Well, that was fine. He didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re totally right, it doesn’t,” he said.
“Oh thank god.”
“You might need a flame-retardant suit, however.”
God, the teasing way he said it. That skewed smile, the light in his eyes.
Then just as she was about to lose it a little bit: “I’m kidding, I’mkidding. I know where we can get some essence of dragon scale. Kind of a trek, and the office it’s in might be locked, but it won’t be a big deal to get around.”
“You mean you’ve just put me through brief terror for nothing.”
He spread his hands. “What can I say? I like seeing your eyes go wide.”
“Your eyes are gonna go wide when I get you back for this.”
“Go ahead and get me back. In fact, I want you to do it. Really hard.”
“Oh yeah?”
Oh no, her brain cried. But too late, too late. Now they were doing something that felt way too much like flirting. Like they had at the kitchen table—only worse, so much worse, because that hadn’t been intentional. And they hadn’t really made it personal. But here he was sayingyouand she was sayingyouand…
Was he standing up?
Was hecomingtowardher?
“Seth, we really need to concentrate on getting this stuff,” she said, in a voice that sounded far too much like a breathless gasp. Honestly, it was a miracle he listened, and stopped, and let her continue. “So just tell me where we need to go.”
And after that he finally seemed able to focus.
Sort of. She could tell he had to avoid looking at her to do it. “We need to figure out how we’re going to get there first. Because obviously we need to go together, and neither of us has a working car.”
“We don’t need cars. I have the Hoover.”
“Right. And how am I gonna get there on that?”
“Well, it will still fly when you’re riding it too.”
“Cassie, the problem isn’t how much weight or non-witchiness the magic can take. The problem is that I will have to be jammed right up against your butt in order for us to both safely fit. And as things stand, I can barely cope withsayingthat I’ll have to be jammed right up against your butt in order for us to both safely fit,” he said, and although her brain started babbling about him being into that, and what it would feel like, and whether they’daccidentally rub against each other whenever she turned too hard, she managed to keep it together.
“So, then, you just ride in front,” she said.
And got some incredulous eyebrows for it. “I’m honestly worried that you think that will be any better.”
“I don’t see why. Then it’ll just bemejammed up againstyourbutt and—ohno, ohwow, you like that. You’re saying you like that. Oh god, okay that’s.… Yeah, that’s a lot of information I shouldn’t have uncovered.”
She had to fully turn away from him, then.
Her back to him, hands on the rim of the kitchen sink, for support. And even that didn’t help. Her legs had just gone, they had completely gone, it was almost impossible to stay upright. The only way she managed was by counting sheep in her head—like she was trying to sleep—instead of thinking for even one second about what he had meant.
Because even one second was too much.
She got a mental glimpse of him arching his back, and—
“Okay, we really need to go,” she burst out frantically.
But he wasn’t even paying attention. “If it helps at all, this talk isn’t affecting me too badly. I think the potion you gave me is really helping to even out that instant jump from one to seven thousand, on the horny scale,” he said, all cheerful.
