“Hey there,” Luc said.
Ashley responded by smacking a baby palm against his cheek with one hand and then grasping his hair with the other.
“That means she likes you,” Dawson said, hovering between Beth and Luc.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
Ashley hooted or did some kind of weird baby laugh, and Luc cracked a grin. “You’re something special,” he said, echoing what Daemon had said earlier.
Watching Luc turn with Ashley, facing Dawson and Beth, I was only vaguely listening to the conversation they started. Something to do with potato chips, mayo, and awkward locations, and that was all I wanted to hear about that.
“Kitten?” murmured Daemon.
I turned my head slightly and, like always, I was simply struck by him, had been from the first time I’d knocked on his door and wanted to punch him in the face. He was mine, all of him—the prickly side and the warm, playful, and loving side.
“What?”
His lips brushed my ear as he whispered a string of words that widened my eyes and scalded my cheeks. And I recognized the words.
They were what he’d written on the note he’d passed to me in class so long ago.
“You game for that?” he asked, eyes burning a luminous green. “I’m really hoping so. Been thinking about it for, like, two years. Don’t let me down, Kitten.”
My heart thumped like thunder in my chest as I said the truest words ever. “I’m game for anything with you, Daemon Black.”