That, or I was just an utter and completefool,as usual.
Either way, when I didn’t avert my gaze, a faint snarl curled his lips. A colder look, mixed with what struck me pretty unmistakably as disgust reached his eyes.
Seemingly the instant the muscles of his face moved, I jerked back into motion. Maybe before that, some part of me questioned whether he’d been alive at all.
The effect ended with me acting like I got hit by a branding iron.
I took a half-leap forward, in the direction of my friends, moving like a startled deer. It hadn’t even occurred to me to be angry yet. I wasn’t embarrassed yet, or shocked. I think my only instinct was to get the hell away from him, as fast as I possibly could.
I wondered later if he’d thought I was afraid of him.
I’m not even sure whether I wasn’t.
I honestly didn’t care what he thought, or told myself that, anyway, but a part of me wondered for my own reasons. At more than one point in our short-lived “agreement,” he’d definitely seemed towantme to be afraid of him.
Had he succeeded in that, finally?
It bothered me on some level that I honestly didn’t know.
Regardless, if any of those more concrete emotions were involved in my reaction, I couldn’t parse it at the time. It felt closer to being punched in the face, or maybe shoved, hard, in the middle of my chest, so that I had to move to keep from falling.
I couldn’t breathe.
My heart constricted to a knotted clump behind my ribs.
By the time I could think at all, I’d walked most of the way over to my friends. The carriage lurched right as I’d nearly reached them, jerking me forward as if the driver had slammed on the brakes while going 150 kilometers per hour. Worried about my cat, I turned to protect her, even as I lost my footing and careened into the padded wall where Miranda, Luc, Jolie, Draken, and Darragh all sat.
Draken must have seen it coming.
That, or he just happened to be nearest to me when I lost my balance.
Either way, I lurched forward, twisted the cat and satchel away…
…and crashed awkwardly onto his lap.
“I’m not complaining,”the tall wizard said, holding me with one muscular arm as he grinned up at me. He winked, eyes teasing. “You can sit here the whole way to Malcroix if you want, Leda. I’m perfectly comfortable.”
I rolled my eyes, but laughed, in spite of myself.
I started to get up, but his arm tightened.
“We actuallyareshort of space,” he said, his voice slightly apologetic. “We hadn’t expected Nyx to be on this carriage. Wewere all going to squash in when you got here, but if you’re comfortable, you might as well stay where you are. I honestly don’t mind.”
I flushed a little, not sure that was a good idea.
Really, I knew for a fact itwasn’ta good idea, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by being weird about it, when it should be a totally innocent thing between friends.
I’d made a mess of that, though, when I went to stay with Mir over the summer.
Draken and I shared a drunken kiss on the beach one night, at a bonfire party made up of about fifty of their film industry and other L.A. friends.
Really, it was more of an extended snog.
I wasn’t proud of it.
Honestly, I still felt an uncomfortable curl of shame whenever I remembered that night, even apart from all of the stupid, childish reasons I’d let it happen.
Worse, I’dknownit was a bad idea, even at the time. Miranda reinforced that fact the next morning, warning me that Draken was “crushing on you like a teenaged virgin, Leda,” and I shouldn’t go there with him unless I wanted to try and make something real happen, because Draken wasn’t going to take it well, otherwise.
