“I bet,” I said, starting the engine and shifting into gear.
Once we’d arrived at the school, there was practically a party around Savannah, our new school celebrity. She handled the spotlight with admirable aplomb, however, and I just stood back and watched her.
I searched the costumes for something that seemed like a Summer look or an Aisha style, but I saw neither of them, nor did I see Drew.
Maybe they’re not here yet, I thought. Or maybe they’re disguised better than what you’d think, like as angels or something equally dichotomous.
To get my mind off them, I surveyed the gym. It was decorated with all sorts of macabre materials and paraphernalia. Tons of spider web loaded with spiders and bloody fingers and severed limbs hung above the dance floor. Black lights stood in all four corners, making the black seem blacker and the white seem to glow. There was a refreshments table set against one wall with a faux stone path that led to it. It wandered through headstones and fog, like you might find in a real cemetery—minus the zombie heads-and-hands emerging from the haze, of course.
I admired it all as the cheerfully costumed students continued to clamor around Savannah.
The loud music faded into the familiar thump of a not-quite-slow song. Its beat brought to mind steamy nights and writhing bodies. The sensual rhythm called to many of the people surrounding Savannah, beckoning them to the dance floor.
Scary couples and gruesome groups started to move in unison to the heavy bass. I searched the made-up and masked faces for Savannah until I located her bright, serpentine halo. She’d been lassoed into a dance by a dead cowboy I recognized.
He sat three rows behind me in study hall.
Suddenly aware of being the lone person not on the dance floor dancing, I turned to make my way around to the refreshments table. I was skirting the writhing mob of dancers when I felt a familiar tug in my belly.
I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Immediately, my heart sped up, banging like a drum, keeping time with the erratic expansion of my lungs as I grew more and more breathless.
I searched the faces for the one that occupied far too many of my thoughts, but I didn’t see him. I could’ve almost convinced myself that I’d been mistaken, but the magnetism that I felt intensified with every breath, assuring me that it was no mistake. Those invisible strings were pulling me, no dragging me into the middle of the crowd, where bodies were crushed together so tightly they moved as if they were one.
Weaving my way through perfumed and cologned figures, I felt like I was getting lost in the fray when I saw a tall, darkly cloaked figure watching me through a break in the mob.
He was dressed as Dracula. His robe was ebony satin with a blood red lining and the hood that covered his head shadowed all but his mouth.
My breath hitched in my throat and burned in my lungs. My pulse thumped wildly and my skin tingled in response to a presence that I couldn’t forget. It was Bo. Beneath the hood that concealed most of his face and the cloak that concealed most of his body, I knew it was him. I’d know him anywhere. I’d love him always.
I could see only his handsomely square jaw and chiseled mouth. My eyes hungrily memorized the lips that I’d never forget the taste of. I felt like I’d been starved of them for far too long.
As Bo’s hand rose slowly from his side, reaching out to me through the crowd of bodies, the words to the song carved themselves onto my heart. Bo was both my sweetest dream and my most beautiful nightmare.
Without hesitation, I stepped forward and slipped my hand into his. A little bolt of electricity shot up my arm when our skin made contact. Bo pulled me to him and I inhaled, reveling in the tangy scent that had teased me for what seemed like forever, and probably always would.
Bodies brushed me from every angle, every direction, but the only thing that I felt was Bo pressed to my front from chest to thigh. I looked up into the most consuming eyes I’d ever seen and I fell into them, sinking into the only place I ever really wanted to be.
I saw Bo’s lips move and, even above the music, I heard his whisper.
“I never thought I’d get to love someone so beautiful,” he said.
The words echoed through my soul and warmed me to my toes. With Bo staring down at me, his words in my ears, his body moving gently against mine, it was the most surreal moment—dream-like, so much so I never wanted to wake from it.
The music surrounded us, wrapping us in a pulsing cocoon of privacy amid the sea of bodies. I laid my palms flat against Bo’s chest as one of his hands snaked around my waist. The fingers of his other hand teased the skin of my arm as they made their way up to disappear beneath the hair at my nape. I felt them tangle in my hair and then curl into a light fist.
With one quick tug, Bo pulled my head to the side as he bent toward me.
I gasped when I felt his hot lips at my throat. I pressed my body closer to his, running my hands down the sides of his firm abdomen. I felt the hard muscles contract beneath my fingertips as Bo’s breath hissed through his teeth.
Lyrics about guilty pleasure wove a sensual web around us. My blood heated with thoughts of Bo’s skin on mine, covering me, sliding against me.
The friction of Bo’s body rubbing against mine, moving in time with the music, sang along my nerves and turned my core into a raging inferno. When I felt his tongue licking at the pulse that beat violently beneath my ear, I had to bite my lip to keep a moan from escaping.
“There’s no one like you,” he said, his lips tickling my sensitive skin as he spoke. “There’s no taste like you,” he sighed, trailing his tongue up to tease the lobe of my ear, drawing it gently into his mouth. “No feel like you,” he moaned, his hand moving to the base of my spine and pressing my hips into his. “There’s no one that I need like I need you.”
My insides melted. I wanted to cry with the pleasure of it, the bitter-sweetness of it. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting someone as much as I wanted Bo. I didn’t think my heart could take it without exploding. I would gladly give up years of my life to be with him, if only for a little while. In the end, I knew it would be worth it.
Bo raised his head to look at me, his eyes searing me with a heat so intense, I felt it in my stomach. Without a word, he tightened his hold on me and lifted until my feet were several inches from the ground and my chest was plastered to his.
Slowly, he turned and walked out of the crush, away from the crowd.
He carried me toward a deserted corner of the gymnasium and into a short, dark hallway that led to a door that emptied out onto the stage in the auditorium right next door.