Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

up. Touch me. His hand on my neck arcs me up until my breasts press against his chest. I wrap my arms around his neck and feel the flame spread, gliding across my flesh like the touch of his hot tongue. He tilts his head back, his dreadlocks wreathed in blue flame.

Oh, yeah, he thinks, and I can feel the tremendous pleasure he takes in absorbing and shaping the amplified energy. His horns unfurl from his brow. I watch them grow in wonder. They’re beautiful. Terrifying. Black and lustrous, they recurve above his head. He continues to move without effort, nodding his head to the beat as if a huge pair of bull’s horns hadn’t just sprouted from his forehead.

The flanged tip of his tail slides across my belly, a warm pressure. His tail wraps around my waist, holds me tightly as we continue to dance.

Jou—

He opens his eyes, burning with power. I can smell it, the heavy, smoky fragrance. The wonder and strength of his true form. I drink it down and fall into him.

Later, maybe an hour, maybe three hours, I’ve lost track of time while Jou and I have been riding the ripcurl of power, I stumble to the bar for a glass of water. My mouth’s so dry my tongue’s sticking to the roof of my mouth. Jou’s still dancing. He could take his pick of partners. Despite the fact that he’s very clearly with me, a bewildering range of people have tried to dance with him. Drawn irresistibly to the gravitational well of his allure. The man in the see-through shirt. A woman in sensible heels and pearls who looks so out of place I just stare at her, bemused, until I realize she’s not a woman at all. Real girls, pierced and plain. A man who glitters in my peripheral vision and whose golden good looks are too perfect to be real. Some sort of fae. Jou ignores them all.

I wait until one of the bartenders takes pity on me and shoves a plastic cup of water across the polished bar top. Glazed and dehydrated, I turn to look at the dance floor while I sip from the cup.

A tall black shadow detaches itself from one of the columns between the bar and dance floor. It takes a few steps toward me and I stiffen, tucking my hand behind my back, ready to reach for my kama. God knows what anyone with the Sight has been thinking while they’ve watched us dance.

Then I recognize the silhouette, the breadth of the shoulders, the fringe of cornrows framing the muscled neck. I let my hand drop.

“Saul,” I say.

He smiles, a flash of pearl in the strobing darkness. “Hey, Zee.” I can hear his tenor clearly over the beat. He always had a surprisingly high voice for such a big man. “Busy tonight, huh?”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, too shocked to be polite. In our six months together, we never went dancing. Neither of us even mentioned it. I can’t reconcile him with this place.

“I came with some friends.” He nods back towards the column, where two other men stand, looking out at the dance floor and nursing their beers. One of them wears a tee that says: If at first you don’t succeed: Control-Alt-Delete.

“Work friends?” I ask. It comes out more nastily than I mean it to. I met Saul when I hired one of the ubiquitous IT consulting firms that cluster around M.I.T. to install a server and two workstations at my old office. I got Office 2004 thrown into the deal; Saul got a date.

“Yeah. What about you?” He nods back at the dance floor, and over his shoulder, I see a huge, horned shape, still wreathed in blue flame, making its way towards us. “New guy?”

“This is Jou,” I say, as the demon brushes past Saul and comes to lean against the bar behind me. He waves for a beer, and instantly gets the attention of not one but two of the bar staff. Where I had to wait for nearly five minutes with my throat so dry I couldn’t swallow, the demon’s served in under ten seconds. There’s no justice in the world.

Jou slides his arm around my waist. And this is Saul-the-prick-who-couldn’t-hack-it.

Please, don’t. I stand rigid in the demon’s embrace. I don’t want to shove my date in Saul’s face, or hurt him anymore than I already have.

I’ve hurt enough people today.

“Saul,” he introduces himself, holding out a hand, which Jou reaches around me to shake. Saul doesn’t have the Sight. He can’t see the talons on the hand he’s shaking. Or the blue flames that still lick over the demon’s skin.

I shudder and squeeze my eyes closed.

“How’ve you been, Zee?” Saul asks.

I nod, open my eyes. “Good. You?”

“Okay. You’d know, if you’d ever take my calls.”

I shake my head helplessly.

Saul holds up his coffee-colored palms. “We can’t be friends?”

No, we can’t. It’s too hard. Too much like lying, to segregate those parts of my life that Saul can understand and accept from the parts he can’t.

I turn to Jou. “Can we go home?”

He looks down at me, his eyes shadowed, just a glint of neon deep in the blackness. “Sure.”

Saul backs up a step. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

I absolve him with a quick shake of my head. “I’m tired.”

Another lie. I’m not tired, just thirsty. Dancing with the demon is a massive rush and I could do it forever. But bumping into Saul, being forcibly reminded of the world outside the fiery envelope the demon’s created, has killed my high. The night’s poisoned. I want to go home.

The demon pushes his half-finished beer back across the bar and settles his hand on the nape of my neck. “C’mon.”

Saul sticks out his hand with a forced smile. “Sorry, man.”

The demon shakes it again. “No problem.”

“Zee, I’ll call you.”

I nod absently – I’m still not going to take his calls – and let the demon propel me towards the