Chapter Thirty-Two. When There’s a Confession #3
“Yeah, and I like dragons.” He takes my hands. “I could listen to you forever.”
There’s that word again, the one he throws around like it’s easy. Like everything he’s saying makes sense when it doesn’t. James Murphy doesn’t just like me, he’s liked me for years. When I contemplated his feelings, I imagined them freshly forged like mine.
“So—” I don’t know how to even start. “So even when I was only a copper-crafter? But at the start of summer it was ‘Someone would have to think she’d win for that to work’ and ‘I promise that won’t be a problem. I won’t even talk to someone in a class beneath me.’”
He frowns, then laughs at my indignation.
“Okay, that first bit at the tournament was rude. And I immediately regretted it. On an average day I can barely manage in your presence. Combine that with Ditters and the pain in my arm? I wasn’t thinking straight.
However, that last part I don’t even think I said. ”
“Well, it felt implied.”
“Farren, I’ve been having to pretend from the beginning.” His hands glide up my arms, coating me in heat. “It’s been torture thinking you truly hate me. That you didn’t have to pretend.”
Our eyes meet again. A wave of want pulses through me.
Then this surge, a tidal wave of feelings I can’t identify, they all come at me so fast and with such overwhelming force.
I never realized just how vulnerable you need to be to admit you like someone.
I’d see couples start dating in school and it seemed so effortless.
“I like you, you like me,” then bam, done.
But it’s so much more than that. More than fear of embarrassment or the fear of rejection even.
It’s opening yourself up for all of it, everything that comes with liking someone to this degree.
To loving someone. How did I not understand what a walled fortress I kept my emotions in before this moment?
Because with James, now, I feel everything, and I can barely speak.
“I’ve had to pretend,” I whisper. “Since I’ve gotten to know you, I’ve had to pretend.”
He leans forward and I open my legs to let him get closer.
He steps in between my thighs. This time when his lips touch mine, it’s not a whirlwind of freaking out over my first kiss happening.
Now I indulge in the details. His hands for one, against my jaw and my waist. A part of me doesn’t believe that I’m his first kiss, because how is he this good?
He knows exactly what to do with his hands. How to tilt his head and move his lips.
I’m all too aware that I’m not wearing a bra, a fact that most of the time doesn’t even matter I have so little to work with. But as James’s hand curves along my ribs my skin prickles with the knowledge if he moved mere inches upward, he’d know too.
When my glasses bump into my face, I pull back for one second and tear them off.
The metal clinks onto the counter, but we’re already back to each other.
I wrap my legs around him to drag him impossibly closer.
He clutches me back. Our kiss impossibly deepens.
Tongues and heat, and my own hands in his curls.
Suddenly, he stops, breaking away from me. We both heave in breaths. “Sorry, give me a second. This is just … it’s a lot.”
I release my hold on him, mortified by what my thighs were doing, encapsulating his hips, straddling him in a way. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, please don’t move away. Just give me a second.” He stares at me and presses a hand to my jawline, cradling my face. “I want to make sure this is real.”
I’m suddenly aware of my surroundings once again. Copper pots swinging alongside us. Wildflower wallpaper looking not-so-innocent in the darkness. “We shouldn’t be doing this here. My parents could walk in.”
He glances around too. “Right. Kitchen. Very open kitchen.”
James Murphy is flushed in my arms, undone in a way I’ve never seen before. I did that.
He’s smiling at me as he pulls farther back to stare at me. Then his smile crashes and dimples disappear. “What do we do now?” he asks shyly like he knows how this went last time. Me freaking out over his father figuring us out. Well, now that that’s happened …
My mind whirls, not wanting to be wrong again. “For now, we keep what’s happening between us a secret. I don’t want to see you hurt again defending me.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t you dare say you don’t mind.”
“Okay. Deal.”
I smile. “So many deals with you.”
He chuckles. “Okay then, a promise. If my father is coming, if he presses charges, we have to be ready for him. But we do that together?”
“Together,” I agree, feeling warm just uttering the word, changing us from two into one. I tighten my grip around him. I’ve made my decision. I’m not letting him go so easily.
But it’s not just us. Nity and the babies have to be ready. For that we need a plan, a way to escape if anyone comes searching the sanctuary. James and I stare at one another, both processing at the same time. I know because when we speak, we utter identical words.
“We need to teach the hatchlings to fly.”