A Thief of Nightshade(35)

A peculiar mechanical sound reached Aubrey’s ears that she couldn’t quite discern until she felt the sting at her legs.

The rope jerked her off her feet and she fell face-first. She spit dirt out of her mouth and looked up to see Aislinn fighting a net that had been cast on top of him and Given just as a metallic rope found her legs as well.

She closed her eyes as the bizarre laughter closed in on them.





Chapter Thirteen


Once ...

AUBREY SAT STARING OUT OF THE

WINDOW, amazed at the amount of snow that was falling. The last time she’d seen snow in Georgia was 1993. She grimaced and pulled up her fleece pants to rub her leg.

“Cold weather never feels good on broken bones.” Jullian sat down beside her and took over, his hands larger and warmer than hers. He ran his finger down the scar after a few minutes, curiosity still killing him. She’d refused to tell him how she’d broken it.

She smiled and looked at the front yard. “I’ve never seen it snow like this here.”

“I’m not a huge fan of winter, but I’m glad to see you happy.”

She grinned wider. “I love snow.”

“I’m glad one of us does.”

It never ceased to amaze her how much his touch seemed to warm her all the way to her core. It left her feeling more generous with her emotions than usual. “It was a dare,” she said suddenly.

He stopped rubbing and looked up.

“I’m not going to tell you if you stop,” she laughed.

He

immediately

resumed

his

ministrations.

“One of my classmates dared me to sneak into the headmaster’s office and steal the keys to the kitchen.”

He stopped rubbing again. “Dare I ask if they fed you too little?”

“You stopped rubbing.”

He resumed, “Okay, so you were dared...”

“We weren’t fed too little by anyone’s standards, but the kitchen was where all the chocolate was kept, not to mention contraband that was collected throughout the year. Remember, I was ten.

Come to find out later, my upstanding classmate had a Walkman that was the object of this little adventure.” She paused, still not wanting to tell him out of sheer embarrassment. “So not wanting to back down on a dare, I snuck out of our dorm window and climbed across the roof to the tiny, ridiculously thin crossover to the building next to ours. The idea was to shimmy across it on my hands and knees to the other side. What we didn’t know, or rather what we didn’t bother to find out in advance, was that they had started to remove the crossover because the metal was corroding. It had been in place for decades and wasn’t safe.”

Jullian’s face grew tight, his brows furrowed. “Do I want to hear this?”

She shrugged. “You know the end result.”

“No, I have to hear it. What happened?”

She took a deep breath. “It looked a little like a ladder, two long solid pieces with smaller slats along the way. I was almost halfway across when the left side gave out. I grabbed tightly to the right and swung my weight over too far. I overcompensated and lost my hold. It was a very, very long way down.”

Jullian leaned down and kissed her leg. “You’re lucky that all you broke was your leg.”

“I guess. I certainly didn’t feel that way at the time, it hurt like hell. All I could think about was how angry Grant was going to be when he found out. And how my bone popping out of the skin was probably a really bad thing.”

“My brave, reckless girl.” He kissed her knee and shin. “I bet it hurt like hell.

Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

She shrugged again. “Most likely for the same reasons you never tell me anything about yourself. I know I’m reserved, I’ve always been. But as much as I’ve broken down and told you, you’ve reciprocated nothing.”

He straightened, his face getting the all-too-familiar distant look that it often did when they discussed his past. “I know.”

“So tell me something, anything, that no one else knows about you.”

He considered her request. “Do you remember that first day in class?” She nodded. “I completely lost my train of thought the moment I saw you. I also had a habit of staying behind the podium until that particular day, when I walked around front just to be closer to you. And you didn’t even look up.”

She

smiled,

recalling

Sam’s

chastisement. “I remember.”

He moved closer, crawling on his hands and knees until he was directly over her. “That smug grin tells me you already suspected as much, but I bet you didn’t know how long I stayed with you the night of the benefit.”

She partially sat up. “What?”

“I didn’t leave as soon as Samantha and that poor excuse of a human she called a boyfriend thought I did.” He tenderly pressed her back down and kissed her softly. “I stayed until five or so to watch you sleep.”

She blushed. “You did not ... and isn’t that a little creepy?”

He laughed. “I did. And it would have been shall we say, a tad inappropriate, had we not just shared our first kiss several hours prior. I thought it was romantic.”