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  “Well, disproving duality can’t be easy. I mean, everything is dual to some extent, right? Everything’s opposite is also its equal. North and South. Good and evil.” He grinned at her, lips quirking up again, eyes crinkling. “Autobots and Decepticons.”

  Gabriella laughed loudly. It felt good to abandon their former heaviness.

  “That’s the proof I need. I can base my entire thesis statement off The Transformers.” She waved her hand dramatically in front of her. “I can see the title now: ‘Eighties Cartoons Invalidate Central Theory in Projective Geometry and Boolean Algebra’.”

  “It could work.”

  Connor wolfed down the last spoonful of his dessert and tossed the bowl in the trash before they drifted in the direction of the docks. When they came to a point where a gate locked the pier, a No Trespassing sign guarding it, Gabriella stopped.

  “Dead end,” she noted, but Connor typed a code into a keypad by the knob, and the catch in the metal door released. He opened it for her, and Gabriella eyed the pier down at the end of the ramp. Sailboats and yachts floated and rocked in every slip. “Do you have a boat down there?”

  “No, but like I said—I know my way around codes.”

  “And I’m guessing No Trespassing signs don’t apply to rebels like you, either.”

  He laughed and held her gaze. “Something like that.”

  His voice was soft and low, his eyes hooded and dangerous again. The Connor she’d seen for a few moments at the café was back, and she wanted more of him. She stepped through the open gate and waited as he closed it behind them. The ramp was steep, and they walked down the length of ropes and wood to the flat of the dock. It was steady, secured in place by tall poles made of timber, moss growing where the water broke around them. The noise from town quieted and was replaced by the softly lapping shore, the creak and groan of idling boats, and the sound of their footsteps. As they neared the edge of the pier, Gabriella was intensely aware of Connor’s presence and the fact that in between the moored boats and sleeping seagulls, they were completely alone.

  “I still don’t see how you can disprove duality,” he continued. “Every extreme is a variation of its dual, right? Hot and cold are opposites, but really, they’re just degrees of the same thing.”

  Gabriella enjoyed his logic, even if he wasn’t understanding the whole picture. “So you’re saying that light and dark aren’t opposites. They’re just two poles of the same phenomena.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good theorizing. I’m impressed.” She leaned back against one of the poles and slicked her tongue over the pool of melted ice cream in her cone. “Do you have any other examples to share with me?”

  “Tons.” Connor braced an arm above her head, his body so muscled and sure and towering over hers. “Love and hate. Repulsion and attraction.”

  She felt the pull between them like magnets. Like gravity. She had to know if he felt it too.

  “Pleasure and pain.”

  “Exactly,” he repeated softly. “I mean, how can you try to disprove something when it’s standing right there in front of you?”

  She licked her ice cream again. Connor’s eyes darkened as his gaze dipped down to her mouth, his heavy stare fixed on her tongue. Gabriella broke off a piece of the sugary cone and bit down on it sharply. She heard his breath catch.

  “Going for the cone already when you haven’t finished your ice cream?” he asked.

  “I guess I’ve had enough.” The truth was that she was nowhere close to full, her body empty and throbbing with the need to be taken and claimed.

  “Well, I finished mine, and I’m still hungry.” His mouth was inches away from hers. “Sharing is caring.”

  She tilted her half-eaten cone toward his mouth. Connor leaned in, his eyes locked with hers as he slipped his tongue inside it. He probed and licked, achingly slow, his tongue sliding into the wafer funnel the way she imagined it pushing into her body. She shivered and reached back to clutch at the wood behind her with one hand, her knees starting to buckle.

  “You sure you don’t want any more?” he asked.

  “I might want more.” But she didn’t mean the ice cream.

  “You should. It tastes really good.”

  He took the cone from her hand and slowly, purposefully gathered some ice cream onto the tip of his tongue. Closing the distance between them, he bent down to brush his lips against hers. For a moment, all she felt was hot breath and cold lips, and then his kiss washed over her. Gabriella melted into the feeling, drinking the ice cream that spilled from his mouth into hers.

  Connor pulled back to take a breath and threw the cone to the ground.

  “You taste better.” He roughly clasped her neck, cleaving her to him for another dizzying kiss.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Bang

  Copyright © 2015 by Ruby McNally

  ISBN: 978-1-61922-570-1

  Edited by Christa Soule

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2015

  www.samhainpublishing.com