Page 39 of Angel's Vengeance

“Because this is where party fun goes to die?”

He barked out a sardonic laugh.“Then why do the mortals even have such a thing?”

Neela craned her head back and started reading the instructions on the screen in front of them.“I think so introverted people can have an excuse to get away from the crowd they were societally forced to be a part of while still documenting the fact that they actually attended the event.”

“Again, why attend at all if it only causes them discomfort and shame?Seems like a ridiculous price to pay for misery.”

Neela pushed some buttons and smiled at him.“Misery loves company.Now smile!It takes three frames, and then it should give us a printout.”

Rhode snorted, then shifted against the seat, hoping to keep certain parts of him far and away from certain parts of her.Perhaps it was an excuse to avoid the camera lens, but as the flash went off in quick succession, something about her words struck him.When the slip of photo paper shot out from below the screen, he understood what it was.

Neela’s smile was all wrong.His ornery face aside, each of the three photos revealed a stiff, artificial sort of forced happiness in her that he instinctively knew had no place in an arcade photo booth meant to capture delight and laughter.Though the corners of her lips lifted on command and neat rows of teeth stood at photogenic attention, there was no true joy in it.Her golden eyes didn’t sparkle, despite the camera flash’s best intentions to capture it.Even her shoulders sat just below her ears, wrinkling the fine cashmere of her sweaterdress’s top to awkwardly mash her figure into an unappealing shell that was far from accurate.

Where was the petal-pink flush to her cheeks that had last lit her features when she’d scurried to name all those damn trees at the arboretum?Where was the sunglow’s radiance in her eyes that flashed her excitement when she’d first seen the arcade’s lights fire up?

This artificial bland visage wasn’t the memento he’d promised her, nor was it the explanation he felt he owed her.

No, that was, as she’d so keenly pointed out, misery, pure and simple.

Misery in the form of a required yearbook photograph taken of the student who had no means to pay for the keepsake.

And it pissed him the fuck off.

“Something’s wrong with you.”

Neela’s eyes widened.“Excuse me?”

“You’re not happy.”

“I’m notnothappy,” she hedged, gesturing toward the photo booth’s screen.“It’s fine.It’s great.I’ve got my photo, and it’s something I never thought I would have.Not really, at any rate.”

“But you’re nothappy.”Then he snatched her hand from the air, and she gasped when the groan that came out of him surprised them both.Rhode’s eyes fell closed as he remembered the last time his hands were on her.

And his mouth.

One by one, he kneaded the pads of her fingers, relishing the way her pupils pulsed as she watched him and how the blood beneath her skin ebbed and flowed back to his touch in eager increments.

Mages, even her fingertips were warm, where his body had only ever known icy savagery.

It wasn’t fair to have all that heat wrapped up in such a delicate grasp, not when the fire within his core punched against the cage of his body as she began to curl her fingers around his.

Fuck.They were only hands, for god’s sake, but blood was blood, and he couldn’t help but track the pale blue of her veins as they tunneled down her palm and beneath her sweater’s soft cuff.

The booth was too hot, too stifling.Oxygen had become a rare commodity as he sucked in precious little of the stuff.Clarity, whatever had remained, quickly turned to necessity.Fire roared beneath his veins, and an urgent part of him wondered—no,neededto know whether Neela was just as hot as he was.

His lips, eager explorers as they were, descended onto the soft skin of her wrist.One kiss, then another, then a curious swipe of his tongue charted her vital lifelines and told him everything he needed to know.

“You are hot,” he rasped out, straining to speak for fear that if he parted his lips from her for too long, he’d never remember the way back.

“It’s hot in here,” she said, though she surprisingly didn’t pull away from him.“The booth is, uh, stuffy.”

“Too hot?”Another press of his mouth against her skin and his cock punched at the zipper of his slacks.

Soft puffs of her encouragement tickled the hair on the top of his head.

And then he felt it.The insistent yank on his silk collar.When he followed the tug, he was met with those golden eyes, blazing with wonder and unspoken questions—questions that would mirror his in another time, in another circumstance.

But there was no other time, and in the hushed privacy of the photo booth, nothing would have stopped him from devouring her mouth as she lightly, tenuously set her lips upon his.

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