Chapter Twenty-One Kion #3
Grumbling to himself, Kion lowers himself into the seat she vacated only moments before. “I’m not a dog. You can’t just make me kneel and sit whenever you like.”
Cho, who apparently didn’t deign to toss her perishables before moving out, is filling the mug her phone had been balancing on with hot water from the tap.
They’d had stale crackers and sticky marmalade for dinner while he “regaled” them with the story of Jacks Clarke.
Kion eyes the sink distrustfully. Fucking sacrilege, doing this without a kettle.
“Are you sure? You’re very doglike,” Taissa says, slicing open an old-looking lemon from the fridge.
Is that even edible? “You smell bad when you get wet, you drool all over the place, and I’m not sure you’re—”
“If you say ‘potty-trained,’ I’ll kick you off the team,” he growls as lightning slashes through the sky. His whole body tenses, and his heart starts marching about like a merry soldier, but he concentrates on Taissa as she pours whiskey and lemon juice into the hot water.
“Well, I wasn’t going to, but I want to, now.” Kion will never admit that he loves the way Taissa sometimes says wasn’t like wasnae. He’d rather die, actually. Taissa plops the hot toddy down in front of him. “It’s more like a lukewarm toddy,” she adds.
“Fantastic.”
Thunder shakes the cottage. Rain lashes against the windows like the belts against Kion’s skin.
“Go on, try it.”
“No.”
“Go on,” she wheedles, “or I’ll hire another caricature artist to draw a really hideous version of you for Complete Carriwitchet.”
The storm goes dead silent as Kion stares at her, mouth agape.
Of all the fucking things.
He’d thought somebody at the paper just really had it out for him. Clearly, he should have known better.
“That was you?” Kion demands, slamming the lukewarm toddy down on the table. It splashes onto his hand. Lukewarm indeed.
Taissa bites her lip. He stares at it for some unfathomable reason. “Yeah,” she says, with a disdainful sniff. But she looks quite proud.
“Cho,” he growls.
“Locke,” she snaps back.
They stare at each other as the air grows thick. Taissa crosses her arms. “I have it framed,” she admits after a long moment of obvious triumph.
“No,” he snarls.
“Yes.” Taissa crooks a finger at him and smiles unpleasantly. “I’ll show you.”
His back stiffens as thunder roars, and he’s lurching to his feet before he even understands what he’s doing. “Fine,” he grits out, and it’s like he’s on autopilot as he follows Taissa to…her bedroom.
It’s small, tiny, with only a mattress stripped of its sheets…and the giant monstrosity hanging on her wall in a ridiculously ornate golden frame, as if it belongs in the bloody British Museum. And the portrait inside…
Him, but worse.
So much worse.
Kion barely hears the thunder over his potent mixture of anger and exasperation.
“I couldn’t take it back to the Nexitory, you see, because I thought you would confiscate it.” Taissa is standing next to him as they both gawk at it like perusers of some seriously questionable art gallery.
“Damn right I would,” he snaps. He reaches out to do exactly that, but Taissa hauls him backward before he can even touch the frame. Her arms are around his torso and she’s pressed flat against his back; he can feel her body molded against his, her breasts pushing into him—
Kion’s neck flushes.
“Don’t touch the art,” she warns, hauling him even farther backward. Her knees bump the bed frame as Kion wriggles out of her grip—fuck, she’s strong—and turns to glare down at her.
It’s half-hearted. Taissa Cho and beds have begun to bring something out in him that he doesn’t understand. The psychologists, and James, would probably call it classical conditioning.
She’s swapped her contacts out for glasses. It baffles him, how good she looks with the frames. One of her curls is somehow sticking straight up into the air. It seems like Kion watches himself from afar as he reaches out to smooth it down.
Taissa’s eyes go wide.
“Be careful,” she warns, but her voice is a little husky. “You’ll make me start thinking you don’t hate me. Pookie.”
His hand falls back to his side, his fingers twitching.
He blames the shock of the rumbling thunder for what he says next.
“You’re not as bad as I thought you were.
Sweetheart.” Ah, shit. He clamps his mouth shut but it’s too late.
Coming from him, this is high praise. Too high.
He scrambles to cover his arse. “You’re worse.
” Kion jabs a finger at the framed portrait.
“Tell me what the hells I did to deserve that.”
“You don’t remember?” Taissa plops down on the bed. After a moment of hesitation, Kion sits down beside her. Somehow, the storm seems farther away as she punches him in the arm.
Hard. He winces.
“Merlin, Cho—”
“You told Everest Huang that I had Pixie Pox, you wanker.”
Oh. Kion might remember something about that.
“And then he dumped me,” Taissa finishes with blazing eyes. “I really liked him—”
Him? Everest Huang was, and continues to be, a gullible ninny. “The only reason I told him that you had the Pox,” he snarls back, “is because you ruined my relationship with Chasca—”
Indignant, she straightens, leaning forward to jab him some more. This time her finger pokes viciously at his chest. “Which I only did because you decided to nearly trip me on a red carpet—”
“That was a bloody accident!” Her dress had been ridiculously long, damn it, and he hadn’t meant to get tangled in it. “But when you spilled wine all over me, it wasn’t!”
“Really? Was it a ‘bloody accident’ when you accused me of being on Fury right after my debut?” Her cheeks are flushed. “I had to take a drug test—”
Ah, fuckkk.
Look. No rookie on any team should have played as well as her.
It wasn’t Kion’s finest moment, but he’d truly believed she could have been on the illicit performance-enhancing drug, which would have been harder to detect than an illegal glyph.
The season past, the Peryton’s captain had been high off it every game.
As well as a Hippogriff’s Knocker. It was some sort of demented trend in the sport.
Besides, her coach Frasier, he’d served some time in his youth for dealing it.
All Kion had done was mention the possibility in passing to James, but some nosy reporter had overheard and from there on, it had snowballed in a way he’d never meant it to.
And yeah, maybe he’d been insecure when the world had started calling her the “new Kion Locke.” Like he was somehow elderly because he’d hit twenty-five and she was a chipper nineteen-year-old.
Like he was replaceable.
Do you think anybody will care if you disappear, devil-boy? You’re replaceable. The Sisters, I bet you they won’t even notice.