“Now I’m thinking my naked-midnight plans are significantly less awesome than yours.” Flo’s face scrunched up as her thoughts wandered. “Maybe I’ll get Desmond to meet me in the sacred grove after the coven departs… Do a little dance of our own…”
I began to chew my lip. My cheeks were still flaming in a deep blush as I met Cade’s eyes. He, for the record, looked not at all embarrassed that he’d just announced our impending sexual exploits for the world — well, only for Flo, butstill— to hear.
“Don’t you look at me like that, Cade Hightower.”
His eyes went crinkly. “How am I looking at you, Goldie?”
“Like the cat that got the cream!” I threw my hands up. “It’s annoyingly self-satisfied, seeing as you haven’t evensampledthe cream yet!”
When I said that, his smirk disappeared and he full-on grinned. It was such a good grin, even Flo stopped murmuring about her tawdry midnight rendezvous to watch him do it.
“Something you should know, beautiful,” he said, rising off the stool. “You standing there with your arms crossed over your chest in that tight corset you’re wearing isn’t as much of a deterrent as you seem to think it is. In fact, it’s just giving me a very nice preview of what’s to come.”
“Oh wow,” Flo whispered.
She could say that again.
My knees wobbled and my stomach flipped. “Cade?—”
He wasn’t done. He took another step toward me, eyes never shifting. “So you can either go get changed into something that doesn’t make me want to rip it off you with my teeth in front of your friend?—”
“Ohwow,” Flo repeated.
“—or you can get your own early preview, up close and personal, of what my expression looks like when I’m satisfied,” Cade finished. “Your choice.”
My whole body spasmed.
He saw it, and his grin widened.
“I’ll, uh…” I whispered. “Just… go get changed.”
He chuckled as I turned and ran — yes,ran— into the storeroom.
* * *
Cade lived in a brown shingled fixer-upper with a postage stamp of a front yard and an attached single-car garage off the side. It was smack in the middle of an area called Juniper Point on the north side of town. Like his house, the neighborhood itself was small — just a handful of narrow streets jammed onto a spit of land surrounded mostly by water. This meant many of the houses — Cade’s included — boasted ocean views from their bedroom windows and beach access from their backyards.
Unlike the rest of the houses we passed, however, Cade’s was in need of some serious TLC. The lawn was mowed, but he had no other landscaping. Not a flower or shrub anywhere to be seen — not in the barren garden beds that stretched along the front path, not in the empty boxes that lined the porch rails, not in the hanging baskets that swung lightly in the crisp October breeze.
Leaves crunched under our feet as he led me from the driveway to the porch. His neighbor had a huge maple tree, which was currently a riot of red and orange, vibrant even in the dark. In another week or so, its graceful branches would be totally bare.
Not that I’d be here to see it.
The drive itself had taken only ten minutes, but this part of the city felt markedly different from downtown. I could tell with only a quick glance around that it was a family neighborhood. People took care of their homes, took pride in their properties. That was clear as day from the fresh paint, the meticulously trimmed hedges, the hand-painted mailboxes.
Cade’s street wasn’t quite as crowded as the ones outside The Gallows — which was a bit like saying the Bahamas weren’t as hot as the inner circles of Hell — but trick-or-treaters abounded. Parents walked their young ones down the sidewalks, holding plastic candy buckets as they moved from house to house. Cade’s was the only dark spot on the street. The rest were brightly illuminated, their front doors left ajar in welcome. Many were sporting festive inflatable decorations on their front lawns, or had gauzy spiderwebs stretched across their facades.
“You don’t have decorations,” I noted as he steered me up onto the front porch. His stairs were slightly warped with age.
“Nope. No time. I’m not here all that much,” he said, fiddling with his key in the lock. Before he opened the door, he paused to look at me. “Brace.”
“For what?”
He didn’t answer, just swung the door inward. As I had (foolishly) not taken the opportunity to brace, I was wholly unprepared when a ginormous black puppy barreled through the door and directly into my legs.
Two paws hit me in the stomach.
My ass hit the porch.