ya

I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?

My eyes meet his and I understand exactly what he's saying. He's my person. He's my home.

He let out a hiss of pain,then smiled that crooked, sheepish smile he always fell back on when he was caught doing something bad. "Sorry. I-I didn't mean to. I just- I've been lying here for hours, thinking about blood.

And when whatever happened in that barn happened, it was a moment I__l never forget. Like a missing key slid into a dusty old lock. Click. My world opened.

Did you mean what you said before? About the dead hanging around? You really believe it?

What is your secret? What could you possibly know, more than 80 years after you death, that someone doesn't want us to find out?

What do you do when you__e in a room of vampires and the most dangerous one tells you that youknow too much? You bolt. What did I do? I hyperventilated.

I look away, but we've caught each other. And I know this wasn't just a ghost story to him, even if it was to the others.

He must have been handsome when he was alive and was handsome still, although made monstrous by his pallor and her awareness of what he was. His mouth looked soft, his cheekbones as sharp as blades, and his jaw curved, giving him an off-kilter beauty. His black hair a mad forest of dirty curls.

His wax-white skin was cool to the touch when she brushed his neck to find the knot of cloth. She'd never been this close to a vampire,never realized what it would be like to be so near to someone who didn't breathe, who could be as still as any statue. His chest neither rose not fell. Her hands shook.

If he looks at me like that again Dottie will need a bucket and mop to get me back to my room.

The blank sheet stares up at me, its emptiness like a slap. Those were the last words Ginny ever wrote before she and her family were murdered.

Dillan didn__ just kiss. He slow danced. We moved in sync. I wanted to lose myself in him. In his touch. Right then the world seemed like such a perfect place.

He opened the door for me with an impassive expression. Oh, but he couldn__ fool me. I knew very well that he gloated inside. He had the right to. I__ be gloating aloud if I were him. I slid into the plush black leather seat and ran my hands over every surface I could touch after buckling my seatbelt. Awe, like a slow burning fuse, spread all over my body. My fingertips sizzled. It was one thing to hear Gramps talk and completely another to actually sit inside the fantasy.__hould I give you two some time alone?___hat?___is smile gave me unexpected quivers. __top molesting my car.

Dealing with Dillan being a jerk can mess up any saint on a good day. And you know I__ no saint.

You__e a people pleaser, aren__ you? You__e the type that can__ stand someone not liking you and showing it._ Raising his head, he laughed openly now.__hat__ just..._ I wanted to take a book from the shelf beside me and throw it at him. __ don__ even have a word____hen I suggest you read a little more so you can find the word you__e looking for._ He hid his chuckle behind a fist.

Dust motes swirled in the air like tiny orbs of rainbows.

No sign of Marissa yet though I heard her clunking around in the bathroom so she was probably doing whatever girls do to make themselves presentable. Poor things. It didn't take any time at all for us guys to rejoin the world and still be our handsome selves.