She didn’t plan on doing either one.
Mae stepped forward and caught his hand, and Nick started and made to pull away. She hung on, tangling their wet, cold fingers together, not letting him make them any demon terrifying any human. She knew him, had heard his true name, read his father’s diary, held his hand before. They knew each other.
He stopped trying to pull away and just looked down at her.
Mae sucked in a breath of stormy air.
Then she reached up to curl her fingers tight into the soaked material of Nick’s T-shirt.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m imagining a few things.”
Nick made a gasping, hurt sound and leaned in, his face half sliding and half scraping against hers, catching a little where he needed to shave, starting a slow, warm, prickling feeling crawling down her rib cage. Then his mouth caught hers, her lips parting, remembering the precise feel of his mouth against hers, and every nerve ending she had felt touched with lightning.
The whole city could burn, and for a moment she didn’t care.
She was kissing Nick, he was kissing her, it was Nick again at last. Mae’s back hit the wet roof tiles and she pulled him down with her, hands knotted in his wet hair, his mouth hot and demanding on hers, lips curling the way she remembered them. She’d memorized his mouth.
“Shhh,” she said, frantic, between kisses. “Nick. It’s all
It was so different from the first time. She’d been concerned about him then, too, but it hadn’t been this wild, intangible thing, she hadn’t felt her heart beating like a frenzied bird trapped in her chest.
“Shhh,” she said against the corner of his mouth, and ran a hand up along the center of his chest, flat muscle under soaked cotton. Her fingers caught on the talisman and the scar beneath it.
He almost smiled, though the smiled twisted in on itself and disappeared. “Mavis,” he said, his voice scraping away from the edge, and she told herself she didn’t like it.
He was calmer now, she thought, and he might listen. She should pull back, deal with him calmly, be in control.
He kissed her again, sharing a shuddering breath from his open mouth to hers, his body pressing her down against the storm-washed roof tiles, and Mae kissed him back. She was burning hot in the middle of a storm, so hot she was shaking with it.
“Shhh,” she said, nosing blindly along his cheek, kissing the sharp corner of his jaw and then sliding her mouth down the pale rain-slick line of his throat.
He didn’t make sounds like other boys did, so she had to pay attention to every little detail in the small lightning-soaked space between them. She bit down on the curve where his neck sloped into his collarbone, tasting the warm rainwater pooled there and the cool skin beneath, and felt him tense above her.
“Come here,” he ordered, and she pressed her lips against his throat and smiled.
Nick peeled the wet material of her shirt away from her skin, fingers sliding under the collar, and ran the shocking-cold metal of his ring along her mark. Mae arched up into him, and he caught her mouth and the small sound she made, his teeth running along the line of her lower lip.
“I have a—” Mae whispered into the slow, hot kiss, drunk on Nick all around her. She was tempted to thump her head against the roof tile in a desperate effort to clear it, but instead she kissed Nick some more. “I—oh God—I have a plan.”
Her plan had not been to push the drenched cotton of his shirt up so she could run a hand up his ribs, skating over the leather band where he kept a knife hidden, but it was happening anyway. Nick was sitting up a little, she was levering herself up on her elbows to help him, to strip his shirt off so she could have wet smooth skin under her hands.
“This is becoming a habit of yours, Nick,” Alan’s voice said coldly from the skylight, and they both froze.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Alan continued, and disappeared down the ladder before Mae had even registered the expression on his face, though she could tell from the tone of his voice that it couldn’t have been good.
Mae swore between gritted teeth, and Nick bolted backward, lunging away from her and toward the skylight. She pressed her forehead against the heel of her hand and cursed herself silently and at length. She was so stupid, how had she done this, and after what Alan had said to her on the high street. How he must feel now.
She scrambled to her feet and went for the ladder, making her way shakily down it, legs not working particularly well, as she heard Nick thundering down the attic stairs.
“Alan!” he shouted, but there was no answer back, not even a shout.
Mae was stumbling down the stairs to the hall when Nick caught Alan in the kitchen, the door open and the fluorescent lights on. Alan was standing beside the kettle, which he’d switched on. He looked pale and determinedly casual.
Nick had hold of the kitchen counter. The way he was gripping it and the fact that he was disheveled and soaked to the skin combined to form the impression of a drowning man.
“Alan,” he said, “I want to talk.”
Mae was at the foot of the stairs now, making her way slowly to the kitchen door. She wasn’t sure if she could help by getting involved. She couldn’t leave the explaining to Nick, but she couldn’t blame Alan if he did not want to look at her right now.
Apparently Alan didn’t want to look at his brother, either. He was staring down at his empty cup.
“You do?” he asked Nick, his voice clipped. “Well, that’s new and different for us. What do you want to say?”
Nick looked at him, eyes glittering under his wet fall of hair. Every muscle in his body looked tense, and Mae remembered what she had told Nick, realized how much he might hate Alan at this moment, and waited with her
