Dark Kiss (Harlequin Teen) (10 page)

Bishop’s blue eyes sparked with emotion as he studied me. Nobody had ever looked at me like that in my entire life, like he could overpower me in an instant but was trying very hard to hold himself back.

When he turned away from me, my heart lurched and I thought he was going to walk away. But he didn’t. After doing another sweep of the area, probably to make sure we didn’t have an audience, he grabbed hold of the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up. Not all the way, but enough for me to see some skin.

It was fairly dark in this corner of Crave, but there was enough light to see the imprint on his back. It was different from Kraven’s black, batlike tattoo. This was more of an outline with some light shading. It looked like actual feathers. Then again, Kraven was a demon and Bishop was…

An angel.

I still wanted to deny it, but that was getting harder with every passing minute.

“You see it?” he asked, glancing at me over his shoulder.

I nodded. He was about to pull his shirt back down, but I wasn’t finished yet.

“Wait.” I drew closer to him so I could get a better look—was it ink or something else? I ran my fingers over the lines to find it didn’t feel like anything but smooth skin. But I felt something else—an energy, a hum, that warmed me being this close to him.

When I’d touched him the first time, I’d had that strange vision that had since faded. For a while, I’d assumed it was just my imagination running wild, but now I wasn’t so sure. Bishop looked like a painfully attractive boy with dark hair and vivid blue eyes, but he wasn’t that. Not at all.

“You’re an angel,” I finally said.

“Thank you for the confirmation. All done?”

Suddenly, I realized that I was touching his back in an intimate way. My cheeks flamed and I pulled my hand away so fast it was comical. Bishop lowered his shirt and glanced at me as if he, too, was surprised I’d been touching him that way only minutes after telling him how much I hated him.

An angel. Here in Trinity.

And I’d just totally groped him in public.

“Sam?” Carly approached us slowly. I guess she was done chatting.

I cringed and turned to look at her. “Uh-huh?”

“Um, what’s going on?”

Good question. I wondered how much of that she’d witnessed. By the look on her face, probably too much.

“Nothing.” Denial was always a nice thing, even when it didn’t help at all.

“Who’s he?” She glanced at Bishop.

“Nobody. We should go now.” I grabbed her arm and started to direct her toward the exit. I felt a strong urge to get Carly somewhere much safer. And I needed to regroup and decide what to do about my problem.

“Leave? Right when it looks like you’re starting to have some fun?” She was actually smiling. My life was falling apart, and she thought it was hilarious.

“No, Samantha,” Bishop said. “We’re not done here. There’s too much to do to wait another day. I need your help now.”

Carly waggled her eyebrows. “He needs your help, Sam. That sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not like that.” I pulled her farther away from the blue-eyed angel. We were so close to the exit. Just another dozen feet to freedom. I stole another glance at Bishop, who’d stopped following and was now staring at me, and ignored my racing heart.

“I knew there was a reason we came here tonight,” she whispered. “I thought it was so you could confront Stephen, but it was so you could meet this guy. He’s a total hottie. You had your hands all over him just now! And he looked like he didn’t want you to stop. Guess you’re breaking that no-romance rule of yours, aren’t you?”

I grimaced. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”

“Sure, it wasn’t.” Her smile faded a little. “I’m all for you finding someone awesome and gorgeous. As long as it isn’t Colin.”

Oh, yes. Thanks so much for the reminder. I dreaded seeing him again tomorrow. He’d asked me out and then I’d nearly accosted his mouth. There was no way he wasn’t going to take that the wrong way. He probably thought I was into him.

For the record, I wasn’t. However, just thinking about how close I’d come to kissing him made my stomach growl softly with hunger. That was disturbing.

Carly slanted a glance in Bishop’s direction. He stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall near the staircase. He wasn’t watching me now; his gaze was on the rest of the club as he did another security check.

“Can you give me a second?” I asked Carly.

“Are you going to give him your phone number?”

“Uh, yeah. My phone number. Sure.”

Her smile returned. “Go for it.”

“Wait here.” As I walked toward Bishop, his gaze locked with mine.

Again, my breath caught. He had a way of doing that to me effortlessly. It was kind of annoying. “It’s been a long day. I want to go home now.”

He shook his head. “You need to come with me.”

I exhaled shakily. “I just told you a few minutes ago that I never want to see you again.”

Yeah. Right before I’d groped him. Colin wasn’t the only one who was getting mixed messages from me this week.

“If I don’t find the others, they’ll be permanently lost, wandering the city, unsure of how they got here or who they are.” Frustration crossed his expression. “I should be able to find them myself, but I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” I asked.

Bishop shook his head. “The searchlights were my only clue, but they’re invisible to me. I must be damaged from entering the city. They told me I might be disoriented, but this is worse than that, and I don’t know why. It could jeopardize my entire mission. But there’s no way I can get a message to them that things went wrong. I’m on my own.”

I twisted a long piece of hair tightly around my finger. “So, the searchlights…why can I see something that you were supposed to see?”

“Good question.” His brows knitted together. “Maybe it was prearranged—a plan B nobody told me about. How else could you have found me last night?”

“I was on my way home, that’s all. I’m no plan B.” I swallowed hard. “I can’t deal with this right now. I need time to think.”

He touched my arm as I turned away. “You need me, Samantha. Without me, you’ll be back here again looking for that gray’s help.” He cast a dark glance at the lounge over our heads. “Trust me when I say that would be a big mistake.”

Tears burned my eyes, but I forced myself to blink them away. I’d be strong. It wasn’t like I had many other choices. “According to Stephen, losing a soul’s a great thing, but I know this hunger is bad. According to you, I could kill people if I lose control. And I could change into something else, right?”

He nodded. “If you can’t control your hunger, you’ll become mindless, like a zombie whose only desire is to feed.”

“Awesome. A kissing zombie.” He wasn’t easing my mind, and yet I hadn’t pulled away from him. “So what am I supposed to do?”

There was a short hesitation before he spoke again. “Help me. And I’ll help you.”

My breath caught. “You can help me?”

“I can.”

“But…how? My soul, it—it’s gone. Stephen said it’s gone forever. I can’t get it back.”

Bishop sent another glance through the club before locking gazes with me again. “He was wrong. I’ll help you restore your soul. I believe there’s a way.”

I felt a sharp, hopeful lurch in my chest. “How?”

“Here’s the thing. I’ll help you, Samantha, but you have to help me in return. That’s the deal.”

I looked at him bleakly. “I thought only demons and car salesmen made deals. Not angels.”

“I need you to find the others for me. I’ll make a deal with you to make that possible. It’s that simple.”

His controlled expression gave nothing away, but his blue eyes—they told another story. They were filled with worry, with hope, and all of it was directed at me. I held the fate of his mission in my hands—according to him, anyway. And he held my entire future in his.

If I made this choice to help him, my destiny would be irrevocably connected to an angel who frightened, angered and frustrated me, but also intrigued me more than I wanted to admit.

Even though I was essentially one of the monsters, he was willing to bargain with me. If there’d been an outbreak of vampires in the city, I wouldn’t blink at the thought of vampire hunters running around with wooden stakes taking care of the problem.

Then again, if I was one of the vampires…

“Would you have killed me last night in the alley if I hadn’t gotten away?” I finally asked. “Despite our ‘connection,’ despite me being ‘special’? Would you have?”

His brows drew together and it took him a moment to answer. “I hadn’t realized what you were until Kraven pointed it out, so it took me by surprise. I should be able to sense that, too. But you aren’t feeding, you aren’t putting anyone at risk. You’re coherent and thinking rationally. No, I wouldn’t have killed you.”

“Liar.”

His eyes flicked sharply to mine as if I’d insulted him. After all, he had just told me that angels didn’t lie. “I can’t change what’s happened so far or what you think I would or wouldn’t have done. The question is, what do you want to do next?”

Again, Bishop was so close to me that our bodies were almost touching. It was as if he was a magnet for me and I couldn’t resist his pull. “If I help you find your friends—and you help to restore my soul—you also have to promise to keep me safe, just like you told Stephen you would.”

I was revising the contract as we went along. My father was a lawyer, so I supposed it came naturally.

He raised an eyebrow. “Deal. I also have another condition of my own.”

Great. Although, I supposed it was only fair. “What is it?”

“When I need you to, you’ll help take the cloud away from my mind.”

“You need me to…?” I began, but then I got it. “You want me to touch you sometimes, because it takes your confusion away.”

“You seem to have that ability,” he said, his expression tight as if it pained him to admit it.

I’d twisted my hair so tight that the tip of my finger had turned a lovely shade of purple. “Deal. But I’m not touching you
all
the time.” Which was too bad, really.…

“No, definitely not all the time.” But something slid behind his gaze then. Something that went against his words.

I’d started breathing quicker and hadn’t taken a single step away from him, despite how adamant I’d tried to sound about keeping my distance. God, what was wrong with me? He affected me like no boy I’d ever known.

Maybe because he wasn’t a boy at all.

I shivered.

Fine. I’d help him. I had no other choice from where I stood, other than going back upstairs and getting cozy with Stephen and his new “brothers and sisters.”

Carly must have gotten tired of waiting, because suddenly there she was, stretching her hand out to Bishop.

“I’m Carly, by the way,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

Bishop hesitated a moment before he shook Carly’s hand. “Bishop.”

“So are we leaving or what, Sam? What’s going on?”

That was the question of the day. What was going on?

I might not feel like a monster who hungered for human souls, but kissing Stephen had changed me and could eventually take me down a very dark road if I didn’t do anything to fix it. Bishop had said he could restore my soul, which would take away the hunger I now constantly felt.