Free Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) by Kelly Carrero Page A

was, at the moment, I was the one feeling all the love. For some reason, whenever Aiden sent some major feel good vibes through me, it always ended in me wanting to jump him right there and then.
    Aiden let out a laugh. “So that’s all I have to do, huh?”
    “Well,” I said, standing up, “it’s not going to work this time.” I turned my back to him and looked down at the screen. “So when can we watch a movie?”
    “Whenever you want.”
    I turned back around to face him. “Tonight?”
    “Okay. It’s a date,” he said. And the funny thing was, although we were technically still in his house, it was actually going to feel more like a date.
    We left the cinema room and slowly made our way towards the casual meals room, which was just another room off the kitchen that was a little cosier than the dining room.
    I had half-expected, or feared, that everyone from the other night was going to be there again. But they weren’t. It was just Anna and Dave sitting at the table when we arrived. My stomach grumbled at the sight of the bacon, eggs, sausages, and bagels in the centre of the table.
    “I see Aiden finally showed you around,” Dave said, then took a sip of his coffee.
    I sat down in the chair beside Anna. “This place is amazing. I can’t believe you have a real cinema here.”
    Anna laughed. “Well, we had to do something with all these rooms, and there was no use for a ballroom anymore, so a few years back, we decided to do some renovations.”
    Dave scoffed. “I love how you now think it was a brilliant idea.”
    Anna shot him a warning glance.
    “It’s true,” Aiden said, coming to his dad’s defence . “She thought it would be a terrible idea to get rid of the ballroom.”
    “It was either, ‘Who’s going to want to watch a movie here when we could just go to the cinema?’ or ‘What if we have an occasion where we need to have a formal dance floor?’” Dave said, imitating how Anna must have said it. “You see, Anna here still secretly loves all things old, but would die if anyone knew how old she really is.”
    Anna rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, trying to play down how she didn’t want to accept changing to the modern ways. She turned to me and said, “You’ll have to get Aiden to show you around outside.”
    I shivered just thinking about how cold it would be out there. “Maybe when it warms up.”
    Dave cut a piece off his sausage. “You know you can control your body temperature.”
    I thought about the other day when I had stepped out onto the balcony when we came there from Thailand. I hadn’t realised then that I should have been cold standing out there in the middle of winter. Living on the Gold Coast, we had never really had cold winters. Most of the time, we would only need to wear a long-sleeved shirt or perhaps a light jacket. “Huh,” I muttered.
    “It’s a funny thing,” Dave continued. “Your mind has been conditioned to think that in cold weather you need to put on extra layers of clothing to keep your body temperature up. But, and here’s the funny part, what you don’t realise is that by putting on the extra clothing, your body is actually working to stabilise your temperature to a lower degree instead.”
    I thought about it for a moment, then asked Aiden, “So how come you always wear a jacket during cold winter days?”
    He stopped short of biting into his bagel. “Well, it would look a little funny if I only wore a T-shirt when everyone else was wearing jumpers.”
    “Point taken,” I said.
    Bernard came in carrying a tray. He stopped to the side of me and placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of me, then another in front of Aiden. “White with one,” he said to me.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    Bernard then turned around and left the room. I picked up the mug and breathed in the fresh aroma. God, I loved coffee. I just about downed the whole lot in one mouthful.
    Everyone fell silent as we dug our way through their