“Aside from that small detail,” Mae told him slowly, “I think it was a pretty good date. You definitely deserve a kiss on the doorstep. Or, you know. Wherever.”
She said the words on an impulse born of fever fruit and sympathy, and then she was panicking. It wasn’t that she had any objection to kissing Alan, but she wanted to be fair. She didn’t know if this was fair.
She did know that she liked the way happiness flooded back into his face, eyes on hers suddenly, warm and private, as if he was about to lean over to her and whisper the best secret he knew in her ear.
“Just one,” she told him. “There’s that other guy. I said I’d give him a chance. But I’d like to—to see.”
“I understand,” Alan said, soft. He still looked so happy.
Mae put her glass down, though it seemed to want to cling to her suddenly sweaty hands. The kitchen was full of shadows, but Alan was close enough to see clearly. She tipped her face up to his.
He put his hands on either side of her, holding on to the counter and holding her bracketed between his arms, apparently so he could survey her at his leisure. He was all lit up.
“Ah,” Mae said, hesitating. She reached out and curled her fingers around the blue shirt Alan had unbuttoned, knuckles resting against the warmth of the T-shirt and chest beneath, and smiled. “Are you waiting for anything in particular?”
“Oh,” Alan said softly, in a response to her “Ah.” He moved in a little closer to her, being surprisingly tall again. There was just a fraction of space between them now. “No,” he continued, sliding off his glasses and pushing them away down the counter.
He looked different without them, younger, the slow flush rising in his cheeks very plain. He bent his head down, the warmth of his mouth and body touching hers even though he wasn’t touching her, not quite.
He lifted a hand to her face, not even touching that, fingers playing about a centimeter from her jaw.
“I like to take my time,” he murmured, words a whisper in the tiny space between them. “I want to get it just right.”
Then he kissed her, slow and thorough, his mouth capturing hers and his body suddenly pressed all along hers, and she grasped at his shirt collar and a moment later his hair, fingers closing around the curls. His mouth moved against hers, soft and catching every broken breath she let out. She felt the shape of his small, warm smile pressed against hers, the edge of his teeth light on her lower lip, and his tongue sliding inside her mouth.
Mae found herself making a little choked sound and pulling his head down to hers, trying to bring him closer. Suddenly she was flat on her back on the kitchen counter, one leg wrapped around Alan’s good leg, one of Alan’s hands cradling the back of her head as he kept kissing her, exploratory, his lips lingering over hers even as his breath came harsh in her ears.
She was pulling his shirt off his shoulders when he drew back, mouth a bitten-red line and eyes bright, and pushed himself off from the counter to lean against the kitchen wall about a foot away.
“Just one, you said,” he reminded her.
Mae sat up. “Um,” she said, and laughed. “Wow.”
Alan laughed with her, cheeks stained pink, and moved around her to snag his glasses and his cup of coffee. When he slid them back on he looked more like the usual Alan, even though his hair was still mussed and his mouth still red.
“Thanks. Well. Nerdy guys try harder, you see,” he explained. “The other guys, they’re so busy with sports and actually getting more girls, but nerdy guys have time to think about it.”
“And to learn how to throw knives with deadly precision.”
“And that, obviously,” Alan said, nodding. He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing down to the floor and back up at her. “You should go get some rest. I’m going to try and wake Nick with coffee, tell him about what happened with Gerald.”
“Okay,” said Mae.
She made no move to get off the kitchen counter while Alan went to the kitchen door, opened it, and then hesitated on the threshold. “Mae.”
“Yes?”
He smiled at her, gradual and pleased. “You’re pretty wow yourself.”
He left, closing the door behind him. Mae took a minute to admire the kitchen ceiling and get her breath back before she went up to bed.
12
Lying with Demons
Mae woke to the sound of steel on stone. She hit the bedclothes heaped over her head and sat up, fighting her way out of the sheets, to find Nick sitting at the window, sharpening his sword. He raised an eyebrow at her no doubt disheveled appearance.
“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”
“I didn’t know which bed belonged to who,” Mae snapped. The sheets smelled of steel and cotton, but that hadn’t told her much. They both smelled like that. She looked across the floor and saw her jeans, too far out of reach for her to scoop up and wriggle into. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I’m not wearing any trousers.”
“No,” Nick said thoughtfully. “I don’t mind at all.”
Mae rolled her eyes at him. “And what were you doing here, Nicholas? Decided to watch me sleep?”
“Yes,” said Nick, and bowed his head over his sword again. He had tissues, oil, and sandpaper laid out on the windowsill in front of him, and a little stone block he was passing his sword up and down, very carefully. “I came to gaze on your sleeping face. Only you had the blanket over your head, so I just had to gaze at a lump I thought was
