Page 620 of Flirting with Darkness

“Neither,” he said next. “Both.” Exhaling in a sigh, he combed a hand through his still-long hair. “I was musing aloud. Pretending I was like anyone else. I do not know where it came from. I really don’t. Maybe I am just fatigued.”

There was another silence.

He could feel and see her thinking through it.

His words didn’t satisfy her that time, either, but they at least made more sense to her. He watched her make the decision to drop it, at least for now. He got the impression she wanted to get them through this auction thing first, then deal with whatever strangeness she felt on him later, once they were back at home.

She’d taken him to a male barber after that.

She’d instructed the man on how exactly to cut his hair.

Ghost didn’t protest that either, and the process itself ended up being surprisingly pleasant, but it was strange as hell to see the final results.

Studying his features in the mirror with that close-cropped hair startled him.

The first time he saw it, after the stylist had finished drying it with some mechanical device, then added some sort of sticky material to the texture, Ghost’s face appeared to be nearly a different shape. When they regained the street, however, he couldn’t help but notice that his clothing and hair now appeared to match that of most of the other men he saw.

He didn’t think he’d ever worn his hair so short.

Well. Perhaps he had, once or twice, while still an adolescent.

But not as an adult.

Besides, those periods where it was short in his own time, Ghost had been growing out his locks from having had them shorn at one orphanage or another due to lice. They’d done that the few times they managed to hold him for any length of time, and sometimes, as it grew out, it looked almost like this.

Those times, his hair had been cut all the same length, however.

He’d looked like what he was… a street urchin.

A prisoner.

A pauper.

The short haircuts on men he saw here had a different feel.

Not being all the same length, but shaped so that his hair remained longer on top, the new hairstyle gave him a strangely rakish look. It made him look younger somehow, too.

She seemed to like it.

Truthfully, that was all that mattered to him.

He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her against him.

He kissed her mouth, losing himself in her tongue and lips.

She slid her hand inside his shirt, opening a few buttons to massage his chest. After a few seconds of that, his cock hurt again, and his lips and teeth were sucking and nipping at her throat. His chest tightened when she opened his shirt more.

His hand wrapped around her ass, and she jumped.

She laughed, pulling out of his embrace again.

“Look, I get it,” she said, a little breathless, pushing back at his half-bare chest. “Trust me, I get it. We’re both sex-starved right now. We’ll finish this and go home. Lock the doors to everyone but the food delivery guy. Deal?”

He closed his eyes.

He nodded reluctantly.

“Deal. Yes.” He barely managed to get the words out.

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