Spellcaster (10 page)

But concerns of how I looked soon faded. All I could think about, all I could feel, was Brendan. All my fears, all my anxiety, all my rage evaporated as I took solace in his presence, letting everything else melt away. He slid his hand under my back, and I went willingly as he rolled me on top of him in one fluid motion.

I pressed my lips against his, his mouth soft against mine. It was like we were made to kiss each other—and I guess as soul mates, we were. We were destined to love each other. He seemed to know when I craved a more demanding, aggressive touch—and when I needed him to be tender, reassuring. Like right now.

Brendan filled my senses—all I could smell was the clean, fresh scent of his shampoo as I knotted my fingers in his hair. All I could feel were his hands on me, as they moved from my hips to my thighs, pulling them on either side of him so I was straddling him.

Wrapping one strong arm around my lower back, Brendan pushed himself up into a sitting position without breaking the kiss. I hooked my ankles behind his back, and he broke away from me, just for a moment, long enough to reach behind him and grab a fistful of fabric from the back of his T-shirt. He pulled the shirt over his head and flung it…somewhere, I have no idea where. He could have thrown it into another dimension and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Brendan’s fingers tangled in my hair, cradling my head as he kissed me softly, sweetly, pulling away from me only to whisper that he loved me. His hands found the hem of my shirt and clutched it tightly. Soon, my shirt joined his. The feel of his palms as his hands swept across my skin, holding me impossibly closer, sent my sense of reason into another dimension along with our shirts. But when his lips moved to my collarbone, and his fingers started to tug at the clasp on my bra, I forced my mind to focus. As badly as I craved feeling his skin against mine, to lose myself entirely in him and forget everything else, I placed my palms against his chest, his strong, warm, broad—
focus, Emma!
—chest. And then I gently pushed him back.

“Mmm, sorry,” Brendan whispered, lifting his palms to my shoulders. He pulled his face away, and his eyes were drowsy with desire. “I’ll stop.”

“We don’t have to
stop
stop, just slow down.” I traced his jawline with my finger as I tried to steady my ragged breathing.
I sounded like an asthmatic running through a dust storm.

“No, we should stop.” His tone was final as he encircled me in his warm arms. I wasn’t sure if it was his natural body temperature, or our activity, but it was getting really hot in Brendan’s bed—in every sense of the word.

Brendan pulled back to look at me with that hungry look in his eyes. “I don’t want to take advantage…especially after today. But it’s just a little too easy to get carried away in the moment with you.”

“Tell me about it,” I breathed, aware that my own face wore the same greedy expression. We were a matched set. I couldn’t help it; the minute Brendan touched me, my IQ felt like it dropped several points.

“You’re just really…hot, and I love you so much…but I’m just not ready to go much further yet, especially not after today… .” I trailed off, blushing.
Yep, the IQ of a box of sneakers. And that’s being generous.

Brendan smiled, planting a chaste kiss on my eager lips. “So we’re in agreement. You don’t have to explain yourself, it’s not like I’m complaining.”

“Are you sure? I mean, the stuff Kendall was saying…” I cringed at how insecure I sounded. Not that I could be pressured into anything before I was ready, but I didn’t need the added guilt trip of making my patient boyfriend sexually frustrated.

“Well, I’ll be honest…sometimes it’s really hard—”

“I know.” I smirked, feeling saucy. “I can tell. I’m pretty much straddling you right now.”

“Really hard to
stop,
smart-ass,” Brendan emphasized, giving me a playful squeeze before cocking an eyebrow at me. “And the other thing, too. But trust me, waiting for you is nothing to complain about.” As he spoke, his fingers danced across my bare back in a way that made me not want to wait.

“And Kendall,” he added, his face scrunching into a repulsed grimace as he said her name, “was the biggest mistake, on every level. She’s about as sexy as a wet sock. Holding your hand is way more satisfying than anything that girl can do. I mean it.”

“I really didn’t need the mental image, but I guess I appreciate the sentiment,” I said dryly.

“Sorry, just being honest.” Brendan shrugged. He ran his hand down my leg, his arm knocking into my shredded knee. I flinched, the playful mood between us instantly turning sour.

“Even though I’m so proud of you for kicking major ass, I can’t believe I wasn’t there.” Brendan sighed, his tone managing to be gentle and acerbic at the same time. “All over something so incredibly stupid.”

I was secretly glad that he had been detained at Vince A. I could live with a sore knee and some bruised knuckles. I couldn’t live with Brendan getting stabbed trying to protect me, especially now that we knew I was the target of this hateful whoever-it-is.

“You know, you still haven’t told me what happened at school this morning. I had to hear it secondhand, so who knows how accurate it is.”

“What did you hear?” Brendan asked, and I relayed what Cisco told me. He nodded along, confirming what Cisco said.

“That’s all pretty much true. So here’s what happened after I leave the classroom. The cops and Casey escort me to my locker to do a search, and they’re going through
everything.
I mean, they’re flipping through my textbooks, your textbooks, the works. And Casey keeps asking me if I sell coke or pills, and I should just make it easier on myself and confess, so maybe I’ll only get away with a suspension.”

“Why would they search
you?
Did they get the wrong guy?”

“No, someone knew exactly what they were doing,” Brendan clarified, his nostrils flaring angrily as he exhaled loudly. If he could have breathed smoke, he would have.

“Casey says they got an anonymous call that I was selling coke and pills. That’s why the cops were there. So, they’re searching my locker, and at first I was a little nervous, because what if someone planted something in there? I never lock it. Then they find something.”

I stiffened. “What did they find?”

“Well, I didn’t know at first. I was standing on the other side of the locker door, so I couldn’t see. So, Casey grabs me by the collar and hauls me down the stairs to her office.” Brendan grimaced. “I don’t know what perfume she wears, but she smells like the air freshener in the guy’s bathroom, by the way. I hope you’re never that close to her. It was gross enough being manhandled by her.”

“Forget about her bathing in Febreze, Brendan,” I said, exasperated. “What happened?”

“Oh, we get to her office and it turns out to be a little bag of baby powder. I mean, it didn’t even look like coke. I guess someone stuck it in the back of my locker, hell, I have no idea when. That locker’s a mess. We should clean it soon.”

“So are you in trouble?” I asked, wanting Brendan to stop going off on tangents and give me the verdict already.

“Well, Casey goes off on this whole spiel about how she’s keeping her eye on me, and this doesn’t really prove anything, so I tell her to go right ahead and give me a drug test. I told her I’ll give her a sample, right there in her coffee mug if she wanted, that I had nothing to hide.” He paused. “She wasn’t amused. The cops laughed, though.”

He shut his eyes, chuckling at the memory as I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him.

“Brendan, how did it end? You’re killing me here.”

“I’m not in trouble. Although, my crack about pissing in her coffee cup didn’t go over so well, but other than that, I’m fine. I was so obviously set up.” Then he laughed bitterly. “The cops said it was either a prank—a really bad one—or someone with a vendetta. I can’t help but think it’s the latter.”

I scowled. “It has to be Kristin.” But Brendan just shook his head.

“I hate to say it, but if that skank was going to set anyone up, it would be you. And she’d know where to get actual pills to plant and do some real damage. That girl’s idea of party games aren’t exactly balloon animals and Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

“You’re probably right, it would have been me,” I agreed sourly.
Instead she tortured me at the Cloisters.

“So anyway, after poring through all my stuff and finding nothing, Casey asks me if I’d had any recent troubles in the school, if I’d pissed anyone off.”

We exchanged matching “is-she-kidding” looks.

“What’d you say?” I asked, incredulous.

“I asked her if she was kidding! I may not particularly like anyone there, but apart from the usual suspects I don’t have any mortal enemies.”

That part was true. The guys who didn’t like Brendan were too intimidated by him to start something. And the girls—well, they most definitely wanted to start something with him. Preferably something pantsless.

“But wait, my day gets worse,” he grumbled then paused. “Again, this isn’t anywhere near as bad as your day. But for me, this is worse than being set up. So I’m basically told to just go to my classes as if none of this happened. Screw that, I’m taking the entire day as a free period and hanging out in the library, thinking I’ll just wait for you. So I get my hoodie from where I left it, under the lab table in chemistry, and I realize that someone had jacked my headphones, right out of my pocket. It was the pair I use when I deejay. My
really
good pair.”

“Oh, no, that sucks!” I cried, thinking of the pair he was talking about. Brendan had lent them to me a few times when I had to work in the library and he had basketball practice—it sounded like the band was standing in my eardrums, serenading me.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Brendan huffed. “I keep a spare pair of earbuds in my locker when I want to listen to music in class, so I had to use them today. It was like listening to music through a sponge. And about as comfortable as if I’d stuffed couches in my ears. The ones I had are on
back order.
”

Brendan said the words as if they tasted bad. Of course he’d be more put out by the stolen headphones than by the plot to frame him as a drug dealer.

“So did anything else happen with Casey?”

“Well, she just
had
to call my parents, of course,” he said sarcastically.

“What did your mom say?” I asked, bracing myself for her tirade.

“It wasn’t too bad. They got my dad on the phone.”

I exhaled a nervous breath. I asked Brendan what his father’s response was. I imagined it was pretty good. I was right.

“He ripped Casey a new one. It was awesome. Even though, let’s face it, Emma, I usually deserve to be in Casey’s office, he said, ‘I find it troubling that you always seem to find some reason to bring my son into your office. I’m wondering if you have ulterior motives.’” Brendan executed a pitch-perfect impression of his snarky father before laughing at the memory of what Aaron Salinger said next.

“Then he told her I wasn’t going to be eighteen until April and he found it disturbing that he had to remind her I was underage.” Even I started laughing at Aaron’s insinuation.

“Casey must have flipped out!” I laughed, my eyes wide.

“She started stammering and stuttering like she was auto-tuned,” Brendan cracked. “And my dad wasn’t even done yet. He asked her if he needed to request a supervisor for every time she called me into her office.”

“That’s great that he was so protective of you.” I didn’t want to think about what Laura might have said had she been the one they got on the phone.

“Yeah, my dad rules. I was glad my mom was on a plane so they got him instead,” Brendan admitted, dropping his head to my shoulder. “I swear, Emma, my mother can be so frustrating,” he moaned into my neck.

“What do you mean?” I asked, biting back any commentary about how she’s been frustrating from the moment I met her.

He raised his head, his lips parted as he tried to explain himself. “She never cared what I was doing—as long as I didn’t embarrass her or make the family look bad,” he said bitterly, adding, “which I won’t lie, I did a lot just to make her mad or get out of some stupid society thing she wanted me to go to. And now, she’s constantly asking me about school, what I do in my spare time. My mom even tried to get me to attend some debutante ball horror show as the escort of one of her society buddies’ daughters back in December. She just doesn’t get that I don’t care about all that stuff.”

“She wanted you to go on a date with someone else?” I repeated, stinging from the news. I knew she didn’t particularly like me, but…damn.

“It’s not a date like that, Em. The girl has to make her formal debut, and whichever guy escorts her sets the tone for, I don’t know, the rest of her life or something,” Brendan huffed, rolling his eyes. “I would have been an ornament. I told her no. Actually you helped get me out of that.” He smirked.

“Why, because we were dating by then?”

“No, because I was all bruised and cut up from the fight with Anthony. No one wants to walk into a room with that on their arm.” Brendan grinned evilly, adding, “Well, except for you. But you, obviously, have impeccable taste.”