Toxic (Denazen #2)(2)

My über hot, strangely innocent-yet-could-kill-you-with-a-bar-of-soap boyfriend.

“We’ll see about that, Ninja Boy.” Kiernan laughed. She’d been calling him that since the day she met him, and it’d kind of caught on. Last week she’d even bought him a black I’m a Ninja T-shirt. Kale pretended to be irritated by it, but secretly, even though it was short sleeved, I was pretty sure he loved the thing.

Hands ready, she turned and nodded to Kirk—a small guy with the ability to manipulate wood—and nodded.

“GO!” someone screamed.

Kale winked. “See you at the top.”

And he was gone. There was actually a moment of stunned stupidity as I watched him glide from rung to rung like a monkey-man on steroids. No normal guy should be able to move like that.

Oops. Kale wasn’t a normal guy. When the smallest brush of your skin could obliterate a WWE wrestler, you left normal behind pretty damn fast.

“Crap,” I spat as he disappeared from sight. Climbing. I was supposed to be climbing.

Fingers gripping the cool metal, I began my ascent.

At first my progress was impressive. Twice I caught sight of Kale, and Kiernan was way below. But the higher I went, the more tired my arms got. The wind wasn’t helping, either. It’d picked up to the point that I had to stop and yank the hoodie over my head because the flapping material was so distracting.

About halfway up the tower, things started getting sloppy. Several times I misplaced my foot, almost slipping, and my fingers were starting to get numb. Kiernan still trailed behind—but barely, and Kale was now nowhere in sight.

Hooking an arm around the closest bar for balance, I stopped to catch my breath. Someone below screamed something that was followed by a symphony of laughter. I heard my name, but a cacophonous clap of thunder drowned out the rest.

Then, because I’d obviously done something to piss Mother Nature off, it started to pour.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.” At that point, a normal person would have given up. Not me. This was the kind of thing I lived for. Swiping a hand across my forehead, I pushed rain-soaked bangs back and continued to climb.

“Ready to give?” Kiernan shouted over the thunder. I couldn’t help smiling. Judging by the slight tremble in her voice, she was the one ready to give.

“Not a chance,” I yelled back.

She said something else—it didn’t sound happy—but her words were lost to the howling wind.

When I finally reached the top, Kale was there, each leg hooked through a metal rung for balance. He flashed me a wet but devastating smile. “You’re slow,” he said, extending a hand.

Our fingers laced together, and instant warmth spread throughout my entire body. Funny how just a single touch could do that. I let him help me up the last few inches and followed his lead, threading my legs through the closely spaced bars at the top. “I think Kiernan gave up.”

He sighed and flicked a strand of dripping black hair out of his eyes. The rain had let up, trickling to nothing more than a light drizzle. The storm wasn’t done, though. In the distance light blazed across the sky, with an occasional boom still splitting the air. “The weather conditions weren’t optimal for climbing.”

Anyone else would’ve earned a duh or ya think with a statement like that, but not Kale. The guy could’ve informed me that apples tasted like apples, and I’d be livin’ large on cloud nine if for no other reason than hearing his voice.

“So, give it to me straight. You’re part monkey, right?”

He blinked. “Of course not.” A few moments later, his lips turned downward. “You’re referring to my climbing skills, aren’t you?”

“Yep. That was pretty frigging awesome.”

He smiled, but it was only a shadow of his normal grin. “I can scale a building, if necessary. It’s part of my training.”

His training. Of course it was. That explained his less-than-enthusiastic reaction.

“Is there a name for it?”

“It’s called Parkour, I believe.”

Parkour! That was it. “I’ve seen videos on YouTube.” I grinned and leaned closer, nipping lightly at his bottom lip. “Seriously hot.”

It was all the motivation he needed. With one arm still wrapped around the crane, he circled my waist and pulled me close as his mouth covered mine. There was something incredibly hot—in a scorch-the-sun kind of way—about a toe-numbing kiss while balanced high in the air during a thunderstorm.

Warm fingers slipped under the bottom edge of my tank top and skimmed the line of my spine.

Incredibly, incredibly hot.

Kale’s feather-light touches did more for me than any adrenaline rush ever could. I worked an arm free and ran my index finger over the thick scar hidden beneath his T-shirt. It went from collarbone to shoulder. Four inches below was another. The result of a training session gone wrong, he’d once said. I knew each and every one by heart—a map of the days and events leading to his eventual freedom. He’d told me about most of them, but there were still a few holdouts. Some stories he refused to share. I never pushed—even though I wanted to. He’d tell me when he was ready.

With his fingers tracing fiery paths up and down my spine, the whole world faded away. There was no storm. Denazen didn’t exist, and our new friends below weren’t waiting for us. There was no pressure about senior year, no hard knot churning in my stomach every time I thought about the Supremacy project and what might happen when I turned eighteen. It was just me and Kale at the top of the world.