He rubbed along my arms, trying to warm me up, while looking down on me as we knelt on the sand.

The moon, no doubt under his spell, drifted out from the cloud it had concealed itself behind. It shone down on us, making it easier to see his face. He looked to be wrestling with the idea of kissing me.

As if he decided not to give it another thought, he lowered his face to mine. The kiss was passionate, rough and harsh. His teeth bit down on my lower lip, sucking it in his mouth before kissing me once more.

I felt like a cat that had been stroked too much. I was over stimulated. I felt the swell in my lips worsen as our arms began savagely grabbing at one another.

He pulled me up into him. His hands crept down my back to where his sweater ended and my legs sat bare. My arms were around his back, rubbing his hot, smooth skin. I tried desperately to keep my hands ‘north of the equator.’

He lifted me up into his arms. I wrapped my legs around him. He lifted me with ease, his strength seemingly unrealistic. I felt like my sister; out on the beach making out under the moonlight, with a guy people suspected of a terrible crime. I pushed myself away, needing breath and separation.

“I want to go home.”

He smiled breathlessly at me. “I need a minute before I can get back.”

I put my foot down on the sand and stood on shaky legs. My headache seemed to be coming back. I couldn’t believe how long it was taking me to bounce back. He watched me like a predator watches a fawn, his eyes moving up and down my bare legs. I felt safe with him against everything, except him. And me. Out there I wasn’t afraid of the date rapist, bears, wolves, or cougars, but I was afraid of me. I was afraid of losing control of myself and doing something based entirely on my emotional body, and not on common sense or rational thought. That was not a comfortable thing for me.

He stood up after a minute and held his arms out. “Okay, I’m ready.”

I frowned. “Can we walk?”

He stepped forward and picked me up, and before I had a chance to argue my opinion on the matter, we were gone.

He looked hurt as he pulled us through the air and everything sped past me in a sickening blur. “What’s the matter—you don’t trust me? I've really slowed the flash down for you. We're barely moving.”

I shook my head. “It's not that. I just don’t like not being in control.”

He laughed, not watching where he was going, making me nervous. “I think the only thing saving both of us from making a huge mistake tonight is your control, because I’ve lost all of mine.” His eyes glistened dangerously as he bent down and kissed me.

I panicked. “Watch where you’re going!”

"We're in your room, Aimee."

The next thing I felt was the softness of my sheets. Wide eyed, I frowned at him. “I have sand on my butt—I don’t want it in my sheets.”

He shook his head and sat on the chair across the room, watching me. I was embarrassed to be seen changing. Regardless of the fact, he had already seen me showering, which disturbed me enough. I gave him a look and walked to the bathroom with new pajamas. “Be right back.”

I wasn’t right back. I stayed in the shower trying to translate all of the details he told me into layman’s terms, as if I were telling my sister.

“He is an immortal who was trying to help us cope with mom's accident. He was trying to make sure a negative outcome didn’t happen as a result of Mom's death, which was not meant to be. A supernatural force or being killed Mom, and as a result, everything in our lives is upside down. I accidentally died on his watch and he managed to save me. As a result, I can see him and dead people, even though that is unfounded at this point. He is attracted to me and I him, even though he isn’t a human being.” I summed it up out loud to get a good grasp on how things were. I turned off the shower and knew what I had to do.

"I have lost my mind; he isn’t real, and the hallucinations have finally taken over." That seemed more plausible in my mind.

I dressed quickly and went downstairs, ignoring the pain in my head, to see my dad, so he wouldn’t worry. “Hey, Dad. I’m going back to bed. I just showered.”

He was reading a text of some sort and looked up with his glasses on, smiling. “Feeling better?”

I nodded, lying. “Yeah, I think I just needed some sleep. I should be better by tomorrow, I think.”

“Okay, kiddo. Night.”

As I turned to climb the stairs, a knock at the door caught my attention. My dad glanced at me. I nodded. "I'll get it." The trek across the room to the door was brutal. My hands quivered from the pain.

My stomach sunk when I opened the door. Shane smirked at me and stepped inside. "Hey. Just wanted to check on you."

He bent his face and pressed his lips against mine. I breathed him in and moaned slightly.

He grinned against my lips. "You okay?" I was clearly not okay. I was turned on.

I blushed and pulled back. "Yeah. Just sleepy."

He tucked my long hair behind my ear and played with the long end. The proximity of his huge hand and my breast was too much. I almost leaned in and made him have a boob graze. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted him. I stood up on my tiptoes and ran my fingers up into his thick hair, pulling his face back down on mine. He lifted me and pulled me back out of the house. Away from the watchful eyes of my father.

He lifted me up, pulling me into him. I moaned into the kiss, caressing him with my hands and mouth. He pulled back chuckling. "Aimes, what's gotten into you?" I wanted to tell him a tall blond hallucination, but I shook my head and wiped my swollen lips.

"So, we're good?" He grinned.

"Yeah. Call you tomorrow?" I took a step back, resting my fleecy back against the door.

He stepped into me and devoured me once more. His body was crushing me into the dark door. He pushed himself away, turned, and waved backwards.

He started the truck and drove off like a madman. My fingers dug into the door, trying to grip the hard surface. He was the right fit for my heart. He always had been. I turned and went back inside, feeling sick about Aleks and Shane and the whole mess.

My dad grinned with his glasses and glass of wine, pretending to read the textbook he held. I rolled my eyes. "Night."

"Uh huh."

I was just grateful my sister wasn’t home to witness my whorish ways. If I had to guess, I would assume she was at Blake’s house.

I climbed the stairs, trying to make it all the way to the top so my dad wouldn’t doubt my miraculous recovery. In truth, the stairs were death. My poor legs shook as I made it up all the way. Being around Aleks seemed to be the only thing that made me feel good.

That worried me. Almost as much as walking into my room and having to look in his eyes.

I opened my bedroom door to find him lying on my bed reading a book on how to decipher Arabic.

He was in his jeans, still half naked on my bed. I frowned at his jeans, imagining all of the salt and sand that would be covering my sheets, adding to what I had already left there.

He smiled as I closed my door and locked it. “I took the sheets and my pants outside and shook them; there isn’t any sand.”

"Thanks." I wondered if he could read my mind, or if, because he was a figment of my mind, he knew what I was thinking.

His crooked smile seemed to be stuck on his face. His piercing blue eyes were driving me crazy.

I walked near him. He grabbed my hand and pulled me on top of him. He rubbed my back. “I haven’t seen these kind of pajamas on a girl your age in a long time.”

I frowned, raising one eyebrow, “Fleece?” I could still taste Shane. I felt bad and yet still turned on. I was becoming a hot mess.

He laughed. “Yeah, girls your age wear sexy things.”

I couldn’t help but laugh back. “Well, I had panties and a tank top on, but you wrecked them. Honestly, I just can’t seem to shake feeling cold and itchy. These make me feel nice.”

He agreed. “I love fleece; it makes me want to rub you.” His strong hands rubbing up and down my spine did feel very nice. I could have fallen asleep, if I wasn’t in the mood to rip his clothes off and have him deflower me right there.

The sexy vibe started to fade away as his massage deepened. It relaxed me and made me sleepy. My head didn’t hurt while he was touching me. I felt peaceful. I knew I had to follow the plan though if I was ever going to get beyond the schizophrenia fears I was harboring.

I rolled off of him to the side of my bed. It didn’t seem to deter him from kissing my neck and rubbing the outer thigh of my PJ's.

Feeling the lust coming back, I pushed him away. “Go to the chair. We need to talk.”

He groaned. “We can talk here. I’ll behave.” He kissed my cheek once, pausing, as he inhaled the fresh scent of my soap no doubt. I turned my face and felt his lips brush mine, sensually again, like the first kiss. I fell into the kiss again, finding myself chasing him. Trying to get him to pull into me and smother me with his affections. I inhaled his scent, feeling my skin tingle and eyes roll back into my head.

Somehow, and I’m honestly not sure how, I managed to pull myself away. “Go to the chair. You’re not behaving and I know I can't.”

He looked at me through his crazy-long dark lashes and smiled an innocent look. "I can try harder."

I groaned and pushed him off the bed with all the strength I had.

He landed on his feet with amazing reflexes and grabbed the chair from the other side of the room. He pulled it over to beside my bed. He sat on it backwards, waiting.

“Okay, I’m ready, brainiac—fire away.” He kept a smirk on his face, probably already knowing the questions I had to ask.

I lay on my back. “Okay, so we are going to do the Q&A portion of this evening, quickly. I have about ten minutes of effort left in me and need some sleep. Ready?”

“Do your worst.”

"Did the drugs ruin my brain?"

"What?"

"Do I have drug-induced schizophrenia? Are you a figment of my imagination?"