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Oh God, I don’t want to be dead. The thought slams through me. Please don’t let me be dead—or worse, a ghost. Dating a vampire is one thing, but please, please, please don’t make me a ghost. Getting stuck haunting Katmere Academy’s hallways for an eternity as Nearly Gutless Grace is so not my idea of a good time.
Nearly Gutless Grace!🤣🤣
“Seriously? As black and empty as the terror growing inside you?” a sarcastic voice with a very proper British accent asks from deep in my head. “Melodramatic much?”
Hot stuff shows up on pg. 2!?! YES PLEASE!🤣🤣😁😁🙌🏾
“Do you like the accent wall? It’s Armani black,” he says, and I have to grit my teeth against telling him what he can do with his Armani black, not to mention the condescension he’s got dripping from every proper British syllable.
Damn, Grace!🤣🙌🏾🙌🏾
“You’re a vampire?” “Well, I’m sure as shit not a werewolf. And since I’m not breathing fire or waving a magic wand out of my arse, you do the maths.” “I don’t know what you’re waving—out of your ass or otherwise—because I can’t see you,” I snap.
🤣🤣
I whirl around, fists raised and heart pounding, only to find a very tall, very good-looking guy with a modern pompadour and excellent taste in clothing, if the black silk shirt and black dress pants are any indication. He’s leaning a shoulder against a bookshelf as he stares at me through narrowed arctic-blue eyes, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
HELLOOOOO!😍😍😍
The way Grace is running straight toward the giant, flame-shooting plonker of a beast currently tearing through the sky directly at her tells me the anti-Hudson propaganda machine has obviously been hard at work in the time I’ve been gone.
🤣🤣🤣 but also sad for hudson!😭😭🤧
Forget the queen. God save girls who believe everything they hear. And leap before they look.
God Hudson!🤣
“The dragon got me.” “What?” she gasps. “Let me see!” “That’s really not nec—” “You don’t get to tell me what’s necessary,” she answers, grabbing my shoulders before I can finish the protest. I’m so surprised that I don’t fight her as she spins me around like vinyl on my favorite turntable.
🎶Interested!🎶
If you somehow find a way to discount his sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies, Hudson is a very attractive guy. Not as attractive as Jaxon, obviously—no one is—but he’s definitely good-looking.
"Goodlooking?!?" Girl that man is sexy af!!!😍😍🙌🏾🙌🏾🔥🔥🔥
“Take off your shirt,” I tell him in the most no-nonsense voice I can manage as I twist off the top of the peroxide bottle. He doesn’t budge. Though his lips twist into a snarky grin as he answers, “No offense, Curly, but you’re really not my type.”
She isnt? How peculiar...
“Don’t tempt me,” he growls, so close that I can feel his breath brush my ear. “You’re not the only one who’s hungry here.”
Tempt the man!🙌🏾🙌🏾😍
“Stranger things have happened.”
So irrelevant but STRANGER THINGS!!!
“Just because you don’t have anyone who wants to build a snowman or make a video with you doesn’t mean you’ve got the right to creep on other people.”
You took it way too far Grace!! 😠😠
I start to read the next journal entry, something about learning to whittle so he can make a toy for his little brother, but I have to stop after only a couple of paragraphs.
The carved horse!😭😭
After all, the best defense is more defense.
I look away, hide my grin behind my hand. Grace is quick, I’ll give her that. A definite pain in the arse but really quick. And pretty funny, too.
😏
“You’re right,” she says. “Excuse me?” I answer at the closest I get to a shout. Because those are the last two words I ever expected to hear come out of her full lips. Not that I’m paying any attention to her lips. But the sentiment stands.
Staring at lips?...😏
Then he settles down on the nearest couch, kicks his feet up, and proceeds to read as a pissed-off, screaming dragon continues to circle us.
And, as if to prove it, he reaches over and flips on the state-of-the-art stereo he’s got taking up a whole lot of space in the media area of the room. The second he does, Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” comes blaring through the speakers so loudly that the windows rattle—right along with my brain.
Damn...🔥🔥🔥
“You want a real threat, you overgrown child? How about you lay one more finger on my Pop-Tarts, and I’ll file your fangs down while you sleep?”
A girl needs to protect her snacks!
“My head, my things.” “Wow, Grace. I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Instead of reaching for his axes, though, he looks straight at me. Raises one dark brow. And lets out the most bizarre sound I have ever heard. It’s earsplitting and terrible and like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I stare at him, shocked, as he does it again. And again. And again.
Don’t react, I tell myself. “Crooooooak.” It will just encourage him if he gets a rise out of you. You know he’s only doing it because he’s bored. “Crooooooooooooooooooooooooak.” Don’t react, don’t react, don’t react.
“Croooo”—he’s interrupted from his warble by a cough, and I think that’s the end of it. But nope, he’s committed, because the second he’s able, he goes right back to it. “Crooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooak.”
“Bullshit!” I explode. “I have put up with the kookaburra and the loon. But there is no way I am putting up with some fake-ass toucan snort—” “Not fake,” he interjects.
“Those were Versace,” I tell her, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t keep the horror out of my voice. What kind of a monster does something like this? “They still are,” she responds cheerfully.
“You want to make a pumpkin pie?” I ask, because that’s what she was thinking about in her memory. And because a turkey seems well beyond our culinary skills.
Awww
As I hold her, I note several things. One, she fits surprisingly well in my arms. Two, she smells really good—like vanilla and cinnamon. And three, I kind of like holding her.
I stand there for a second, then another and another—too afraid to breathe or even blink. I don’t know how long I stay rooted to the spot, staring at the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, but I know it could have been an eternity and it still wouldn’t be long enough to take it all in. Because the thin string I instinctively know connects me to Grace has quadrupled in size since yesterday…and it’s now glowing the most brilliant blue I have ever seen.
“It’s…fine,” he says, sounding totally bemused. But I just squeeze him more tightly—my arms seem to be totally outside of my control at the moment—hugging him the way no one has ever hugged him before. Hugging him the way he always should have been hugged. By his mother. By his father. By Jaxon. By Lia. By all the people who should have loved him. Who should have taken care of him.
I still don’t let go.
Eventually, his arms move around my back. Slowly, tentatively, like he has no idea how to hug someone. And then he’s holding me tightly, too. So tightly that I can barely breathe. And that’s more than okay. Eventually,
has grabbed on to him and is dragging him down. The dragon snorts and spits fire and screams in fury, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that that something is Hudson freaking Vega.
Man pulling a fast and the furious moment!😍
“Oh my God! You are such a snob.” It’s my turn to give her a look. “I’m a centuries-old vampire prince with more money and power than any one person should have. Of course I’m a snob.” “Wow. Way to own it.” She shakes her head as if surprised.
“People should always own who they are, flaws and all. The fact that I happen to have more flaws than most doesn’t change that.”
She kept insisting I Jedi mind tricked her into eating two entire packages of Pop-Tarts in one sitting. Trust me, this girl needs no one mind tricking her into eating all the Pop-Tarts she can.
I hit the floor with a thud and a very loud squeak. And then I just lay there, because, seriously, where is there for me to go from here? With the way my luck is running this morning, I’ll try to sit up and fall face-first into his lap.
“Grace?” His voice is filled with concern. “Are you all right?” “I’m fine,” I tell him, though it comes out muffled because I refuse to lift my face from where it’s buried in the rug. “Can I at least help you up?” he asks tentatively. His hand brushes against my back, and I shrug it off. “Just leave me. I can die here. It’s fine.”
He must wave a hand over me because I feel a sudden breeze on the backs of my thighs and the bottom of my ass. Because of course the T-shirt I’m wearing is all the way around my waist. Of freaking course it is. Which means that in the last five minutes, not only has Hudson had all of my most sensitive parts pressed up against all of his most sensitive parts, but he’s also had one hell of a view.
🤣🤣🤣
Could this morning get any more embarrassing? With a groan, I reach up and grab a fistful of sheet and blanket and pull as hard as I can as I flip myself onto my back. Which, it turns out, is yet another singularly unimpressive move on my part, because Hudson comes tumbling down right along with the covers. And lands directly on top of me.
For a second, we’re both too stunned to move. But then he laughs—a warm, amused sound that shakes his whole body against mine. “So that’s a yes, then,” he comments when he finally has his mirth under control. “It was as good for you as it was for me.”
“So bloodthirsty, Grace.” He tsk-tsks. “Is that any way to treat your cuddle bunny?” Cuddle bunny? What the hell? Who is this guy and what did he do with Hudson? “I think you meant to say you’re my cuddle buddy.” I stress the d sound. “Aww, Grace, I thought you’d never ask. I’d love to be your cuddle buddy.” “Hudson!” I growl. “Okay, okay. So grumpy.”
This man!🤣🤣
I’ve been standing here the whole time, and I’m still not sure how that went from me fucking with her to me being the object of Grace’s pity.
Grace and I roll our eyes at each other, but I can’t help grinning just a little. Nothing—no one—in my life has ever chosen me over someone else before. They’ve certainly never liked me better. It’s a good feeling, and I find myself petting and crooning to Smokey as we walk down the porch steps.
But the second I’m next to him, Smokey hisses in outrage. Annoyed by her possessive behavior at this point—especially since I have no designs, romantic or otherwise, on her new favorite person—I hiss back, twice as loud. It startles a laugh out of Hudson, which in turn must startle the swans on the lake. Because, as one, they take to the sky.
“What can I say? I’m a card-carrying feminist, and I would never want to suggest you couldn’t do a better job than a man.”
Her big brown eyes search my face, looking for I don’t know what. For the first time, I notice the gold flecks at the very center of her irises. They’re beautiful. She’s beautiful, stubborn chin and all.
She sure is...
Shaky or not, hungry or not, Hudson Vega in full action-hero mode is a sight to behold. Muscles working, body straining, just a little bit of sweat sliding down the side of his neck into the collar of his shirt…
