Free Before I Wake by Rachel Vincent

spend however you
want—and for the most part, we do—why the hell would you go back to high school?
What on earth was I thinking?”
    Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures,
but you were thinking that you wanted to retain what
little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back
to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the
only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”
    “Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so
they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have
to go back.”
    “You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and
my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his.
“If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just…” Kiss. “Like…” Kiss.
“This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me
gasping for breath.
    “Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in
school?”
    Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of
‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to
look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is… .”
    His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat
faster.
    “That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my
chin and down my neck. “ You feel good. Real.” Solid,
like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch
him. To feel him.
    I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and
dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the
possibility of accruing any more.
    “You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin.
“You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind
of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on
fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my
stomach.
    I closed my eyes. “I feel it.”
    “Can you feel it here?” His hand glided over my skin and around
the curve of my ribs until his finger brushed the edge of my bra, and I stopped
breathing, just for a second.
    “I feel it.” I pulled him back up and slid my hands beneath his
shirt, feeling my way over his chest as I pulled the material up and over his
head. I dropped his shirt on the floor and laid my hand over his heart, and I
could feel it beating.
    “Does it do that all the time?” I whispered, and he shook his
head, his eyes swirling with pale blue twists of need, and hunger, and something
deeper, and steadier, and…endless. “Mine doesn’t, either.”
    Tod laid his hand over my heart and I blinked up at him. “It’s
beating now,” he said softly.
    “Yeah. It is.”
    He kissed me, and I didn’t realize my legs had wrapped around
his hips until he moaned into my mouth and pressed himself into me.
    I felt so alive in that moment. So real and—
    “Kaylee, are you home?” my father called from the living room,
and the front door slammed shut on the tail of the question.
    “Shit!” I whispered, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear
us. He couldn’t see us, either, but I couldn’t hide the rumpled comforter.
    Tod sat up and reached for his shirt while I straightened mine.
“Relax,” he said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What’s he going to do,
kill us again?”
    “Not me.” I ran both hands through my hair to smooth it.
“You.”
    “You’re almost seventeen, and you’re dead. He has to know that
his parental influence is nearing its end stage.”
    “He does. I think. We’re gonna talk about it. Just…not
today.”
    “Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps echoed in the hall, headed our
way.
    I closed my eyes and concentrated on making myself both visible
and audible. “In here.” I opened the door and my dad stepped into the doorway as
I dropped