Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

could even feed from them, if I absolutely had to—but because he wasn’t human, he could stop me whenever he wanted. I literally couldn’t hurt him, which was all I could ever have asked for in a boyfriend. Though he was so much more.

And while he could certainly use his Influence on me, I could feel what he was doing because I wasn’t human. With a little practice—at his suggestion—I’d learned to break his hold on my willpower. Which meant he couldn’t hurt me either.

We were both weird and scary. When I was being truly honest with myself, I had to admit we were monsters, both manipulating people for our own benefit. But we were a matched set of monsters. We balanced each other out. Kept each other in check.

Nash and I were made for one another.

“Okay, are you ready?” I asked, hesitantly.

He nodded, and his eyes took on this weird look they sometimes got—like the colors in them weren’t quite steady—and he grinned. “Yeah, but make it fun, Bina.”

I returned his grin with a sultry one of my own. “Fun” was the least I could do.

As one of several kinds of empaths, I can typically read people’s general emotional state at a glance, no matter what they’re trying to hide. But it usually takes some small amount of physical contact for me to accurately read someone’s fears—to get the nitty gritty details. With everyone else, that contact had to be subtle and small to keep from completely freaking them out.

With Nash, I got to be truly hands-on.

I climbed onto the chair with him again and kissed him, long and deep. His mouth opened against mine, and my tongue met his. Dimly, I felt his hands on my hips, anchoring me on his lap, but then all that faded into the background in a single instant.

I saw his deepest fear in that moment, and it looked like ... me.

Huh? Nash was afraid of me? That was new. And weird.

In his mind—or maybe somewhere deeper and darker, wherever fear truly lives—I lay on his bed, in his room, in only my Cowboys tee and underwear. I remembered that night.

But why would he be scared of that?

As I watched, he lay on the bed next to me, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. I remembered that too. He was so warm, and he’d smelled so good.

But this was Nash’s fear-memory, not mine, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when what I remembered didn’t happen next. Instead of kissing me and touching me and looking at me like the world suddenly existed only in my eyes, this fear-Nash climbed on top of me and...

The fear-me tried to stop him, but then he leaned down and whispered something in my ear, and my hand fell limp at my side. I stared at the ceiling over his shoulder as his mouth and hands wandered.

And that’s when I understood. He wasn’t scared of me. He was scared of himself. Nash was terrified that he’d Influenced me.

No!

I pulled away from him and stared, my lips still warm from his. “No. Nash, that’s not how it happened.”

His brow furrowed. “What did you see?”

“Us. That night...” I swallowed, then met his gaze so he could see the truth in mine. “You’re afraid that you made me.”

He closed his eyes, and his head fell against the back of the chair. “Or that I will make you.”

“But you didn’t. You never have, and you never will.”

He lifted his head, and now his gaze was searching. Worried. “How do you know? I don’t even know I’m doing it half the time.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m pretty new at this, Sabine.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“No, not that.” Nash shook his head and started over. “Well, that too, but that’s not what I meant. Male bean sidhes are born with a little bit of Influence, but we don’t really come into our full potential until puberty.” His face flushed, but his jaw line was firm—he was determined to spit out whatever he had to say. “Anyway, I’m not very good at controlling it yet. Tod says that’s normal, and I’ll gain a lot of control in the next couple of years, but right now I still ... accidentally ... Sometimes I make people do things without meaning to. And I don’t want that to ever happen with you.”

I kissed him again because I couldn’t think of a better rebuttal. And when I pulled away, he looked a little calmer. “Nash, you don’t Influence me. I don’t think you could, even if you wanted to. I’m not exactly a pushover. Not neutered, remember?” I smiled and was relieved to see him grin in return.

Nash laughed out loud, and I kissed him one more time before climbing out of his lap. “Well, I guess you’re not the problem,” he said, as I settled onto the edge of the bed again.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” I’d almost forgotten the point of our little experiment. “So, if it’s not me, it’s them, right? Or something that’s happening to them.”

“What could be happening to them?”

“I don’t know, but the last time I felt that kind of mindless acceptance was when you Influenced the ticket guy into letting us watch The Last House on the Left at the movie theater. He felt like these girls felt. Like he was at peace with a decision he hadn’t even made for himself.”

“You’re saying someone’s Influencing the Holser girls?”

“No...” I frowned again. “There aren’t any men on the staff—much less bean sidhe men—and anyway, I’m pretty sure I’d know if that were happening. Besides, Influence wears off almost as soon as you stop talking, so it couldn’t be any of the dads visiting today, because none of them were outside with the girls I tasted. This is something else. It just feels similar to Influence.”

“Sabine, whatever it is, it’ll probably wear off. It wasn’t like this the day you got here, right?”

“Right.” BethAnne had felt anything but calm and accepting.

Nash nodded. “And you can’t swear it was like this yesterday. Chances are everything will be fine tomorrow, and you’ll gorge yourself on some poor girl’s agoraphobia.”

After BethAnne’s nightmare, such a simple fear would be a relief. “And if you’re wrong?”

Nash sighed. “I’m not going to talk you out of digging into this, am I?”

“Why would you try? A girl’s gotta eat.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Sabine, you’re supposed to be lying low. It works the same way in here as it does out there.” He gestured toward my window, to indicate the outside world. “Your best chance of survival is to go completely unnoticed by humans.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “More of your mom’s advice?”

“She’s eighty years old, Sabine.” Though she looked less than thirty. “She knows what she’s talking about.”

“Not this time.” I shook my head firmly and pushed his hands away when he tried to pull me closer. “My best chance of survival is not to starve to death.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’d refuse to leave this alone even if you weren’t hungry?”

I shrugged. “At least it’ll pass the time.”

“You have to learn to let things go, Sabine.” He took a deep breath and met my gaze, then spat out what was really bothering him—the reason for the frustration I could taste in the air around him. “You should have told me about Tucker. I would have handled it.”

“Nash, that was months ago. And I don’t need you to handle things for me.” Besides, knowing what I now knew about his tenuous control, I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d handled it, Tucker would have gotten a sudden, irresistible urge to walk into rush-hour traffic. “I just need you to be here.”

“I know.” He sighed again and leaned forward and pulled something out of his back pocket. “This is for when you need me and I can’t be here.” He handed me a small, slim flip phone. The pay-as-you-go, over-the-counter variety. “They’ll take it away if they see it, so leave it on silent and be careful. But call me if you need to talk.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I kissed him, and when I finally pulled away, he stood. “Does this mean you have to go?”