Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One) (5 page)

She still held
off her power. I couldn
’
t read her completely at the
moment, yet her body and face told me so much. Just then, she left
it all out there and I
’
m not sure she knew she was doing
it. I certainly have never felt someone
’
s desires before. The same
pumped up feeling from before like I would explode if she
didn
’
t give in to me was making my face sweat. I stopped midstep
on one stair. She sensed it too. She faced me slow and steadily
where she stopped halfway above on the stairs.

Whatever was
happening here, it wasn
’
t on the regular menu. She turned
when I didn
’
t answer whatever she said next,
but stopped when I made a noise to hold her there. There were
things I
should do
. With this girl, there was a long list of
should nots
.
Unfortunately, the
should
not
’
s
were winning.

I swallowed hard
for the second time being confronted by this girl and instead of my
instinct, I fake smiled my way out of answering her real question
and BS
’
d her with some line that always worked on
chicks.

She huffed and
returned her cute backside up the staircase. She disappeared again
behind the door marked “Mrs. C” that was closing in my face and
only meant we
’
d finally made it to class.
Late.

She
didn
’
t even speak to the teacher but dropped her empty coffee cup
in the trash bin and moved to the only table available that was on
the far side of the room. I liked the seating arrangement as much
as I liked the scowl her face held. For some unearthly reason I
took pleasure in the fact that that anger was towards me. It meant
she was thinking about me no matter how vehement the look was
intended.

Walking to the
teacher
’
s desk, I heard the distinct sounds of murmured voices in the
room and knew she was catching flack for being late. The shock of
it was the vulgar way they spoke about her yet she screamed
anything but. She was pure, good. Didn
’
t they see
that?

Her pencil tapped in a rhythm. The
emotional roller coaster moved around the room telling me she had
no idea what her power was doing to these poor humans. The energy
scraping through the humans was beyond what any of my kind could
do. Had she done this for years and no one was sent to help
her?

A soft synced sigh went across the
room like an audible wave of tension and then the windows shook
enough I thought I done it myself. When my surprise was edged into
my face like a Roman statue, I saw that she knew...I knew. My eyes
zoomed outward to the window panes that were busting at the seams.
How could I not look? No one had ever done so much in front of me
and a group of humans in my lifetime alone. I was struck dumb right
there.

I tried to not
look her way and appear halfway focused on what class it was I just
entered. I had glanced at the schedule in a hurry when making it to
be sure I had most of her classes, but not all of them.
I
’
m
thinking now I should have just booked an all day security detail
for the sake of not missing a moment of her sassy
attitude.

As soon as the thought passed, she
snubbed her nose in the air at me if anything to remind me I was
staring too much. And I was.

I slid back in
my seat and held my breath. He was acknowledging in a pointed way
that I wasn
’
t alone and I
wasn
’
t normal. I wasn
’
t like the others in this room. I
was like him. And he was like me.

A throat cleared. At that I knew
the entire room of twelve give or take was ping ponging back and
forth between the two of us including Mrs. Cauldron.
Brilliant!

“Mr. Ames Cahn, I presume.
”

Ames Cahn. At least I had a full
name now.

He left my gaze
only to shift them to the teacher
’
s controlled look. She was none
too happy with the little display that I would
’
ve gladly avoided.
“Pleasure to be here. Sorry I
’
m late. I was detained and Emma
showed me the way to class. It
won
’
t happen again,
ma
’
am.”

The class
snickered. Mrs. Cauldron pointed to the seat next to me. I tapped
even faster. I sang the same sad song in my head while I tapped the
beat. As ridiculous as it seems, it was on old song. My stepfather
used to sing it a lot. I don
’
t know the name of the actual
song, but its main chorus for which I tapped to was the
following:

“
Hey there Little Red Riding
Hood.

You sure are looking
good.

You
’
re everything a Big Bad Wolf could want.”

The Big Bad Wolf
in question was right here, beside me now. His black jeans squared
the corner of the table and slid into the chair next to me. Moving
air was not a good thing. When he came so close I realized
I
’
d
found his scent back in the group of cheerleaders before
I
’
d
even approached him. He was something earthy and pine, like the
wintery smell of the trees when I traveled through Louisiana and
Mississippi once on my way to Mobile with my adoptive parents. We
went on vacation to see the navy ships across Baton Rouge and
Mobile, a signature vacation since my adoptive father, Phillip, was
a retired navy officer.

Taking in his
scent made time stay too darn still for a longer than average
second. When I opened my eyes he was there, watching me. I wondered
if he knew what I
’
d just done. He seemed to have
figured other things out about me no one else ever had in the short
span of time and everyone else I
’
d known a lifetime. Too short a
time to be analyzed this much so I needed to be careful with this
one. Some of the others-as in strange characters who just show
up-in the past who had snooped around seemed to be aware of my
oddities, but I never let them see. This one was different. He got
under my skin the second he appeared.

I never know how any of the others
knew about me or what they wanted. They always disappeared before
it got too weird.

Class resumed since we were the
latecomers and both of us drew our attention away from each other
to open out crisp new notebooks and started writing. Creative
Writing class meant starting off with...creative writing. We were
free writing anything we wanted to put on paper. Ack! All I could
think of was him.

I doodled a flower and expanded it
to a size that covered half the page. A buzzer went off and the
teacher said, “Switch.”

I bugged my eyes
out in the teacher
’
s direction at not knowing first
what she meant, and second because freshmen year
she
’
d been so direct and not this laid back in her teaching.
While I might have found that refreshing and even a little bit
spontaneous for her, I was scared stiff at the implications her
words meant for me right then.

I looked over at other tables to
see what they were doing and sure enough, they were trading
notebooks, now private journals, to their table partner. What did I
do next, you ask? I traded mine with Mr. Dark and Dangerous next to
me. All two words and my flower design slid over to him.

His notebook rose and fell in
front of me. I stared at the paragraph before me not wanting like
anything to read it. I wanted to close my eyes and start a do-over
day. Let it not be real.

“How did you know how to spell my
name?”

Huh? I looked
over at my notebook, not him. Wide-eyed, I stared at the page where
I
’
d
drawn the large daisy in the middle. Above it was his name in all
caps. How did I know how to spell it and why the heck did I write
it?

He seemed to register my surprise
as was our way for the last thirty minutes.

“I
didn
’
t even know I wrote it,” I whispered out like a lame idiot.
It seemed harsh sounding, but I didn
’
t really mean it that
way.

“Well, kudos. No
one has ever got it right on the first try. You must be some kind
of amazing.” He smiled over to me with the same laugh from earlier
that spoke more than words alone, the husky sound that somehow
managed to reach out and shake me up on the inside. I caught
something in the smile. It wasn
’
t fake this time. I looked around
and saw that no one was paying us any attention and this left me
less vulnerable maybe to prying eyes. I tried it
out.

“Why are you here?”

He stiffened in his chair and said
gruffly, “Why, do you know?”

What? What would I know? What the
heck!

Instead of answering with a whack
job answer, I turned to his notebook in front of me. It
read,

I am alone in a world where no one
wants me.

The sky is the limit. The earth
beneath me.

I am nice. I am not. I am bad. I
was worse.

What am I?

After I read it I knew the color
drained from my face. I courageously moved my head up to find his
watchful eye. “Why did you write this?” I was scared to
know.

“Write what?” he asked slowly and
exact.

Incredulous. “You are
a—

He stopped my
sentence with his hand grabbing mine. The warm feeling returned. It
washed over me, embraced me. I felt it ripple at my hand and move
out over the whole of my body. When it stopped, it
didn
’
t really. It just held there and stayed over me like a warm
fire blazing in front of me. His hand jumped back to his lap
leaving me wondering how long I
’
d held it. Ten seconds
maybe.

His eyes said he
either felt much the same or some other possible effect. I sure
wouldn
’
t ask. Realizing that I was staring at his hands in his lap,
I didn
’
t hear what he said. He cleared his throat and I knew he said
the same thing again that I missed.

“Read it again,” his voice was
rougher than before.

I darted my eyes at his and them
back to the paper all kind of at the same time. On the notebook in
front of me it said,

Emma
Steele.

I know what you fear the
most.

I lurched upward and out of my
seat. The screech of the chair got the attention of the room and
the teacher.

“Miss Steele. Are you
okay?”

No! Not really. And yes. But the
demented freak who was remarkably gorgeous and had way too much in
common with me might not be okay if he shows me anymore of his
super powers.

You see, Mrs. Cauldron is a nice
teacher. Another teacher would be sarcastic and make some rude
comment that would force me to be embarrassed to exist and I would
cringe and return to my seat. Mrs. Cauldron always had your best
interest at heart. Oh, she could be sassy in her own right. But she
had a way of knowing when one of us just needed a
moment.

I searched the faces around me
waiting for my decision. “I am fine. Thank you.” I returned to my
seat scooting the farthest away from him I possibly could. He acted
as normal as a teenage guy could be the rest of the class. When the
bell rang, I sprang up and out before he could do any more damage
to my already head case psyche.

The rest of the tables around us
were already writing when we entered so I followed suit and so did
she. In all my years, I could blend in when needed. I could also
make a statement when needed. This was not one of those make a
statement kind of times.

All I could think of was
her.

At last second I scribbled out a
separate message daring myself to give her a taste of what she
might know all too soon. A sliver of truth.

She looked around anywhere but at
me to see that everyone else had traded notebooks and I cased mine
through the air before she could do the scent thing again and make
me freeze up in front of her.

She had the
voice of an angel every time she read the words on my paper. I
should know. I
’
ve met some who
wouldn
’
t have anything to do with me. This girl was all pure golden
innocence. And I loved and lapped up every single second of it.
Genuinely smiling over to her in this small list of revelations, I
saw her for the first time in a different light. She really
wasn
’
t being malicious or cruel, but truly in a state of shock at
my behaviors. She peered out from behind the board straight color
of the sunshine hair at the room and searched for something. I
didn
’
t know what for but I suddenly wanted to know what she was
thinking. Everything she was thinking.