Chapter Eight Taissa #4
“We’ll have to start posting about each other.” She tries to ignore the tightness in her throat. The death threats probably haven’t stopped, but she refuses to check.
Kion grimaces. “Why is that even remotely necessary?”
“People believe everything they see on social media.” She opens her camera. “We’ll add Cauldron to our strategies. Starting now. Try to look less like you want to die, please.”
As he glowers, she snaps a photograph.
It looks like a mugshot.
Oh, well. It’s the best she’ll get.
“Caption…‘Dinner with my darling pookie.’ ”
“Don’t you fucking dare—I haven’t told the team yet, and the last thing—” He pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to reason with a crafty demon.
She doesn’t know whether to be offended or delighted.
“Cho, the last thing I need is for them to find out from you calling me bloody ‘pookie.’ ”
“Fine,” she lies. Personally, she thinks that’s the best way for them to find out. “By the way, we need a story.”
“A story?”
“How did we first meet?”
“I don’t even remember.”
Her stomach cramps, and then drops. Of course he wouldn’t remember. Well, it’s crystal clear in her mind. “Make something up, then. Remember, Bill and Niamh want you to have been madly in love with me for years.”
“That’s too big of a lie.” Kion’s knuckles are white around his fork. His neck is flushing. “Nobody will believe that. We hated each other, and still fucking do.”
She’s ignoring him. “You first met me at the NCL Gala when I was a debut. You nearly fell to your knees from how beautiful I was. I wasn’t interested and turned you down.
Because of your fragile little ego, you spent the next years resenting me.
” (In a perfect world, this is what would have happened.)
Kion seems to be going through all five stages of grief at once. “No.”
She’s undeterred. “We both mistook passion for hatred.”
“Cho—”
“Then, you felt wretched after ruining my life.”
“I didn’t ru—”
“Hoping to make amends, six months ago you crawled to me and professed your love. You also apologized profusely and wept. Oh, and kneeled. Maybe you read me a sonnet.”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“It took a while, but I forgave you.” Taissa stabs her pie angrily. “The gifts you showered me with helped. Especially that beautiful Porsche of yours.”
“No.” Kion is watching her destroy her pie like a man witnessing the terrors of war.
“You are utterly obsessed with me. If I left you, you would perish. Waste away.”
Kion has pinned her with a look so scathing that she straightens in alarm, glancing toward the paparazzi, who are still snapping away.
They’ve surely captured his lowered brows, his tense jaw, and the obvious I hate you so much look all over his face.
Knowing them, that will be the photograph they use tomorrow, unless…
(Oh, Morgana. Don’t make her do it.)
“Don’t slap me, Locke,” she warns as she half rises from her seat.
Across the small table, Kion looks alarmed. “What the hells are you about to do, Cho?”
This. Gritting her teeth, she leans forward and purses her lips.
Locke looks like a man sentenced to the gallows. (Well, that’s a confidence boost.)
His eyes bulge as she approaches, aiming for his cheek. But the numpty, clearly convinced that (despite her word) she’s about to snog the ever-loving life out of him, jerks in his chair. Thrown off course, one of Taissa’s hands lands right in the pie, and her lips land on his.
On Kion’s lips.
On Kion Locke’s lips.
For a moment, neither of them moves: dragonflies suspended in amber.
Even with hers just barely brushing his, she can tell that his lips are pillowy.
It’s that slightly bee-stung bottom lip of his.
Taissa trembles. She should pull away. This isn’t at all what she planned.
But it’s like she’s stuck: She’s a magnet and he’s a-a fridge.
An obnoxious, infuriating fridge that smells like summer and the sea and is currently staring up at her with those intense black eyes.
So many emotions churn in them. Is it too much to hope for that she doesn’t see revulsion?
Apparently so. Kion breaks the kiss, lurching abruptly away, breathing hard.
Taissa, still frozen, stares at him.
(Teenage Taissa has made an unfortunate reappearance somewhere in the back of her brain. And teenage Taissa is screaming that Kion Locke just kissed her.)
“Cho.” Kion’s voice is raspy. “What the fuck?”
She stomps on Teenage Taissa until there’s nothing left but a smudge of her. “You moved,” Taissa hisses accusatorily at Kion.
“Because you were coming at me,” he growls. “It’s a natural fucking reaction—”
“You kissed me—”
“No. You kissed me—”
“Away and take yer face for a shite,” Taissa sneers at him, channeling old Grandmum Morag. “Ya wee jobbie.”
To her great satisfaction, he looks suitably bewildered (either by her suddenly thick accent or her impressive vocabulary). But then his eyes move down to Taissa’s right hand.
That is in the pie.
“You’re covered in gravy,” Kion drawls back, and somehow those four words are more withering than any of Grandmum Morag’s ever could be.