The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [126]
Dean spun me out and back. “Course you do. I’m hoping you’ll grow to like me, too.” He winked. “A little.”
I didn’t answer, I just danced until the song ended and static hissed along the empty aether. “Too forward?” Dean said, lowering our hands so they were pressed together between us. The shine faded from his eyes.
“It’s not that.” I didn’t let go of Dean and he didn’t let go of me. “But this won’t last. Me, and the Weird, and the Folk—”
“Aoife,” Dean interrupted, bending his head toward mine. “I don’t care about lasting. I just want right now.”
We swayed together on the spot, bonded by hand and hip, my breath and heartbeat trapped in Dean’s starlight gaze.
“Dean?” I whispered.
“Yeah, princess?”
I stood on tiptoe to close the distance between us. “I want right now too.”
When I kissed Dean I shut my eyes as if I were dancing again, and shut out everything except his scent, and his skin, and the music whispering in my ears.
Dean let out a soft sound when I pressed my lips to his and then pulled me tight and flush against his chest. His hand on my waist was warm, and I could feel every finger pressing into my ribs. His other slid across my neck, the tips of his fingers catching my hair.
“Aoife,” Dean said huskily, when we finally pulled apart.
I opened my eyes, slowly, afraid that he’d become nothing more than smoke if I looked at him.
“Yes, Dean?”
His eyes were stormy, darker than I’d ever seen them. Dean’s hand moved from my neck to cup my cheek, the spot where Tremaine had slapped me. When he touched me, my skin was finally warm. “I don’t want to let go of you.”
“Me either,” I whispered. My stomach was light and my head was full of vertigo, like the floor was falling away beneath me, and yet I knew Dean would anchor me, keep me close.
Dean pressed his forehead against mine. “So let’s just stay like this a while.”
“Aoife!” The new voice slammed me back down to earth.
Dean and I turned as one, his hands still on me. “Cal?” I gasped. How much had he seen? His expression told me that he’d seen far too much for me to have any hope of explaining.
Cal stood in the doorway, a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk slack in his hands. “I heard music. I brought you some …,” he started, eyes darting between Dean and me. “Bethina got some groceries in this afternoon and made them.…” He shook his head, lips peeling back to show all of his teeth in a grotesque echo of Tremaine. “Really, Aoife? Him? Him?”
“Cal, it’s not …,” I started. His face went stone, and his expression was ugly. He wasn’t my Cal in that moment, and I didn’t want to know the new person who was staring at me with unabridged contempt. Cal looked like every student who’d stared down at me—Marcos, Cecelia, every one.
“It is, Aoife. He’s not our kind. You’ll have to choose, and you’ll leave me behind.” He slammed down the plate and glass, so that milk sloshed all over the parlor table. “I hope you’re happy.”
“Cal …” I extricated myself from Dean’s grip, anything but happy. I’d never seen Cal so angry. “Cal, wait!” But my friend had stormed out, and the frightful foreign expression hadn’t left his face.
“You should go talk to him,” Dean said.
I pressed my hands over my face, feeling a hot tangle of anger and sadness, but not shame. I wasn’t embarrassed about what Dean and I had done. I’d wanted to kiss him since our first day in Arkham, and after what had happened since that day, I was through being ashamed of wanting things. “It won’t do any good,” I said. “Cal’s … fragile. He’ll think that I lied to him.”
“I don’t mean salve his dashed notions of romance. I mean calm him down.” Dean shoved his hair off his forehead. “If he throws a rod and goes back to the city spouting stories, he could hurt you, Aoife. And then I’d have to beat the crap out of him, and that’d be a real shame.”
“Cal wouldn’t …” My stomach flipped over, dizzy and unsettled. I realized I didn’t know Cal as well as I had the night we left Lovecraft. “Would he?” I realized I didn’t know the Cal who’d run out of the parlor at all. He might.
“I once spent