Page 122 of Stone Cold Touch

We’d made this promise to be friends with one another, but it really was a slow go. “I slapped on a ton of moisturizer last night.”

“Can I tell you something that’s going to sound really weird?”

Turning back to the small mirror hung near my closet, I tugged my hair up into a bun. “Sure.”

She sat back down on the edge of the bed again. “I’m jealous of you.”

One eyebrow climbed up my forehead as I slowly lowered my hands and turned to her.

Her cheeks flushed. “And not because of Zayne. Well, yeah, I’m kind of jealous over that, but whatever. I’m more jealous that you get to go out and do things—go to school, go tagging if you want to. You’ve fought demons and you’ve gotten hurt.”

“You’re jealous because I’ve gotten hurt?”

“I know that doesn’t make sense.” She sighed. “I’m not happy that you were injured, but you’ve been out there. You’ve gotten scratched or bumped up, but you’ve been outtherewhile I’ve been...” She waved her hands around the room. “I’ve been stuck in here.”

I didn’t know how to respond at first, but I got it. I really did. The females in the clan were so protected it was suffocating. For the most part, they’d probably never suffered a hangnail, and if they had, it was a national crisis.

Danika and others like her werestuckin pretty cages.

“I get it,” I said, sitting down next to her. “You know, when I was younger, I was jealous of the other female Wardens, because they were accepted. Everyone cared and paid attention to them. They were wanted and I was...well, I was just here. But I got over that pretty quickly.” I looked over at her, wishing it could be different for the whole lot of us. “I think, in a way, you guys have it worse than I do.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s not like I don’t ever want to mate and have babies. It’s just that I...”

“Want to do something else, too?” When she nodded, I bit my lip. “Then why don’t you? You’re trained. You can fight. Do you really need their permission? I mean, really? Who’s here to stop you if you go out and hunt?”

Danika didn’t respond for a long moment and then her eyes lit up. “You know, you’re right. I could do it and once I got up there, what could they do to stop me? Send me home?” She laughed. “I’d like to see them try.”

“Try what?”

We turned at the sound of Zayne’s voice. Goodness gracious, dressed as he was in dark cargo pants and a tight Under Armour shirt, he was hot in a completely dangerous way.

“Nothing,” chirped Danika. She leaned over, surprising me with a quick hug. Then she popped up and left the room, waving at Zayne as she squeezed by.

He frowned. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head and repeated what she said. “Nothing. You ready?”

“Yeah.” He eyed me as I made my way over to him. “Nice outfit.”

“Danika said I looked like an after-school-special ninja.”

Zayne laughed. “Nice.”

I started past him, but his arm formed a wall as he placed his hand on the other side of the doorjamb. My eyes lifted to his and he lowered his head, almost as if he was about to kiss me, but that couldn’t be it. He wouldn’t dare do something so insane again. Zayne didn’t have a death wish. But as his mouth drew closer, the flutter in my stomach grew. His fresh, winter-mint scent surrounded me, and then his lips brushed the curved of my cheek.

I tensed in the sweetest kind of way. My eyes closed as my hands itched to touch him. Things...things were so odd between us. Both of us had admitted that there was something between us, that we wanted more, but there was also a line between us, one that consisted of labels and promises and danger.

I thought of the promise I made to myself last night, the promise that changed what we both wanted. Disappointment swelled and crashed through me like tumultuous waves as I abruptly dipped under his arm.

Ignoring the look of confusion, I smoothed my hands over my pants. “Is there anything we need to get before we go?”

A moment passed before he answered. “I have everything we need packed away in the Impala.”

Everything we needed for a possible exorcism consisted of holy water, something I was so not getting near, purified salt and stinky, blessed incense. We had everything needed to do one in the house, and I briefly considered doing an exorcism here, but that would kind of be hard to explain to the Wardens. I’d have to bring up Petr, and with the way Abbot was acting toward me, that wouldn’t be smart. I had no idea what to do about Petr, and there was a tiny part of me that really wondered if he was here in wraith form. Either way, excitement hummed through me as we headed out to the garage. I’d never seen an exorcism before. This should prove interesting.

“Can I yell ‘By the power of Christ, I compel you’ whenever we get to that point?” I asked.

“What?” Zayne laughed as he opened my passenger door. “Hate to break it to you, but we don’t have to say a word and no one will be yelling anything like that.”

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