Tod laughed. He was always able to find the humour in even the creepiest situations. I'd thought that it was an undead thing, until I became a member of the undead. Then I realized it was a Tod-thing.

He’s like the Rasputin of reapers.

Tod's pale brows arched halfway up his forehead, and he looked suddenly, achingly wistful. "She knows not what she says..." Maybe not. But I was starting to get a pretty good idea.

There’s an us?” “As far as I’m concerned…” He leaned forward, his mouth inches from mine, and my pulse spiked. “There’s nothing but us.

Great. "So not only am I not-human, but Death is my arch foe?" Who, me? Panic? "Anything else you want to tell me, while we're confessing?

He shrugged, looking right into my eyes. "Right now, this is all I feel." He held our intertwined hands up for me to see and I wanted to look away, but I couldn't break the hold his gaze had on me, like he could see more than anyone else saw. Things I couldn't see myself.

Alec licked his spoon, then set it on the table and popped his drink open. "Okay, I may be breaking some kind of girl bonding rule or something, but can I offer you a guy's perspective on this?" I frowned, my spoon halfway to my mouth. "Is this gonna make me want to hit you?" He shrugged. "Maybe. But it's the truth. Here goes: kissing back is an instinct. Unless the girl smells like a sewer or has tentacles feeling you up independently, a guy's first instinct is to kiss back. That's how it works. What's important is how long that kissing back lasted. So...how long?