The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 432

Chapter 432: 432 | A Defibrillator Padded in Pink Cashmere

I caught her wrist before she could pull it back from my collar.

Her pulse kicked against my thumb. The Bond Resonance carried the spike straight into my chest like a defibrillator padded in pink cashmere, and I held her there, turned her hand over so the inside of her wrist faced up, and pressed my mouth to the skin where the vein ran blue and warm.

"Hello, my love."

The kiss was soft and specific and placed with the kind of deliberate care that Diane would have called brand positioning and that I called knowing exactly where Sloane Fitzgerald’s nervous system kept its emergency override switch. Her pulse jumped a second time under my lips, harder, and I felt the hitch travel through her forearm into her shoulder into the breath she caught and held for one point six seconds before she yanked her hand free.

"Don’t."

"Don’t what."

"Don’t hello my love me in a room where I can still smell whatever happened before I got here."

She stood up off the table and walked three steps toward the window, her boots sharp on the floor, her ponytail swinging in the specific arc that meant she was calculating how much structural damage she could cause before anyone filed paperwork. The afternoon light caught the choker at her throat and the tight line of her jaw and the way her shoulders squared beneath the Halloran blazer in a formation that said I am not fooled and I am deciding what to do about it and the decision will involve your suffering.

I stayed seated. Staying seated was the move. Standing would look defensive, and I was not defensive, I was guilty and intelligent enough to know the difference.

"Sloane."

"No."

"I didn’t do anything that—"

"You have a bruise on your neck." She said it to the window. "Below the collar. Left side. It wasn’t there when you kissed me at the quad this morning because I checked, I always check, and now it’s there and it’s fresh and it’s in the shape of somebody’s mouth and that somebody is not me because I haven’t been near your neck since last night when I bit you in a different spot which I also checked this morning because I am a thorough person Lukas Belmont."

The entire sentence arrived without punctuation or breath, which is how Sloane delivers kill shots. Not louder but faster, stacking clauses until the weight collapses the target.

I touched my collar. The left side. Below where Petra had put her mouth forty minutes ago in this exact room while saying something in French that I was going to remember for the rest of my natural and extended five-hundred-year lifespan.

"I can explain."

"I know you can explain. You can explain anything. You explained a tactical kiss to a nationally broadcast news camera and Professor Crane used it in a lesson plan. You explained late manifestation to a federal diagnostician and she signed paperwork. You could explain a house fire to the house and the house would apologize for being flammable." She turned from the window and her blue eyes hit mine like twin concussive charges set at staggered intervals. "I don’t want an explanation. I want you to stand there and understand that I know."

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