1

“Just a kiss?”

Excitement thrummed through my veins as I tugged my gaze from the TV screen to Clay Armstrong. It took a moment for my wonky vision to focus and piece Clay’s face together.

Just a few months older than me, he was beyond cute, with light brown hair that was always flopping over his forehead and just begging for my fingers to run through it.

Then again, I’d never seen an unattractive Warden even though I didn’t have it in me to do the mental gymnastics to figure out how they looked like a human and then like a Warden.

Clay sat beside me on the couch in his parents’ living room. We were alone, and I wasn’t quite sure what life choices I’d made to end up with me sitting here beside him, our thighs touching. Like all Wardens, he was so incredibly bigger than me, even though I was five foot eight and not what one would normally consider a short girl.

Clay had always been friendlier toward me than most of the Wardens, flirty even, and I liked it—he gave me the kind of attention that I saw between others but never had been on the receiving end of until now. No one in the Warden community besides my friend Jada, and of course Misha, paid much attention to me, and neither of them wanted to kiss me.

But Clay was always nice, complimenting me even when I knew I looked like a hot mess, and for the past couple of weeks, he’d sought me out a lot. I liked it.

And there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with that.

So, when he’d approached me at the Pit, which was just a really large fire pit where younger Wardens gathered at night to hang out, and asked if I wanted to come back to his place to watch a movie, I didn’t have to be asked twice.

Now Clay wanted to kiss me.

And I wanted to be kissed.

“Trinity?” he said, and I flinched when I saw that his fingers were suddenly close to my face. He caught a piece of hair that had fallen against my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. His hand lingered. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Disappearing on me,” he said. I had, and I did that a lot. “Where’d you go?”

I smiled. “Nowhere. I’m here.”

Those Warden eyes, a bright sky blue, peered into mine. “Good.”

My smile grew.

“Just a kiss?” he repeated.

The excitement went up a notch and I exhaled slowly. “Just a kiss.”

He smiled as he leaned in, tilting his head so our mouths lined up. Mine parted in anticipation. I’d been kissed before. Once. Well, I’d done the kissing. I’d kissed Misha when I was sixteen, and he’d kissed me back, but then it became really weird because he was like a brother to me, and neither of us were about that kind of life.

Plus, things weren’t supposed to be like that between Misha and me, because of what he was.

Because of what I was.

Clay’s lips touched mine, and they were warm and...dry. Surprise flickered through me. I thought they’d be, I don’t know, wetter. But it was...nice, especially when the pressure of the kiss increased and his lips parted mine, and then it was more. His mouth moved against mine, and I kissed him back.

I didn’t want to stop him when the hand along the nape of my neck slid down my back, to my hip. That felt nice, too, and when he eased me down, I went with it, placing my hands on his shoulders as he hovered over me, using his arm to support his weight so he didn’t crush me.

Wardens’ body temperatures ran high—higher than humans, higher than mine—but he seemed hotter, like he was about to burn up.

And I...I felt sort of...lukewarm.

We kissed and kissed, and those kisses weren’t dry anymore, and I liked the way his lower body had settled over mine, how it moved against mine, a mysterious rhythm that felt like it should be, could be, more—if I wanted that.

And that was...nice.

Nice like when he’d held my hand on the way to his place. So was the candle he’d lit that smelled like watermelon and lemonade—there was something romantic about that, and about the way his hand opened and closed on my hip. I felt warm and pleasant, not rip my clothes off and let’s get it on kind of excited, but this was... It was really nice.

Then his hand was under my shirt and up, over my breast.

Hold up.

I reached down and grabbed his hand as I pulled away, separating his mouth from mine. “Whoa.”

“What?” His eyes were still closed, his hand was still on my breast and his hips were still moving.

“I said just a kiss,” I reminded him, tugging on his hand. “That’s more than a kiss.”

“You’re not having a good time?”

Was I? I had been, key word being had. “Not anymore.”

I had no idea what it was about not anymore that somehow translated into kiss me again, but that’s what Clay did. He pressed his mouth to mine, and that pressure was no longer nice. It was almost bruising.

Irritation flared to life like a lit match. Tightening my hand on his arm, I pulled it out from under my shirt. I pushed on his chest, breaking the kiss.

I glared up at him. “Get off.”

“I was trying to,” he grumbled, lifting up, but that was not remotely fast enough for me after that gross comment.

I pushed—pushed hard. Clay toppled off me and to the side, into nothing but open space. He landed on the floor, his weight rattling the TV and causing the flames on the candle to flicker.

“What the Hell?” Clay demanded, sitting up. He looked thunderstruck that I was capable of doing what I’d just done.

“I told you I wasn’t enjoying this.” I swung my legs off the couch and stood. “And you didn’t stop.”

Clay stared up at me, blinking slowly in shock. It was like he didn’t even hear me. “You pushed me off you.”

“Yeah, I did, because you’re gross.” I stepped over his legs and stalked past the window, heading for the door.

He powered to his feet. “You didn’t seem to think it was gross when you were begging me to kiss you.”

“What? Okay. Fake news right there,” I snapped. “I didn’t beg you. You asked me if you could kiss me and I said just a kiss. Don’t rewrite what just happened.”

“Whatever. You know what, I wasn’t even into it.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned back to the door. “Sure felt like you were.”

“Only because you’re the only female here that won’t expect me to mate with her.”

Mating in Warden terms didn’t mean hooking up. It meant getting married and having a metric crap ton of little Warden babies, and I was beyond insulted at this point. Not just because that was superwrong of him to say, but it also struck close to home.

There was no one here for me, no relationship that could ever be considered serious. Wardens didn’t mix with humans.

They didn’t even mix with my kind.

“I’m sure I’m not the only female here that doesn’t want to mate with you, you jackass.”

Clay moved with the speed of a Warden. One moment he was beside the couch and the next he was in front of me. “You don’t need to be a—”

“Choose your words wisely, buddy.” Irritation was quickly turning into anger, and I tried to calm down, because...bad things happened when I got angry.

And those bad things usually involved blood.

A muscle thrummed along his jaw and his chest rose with a deep breath before his handsome face smoothed out. “You know, let’s start over.” His hand moved outside my central vision and landed on my shoulder. I jumped, startled by the unexpected contact.

Wrong move on his part, because I did not like to be startled.

I caught his arm. “Can you let me know how much it hurts when you hit the ground?”

“What?” Clay’s mouth hung open slightly.

“Because you’re about to hit it really hard.” I twisted his arm, and there was a brief second when I saw the shock flash across his face. He was a Warden in training, preparing to be the warrior the world knew the Wardens as, and he didn’t understand how I’d gained the upper hand so quickly.

And then he wasn’t thinking anything.

I spun him around and leaned back on my right leg. I kicked out with my left, not holding a damn thing back as my foot connected perfectly with the center of his back. Incredibly proud of myself, I waited for him to eat the floor.

Except that wasn’t what happened.

Clay flew across the room and hit the window. Glass cracked and gave way and then out the window he went, into the yard. I heard him hit the ground. Sounded like a minor earthquake.

“Whoops,” I whispered, pressing my hands to my cheeks. I stood there for, like, half a minute and then I sprang forward, hurrying to the front door. “Oh, no, no, no.”

Luckily the porch light was on and it was bright enough to see where Clay was.

He’d landed in a rosebush.

“Oh, dear.” I went down the steps as Clay rolled out of the bush, onto his side, groaning. He seemed alive. That was a good sign.

“What in the holy Hell?”

I jumped at the sound and looked up, recognizing the voice first. Misha. He came out of the shadows, stopping under the glow from the porch light. Too far away from me to see him clearly, but I didn’t need to see his expression to know he had that look on his face, a mixture of disappointment and disbelief.

Misha turned from where Clay lay on the ground, to me, to the window and then back to me. “Do I even want to know?”

There wasn’t a single part of me that was surprised to see Misha. I’d known it was only a matter of time before he figured out I’d snuck away from the Pit and ended up here.

We were raised together, receiving the same training as soon as we both could walk upright, and he’d been there for my first scraped knee when I’d tried and failed to keep up with him—which he’d laughed at me for—and he’d been there the first time my life came crashing down around me.

Misha had grown from an adorable, freckle-faced, redheaded dork to quite the cutie. I’d had a crush on him for about two hours when I was sixteen, which was when I’d kissed him.