Mir’s warning was dire enough that I’d pulled Draken outside with me, not long after he showed up in the kitchen that morning. I took him to the beachside deck, handed him a cappuccino I’d made for him in Mir’s enormous, copper, espresso maker, and told him how much I valued our friendship and that I didn’t want things to get screwed up.
Which had the benefit of being true, but I still felt pretty terrible about it.
He’d pretended to take it well, but I suspected he hadn’t.
“Let her go, you neanderthal,” Miranda said, shoving at his arm.
“And put her where?” Draken retorted back.
“We can make room,” Mir said, exasperated.
She blew her bangs out of her face, and I noticed for the first time that she’d dyed her longish bob green since I’d last seen her. Her eyes matched the shade perfectly, like sea glass, or the lightest jade imaginable, and looked nothing at all like mine.
The carriage swerved, and Draken’s arm tightened to keep me from sliding off his lap and onto the floor. I gripped his jacket’s sleeve briefly for the same reason, and made the mistake of glancing up, once I had my legs in a slightly more dignified position on one side of Draken’s thighs. That bare instant I wasn’t focused on my friends, I found those gold eyes staring at me again. He looked away before I could make sense of his expression, but not before I saw his irises flash with a ripple of gold-green fire that slid through the rings.
I wondered again, how no one else ever seemed to notice how utterlybizarrehis magic was. For someone who seemed to want to keep it a secret, he did a crap job of hiding it.
He leaned down while I watched, saying something into the ear of the brunette witch who still had her legs hooked over his.
She laughed, and shoved at his arm.
I gently tugged Draken’s arm from around me.
As I did, I couldn’t help wincing, remembering our longish snogging session on the beach that summer. The most difficult part of that had honestly been how much I’d enjoyed it. Granted, I’d been hammered, and he’d been hammered, but I’d still liked kissing him much more than I should have, given who he was.
Draken ended up being a much better kisser than he had any right to be, and I’d let it go on for far too long at least partly for that reason. I still didn’t see him that way, not really, but I could admit to myself that it’d been hot, kissing him. Hot enough toconfuse me, and to have me fully in his lap by the end, my hand massaging his cock while he groaned against my neck. Honestly, if Mir and the others hadn’t been there, I might have let things go a lot further.
That realization had mortified me the following morning.
Now I wondered why I hadn’t been willing to eventrywith him.
A noise on the other side of the carriage jerked my eyes up.
Bones was on his feet, breathing hard. I watched, body tense, as he bent down to rip a cloak off the seat near where he’d just been sitting. He straightened before throwing it over one arm. I realized only then that he wore a full, very expensive-looking, brocaded suit, black with tiny gold designs on the vest under a black jacket and over a black shirt. His face looked darker than it had, but that off-kilter glow had sharpened in his eyes. I saw another, brighter tongue of gold-green fire slither through his irises, right as his jaw ticked.
“I’m not sitting up here,” I heard him growl to the witch with the red stockings. “Stay if you want. What do I care?”
Without another word, he aimed his feet for the spiral staircase, and I couldn’t help noticing he walked with a limp. His upper body moved strangely too, like he’d hurt himself somehow. His back, maybe?
Whatever it was, I’d never seen him move that ungracefully before.
Hating that I’d even noticed, I stared after him until he disappeared, feeling anger for the first time, along with a confused, frustrated feeling I’d nearly forgotten, that only ever seemed directed at him. I had the overwhelming urge to go after him for the sole purpose of shoving him, or maybe slapping him across the face.
I was still staring at the staircase when Wraith, who was normally a bizarrely quiet cat, let out a plaintive meow.
Draken clucked at her, then coaxed Wraith out of my satchel and onto his lap once I’d squeezed down on the seat between him and Miranda. I almost regretted getting off him once I had. Now, instead of sitting on his legs, my entire body pressed tightly up against his.
Mir must’ve seen the look on my face, because she slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to her.
“Stop stealing her cat,” she scolded Draken, then said quieter, in my ear. “I’ve talked to him. I know you talked to him, too. Stop feeling bad. I can see it all over your face.”
I didn’t answer.
Somehow, my eyes flickered back across the carriage, as if looking for those gold eyes against my will. Instead I found the pretty brunette with the red stockings glaring at me, arms crossed across her chest. I jerked my eyes away when Wraith meowed plaintively and walked back onto my lap. I scooped her up and held her against my chest, feeling weirdly protective of her and clingy and maddeningly emotional all at once.
I felt my eyes prick and clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
Gods-damn it. What was wrong with me?
