Toxic (Denazen #2)(30)

And without question, he did. I’d seen firsthand what Kale’s skin could do. From the first moment back at Curd’s house when he’d touched a Denazen employee so we could escape, to the plant a few minutes earlier. I knew exactly how deadly it was.

But I just didn’t care.

“Just keep them closed.” Pulling my sleeve over the tips of my fingers, I brushed the side of his face.

He froze. “Dez, don’t…”

“Shh.” There was a funny tickle in my stomach. It was a monster contradiction to the painful lump in my throat. “Just pretend. Imagine it’s my fingers against your skin. Just for a little while.”

A soft noise escaped his lips.

My covered hand glided across his cheek and down his neck. Eyes still closed, Kale reached down and tugged at the hem of his shirt. In a fluent movement, it was over his head and clutched between the fingers of his right hand. The other was tangled in the denim of his jeans.

I figured I’d already overdosed on Jade’s aura, making Kale’s skin painful, if not deadly, to me even when she was around, but after hearing what she said about controlling her ability, and regardless of her denial, I was sure she’d done it deliberately. According to Ginger, it would essentially reset in a few days, and until then, I had no choice but to take her word for it. But to not be alone with him until then? I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it.

Down the side of his neck and skimming lightly across the planes of his chest, I traced the scars there, one by one. His reaction kept me going, even though I knew I should stop. Small noises in the back of his throat, he tugged in desperation at his denim-clad leg. “Dez—”

“Shh,” I whispered again, leaning just a bit closer than safe should allow. This is how it was with Kale. So easy to lose myself. Let all the walls down and forget about everything. He really was everything to me. My beginning and end.

Lower and lower, I traced my way down to the waist of his jeans. A surge of adrenaline pumped through my system. When I let my sleeve slide up so I could undo the button, I knew I’d gone too far.





11


Kale’s body went rigid. His eyes shot open, and his hand clamped around my sleeved arm. “You have to stop.”

He was right. Still, though, I couldn’t. An adrenaline junkie through and through, this was the ultimate high. Kale plus danger. The enticing combination short-circuited my common sense—not that I had much according to some—and made rational thought a thing of the past.

Carefully, I gripped the tip of the zipper and pulled it down a fraction of an inch. The door wasn’t locked. I could tick off at least a half dozen names. People that hit the hotel gym before bed. At any moment, someone could walk in and find us. I’d made out in public at a few parties, but this was something entirely different. A new kind of rush that sent my heart hammering and took my adrenaline to new levels.

“It’s okay. I—”

In a half beat of my heart, I was on my back, and Kale was hovering just above me. I could feel the warmth radiating from his skin. Skin so dangerously close to mine.

Shocking blue eyes stared as the tips of his dark hair tickled my cheeks. “This is dangerous,” he growled. “To push further would be insanity.”

“I know.”

To my surprise—and the slightest hint of something akin to fear—he didn’t move away. “But—”

“I know,” I sighed.

“It feels strange.” He pulled back just a bit. I could see his whole face now, not just the mesmerizing blue of his eyes. He looked confused.

“Strange?”

“Sometimes I can’t breathe when I’m near you. Knowing we can’t touch steals the air from my lungs. It hurts, and it’s all I can think about. But this…” He leaned in again, and a wicked smile spread across his lips. He was closer this time. I could smell the soapy remains of shampoo and the lingering scent of chocolate on his breath. “This makes me forget. It makes my head spin. Like beer.”

Some girls might’ve been insulted at the comparison, but not me. Kale associated beer with losing control. A large part of me loved that I could do that to him. “I know how you feel.”

“So this is what it’s like? To be a junkie?”

I tried not to laugh when Kale said things out of context, but sometimes it was impossible. “An adrenaline junkie,” I corrected with a slight snicker. “And yeah. That, and being in love.”

His expression sobered. “But it’s dangerous for me to lose control around you right now. The risk is far too great. It’s painful.”

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Sometimes love is painful.”

He scrunched up his nose, brows rising slightly. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It makes sense,” I assured him. “From day one we had the deck stacked against us, but we got through. We’ll always get through. Wanna know how I know?”

“How?”

Until I met Kale, I had no idea it was possible to fall so completely in love with someone. To not know where they ended and you began. It was something that grew more and more with every passing day, and I knew in the deepest parts of my soul that it would continue to grow. We’d always have obstacles thrown in our path. Denazen, Kale’s past, Jade… But it would never change things. There had never been anything I was more sure of.