𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐌 & 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆! | harry styles

𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈

HARRY won't stop smiling at me. It's weird. Usually he looks tired and sick and as worn through as my oldest shirt, the one with the holes in the elbows and the hem all frayed. But tonight, he's smiling.

"What's up with your face?"

"My face?" He brings a hand to his cheek, like he's checking for stray blood the same way someone thinks they might have traces of their dinner left on their chin.

"You're all smiles tonight. It's weird."

"Weird?"

"Yeah. Really weird."

"You stood up for me today." The smile just gets bigger, and if I didn't know he was a hundred- year-old vampire, I'd think he was just another teen boy with a crush. On me. I blush hard enough to break out in a heat rash.

"You were spying on me?"

"I was keeping an eye on you." His smile falters a bit. "McClean is bad news; you shouldn't have gotten in that car."

"Was it Sadie? The woman in the grass? Was it Sadie who did it?" I glance off toward the highway, my mind zooming down the asphalt until I was standing back in front of that cute little house with the flowers and the porch and the dead woman in the lawn. I knew they'd taken her away, carted her off to the morgue, but in my mind, she will always be there, sprawled in the grass like a broken doll.

Harry's smile slips completely, and he glances away with a heavy sigh. "Yes."

"I thought she was getting better."

"I never said that."

"She got away," I ask without actually asking.

"She's tricky like that. It's easy to lose her."

"Yeah, no shit. I know the feeling."

"It's your fault, in a way. The fact that she got away."

"Mine?" I glare at him because keeping an eye on Sadie has nothing to do with me these days. Even if I could be the one to watch over her, there's no way I could stop her if she decided to off someone. Or me.

"Yes. You've been such a distraction lately. I had to get away. Clear my head. You smell so strong that I had to run clear to Calgary to do that. She took advantage of my absence."

"You ran to Calgary?" That was a decent seven hundred miles away. "I stink that bad?"

"I never said you stink," he chuckles. "In fact, you smell so good, there are times I have to keep myself from leaping on you."

"Leaping on me, and then what?" I'm basically suspicious of everything now, and when a vampire tells you you smell good and he wants to leap on you, there's a high probability you wouldn't come out of that situation alive.

Harry leans in, too fast and too slow, not in human time at all. Just a blur and then a halt that happens before I can blink, and he's holding me just half an inch off his lips. Just holding me, not breathing and not blinking and not moving any further, and god, he frustrates the hell out of me.

"Kiss you," he exhales. "Leap on you and kiss the shit out of you."

Holy.

Fuck.

"Do it then," I whisper. "I bet I taste delicious."

"I'm certain of it." His voice is a waiver. An exhale. A falter. Then he gives in.

This time, it's not my forehead.

He tastes like the best kind of wrong. Like a fatal sting of poison. Like the final sinful act that gets you permanently kicked out of church, or school, or heaven. He tastes like butterscotch and burnt sugar and the wrong end of a lit match.