But all of a sudden he let go and fell. I watched in a sort of slow-motion horror as he neared, grabbed me, and pressed the button on my harness. I was sure we were going to hit the ground, but at the last moment he pushed against the bookshelf with his legs and, wrapping his arms around my torso protectively, landed on an overstuffed sofa—the same one we’d sat on for the disastrous interview with Mariana and Dominic.
I stared, dazed, at the ceiling, my heart racing furiously. And then I went limp and laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
“That’s odd,” I heard Adrian murmur from underneath me a few moments later.
“What?” I said, trying to limit myself to an occasional happy chuckle as tears leaked down my face. I wiped them away with the back of my hand.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before.”
I wanted to turn around and look at his face, see what he was feeling—and at the same time I didn’t.
I shrugged, still smiling. “I haven’t run around like that in a long time.”
“Endorphins.”
“Mmm,” I said, which he misinterpreted as an invitation for a verbatim recitation of the word’s definition.
“When you participate in physically demanding activities, your body produces endorphins. Endo means ‘inside,’ and orphin is short for ‘morphine,’ so it’s like morphine that your body creates to bond to receptors in your nervous system and dull pain, which makes you feel good.”
I wriggled around to face him. “You’re a huge word nerd; you know that, right?”
But it was a bad idea to turn around. Bad because my arms were resting on either side of his face. Bad because we were lying down. Bad because I was lying down on top of him. Bad because we were alone. Bad because the firelight made his silver eyes bright and deep and beautiful. Bad because my heart was racing suddenly, and the temperature had skyrocketed about fifteen degrees. Bad because his hand had somehow ended up on my hip, and bad because I realized I was basically straddling him.
“Am I interrupting?”
I was so scared I actually jumped about five feet in the air, doing an involuntary backward flip and hanging upside down with my hair pointing everywhere as a strange figure stared at me from the end of the couch.
“Hello, Julian,” Adrian called from where I’d left him. He put his hands behind his head and smiled at his brother and then at me, looking amused.
I awkwardly flipped right side up again and felt all the blood drain back down out of my face. I blinked a few times and then looked at what was apparently Adrian’s older brother. He was barefoot, too, wearing expensive jeans and a linen shirt that was completely unbuttoned, revealing a chest and abdomen so sculpted they looked fake. He had medium-brown hair that fell in a perfectly tousled mess a few inches shorter than Adrian’s. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were from here, but something dark. He was different from Adrian, but certainly lived in the same sphere of physical perfection.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a very nice smile. “You must be the infamous Caitlin Holte.”
“Hi—yes—I mean, I am.”
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on slowing my heartbeat, which, in the company of vampires, was way more embarrassing than my inability to speak.
“Be nice,” I heard Adrian warn his brother from the couch, although he sounded more amused than threatening. I pressed the button on the harness, lowered myself to the coffee table, and hopped lightly to the floor. Trying to salvage some of my pride, I walked over and held out my hand.
“It’s nice to finally meet you.”
He grinned and shook it slowly. “The pleasure is absolutely mine.”
He raised my fingers to his lips and placed a light kiss on my knuckles, his focus entirely on me. I was close enough now to see that his eyes were a curious brown-blue, a combination I’d never seen before. They were absolutely gorgeous.
“Julian, now that you’re back in subfreezing weather, do you think it might be wise to dress more—natively?” Adrian asked drolly from his place on the couch. Julian looked down at his bare chest.
“Oh, I suppose. I’ve been used to being naked for so long, I forgot what clothing felt like.” He glanced at me. “They paint me as an angel most of the time. And as everyone knows, angels fly around the heavens rejoicing in the Lord in the nude.”
I swallowed. Adrian rolled his eyes.
“You’re a model?”
“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. “I don’t need the money, but I do so love promoting the arts.”
“Such a sacrifice,” Adrian commented.
Julian smiled. “I do what I can.” He draped himself across the opposite couch and asked, “So what’re you kids up to?”
The word choice struck me as funny—and then I remembered he wasn’t really our age. He looked fresh out of high school.
“We were just working on some chemistry homework,” Adrian said coolly.
Julian slowly eyed the two of us, the corner of his mouth tilting up. “Uh-huh.”
“Actually, I need to go finish, so why don’t you two catch up while … I … do that.”