He touched his lips to mine, a small brush, then again, lingering. The need rose up, making me want to fall through the floor and fly at the same time. Someone whispered, it couldn't be me, I'd never sounded like that before. I grabbed his shirt at his lower back, hanging on to the soft folds for dear life as the kiss deepened. This was what I had needed so badly in history today. I knew how to define that craving now. His mouth on mine, his arms around me, was food and water enough to survive on for the rest of my life.
He moaned, the sound filling my mouth like a dessert to savor. Something told me I should stop kissing him now, that continuing this kiss could be bad in a way I didn't understand. There was something I was supposed to remember. But that nagging thought was gone, lost beneath the swamping need. He tasted so good, his warmth filling up that cold cavern inside that had tried to drown me in icy waves in class.
Then he staggered, breaking off the kiss, and rested his cheek against the top of my head.
I listened to his ragged breathing with a dazed smile of my own, and had to bite my still-tingling lower lip. Wow. I could swear I'd just swallowed the sun. I was filled with light and heat. Kissing Greg had never felt like this. Not even close.
When I eased back, I was surprised to feel Tristan shaking a little. Wait. Boring, plain-Jane me had made the most gorgeous guy in school shake? Impossible. I stepped away, and he leaned back against the wall with a grin.
"Um, are you okay?" I asked with a laugh. Now he was just being goofy.
He gave me that little-boy grin and laughed, too. "Yeah. Your kisses are...a whole new ball game for me."
Hmm. "Um, is that good or bad?" Biting my lower lip, I moved over to our picnic area and began to gather up our drinks and trash. I let my hair fall forward to hide my face. Could he tell I'd only kissed one other boy besides him?
"Definitely good. Maybe too good. I'll probably need some practice to get used to them." He startled me when he was suddenly there beside me and pulling me to my feet again.
I laughed, my hands grabbing on to his shirt for balance. "Tristan, we have to go! I don't want to go, either, but I told Nanna I would be home in a few minutes and-"
"I know."
"Then..." I waved at our things still left to be cleaned up.
"I'll do it. I don't want you cleaning up for me. I meant it when I said I don't need a slave." His hand coasted over my hair in the lightest of caresses, making me glad I'd left it down tonight.
"Helping others isn't being a slave, Tristan. It's called teamwork and getting things done."
He grunted in response, apparently unwilling to argue any more about it tonight, and helped me gather up everything. I waited for him to reach the hall door. Then I shut off the closet light, which I made the mistake of looking up at first. Temporarily blinded, I had to find my way over to him by following the soft sounds of his breathing. For once, my supersensitive hearing was actually helpful.
I knew I'd found him when my hands touched the hard curves of his upper arms.
His hands were full of the pizza box and plastic bag. The darkness hid me, made me bolder, and the temptation was too much to resist. Grinning, I slid my hands up to his cheeks, stood on tiptoe, leaned in and whispered, "May I?" before I kissed him.
I understood then why humans have noses. So we can find each other to kiss in the dark.
I held the kiss long enough to make us both breathless. Then I pulled away while I still could and led him down the stairs, my entire body buzzing.
Once the building was locked up again, we headed down the cement ramp to our trucks. He shoved the pizza box under one arm so he could reach out and hold my hand. During the slow walk together across the campus in the dark, the silence broken only by the occasional cricket and our feet rustling over the grass, a sudden thought hit me.
Mom had been a senior here at JHS when she'd met my father. Had my parents done this? Walked side by side across this same campus, defying the rules so they could be together, risking starting a war, too, just because they loved each other?
They'd ended up getting married, yet even that hadn't started a war between the vamps and the witches. But it had ended up getting my family kicked out of the Clann.
Then again, what could the Clann do to us now? They couldn't exactly kick us out again. I was already banned from learning magic. And Mom could've been exaggerating about our starting a war anyways. Not to mention...talk about her being a hypocrite! How could she have the nerve to tell me to stay away from all descendants when she'd married a vampire?
He followed me to the driver side of my truck, waiting while I got in, snapped on my seat belt and rolled down the window.
"Can I see you again next week?" he asked.
I frowned. All arguments aside, we were still breaking the rules. "Tristan, let me think about-"
He leaned forward and kissed me. By the time he stopped, I couldn't think straight again. "Ohhh, no fair using kisses...."
I felt his lips curve into a grin against mine, teasing me as he whispered, "Please, Sav? We can keep it a secret if you want. The Clann and our families wouldn't find out."
Could we really manage to date each other without anyone finding out?
He kissed me again, slowly this time, the tip of his nose nuzzling mine, robbing me of breath and reason.
Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself nodding in agreement.
And then praying during the entire drive home that we weren't making the biggest mistake of both our lives.
Nanna met me at the door, already dressed for bed in her favorite long, old-fashioned cotton and lace-trimmed night gown. She held the cordless phone in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. "Your father wants to speak with you."
"Right now?" I froze. I hadn't spoken to my father in months, not since that phone call last spring when he'd made me promise never to dance again and passed on the council's threat to hurt Mom and Nanna if I refused.
"No, he left a message. But he wants you to call him back as soon as possible."
She took a message for him. I growled under my breath.
"You know I don't want to talk to him," I said as I quickly circled around her, moving fast down the hallway toward my bedroom in the hopes of avoiding an argument.
She followed me, her bare feet silent on the worn linoleum floor in the hall then whisper soft on my bedroom's brown shag carpeting.