Free Opal by Jennifer L. Armentrout Page A

His forehead brushed mine. “Can I tell you something?”
    I nodded.
    “I find it incredibly attractive when you’re all feisty with me.” His lips brushed against my temple. “That probably makes me disturbed. But I like it.”
    Yeah, it kind of was wrong, but there was something…hot about how quickly he defended me whenever something happened.
    His nearness was tempting, especially when his breath was tantalizingly warm and so near my lips. Summoning my willpower, I placed my hands on his chest and pushed lightly. “Focus,” I said, not sure who I was talking to, me or him. “I have something more important to tell you than what disturbing things get you hot.”
    His lips quirked into a grin. “Okay, back to what you saw. I’m focused. My head’s in the game and all that.”
    I laughed under my breath but sobered up pretty quickly. In no way was Daemon going to respond well to this. “I’m pretty sure I saw Blake today.”
    Daemon cocked his head to the side. “Say what?”
    “I think I saw Blake here, just a few minutes ago.”
    “How sure are you? Did you see him—his face?” He was all business now, eyes as sharp as a hawk’s and his face set in grim lines.
    “Yeah, I saw—” I hadn’t seen his face. Biting down on my lip, I glanced down the hall. Students piled out of the cafeteria, pushing into one another, laughing. I swallowed. “I didn’t see his face.”
    He let out a long breath. “Okay. What did you see?”
    “A hat—a trucker hat.” God, that sounded lame. “That had a surfboard on it. And I saw his hand…” And that sounded even worse.
    His brows arched up. “So, let me get this right. You saw a hat and a hand?”
    “Yeah.” I sighed, shoulders slumping.
    Daemon smoothed out his expression and placed a heavy arm around my shoulder. “Are you really sure it was him? Because if not, that’s okay. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “I remember you saying something like that to me before. You know, when you were trying to hide what you were from me. Yeah, I remember that.”
    “Now, Kitten, you know this is different.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Are you sure, Kat? I don’t want to get everyone freaking out if you’re not sure.”
    What I’d experienced was more of a feeling than a true sighting of Blake. God knew that a ton of boys around here broke the dress code with atrocities such as trucker hats. The thing was, I hadn’t seen his face and looking back, I couldn’t be 100 percent sure it had been Blake.
    I looked into Daemon’s bright gaze and felt my cheeks burn. There wasn’t judgment in his eyes. More like sympathy. He thought I was cracking under the pressure of everything. Maybe I was imagining stuff.
    “I’m not sure,” I said finally, casting my eyes down.
    And those words soured in my stomach.
    …
     
    Later that night, Daemon and I did babysitting duty. Although Dawson had promised not to do his own search-and-rescue mission, I knew Daemon wasn’t comfortable leaving him alone and Dee wanted to get out tonight, go to the movies or something.
    I wasn’t invited.
    Instead, I was sitting in between Daemon and Dawson, four hours into a George Romero zombiethon, with a bowl of popcorn in my lap and a notebook resting against my chest. We’d been making plans to look for Beth, getting as far as listing the two places that we knew to check before deciding to do surveillance this weekend to see what kind of security they had going on now. By the start of Land of the Dead , the zombies got uglier and smarter.
    And I was having fun.
    “I had no idea you were a zombie fan.” Daemon grabbed a handful of popcorn. “What is it—the blood and guts or the in-your-face social undertones?”
    I laughed. “Mostly the blood and guts.”
    “That’s so un-girlie of you,” Daemon commented, brows knitting as a zombie started to use its meat cleaver to break through a wall. “I don’t know about this. How many hours do we have