Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

who knew?

      So run, the voice of reason bleated. Say hey, it’s been real. Flag a cab. Sprint. Parrish bodyguards were hovering nearby. They would pick her up, give her a ride home. Lecture her, too. Tell her dad.

      He took her hand.

      She dragged in air, as energy flashed through her. Every cell in her body got a sharp, wonderful little jolt of it. She tried to breathe.

      Her hand liked his hand. Oh, so much. It was big, smooth. Callused skin, like polished wood. Warm and strong. She was too shy to meet his eyes. Her thoughts scrambled helplessly, here and there.

      She couldn’t bear to pull her hand away. Tingling rightness flowed from him, right up her arm. It uncoiled slowly through her, swirling, pooling in the classic places. Tightening her nipples. Making her thighs clench, her clit tingle and throb. Just from holding hands.

      They walked, silently, hands linked, eyes down. Barely noticing where they went. Over the Steel Bridge, traffic roaring around them, but it didn’t matter. They were struck mute. Neither was willing to break the surface tension of that huge, gentle shyness. It was a rainbow-tinted bubble. Improbable and lovely. She would just let it float along, shining bright, and enjoy it while she could. It would meet its end soon enough.

      Bubbles always did. It was a natural law.

      She didn’t realize where she was walking until she was standing in front of her own more or less grotty building on NE Helmut Street.

      She hadn’t meant to bring him home.

      Oh, hell. Get real. Maybe she had.

      CHAPTER

       7

      Edie Parrish had loosened gravity’s hold upon him. Kev floated beside her, lucky for the touch of that slender hand to anchor him to earth, or he’d float right off up into the sky, as light as a cloud.

      He was so jazzed, he could hardly breathe. Edie Parrish blew his mind. So beautiful, so smart. Deep and strong. Thorny like a rose. The photograph hadn’t begun to catch all that she was.

      His memory of her child self was frozen in time, like a medieval icon, but this Edie Parrish was no icon. She was warm, soft, perfect in every delicate detail. That translucent skin made her look like a forest sylph. Big, expressive silver-gray eyes, rimmed with indigo, shadowed with delicate purple smudges. Sooty lashes. Her face was narrow and delicate, brows dark and tilted up. Her hair a mass of unruly dark waves that brushed the top of her rounded ass.

      She dressed down, tried to hide, but she couldn’t. Not from him. She shone like a sports stadium spotlight to him. He could extrapolate every tilt and curve from the stretch and swing of those drab, don’t-look-at-me clothes. The generous swell of her tits, the length of her slender frame, the way her jeans clung to her ass. She was tall, the top of her head hitting him right at the mouth. If he embraced her, he could nuzzle her hair without bending his neck.

      God, how he wanted to. His mouth watered to lean down close, and start memorizing the smells of her scalp, her pelt. He wanted to stare at her in bright sunlight, study the glinting grain of the nap of female hair on her body. Stroke and kiss the hot fuzz in all her hidden places. He clenched his jaw, mouth watering.

      He could smell her, too. Every intimate detail of her, with his olfactory capacity on screaming overload. Usually, the excess of private sensory information about strangers’ bodies was embarrassing to him.

      Not with Edie. Her intimate scents made him dizzy. And rock hard. He’d been dogged by inconvenient sexual impulses since waking up after the waterfall incident, but this made his previous urges look like a mild itch. He’d had no idea what sexual hunger felt like til now.

      Every detail of Edie Parrish was deliberately designed to please him, and he’d never even identified any particular preferences before. The hollow at her collarbone made him gulp excess saliva. He couldn’t drag his eyes from the lambent glow of her skin, couldn’t stop dragging in lungfuls of the honey and milk and flowers scent that hung like a delicate cloud around her. Couldn’t breathe it in fast enough.

      He wanted to inhale her, drink her up. Lick her all over. Make her relax, blush, and giggle, lose that worried look. She reminded him of animals in the wild; wary, but innately dignified. None of that air of easy entitlement, like so many young people who came from wealth.

      He couldn’t read her eyes, under that heavy fan of lashes. She probably thought he was out of his mind. Grabbing her hand, like he had the right. He hadn’t meant to. He’d just done it.

      “This is where I live,” she said.

      He looked around, surprised. He’d tried to find her address, had not been surprised to find it unlisted. Many would see her as prey.

      Not what he’d expected. A shabby, grungy boardinghouse in a run-down neighborhood. He forced himself to let go of her hand, and immediately missed the bright, vibrating song of contact.

      She flung back her hair. The gesture looked defiant. “Want to come up?” she asked. “For a cup of coffee, tea? Or, ah, whatever?”

      “Yes,” he said. Some whatever would be fine. Lots of it.

      Her gaze darted away again. “Um. Come on, then.” She led him through a chain-link gate, and on a cracked concrete sidewalk around the building, up a creaking outside staircase.

      Her apartment proved to be on the fourth floor, opening from a common veranda off the back of the building. It overlooked a cluster of Dumpsters and an unprepossessing alley. There was a scarred deadlock and a single aging knob lock, loose and rattling in the door. He could kick the thing loose with one blow of his foot. Or maybe even his fist.

      He wondered what her people were thinking, letting her live in a dump like this. Not that he had any business complaining. Yet.

      “Hey! Edie!” An eight-year-old kid scampered up, scrawny and brown, with a tangle of curly black hair and missing teeth. “Will you help me with my history essay? I’m supposed to write about the Louisiana Purchase, but—” He skidded to a stop when he saw Kev.

      “Hey, Jamal,” Edie said. “Maybe later, OK?”

      But Jamal had forgotten his essay. His dark eyes went huge with wonder. “Shit on a stick!” he breathed. “You’re Fade Shadowseeker!”

      Edie looked embarrassed. “We’ve talked about this before! Fade is just a character, not a real person! This is Kev.” She turned to Kev. “Jamal’s my neighbor. He’s also my first reader, and my best critic.”

      “He is too Fade! Look at those scars! Hey, is it true, about you giving a million dollars to the runaway shelter? And beating up that asshole who stiffed Valerie? I heard you knocked his jaw practically off his face before you took her to Any Port. Shit sucking bastard is eating liquid food through a straw. And did you really jump those guys who—”

      “Jamal! No! He did not! His name is Kev, and Fade Shadowseeker is…not…real! Kev is another person! Get it through your head!”

      Jamal snorted, utterly unconvinced. “So what’s he doing here? You never bring guys here.” Jamal turned a disapproving scowl on Kev. “Are you gonna have sex with Edie?”

      “Jamal!” Edie hissed, horrifed. “Shut up!”

      “Fade has sex with Mahlia in Book Four,” Jamal confided. “But I always skip that chapter. Girls are gross. Except for Edie. She’s OK.”

      Kev cleared his throat. “Everyone’s entitled to his opinion.”

      “Beat it, Jamal,” Edie said sternly. “Or no more computer time. For the rest of your life. I mean it. And I do not want to hear another word about Fade Shadowseeker.” Edie’s voice was a thread of steel.

      Jamal backed away reluctantly. Edie glared until he turned the corner. Then she unlocked her door, and pushed on in.

      The scent of the place embraced him right away. Dried rose petals, cinnamon,