Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2), Lan Chan [readict TXT] 📗

the eye with my fork.” Sophie squeaked. Kai burst out laughing. I curled my fist around my fork so that I wouldn’t have to unpack the shot of pleasure that raced through my gut at the sound of his laugh. It was such a rare creature that it was a shame he pissed me off while he was doing it.

“Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.” I knew what he was going to do but there was no way to stop it. He reached out to me. I wasn’t fast enough to run. His reach was too long to evade. As soon as his fingertips brushed the swell of my cheeks we were teleporting. I had no control of myself when that happened.

I almost screamed when we reappeared on the other side in the gazebo at the end of the Grove. Without the table between us, Kai locked his arm around my waist. His body was a bastion of heat against the chill evening air. My head filled with the wood smoke and pine scent of him. I inhaled involuntarily, already heady with the sensation.

“Wahh,” I managed to get out, before his mouth captured mine. His lips brushed mine apart and he slipped his tongue into my mouth. I could feel myself giving in to the soft sweep of it. My heart stuttered for an instant, terrified of my own violent reaction to him as well as the danger of where letting go now would lead us. His free hand reached up. He brushed my cheek with his thumb.

Kai pulled away an inch. Just enough so that he looked into my eyes.“I don’t need you to protect me, Blue.”

I almost choked on my response. “Excuse me. But if I hadn’t protected you, there wouldn’t be a soul inside that mound of muscle you call a body.”

He kissed me again, his lips soft but firm. “You know what I mean,” he said when he pulled back this time. It was that blatant truth that had me pushing against his chest. I had a niggling fear that he might have seen the vision of Lucifer when we were fighting off the Sisterhood. The horror of it chased away all the heat in my body. Kai refused to allow me to go, his arms locking once more behind my back. He crushed me to his chest, making it impossible for me to run.

“It wasn’t a vision,” he said.

“No. It was a threat. That’s much worse to me.”

The muscles in his arms grew taut. “You think I’m scared of him?”

“Yes! If you have any scrap of brains, you would be scared of him. He’s not some low-level demon. He’s a seraph.”

“Not anymore,” was the gritted reply.

I twisted in his arms to no avail. That made the fury in my chest all the more heated. “Who cares about the semantics? He might be locked up right now, but if he gets out, he’ll....” I couldn’t even speak the words. My forehead pressed against his chest. Despite knowing it was dangerous, I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight.

“Shhh,” Kai said. His hand tangled in the hairs at the nape of my neck. A shiver raced down my spine. “I don’t know if I should be insulted that you think I’m just going to lie there and let him kill me.”

“I don’t know if you have much of a choice.”

I felt the muscles in his chest tense. “So you’re planning to do what exactly? Fight him on your own? Did you think if a battle starts that the rest of us would sit around and wait for him to come and get us?”

“What about Brigid’s vision?” I said.

He tipped my head up with this thumb. “What about it?”

“I’m on the wrong side of the field?”

“So what?” he said. Even in the moonlight, his green eyes were smouldering. “You’re on the wrong side now, aren’t you? If the theories are true, you might be part of the Sisterhood lineage. You’re supposed to be killing us.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning my head away. “I don’t –”

“No. It doesn’t matter.” He dropped his hands to my waist and lifted me up. Seating me on the railing of the gazebo, Kai pushed my thighs apart and stepped into the space. His hands came down on either side of me. They gripped the railing. He leaned forward so we were eye to eye. He was too close. His presence too overwhelming so that I was starting to think maybe he was right. Maybe none of this mattered.

He watched me with those luminous green eyes, his gaze gentle. It freaked me the hell out and at the same time I didn’t want it to end. “You told me to move on,” Kai said, “I’m trying to. So move with me.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Sure it is.”

“For you maybe.”

He grinned then. A flash of something mischievous flaring in his eyes. I inhaled sharply, unsure if I’d imagined it. “You want to be chased, Blue? Is that it?”

I tried to punch him, but he blocked me and held onto my hand instead. “You are so bloody infuriating.”

“Ditto.”

He was smiling as he leaned forward to kiss me. I could hardly breathe when he stopped. My lips tingled where he’d bitten me playfully. A stab of something bitter tried to take hold. He seemed to sense it because he wrapped his arms around me again.

“Don’t run, Blue. Not like this.”

My chest ached. “I...”

He gripped the sides of my neck. “You’re not alone anymore. You never will be again. This isn’t a fight you have to take on by yourself.”

There was such practiced conviction in his words that it made me wonder how many times he’d had to repeat the same thing to himself. All I could do was exhale. He took it as agreement.

My stomach rumbled. Kai chuckled. “I told you to eat.”

Just like that all the butterflies in my stomach turned to dust. I clamped my jaw. “I’m fine.”

He huffed. “You’re going