Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

“That’d be—” Colin started, and a burst of panic jolted through me. I might be just one person, but I had to at least try every tactic I could, other consequences be damned. His soul was on the line right now.

I curled my fingers around Colin’s elbow. “We have that thing tonight,” I interrupted, soft and even, and he turned to me for the first time since I’d come out.

“Thing?” he said with obvious confusion.

I squeezed his arm and bobbed up on my toes to press my lips to his.

I didn’t want to overdo it, but I did need him to feel the promise I was making. To remember the desires between us still unfulfilled. I leaned close enough that my breast grazed his chest, tangling my fingers in his hair to give him that tug I knew he loved as I parted my lips, and then I eased back. Joel or Kevin let out a catcall behind us, and they both laughed, but I didn’t care. Colin was staring at me and only me, hunger lit in his amber eyes. He seemed to study me for one long, heart wrenching moment. I looked back at him as openly as I could, hoping he could see the affection and longing that brief touch had sent rushing through me. This wasn’t just a tactic. I was every bit as hungry as he was.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Right,” he said with a rasp. “The thing.” His gaze darted to the Glower. “It sounds like a great opportunity. I’ll get in touch to find out another good time to drop in.”

“My number is on the back of the card,” she said. He gave her a curt nod and a wave, already swiveling toward the car, his hand closing around mine. His thumb traced back and forth across my knuckles as we walked, a promise of his own, and a slow flush crept over my body.

We barely spoke on the drive back. Every time I thought of opening my mouth, all I wanted to be doing was kissing Colin again. When we stopped at a red light, he reached over to touch my knee, his fingers drifting over my inner thigh. The second time, he edged my skirt a little higher, and the third time even higher, until I thought I would melt into the seat.

Outside the condo building, he tossed the keys to the valet and practically dragged me to the elevator, not that I had any intention of dawdling. Just as he’d stepped closer to me, a white-haired resident in a jogging suit loped on, pressing the button for the fifth floor.

Colin and I stood there silently, our arms brushing, my heart thumping, as the numbers lit up one by one. The jogger got off. The door closed. Colin let out a rough sigh of relief and caught me in his arms. He kissed me against the elevator wall, one hand pressing me to him, the other sliding over my hip and along my thigh, raising my leg against his. I could feel him against me through his jeans, already hard. The sensation sent a thrill through me. I teased my fingers down his chest, kissing him back just as eagerly.

Whatever this meant, wherever it ended, I needed it. This. Him.

We dashed for the penthouse door, and Colin kicked it shut behind us. Before the lock had even clicked into place, he’d tugged my face to his to continue those desperate kisses. I broke from him with a ragged breath to yank his shirt over his head; another kiss and he’d discarded mine. He walked me backwards to the hall as he disengaged my bra, the muscles of his shoulders quivering with anticipation beneath my fingers, his tongue demanding as it swept around mine.

Before I’d had more than a glimmer of doubt at the thought of taking this encounter into the bedroom I’d seen at least two other women sharing with him, he nudged open the door to my room.

“Is this okay?” he said hoarsely, his hands running up over my stomach to the base of my breasts, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t have agreed to in that moment.

“Just don’t stop,” I said, with a catch in my throat as he rolled one nipple beneath his thumb.

We sank onto the bed, shoving aside the tangle of sheets I hadn’t bothered to smooth this morning, still kissing. Colin straddled me, tearing his lips from mine to lick and nibble a searing path down my neck and over my collarbone, capturing the other nipple in his mouth. As he laved it with his tongue, I arched my neck back with a gasp. For a hazy minute I surrendered to his attentions completely. Then my fingers slipped down over the tight muscles of his abdomen to the top of his jeans. I gripped the buckle of his belt determinedly.

“Not yet,” Colin murmured. He trailed his mouth to my other breast, and then down, over my stomach where it dipped to my belly button, his hands traveling up my thighs under my skirt. His thumbs hooked around my panties and edged them down, inch by torturous inch, as each press of his lips eased closer to the core of me. I whimpered, bowing up to meet him. He pushed my skirt up to my waist and then his mouth was there, devouring the hottest, hungriest part of me.

I cried out as his tongue flicked over the sensitive nub there, a jolt of pleasure radiating through me. He dipped lower to lap my opening, and my hips bucked. Much more and I’d have come apart right then, but that wasn’t what I wanted. We’d waited long enough.

“Come here,” I said with a tug of his hair. Colin swept his tongue over me again, forcing a moan from my lungs. Then he surged up over me, our bodies flush, my taste musky on his lips as we kissed. I reached for his belt again, and this time he didn’t stop me. I felt the hitch of breath from his chest to mine as I released the buckle and popped the snap beneath. His length pressed against the zipper as I slid it down. I trailed my thumb over the thin fabric of his boxers and he groaned.

“I want you,” I heard myself saying. “Please.”

Colin let out a shuddering laugh as he kicked off his jeans. “You don’t have to ask twice.”

He straightened up, kneeling over me as he retrieved a packet from his wallet. I took the opportunity to ease down those boxers and coax out his erection. I hadn’t really seen him in the pool last night, through the water and its reflections. I traced the veins corded through the silky skin that seemed at odds with the hardness of him, loving the hum my touch drew from his throat. He ripped the packet open and paused, gazing down at me.

I rested my hand over his, and we slicked the condom over him together. He conformed his body to mine again, kissing my jaw, fondling my breasts, as the solid length of him rubbed between my legs, provoking a hum of my own. I raised my knees to his waist.

“Please,” I whispered, and he guided himself in.

My eyes drifted shut and a sigh slipped from my mouth as he filled me, hard and hot in all the best ways, sliding easily against the abundant wetness inside. He moved slowly, teasingly, until all I felt was him, above me, within me. I opened my eyes and found him watching my face with an expression so tender it called butterflies into my chest.

“Colin,” I said before I’d realized I was going to speak.

“Yeah?” he murmured.

I couldn’t say the words that had been on the tip of my tongue, that ached in my throat. He’d think I was ridiculous. It’d only been a few weeks. Maybe those words weren’t even true. But I wanted to give him something to answer the affection in his eyes.

“I’m happy,” I said.

His smile sent warmth through parts of me I hadn’t thought could get any hotter. “Me too.”

He pulled back and pushed into me again, a little faster, and a little faster. My legs squeezed around him. I rocked with him, urging him on, and he groaned. He gripped the curve of my hips and tilted them up so he could angle even deeper. His length pressed against the sensitive spot inside, building and building to that magical peak.

“You feel so good, Avery,” he muttered against my cheek. “So damn good.”

I ran my fingernails down his back and his muscles trembled in response. I had no capacity for words left at all. I arched higher, embracing him with everything in me. He nipped the corner of my jaw, thrusting harder, and I hit my release. Pleasure rolled through me, making my legs shake and my breath quaver. Colin moaned, his hips jerking.

I coasted on the pulsing tingles of the aftermath for a few dreamy moments as he slowed inside me. Then he withdrew, but only for a second. He lay back and carefully gathered me against him, his chest still heaving and his breath rasping as he kissed the top of my head.

I wasn’t sure how long we lay there like that, sprawled together, naked except for the skirt bunched around my waist. I nestled my head against his shoulder, gliding my fingers up and down his sternum, lost in the warmth of him and the feel of skin against skin, the salty-sweet smell of him mixed with the lingering hint of pine. For that short stretch of time, I almost believed it could be this simple: him and me and no one else. No Glowers, no demanding record label execs or Society supervisors, no restless bandmates. I almost believed that nothing else could touch us, let alone harm us, as long as we could breath in the same rhythm.

Then Colin cupped my face to brush a strand of hair back behind my ear, and I felt his body tense against mine as if he were readying himself.

“Avery,” he said, “I need to tell you something.”

“What?” I said. It was a struggle keeping my voice from breaking over that one word, but I managed it. The possibilities flitted through my head as my hand stilled on his chest. He wanted to be sure I understood this didn’t mean anything beyond the act itself. He needed me to know it couldn’t happen again. He was going to ask for me to be reassigned. I wanted to be prepared for the worst.

“I know what you’re doing for me,” he said. “I know what you’re trying to protect me from.”

That statement was so distant from anything I’d been expecting that I couldn’t help laughing. “From your particularly reckless impulses?” I suggested. “From ill-advised decisions? I’m pretty sure we covered that in the introductions.”

“No,” Colin said. “I mean I know about the ones that glow.”

13.

“W
hat?” I said, sitting up beside Colin in the bed. My heart thudded against my ribs, a hollow echo of the thrum that had filled my body not so long ago.

Colin gazed up at me, his head propped on one arm, those amber eyes as captivating as ever beneath his thick lashes. His muscled chest rose and fell where my fingers were still resting on it. He lay his hand over mine, grasping it and holding it there.

“I thought you should know,” he said. “I’ve felt like an ass, pretending not to have a clue. And you shouldn’t feel like you have to keep trying to protect me. I know what they are. I know what I’m doing.”

My mind was still reeling. The warmth of his skin against mine provided none of its earlier comfort. “I think I need you to back up a little,” I said. “You know this how?”

“Well, I— I’m sure you have a better understanding of how the whole thing works,” Colin said. “But as far as I’ve figured out... The British rocker I told you about, the one who mentored me a bit? I adjusted that story.”

My memory tripped back to that conversation over the restaurant table. Oh.
Oh
. “You said you found
out
that he’d hung himself...”

“I found him,” Colin said, his voice going rough. “Right after. He’d given me the key to his house in the city before he left, in case I needed a break from the dorms sometimes, and I went over as soon as I heard he was back in town, didn’t even wait for him to get in touch. And—” He stopped, his gaze sliding away as his expression clouded in remembrance.

Oh, Colin. I could picture him—the lankier, ganglier, though no less charming younger version of himself—bounding up the front steps to the door, rushing inside eager to reestablish that connection with the makeshift musical family he’d started to construct, and then...

Despite my shock at his revelation, my fingers tightened around his in sympathy.

“I guess that’s how it happens?” he said. “Being able to notice them? You were there, when your dad...”

I nodded. “No one knew?” I said quietly. “That you’d found him?” If his discovery of the death had been reported anywhere, the Society would have reached out to him the way it had to Mom and me, to find out if a Glower had been involved and if he’d gained the sight.

“I was freaked out,” Colin said. “I could tell he was gone. I didn’t know what the thing I’d seen was or what it might do to me. So I took off. I called 9-1-1 from a payphone and hiked back to the dorms. Never told anyone I’d been there.”

He drew in a breath and looked at me again. “I figured it out. There are so many of them in this city, when you’re in certain crowds—I saw how they acted, what they said to people, what sort of people they went after, and what came out of that... I might not know as much as your Society does, but it’s not that hard to pick up the basics.”

“Then why the hell have you been acting like such an idiot?” I burst out, unable to contain myself. My hand slipped from his as I threw both of mine in the air. “Talking to them, letting them get close to you—that one in Austin would have marked you if I’d gotten there any later!”

“Marked?” Colin said, frowning.

“That’s what we call it,” I said. “When they... latch onto one person, so they can feed off their energy more quickly. When you see someone with them, who has a little glowing spot, right here.” I touched my chest over my heart, the place where the break-dancer’s body had glimmered the other night in the club. “It’s not something you can play around with, you know. Once they’ve got a line in you, there’s no way to break it. None that we’ve found, anyway.”

He rubbed his eyes with a broken laugh. “I didn’t know it was that easy.”

“That’s why I’m
here
,” I said, “and the people the Society sent before me. Why didn’t you say something to begin with? We could have explained the stuff you don’t know, what to watch out for, how to ward them off, where to—”

“Avery,” Colin said, cutting me off. He caught my hand again, rubbing his thumb over my palm. His eyes had gone so serious my voice died in my throat. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you now,” he said softly. “I don’t want to watch out. I’ve been trying to get their attention, to look like an appealing target, so one of them will
want
to mark me.”

The words knocked the air from my lungs. Because I knew the instant he said them how true they were. Like a shift in the light that turns what appeared to be a mishmash of shapes into a coherent picture, all the crazy inexplicable things he’d done since I’d started this assignment—the grandstanding in the clubs, the faked highs, the shout to the Glower outside the condo building—no longer looked so inexplicable. In fact, they made a horrifying sort of sense. Even today, he must have seen the Glower outside and sent me off on the wild goose chase for the imaginary picks because of that, knowing I wouldn’t give her a chance to talk if we went out together.