Free Hot Summer Bites: A Castle of Dark Dreams Novella (A Penguin Special from Berkley Sensation) by Nina Bangs Page A

denial sounded a little weak to him.
    Dammit, he’d bet that’s exactly what she had planned. Without thinking, he slipped into her thoughts to verify his suspicion. Aha, he was right.
    Uh-oh. He shouldn’t have done that. As he withdrew from her mind, he watched her warily. Eric could tiptoe into a person’s thoughts and go undetected. Not him. When he was in a mind he may as well be wearing hobnailed boots.
    She narrowed her eyes, her anger beating against him. “I felt that. You were in my mind. You told me you couldn’t read people’s thoughts. So beside everything else, you’re a worm-eating liar.”
    Yeah, she’d noticed. “Good thing I checked. Guess I’ll have to tell Eric to dust off that pink eraser.”
    Kristin couldn’t remember ever being this angry. She was furious about what he’d tried to do to her career. She was ticked about him invading her thoughts. But most of all, she was upset that he’d exposed her plan to use both stories. Not because she wouldn’t get them, but because his accusation made her feel like the lowlife he thought she was.
    When in doubt, attack. She moved in on him, nose to chest. Not too intimidating, but she’d have to stand on something to do the nose-to-nose thing. Kristin settled for jabbing him in the chest with her finger.
    “Let me tell you something, bloodsucker. I—” She caught a glimpse of something moving just outside the window.
    Turning her head, she stared into eyes as big as dinner plates. Holy cow! Monstrous tentacles waved at her. Even as she widened her eyes to take in the full horror of the thing, the super-sized octopus attached said tentacles to the window with a menacing
thwup
,
thwup
of its many suction cups.
    And in the time-honored tradition of all kick-butt heroines, she screamed like a demented fire siren. “Aaiigh!” Then she flung herself at Taurin. Wrapping her arms and legs around him, she hung on. Hey, kick-butt heroines know about that living-to-fight-another-day stuff.
    Taurin evidently wasn’t prepared for her . . . enthusiastic response, because he went down with her riding him all the way.
    While her heart clawed its way up her throat, she tried to jump-start her brain cells.
Notreal, notreal.
Meanwhile, there was upheaval below. She looked down. Taurin was laughing at her.
    “I
never
lose it that way.” She should move, but she was still shaking.
    “Right. The same way you never faint.” Taurin’s laughter faded, and his gaze heated.
    Emotion flooded her as she raised a shaking hand to rake her hair away from her face. “It’s every damn thing that’s happened to me here. All of it just balled up inside of me—vampires, shapes-shifters, and God knows what else—so when I saw the octopus I just came apart.”
    The reality of the last three days washed over her. Horrified, she felt tears sliding down her face. She opened her mouth to tell him she never cried, but then shut it. Like he’d believe her.
    “Hey, it’s okay.” He clasped her shoulders and pulled her down until she lay flat on top of him. “No one blames you for feeling jumpy. You should’ve seen me when I first realized vampires existed. I hid in a cave for a week.”
    Kristin looked down at his face, so close to hers, and she knew her eyes were still awash in tears. “Really?”
    “Well, maybe not a whole week. Dacian dragged me out after three days.” As he spoke, he rubbed his hands up and down her back in a comforting rhythm.
    Well,
he
might think it was comforting, but she was feeling something else entirely. Strong emotions fed other strong emotions. Now that she’d released some of her stress in that stupid outburst, she could appreciate her position.
    Pressed flat against his muscular length, she felt every tiny movement of his body. As he shifted his position to pull her closer, her nipples scraped across his chest, immediately raising false hopes in areas farther south.
    While her brain tried to convince everyone to calm down, that this