Read Online Beautiful Elixir (Beautiful Oblivion #3) by Addison Moore - Free Book Online Page A

brows. His milky teeth graze over his dark, crimson lip, almost violet in color; Caleb is an entire palate of oozing testosterone. His devil’s grin is the icing on the very seductive cake. “You have sharp canines.” I run the pad of my finger over his tooth and prick myself with it. “You’re like a sexy vampire. I bet you hear that all the time.”
    Sexy? He mouths as if he found the word cheesy, and it is.
    “Okay, exceptionally handsome. Freakishly so.” My face heats again. My body only seems to react when I’m telling the truth. The lies are so much easier. That’s another thing I learned to do during my parents tumultuous divorce, spew disfigured truths from my mouth as if I believed them. It’s true in nature , my mother used to say as she coached me. Sometimes you need to say what’s going to prove a point. We need to win this thing. We’re not going down without a fight and sometimes, Kenny, you need to fight dirty . I frown at the memory. Dirty, dirty, dirty is what I’ve become.
    “Freakishly handsome? Thank you, I think.” He pulls my hand toward him again and takes a grazing bite from the inside of my wrist. “Believe me, I have plans for your neck later.” His brows rise, but I don’t play along. I’ve already fed into his vampire lust, into mine, enough for the evening. The point of coming over wasn’t to fall into bed with him. It was to enjoy his company—to converse using my mother’s native language.
    “I want you to bare yourself to me, Caleb. Your soul, not your body.” I glance down at his broad, thick chest. I’ve felt that skin over steel pressed against me before, and my body craves more of the same. No lie there. My breathing picks up in rhythm to his.
    “Okay.” He closes his eyes as if I’ve just asked him to do something reprehensible like slaughter a kitten. Some people, most people, would rather slaughter a kitten than bare their soul. “Do you remember any of the stuff we used to talk about?”
    Caleb and I were secret friends. We met by the swampy side of the lake and dipped our feet off the side of the canoe, sharing stories of our lives but mostly it was meaningless bullshit. We were just killing time before the good part started, the part where he stuck his tongue down my throat for hours, his hands groping under my swimsuit until he cried uncle and took off in fear of breaking the virginal law. I wasn’t quite at the age of consent, but my body didn’t care. Apparently Caleb takes jail time very seriously, and knowing my mother, my father , he was wise to do so. He would have ended his career before it began. Much like I did.
    “I remember that we kept our lives on the surface.” It’s my turn to raise my brows because he knows it’s true. We were strangers for two summers fighting off feelings that I haven’t known ever since. “I want to know you, the real you. You’re going to know me, Caleb. You’re going to see me, unfairly so. If I had sex with you right now, you wouldn’t see me that way, doing those things, my body gaping and sloppy. If I knew I was being filmed, I might have made an effort.” Somewhat of a lie. “So just to even the playing field. Tell me something about yourself. Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.”
    His eyes widen for a moment as if he has one but doesn’t plan on shedding any light on it—not tonight anyway.
    His mouth twists and turns as if I’ve robbed him of a goodnight’s sleep. Caleb presses in with those ethereal, heavenly eyes and nods.
    “I have a very dark and ugly secret, Kennedy, that I will share with you.” His lids grow heavy and thick as if his lust for me were putting him in a trance. “But first you have to kiss me.”
    “I was wondering when we would get to the good part.” Lie. I knew it was coming. As much as I wanted to ignore him, punish him for leaving me, for letting me drift into Keith’s unwelcome, deceitful, filthy arms, I couldn’t. As much as I want to resist Caleb McCarthy,