at one of the hospitals—the same one Dean had been taken to. They had another DOA brought in two nights ago—a young woman who had no previous health conditions died of a massive heart attack. Heart blown out basically, like with Dean.”

I winced.

“Her fiancé will be out of town the day after tomorrow to attend the funeral in Pennsylvania, so I’m going to check out their town house,” he continued. “It’s the only way to see if she was infected, you know? If she’s now a wraith, her house would be the most likely place she’d be.”

The Wardens had been doing a lot of that lately—scoping out the recently deceased. “Can I go?”

He stopped, wiping the back of his forearm as he looked at me. A second passed. “You’re starting to sound like Danika. She’s been demanding to be allowed to go on hunts.”

“Why shouldn’t she be? The girl is trained. She’s a full Warden. She can fight.”

“You know the answer to that.”

I frowned. It felt weird to defend Danika when I’d spent so much time hating on her. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be just a baby-making machine.”

He shook his head as he turned back to the bag and got back to working out. Only he could beat the Hell out of something and not be out of breath. I’d be panting, lying on the floor in a puddle of sweat at this point.

“So can I?” I asked again. “I haven’t been tagging, so it would feel...good to do something helpful.”

Zayne threw a couple of punches and then drew back from the bag. The front of his gray shirt was damp with sweat. “I guess it wouldn’t be a problem. Sure.”

A wide smile broke out across my face. “Thank you. I really want to do something that doesn’t...”

I trailed off as he reached down and pulled the shirt off over his head and dropped it to the floor.

Holy hotness...

Now that was just so wrong.

My eyes roamed over his chest and defined stomach like those of a starved person looking at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Those sweats of his hung low, revealing the indents on either side of his hips. Zayne really didn’t have a six-pack. More like an eight-pack.

“What were you saying?”

Each ab was tightly rolled. As if someone had carved them into his stomach. “Huh?”

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