Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

our parents died. Little sisters can be hell. I hadn’t expected a baby in Nick’s life, though, no matter whose it was.
    “So?” Nick asked. “Any thoughts?”
    I counted to ten.
    I didn’t know what to say.
    My dreams of Nick involved sexy times and happily ever after, not him an ocean away with a little sister and a toddler in tow. I restarted my count.
    My hair had long since come loose, and I tucked it behind my ears. I licked my lips. I kept counting.
    A gust of wind tore across the balcony so strongly that I grabbed Nick to anchor myself. Dirt whirled up from the bare earth beyond the pool and shot into the air like a dancing geyser. When the wind changed direction and spun the funnel across the yard to the patio below us, it pushed me back against the wall.
    “What the hell?” Nick yelled, jumping up and pulling me to my feet. He stepped in front of me and a smile broke across my face.
    Yes, Annalise, exactly. That’s just how I feel inside.
    “I think my jumbie says it way better than I can,” I said.
    The funnel backed off slightly and spun on the patio, the top of its cone just out of arm’s reach. I looked down into its dirtless core and my hair floated up like I was underwater.
    “Your jumbie? Like a ghost? Yer shittin me, right?”
    “Nick, meet Annalise. Annalise, this is my charming friend, Nick.” I let go of Nick and put my hands on my hips. “She must like you at least a little, or she’d have sucked you in there by now.”
    I turned toward the wall and put my face and hands on her yellow stucco. “I think he gets it,” I said. “Thank you.”
    The funnel stopped spinning and the dirt dropped to the patio with barely a whisper. The gentle breeze resumed. The night was eerily quiet and the smell of dust lingered. Annalise’s display had energized me, excited me. If this was all I got of Nick, so be it. I’d make the most of it.
    Nick was staring at me. “That was wild. And you,” he said, and his voice grew rough, “you are the jumbie.”
    I put my hands on his chest and rubbed up and out, across his collarbones, over his shoulders.
    His eyes gleamed in the dark. “That was friendly.”
    I slid my hands up the dark skin of his neck, then pulled it down just enough that I could bite the base of it where it angled down into his broad, chiseled shoulders. I nudged the neck of his t-shirt aside to get just the right spot. And another, and another, up and around the back. I had wanted to do this since the first time I saw him, and it was even better than I’d imagined.
    “Holy shit, you’re not a jumbie, you’re a vampire.”
    And then he pushed me against the wall, his hands following a path on me much like the one mine had on him. When he reached my neck, he grasped my face under my jaw and around the back of my head and held me still while he kissed me like it was a contact sport. If it was, I’d started it—and as far as I was concerned, I was winning.
    Mother Goose and Grimm, I wanted to eat this man alive.
    “Katie? Is that you?” a voice called out.
    And just when we were getting to the good part.

Chapter Seven
    I jumped, colliding teeth with Nick and biting his tongue. “Ow!” he said.
    “Sorry about that,” I whispered. I wiped a drop of blood from his lip.
    I yelled, “It’s me, Rashidi. I’m on the balcony outside my bedroom.”
    “Who the hell is Rashidi?” Nick said, pressing his fingers against his mouth.
    I came up on my toes and kissed Nick one last time, sucking his lip as I lowered myself down, pulling his head with me, which had the effect of starting the whole oral-gymnastics exercise over again. Nick pushed his body against mine, hard, dragging himself against me.
    I pulled my mouth away and his followed mine. “We have to stop.”
    “I don’t like this Rashidi,” Nick said against my mouth.
    “Good evening, Katie, Bart,” I heard from somewhere down below.
    Woopsie. “Hi, Rashidi.” I wriggled out from between Nick and the wall and reached