Page 190 of Mama Si's Paradise

I raised my head a bit to see the time—not even ten a.m. Here I thought I’d slept the whole day.

Grey moved back and lay his head on the pillow, looking perfectly satisfied.

“What about my skin?” I asked, and before I knew it, he grabbed me and put me on his chest, so I was half lying on him.

Damn. So much more comfortable than the pillow.

“It’s soft. My fingers glide over it. Smooth.” And again,he continued to touch my shoulder as he held me tightly against this chest.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of his skin, feeling like home, which was fucked up all on its own.

A long breath left me. “Aliens.” And they’d replacedme,too, with a version of me that had no sense whatsoever.

Grey chuckled and his chest moved up and down, shaking me. Of course, I was smiling half a second in, because what the hell is the normal world?

“I’ll take it,” he said, planting a kiss on the top of my head.

“The Blood Call,” I said, more for my benefit than his. “The stupid Blood Call. It happened.” And I needed to be thinking aboutthat, not the way his abs felt under my hand—and why the hell was Itouchinghim like that?

“It did, yes.” His abs, those delicious looking abs, clenched hard when I went just below his bellybutton, tracing the hairs that went all the way down to his cock under the covers. I saw the shape of it, though. I saw it, and my insides clenched as well.

Heat between my legs.

“And? Talk to me.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Tell me what happened.”

Grey brought his hand that had been touching my shoulder up to my cheek and framed my face, blocking my view of his cock for a bit, for which I was thankful. “Your blood called. We answered. We came here and we bit you.”

The memories poured into my head like a floodgate had burst open.

Fangs. Naked chests. Blood coming out of me, feeling so incredibly relieving…

My hand rose to my neck to feel for puncture wounds, and they were there. I barely felt them, but they were there. I’d been bittenfive times, and…

“Something was wrong.” I raised my head to look at his face. “Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

Grey flinched. “Notwrongexactly,” he said. “More like…something unusual.”

“Unusual how?” Because my mind was buzzing and my memories made no sense and I just needed him to spell it out for me, but he kept staring at my lips.

I grabbed him by the wrist and rose up even higher until my face was right over his, my hair falling like a curtain to our side, taking away some of the light from the lamps.

“Grey, unusualhow?”

He looked up at me with those troubled eyes. “Your beauty haunts me, Autumn Hayes,” he whispered instead, and my eyes closed, my stomach doing a flip despite my better judgment. I lowered my head, holding onto his hand that was pressed to my cheek, and I kissed his palm like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“I would have never guessed you were such a romantic.” He had so many pretty words to say.

I wondered if Cynthia and Amita had heard it all before. Hisbrides.

A knife twisted in my gut.

“Me neither,” Grey said, but I wasn’t smiling anymore. And I tried to hide my face, lower my head, but he raised it again. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. The Blood Call?—”

“Don’t lie to me, Fall. I can hear your blood. Tell me what’s wrong,” he insisted.

Ah, fuck. “It’s an invasion of privacy to belistening to my blood,you know,” I muttered, and I tried to move away, turn my back to him or something.

---