I hold my hands up. “As we all saw last night, I don’t have a clue how to hold a sword or a bow and arrow or… anything. I’d be horrible.”
“We’d train you.” Nick grins. “I’ve seen you move. You’d be incredible.”
“Oh, really?” I cross my arms, narrowing my eyes.
“Yeah, really.” His laugh is a soft rumble in the quiet morning air. “Maybe I like watching you move.”
I open my mouth, but no actual words emerge, so I just shake my head and turn away.
He stops in the road, catches my wrist, and tugs until I have to angle toward him. “Don’t do that,” he chides.
“Do what?” Shadows play across his face as he draws me nearer. Like last night in his room, he presses his thumb into my palm, and just that bit of pressure ignites my insides, sets my heart racing.
“That thing you just did. That thing you do,” he says, his eyes filled with humor—and a shadow of hurt. “Tell yourself I’m just teasing. It’s okay to be nervous, but please don’t dismiss the idea that I like you, B.”
I make a strangled sort of indignant sound. “I’m not nervous. I’m just…”
He tilts his head. “Just what?”
I blink in shock, because he’s really, really expecting an answer, isn’t he? “I’m… a lot of things.”
He hums in amused agreement, his lips tight in a suppressed smile. “You are. I agree.”
“And… and… I’m not used to feeling this way.”
“What way?”
I feel heat rise in my cheeks and look away just as Nick flashes a soft, knowing grin. He trails his fingers up my forearms to my inner elbows, making me shiver. His right hand skims past my elbow to my bicep, over my shoulder to rest on my collarbone, his thumb swiping along my jaw.
“I had a thought about what I said last night.” His voice is quiet, almost meditative, as he watches his thumb on my cheek. “About being Arthur’s Scion and how, on some level, I never thought I’d have to really deal with it, you know? Not really. My dad didn’t. Granddad didn’t. A dormant Scion has clout, but no real say in the Order. I never thought about how his powers might feel and what I might do with them, until…” His eyes flick to mine.
My breath hitches. “Until?”
“Until the uchel took you.”
“Oh, sure,” I joke, my voice trembling only slightly. His face is so close I can smell the shampoo he used this morning. See the fine lashes against his cheek. I’m scared to want him—but I want him anyway. My next words come out breathy and faint. “Damsel in distress activates your hero mode?”
The passion in his voice, the breathless force of it, is enough to make me shiver. “You’re not a damsel to me, Bree. You’re a warrior. You’re strong and you’re beautiful and you’re brilliant and brave.” He presses his forehead against mine, his eyes squeezed shut, and takes a slow, ragged breath. “And I’d really like to kiss you.”
“Oh,” I squeak, and immediately wish I’d thought of something more to say. Anything more.
He chuckles, his clean, minty breath already intimate against my mouth. “Oh, ‘no’? Or oh, ‘yes’?” He pulls back to meet my eyes, and there is affection and something more flickering in their heated depths. It’s the something more that sends an arc of electricity through my body.
“The second o—” He tilts my chin and presses his mouth against mine, warm and soft.
I’ve read books, watched movies, whispered secret wishes to Alice in the darkness of bunk-bed sleepovers. I expect this kiss to feel an awkward sort of good.
I don’t expect each gentle brush of Nick’s lips to shift, grow insistent—and set me on fire.
The distant sounds of early morning birds fade away when Nick’s fingers smooth up the column of my throat, angling my face so that our mouths connect more fully. My fingers clutch at his T-shirt, pulling closer until I am all feeling and no thought: my heart pounding with his, the heat of his chest against mine, the strength of his thigh pressing into my own. Someone gasps for air; then we find each other again. I make a sound in the back of my throat that should be embarrassing, but Nick consumes it with a low hum against my mouth, drawing me forward until we’re flush. In that instant, I feel the two sides of our familiar dance. The call and response of trust and loyalty, intermingling until they become a melody. A beautiful truth that circles in the wind, swirling against my mind, growing louder until everyone, everyone must hear it too.
I don’t know what our kiss is becoming—just as his lips ghost over my jaw, just as his fingers feather over my sternum, we hear someone’s feet crunching down the gravel road behind us.
“Nick? That you?” Russ.
I instinctively freeze, but Nick lifts his head, a frustrated groan rising from his chest.
Another voice nearby. “Who’s that—?” Oh God. Evan too. “Whoa!”
At some point, we’d rotated so that my back is toward the way we’d come, and Nick is facing Russ and Evan’s disembodied voices. Thank the Lord, too, because I can duck my face into Nick’s shoulder and catch my breath instead of die of mortification in front of frat boy Evan Cooper.
Evan crows. “Oh-kayyy, y’all! Sheeit…! Get it!” He’s wheezing with laughter.
“Is this a good morning kiss or a good night kiss?” Russ calls, the sound of a grin all over his voice. “Are we coming or going?”
“Kinda busy right now, guys.” I can’t help but feel a little thrill at the steel underneath Nick’s hoarse voice.
“Oh, we can see that.” Russ laughs at his own joke while Evan says, “Sorry to interrupt, my liege! Please, proceed with thy gentle tonguing!”
They both laugh a long time at that, and even I crack a grin into the soft fabric of Nick’s shirt. They walk around us, whooping and cheering the entire way down the gravel road toward campus.
As soon as they get out of earshot, Nick sighs, pulling me tighter into the circle of his arms. “You okay?”
I nod into his chest and press my ear to it. We stand there in comfortable silence. After a few minutes, both our hearts slow from a rapid gallop to a steady thump. My lips still tingle and the fine hairs on my arms are alert with want, but I sigh into it all rather than act on it.
For the first time in a long while, I let myself enjoy a moment of warmth and safety without wondering if it’s real.
25
“TONIGHT?” ALICE’S VOICE goes near supersonic in my ear.
“Yeahhhh,” I say as I stroll through campus. It’s a gorgeous day, and I navigate the brick pathways with a smile on my face. On Wednesday it was surreal to walk among thousands of Carolina students who had no idea what really went on at their school. Now it’s Friday and that secret feels like nothing at all.
Reality sure does change after a kiss like that.
After he’d walked me home yesterday morning, Nick and I’d been texting each other constantly. I pretty much wore a perma-grin the entire day. This morning he sent a text asking me to go out with him and the other Legendborn tonight. I’d said yes, and then, like any good best friend, texted Alice. She’d called me back right away. I only have a few minutes to talk before I meet with Patricia, but I have to agree with Alice—melting on the phone with my best friend about any Nick-plus-lips topics is worth a quick phone call.