Chelsea ✨Arielle’s Nebular Ally and Team Acrux✨ > Books: it-aint-easy-bein-cheesy‎ (56)

...regrets weren’t worth the memories they lingered in.

He leaned an inch closer to me and the space between us burned hot with raw energy for a moment and I suddenly felt like I was caught in a hunter’s snare. The worst thing of all was that I didn’t even want to break free. He had me and in that second we both knew it.

“Do you have a pirate fetish or something?” I blurted, eyeing the coins and gold with confusion.
“What?” he asked, his scowl somehow defying the laws of physics and finding a way to deepen.
“Well you’re half naked in a bed full of coins so either you’re doing something with them or putting them somewhere... inaccessible while fully dressed or I missed the memo about your enrolment in Captain Silver’s new fleet.”

“You really don’t know anything do you?” he asked. “This is how my kind regenerate our power; from gold.”
“Oh.” I frowned at the coins again as I processed that. “So are you Order of pirate then? Do you transform into a one legged man with an eyepatch, a hankering for rum and a pet parrot?”

What’s the worst that can happen in a library anyway?
Tell that to the guy who was killed by Colonel Mustard with the candlestick.

She bit into the croissant. “Isn’t it exhausting to be an alphahole all the time? Do you guys have a handbook for it? Maybe secret support groups?”
“An alpha-what?”
“Alphahole. Possessive and aggressive.” She waved a hand at his bare torso. “You know—you males who rip your shirt off at the slightest provocation, who know how to kill people in twenty different ways, who have females falling over themselves to be with you; and when you finally bang one, you go full-on mating-frenzy with her, refusing to let another male look at or talk to her, deciding what and when she needs to eat, what she should wear, when she sees her friends—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Bryce breathed, “If we summon a kristallos—”
“We don’t take that risk,” Hunt snarled. “We’ll figure out how to get the venom another way.”
“I can handle myself—”
“I can’t fucking handle myself, Quinlan. Not if you might be in danger.”

“No, no, and no,” Bryce cut her off. “Jesiba is having me do a classified job, and Hunt was assigned to protect me.”
“Is being shirtless in your house part of that assignment?”
"You know how these Vanir males are. They live to show off their muscles.”
Hunt rolled his eyes as Juniper laughed.
"I’m shocked you’re even letting him stay here, B.”
“I didn’t really have a choice.”
“Hmmm.”
A thump of bare feet on the ground. “You know he’s listening, right? His feathers are probably so puffed up he won’t be able to fit through the door.”

It sucked. This stupid fucking world they lived in. It sucked, and it was full of awful people. And the good ones always paid for it.

Ruhn said to her, “I asked you to come. Not him.”
Bryce linked her arm through Athalar’s, the portrait they painted laughable: Bryce in her fancy work dress and heels, the angel in his black battle-suit.
“We’re joined at the hip now, unfortunately for you. Best, best friends.”
“The best,” Hunt echoed, his grin unfading.

Loyal unto death and beyond.

I want nothing more than to stay in this moment, my hand in his. But that’s an impossibility. A weakness. I am a monster, and he’s a human. I

I want nothing more than to stay in this moment, my hand in his. But that’s an impossibility. A weakness. I am a monster, and he’s a human. I want his heart, and I want his other heart. His affection, his blood. I want it all.
But if I take one, I can’t have the other.

Right here, right now, even if it hurts—I can pretend to be perfect, human, free. Whole.

They can belittle me, they can mock me, they can tear me apart. But they can’t kill me. Only my own mistakes can do that.
Only I can do that.

It was so easy a week ago. But now he has a face. Now he has a story. Now he stands here, looking at me as if I’m the greatest mystery in the world, his eyes both sad and hungry—starving for something he’s never known the name of.
Challenge. An equal. A friend. He’s starving for it all.
Starving for me.

I am no flower to be ravaged at your whim, angry wolf—I am your hunter, bow cocked and ready. I am a Heartless, one of the creatures your people fled from in terror thirty years ago.
I let the smallest, hungriest smirk of mine loose on him.
If you were smart, you’d start running, too.

During the day, when things are brightest, we don’t see the stars, but they are there. It’s only in the contrast of night, when things are darkest, that the stars shine.

August and I didn’t see each other much until I moved to San Diego. What was it about me that struck him so powerfully? That made him think I might be the one after only a few encounters?

I like to think of it as certain. Like when I’m in the zone, the game comes to me easily and I’m certain I’ll make every shot before the ball even leaves my hands—that’s how I feel about Iris. She’s a shot that hasn’t even left my hands, but I know will be nothing but net. I’m certain that if ever given the chance, it would be that way for us.

“If you were mine, Iris, there would be no doubt what position you’d hold in my life. You’d be center. I’d play you at the five.”

The look he gives me alternates between affection and indulgence. “You can be on my team.”
“Oh.” I lob a smile up at him, much too close to flirting. “And what position will I play on your team?”
His smile melts a little around the edges, and his eyes lose some of their humor. “At the five-spot,” he says softly.

And then he looks up, and our eyes hold. I’d love to pretend this is casual. Friends with a dash of attraction. Slightly forbidden, but mostly harmless. There’s an undeniable truth, though, when my eyes connect with his. When our eyes meet, it isn’t casual. He and I together are mayhem. When he looks at me, I can’t pretend otherwise.

“We made a memory on the hood of my car,” she says, her eyes wide and pleased. “See? It’s not so bad.”
My smile drops, and I shake my head.
“No, babe. This car’s still a piece of shit.”