well. When we were fifteen, we moved with our mom from Rhode Island to California to get away from him. She got an offer from an opera company in Los Angeles. Singing’s her passion. Fitting, huh?”
Micha smiled faintly.
“California gave me a place to rebel like crazy. I lied about my age, got an apprenticeship in a tattoo shop, learned my skills. Then I filled my head with holes and covered my skin with ink. My mother was relieved, I think. Normal teenage bullshit versus being a freak of nature.”
“You’re not a freak of nature. Paranormal abilities are not a disease.”
“It’s easy for you to say that.” She tried to keep the bile out of her voice. Micha probably heard it enough. “Our mother got this guy to come over to our apartment and talk to us a couple times a week. He was impervious to our abilities, so he could teach us how to control them. That was when, you know, all this stuff started to become ‘science.’”
“Was he a vampire?”
“A vampire?”
“Vampires can block most paranormal abilities.”
“Hell, I don’t know.” She heaved herself into a sitting position. “Doesn’t matter, though. It was what it was. It is what it is.”
“Eloquently put.”
She sat quiet for a moment, knees drawn up, elbows resting on them. “What about you? What was it like being the odd one out?”
“You don’t want to hear about that.”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
Micha rubbed his face. “It’s boring and inconsequential. Another time.”
“Unfair. After I just told you my darkest secrets.”
“Life isn’t fair. And you wouldn’t want it to be. That would mean all the bad stuff happens because you deserve it.”
She grinned. “It’s a good thing you’re hot. Otherwise, by now I would have punched you in the face for all these gems of wisdom you keep flinging at me.”
Micha sat up too, on one elbow. “So are you in a relationship? Got a special lady?”
“Oh my God, stop.”
Micha laughed.
She feared she might actually blush. “No. I don’t want a boyfriend. Not right now.”
“I don’t remember introducing you to my wife. I do remember meeting you. I remember what I thought of you when I met you.”
“You thought I was an uncouth, nasty little punk girl, didn’t you? Most people do. You probably still think that. Because I am.”
“I thought you were absolutely fascinating, and I still do.”
“I bet you say that to all the supernatural girls.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t really know me, Micha. You don’t really know yourself right now.”
Micha sat up fully and swung his long legs over the side of the sofa. “There you go with ‘you don’t know me’ again. I know you’d like me to kiss you.”
Heat swiftly shot up her neck and into her cheeks. “Why do you think that?”
Micha opened his mouth, but then hesitated, before titling his head and giving her a smile. “I can tell. I have amnesia, but I’m not stripped of my perceptions.”
“Oh really? So you’re into dirty punk girls?” She struggled not to start mocking, her natural defense mechanism. “’Cause whether you know it or not, you were married to a very austere, beautiful woman.”
“I don’t have a type. I think you’re interesting.”
She winced. “Oh God. Wrong, wrong answer. You have no idea how wrong.”
“Is it?” Micha sat back and patted the cushion beside him. “Why don’t you come over here?”
Very bold. She could appreciate that. But…
“Micha, you have no idea the guilt I would suffer if I made a pass at you right now.”
“It’s a good time, though. I don’t remember my wife.”
“What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“What kind of guy do you think I’m not? I can’t remember, so it’s now or never.”
This had to be the worst, most obscene, wonderful logic she had ever heard, like allowing drunkenness to facilitate getting it on with a best friend you’d been wanting for years. The consequences ran the gamut from amazing to horrible—and she knew from experience.
“Come here,” Micha repeated, softer. “I won’t hate you even if my memory comes back.”
“Micha.”
“Come. Here.”
The tone of his voice, a hook in the gut, and she was caught by chemical urges.
She lost the ability to gauge the good idea-ness of the situation somewhere between her sofa and Micha’s sofa, upon which she found herself instantly tangled with him and kissing hungrily. He pushed her back and crawled on top of her. So much for romance. His lips were incredibly soft, silky and wet, agonizingly intimate. He gripped her hair, and she liked the gesture. She kissed him harder, parted his lips, and plunged her tongue into his mouth. The barbell through her tongue clicked against his teeth. She had no conscious control over her hands, letting them roam without timidity, over his broad shoulders, down the curve of his back, onto his ass. Micha slid his hands down her sides to the top of her jeans.
“You have a nice body,” Micha murmured against her mouth, when they eased up on the kiss. “Nice and…”
He dug his fingertips in above her hipbones, under her shirt, clearly at a loss for an adjective and making her forget how to speak English as well. He slid a hand lower, and his fingers crept under the edge of her waistband.
“And an amazing ass,” he added. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
The only words she could find in her hormone-scrambled brain made no sense, words like “Kentucky” and “racquetball.” “I think so?”
Micha chuckled.
Of course, the door opened.
The two of them scrambled apart like naughty teenagers caught in a backseat. Judging by the look on Sam’s face, they hadn’t moved fast enough.
“That’s what his ability is,” June muttered. “Cockblocking.”
“I’m glad to see you two kept yourselves entertained.” Sam spoke pointedly.
Muse walked in behind him. June tried desperately to think of something else in case Muse turned out to be as much of an invasive jerk as Robbie, sticking her nose in other people’s heads. June pictured her mother’s little flower garden behind her house, but suddenly Micha was pushing her into the tulips and getting on top of her.
Sam walked between the two sofas. He stopped and stood over her. He had a newspaper in his hands.
“I have news, good and bad,” he said. “I’d give you a choice of which to hear first, but the bad won’t make sense without the good.”
She tensed. “What is it? I don’t think I can handle any more bad news.”
Sam thrust the paper at her, a magazine-type deal. An entertainment paper. She took the offering tentatively. Muse sat on the opposite sofa and clasped her hands in her lap, watching them. The corner of her mouth jerked. She blinked rapidly.
“That him?” Sam asked. “I mean, obviously you’re fraternal.”
The headline at the top of the page said,