Read Online Even Villains Go To The Movies by Liana Brooks - Free Book Online Page B

disentangle his hand when he realized what was happening. Rage could make people feel things, and she could feel other people’s emotions, and now it seemed she could take some of it away. The same pathways in the brain that registered emotion would respond to pain, wouldn’t they? “Let go,” he whispered, not wanting to see her hurt.
    Arktos tried to pull his hand away. “Stop it. I know what you’re doing.” Rage lifted a delicately arched eyebrow over her domino mask. “You’re taking—” The need to breathe cut him off.
    “That’s right.”
    The pain ebbed away into nothingness. “I just took one year of your life away.”
    “Don’t play the coy ingénue and quote The Princess Bride at me. You’re going to kill yourself doing that.”
    “Kill myself by exciting your serotonin receptors? Somehow I doubt that.”
    “Empaths are like fire bugs, they can overload. Go insane. Burn out.” He stared at the city lights reflecting off the smog overhead. “That’s what’s wrong with the pyro. He’s about to burn out. If I can’t get him in an isolation ward soon he will do his best impression of a firework and leave chunks of burned pyro all over the city.”
    “Graphic and unpleasant details that you should have mentioned sooner.”
    “Uh huh.” He closed his eyes.
    “Hey now! Stay with me here.”
    “Why?” He meant to ask why she was helping him but it was too hard to form the words. So easy to fall asleep. Everything would be better tomorrow.
    Her thumb caressed the sensitive skin on the palm of his hand. “Don’t leave me. You’re the only man who’s made me laugh in years. You’re kind.”
    “Says the woman who’s known me for how long?”
    “I can read emotions. It’s there, all of it. Your worry for people, all the drives and concerns, all your insecurities. Simmering away just beneath the pain.”
    “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asked, voice rasping.
    “What do you want to talk about?”
    “Not me or my bare-naked emotions!”
    “Do you want to talk about you being bare-naked?”
    He opened one eye and saw Rage smirk. Her eyebrows waggled in a suggestive way made famous by silent film. “No.”
    She sighed dramatically. “As you wish. Would you like to play at questions?” She held on tighter. “The next line is, ‘What’s your name when you’re at home?’”
    Arktos quit fighting. “What’s yours?” Another cough shook him, but the pain was minimal.
    “When I’m at home?”
    “Is it different at home?”
    “What home?” Rage shot him a triumphant smile that dared him to keep the game up as his muscles spasmed around the break.
    Pushing himself into a sitting position, he asked, “Haven’t you got one?”
    “Why do you ask?” Rage stood and brushed dirt from her black jeans.
    He stood too, wincing as he tested his knee. “What are you driving at?”
    “What’s your name?”
    He smirked at her. “Repetition. Two-love. Match point.”
    Rage stepped closer. “Who do you think you are?”
    “Rhetoric. Game and match.” He took her hand back. “A kiss for the winner?”
    “I don’t remember that part of the play.”
    “I’m improvising.” Arktos brushed a stray hair back from her eyes. It felt like a wig, and the too-blue-to-be-true eyes were probably contacts. He couldn’t bring himself to care. She’d been there to defend him. He traced her jaw line. “A kiss for the winner.”
    “Who won?”
    “Does it matter?” he whispered, leaning forward.
    She met him halfway.
    Arktos slid his free hand behind Rage’s neck as she pressed against him. He ran his tongue across her lips and they parted, inviting him in.
    Her hands rested on his shoulder, fingers kneading the muscle as she pulled him deeper into the kiss.
    Arktos slid his hand under her jacket, feeling the sweat of the hot night and the thin layer of silk between him and her skin. He slanted his mouth, taking more. Demanding more.
    She tasted of lime and vanilla, an exotic