I shift forward, and now we’re touching, and I take my hand off her arm and slide it, slowly, around her waist and she rocks forward almost imperceptibly, but I feel it. I feel everything she does.
“And what exactly are you consenting to?” I ask her, feeling my own voice dip dangerously low.
Her lips move, half-pucker, the face I’ve already learned she makes sometimes when she’s thinking.
“The art show,” she murmurs, her eyes flicking to my lips. “The sea monster.”
I tighten my fingers around hers.
“Holding hands?” I ask.
“Yes,” Thalia says.
“Tracing my tattoo with your fingers?”
“Yes.”
I hold our clasped hands up in front of my face.
“A kiss here?” I ask, lips brushing her knuckles.
“Yes,” she says, the word a little more than a whisper.
I press my lips to her fingertips, my eyes locked on hers, my pulse thrumming.
“A touch here?” I ask, pressing my fingertips into her spine.
“Yes,” she murmurs.
I leave her hand on my shoulder, run my fingers up her arm.
“Here?” I ask.
“Yes.”
To her collarbone, her neck, her pulse hot and racing just beneath her skin until my thumb is skimming along her jaw, my own blood hammering at my veins.
I watch her face for a long moment. Not because I’m unsure, but because I’m sure, and I want to remember this.
“A kiss here?” I finally murmur, and I brush my thumb along her full, lush lips.
“Yes,” she whispers.
So I kiss her.Chapter SixThaliaI feel like I’ve been waiting years for this kiss.
It’s a ridiculous way to feel, and I know it. I met Caleb a couple of hours ago, so logic dictates that I can’t have been waiting any longer than that.
But when he touches my lip with his thumb and then with his mouth, when his fingers dig into my back but his lips stay gentle and warm, when I press myself against him without even meaning to, I feel like I’ve been waiting years.
I step forward, into him. I slide my hand to his neck, into his hair, feel his warmth between my fingers. I move my lips against his and he responds, pressing harder, his thumb now on my cheekbone.
We kiss. We kiss and time passes, the world spins, and I’ve got no sense of it. Could be seconds, could be hours. I don’t know.
Then, he pulls away. A fraction of an inch.
“Don’t,” I say, virtually a growl.
“Don’t what?”
“Stop.”
He kisses me again. Now, harder. Now, needier. Now he works his fingers into my hair and I open my mouth under his and the kiss deepens. He digs his fingers into my spine and I press forward, standing on my toes. His slight stubble is rough against my face, his body muscled and hard against mine, and even though the keys in his pocket are digging into my hip, I don’t stop.
Then the sea monster lights up, and we both pull back in surprise, still half-wound around each other, and I look across the pond at the glimmering, glowing beast.
“Oh,” I exhale, still panting for breath.
Caleb takes a deep breath, clears his throat.
“Thanks,” he calls out, and I finally look over his shoulder to see Vivian, standing by the breaker box where she just plugged the monster back in, gazing across the pond with her hands on her hips, the same ready-to-challenge stance she had before.
“We were working on that part,” he mutters, low enough that only I can hear him.
Beyond Vivian, the monster shines. It glows. I have no idea what its scales are made of — up close it looked like some kind of film — but it moves loosely in the breeze, shuddering this way and that, the lights in the scales designed to look like they’re rippling with the wind.
The effect is that it looks strangely alive, alive enough that I find myself gripping Caleb’s shirt in one hand, holding my breath as the monster seems to come up for air, gently shake itself off.
“It’ll do,” Vivian calls. “How’s it fixed?”
If she’s noticed what we’re doing, she doesn’t show the first sign of it.
Caleb takes a deep breath, clears his throat, takes my hand, walks to the edge of the pond where Vivian’s standing.
“Rigged it with a bungee cord and a two-by-four,” he says. “It’ll hold for a few hours.”
“Huh,” Vivian says. “Well, it’s better than it was.”
Caleb slides his thumb over my knuckles, and I swallow hard at the friction.
Leave, I think at Vivian. Please leave, we were very busy…
“DRAGON!” a kid shouts from somewhere far, far closer than I want. “Cool!”
“Oh, wow,” an adult voice says. Moments later, there are steps on the bridge and then four figures are coming across: two small, two full-size, and my toes curl with sheer irritation, like I’m a teenager on a movie date and my mom just sat down in front of me.
Then Vivian walks away without another word, just marching off.