Dark Taste of Rapture Read Online Free Page B

doorjamb, hands stuffed in her pockets, her expression far away, as if she were lost in thought.
    “When did you take this?” she asked, unable to find the memory herself.
    “A few months ago.”
    “And you’re just now showing me? Harsh, Ava. So harsh.”
    “Hello, I’m talking to you,” Mustache Girl snarled. I’ll call her MG for short , she mused, before saying to Ava, “I look so smart. I bet I was pondering nuclear physics. Or maybe quantum mechanics. Oh, oh, I know. Paradox theory.”
    “Nah. I’d just asked you if you’d eaten my granola bar.”
    MG gave up waiting for a response and wandered away to find a new rollaway.
    “Send it to me.” Noelle rubbed her hands together. “That’s gonna be my new screen saver. For reals.”
    The photo disappeared, and Ava stashed the phone back in her pocket. “I’ll send it to you the day you share the butterscotch candies you’re having delivered here.”
    Always the negotiator, her Ava. “Sorry, darling, but I’m not—ah, wait. I feel you, oh, devious one.” Butterscotch was Ava’s biggest weakness. “I’ll have them here by the end of the week, you just wait and see.” Making her friend happy was one of her top priorities in life. “Until then …” Where had their conversation left offbefore they were so rudely interrupted? Oh, yeah. “ Are you retarded? This place is a dump.”
    “Uh, you forget. I’ve lived in worse.”
    True. They’d met in junior high, when Noelle had been acting out to prove her parents’ disapproval meant nothing to her and had (allegedly) burned her former boarding school to the ground. Ava had been desperate to lose her drunken mom’s attention, as well as the attention of the nasty men her mom had allowed to parade through their trailer.
    They’d needed each other, and so they had clung to each other. Hell, they still did. There was nothing Noelle wouldn’t do for her beloved Ava. Commit murder? Sure, why not. Only thing to figure out was where to hide the body. Lie, cheat, steal? Done, done, and done. Eagerly, happily. Ava was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and Noelle took care of what was hers.
    And yeah, they razzed each other. A lot. Matching “dim wits” with little Ava, as Noelle’s brothers used to say, was fun . Torturing her was even more fun. But at the end of the day, if anyone else even looked at Ava funny, Noelle went lethally insane.
    Speaking of funny looks. “Did you see the way that Hector guy eyed me up and down, as if I belonged in a scientific studies magazine for newly discovered fungus?”
    “Yeah, but did you see his muscles?” Ava threw MG’s forgotten wardrobe over her shoulder before unpacking her own.
    “How could I miss them? His I’ve-tasted-human-heart-and-liked-it black T-shirt was strained to the point of lunacy.”
    “Vocab lesson time. You mean lewdness. As in, indecent.”
    “Stuff your lesson. I meant lunacy. As in crazy. One glance and my brain short-circuited.” Short-circuited with the urge to touch, the desire to lick, the need to claim.
    None of which she understood! Claim? Not in this lifetime.
    He wasn’t her usual type. He was tall, tattooed, and bald, with the cruelest frown she’d ever seen. Oh, she liked ’em tall, but tattooed? No. Try refined. Bald? Even peaches sported fur.
    Although he wasn’t bald from age or genetics. A shadow of stubble had covered his scalp, proof his roots were there and thriving. So, obviously, he shaved. But who shaved on purpose? And why?
    She’d almost asked him. Only thing that stopped her was the suspicion he would ignore her. Because the entire time she’d stood there, trying not to notice him but noticing him anyway, he’d had her under that microscope for fungi—and clearly found her the worst of the lot. Honest to God, that frown of his had made her shudder. Or shiver. She wasn’t sure which. But there was no denying something about him appealed to her.
    His eyes were an intense gold and utterly