These Thorn Kisses (St. Mary’s Rebels 3)

Nothing changes on his face when I finish.

And somehow his blank face and his continued silence have started to make me blush even harder.

Then he speaks, and I feel like someone has just started to unravel me. “But from what I understand,” he says, his head tilted to the side in a thoughtful look, “you already do.”

“What?”

He unfolds his arms and he bridges the gap between us.

Like he did back in his office and like that day, I stand rooted to my spot. I watch his shoes cross the carpeted floor of the library as he draws near me, all slowly and dangerously.

And when he gets there, where I am, I’m flooded by his spicy thorn scent as he murmurs, “Every morning.” His eyes move over my face and I can’t help but tip it toward him. “When you sit under that tree of yours with your sketchpad. Wearing that little pink sweater and that knitted white cap. And you follow me around the soccer field with your big silver eyes. You draw me then, don’t you?”

Silver eyes.

He knows my eyes are silver.

I mean, of course he knows. He’s seen them. He’s looking into my eyes right now, but people have a hard time pinning down their color.

But he didn’t.

He’s figured it out. The color of my eyes, and also me.

That I watch him. That when I sit there every day I draw him.

“I don’t follow you around with my big silver eyes,” I say in a tone that sounds more breathless than confident. “And I told you I sit under that tree every day. It’s my spot. I sketch early in the morning every day too. Because I —”

“Because you read it in a book. Yeah, I know,” he states, his gaze still roving over my face. “I know what you told me.”

“So there,” I reply this time with more confidence. “I told you that. You know that.”

“But I also know,” he rasps as he gets closer to me, stealing whatever little breaths I have left, “what I’ll find if I open that sketchbook of yours. The thing you carry around twenty-four seven. Along with your favorite pen. Pink, isn’t it? Because you’re an artist.”

My heart is leaping out of my chest.

It’s trying to fly out of my mouth but I swallow it down and say, “You won’t find anything. I don’t know why you think —”

“I’ll find myself,” he says, plowing right through the middle of my sentence. “My eyes. Surrounded by roses. That’s what you were drawing that day, weren’t you? Out in the courtyard.” Then after a pause, “Bronwyn.”

Oh… fuck.

He saw that.

He fucking saw what I was drawing the day Callie brought him to introduce us. But I thought… I thought I’d shut the sketchpad before he had a chance to see anything. I thought…

“No you didn’t,” he tells me as if reading my mind. “Not in time.”

And the way he says it, with the slow shake of his head, with this bright arrogant glint in his eyes, takes my breath away.

It makes me think that this is glorious.

He is glorious.

So fucking glorious.

Still I protest.

I have to. For more reasons than one.

“That may be so. But I’m an artist. And assuming that you’re my only muse is ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” I nod. “So I think that you’ve lost your mind.”

“My mind.”

“Uh-huh,” I go on, for the sake of my plan, for the sake of my friendship with Callie. “I think that your mind is going away. Since, you know, you’re closer to my dad’s age and all. Because I think that I’ve told you a million times that my name is Bronwyn but people call me Wyn. And so I’d appreciate it if you did too.”

I won’t.

I won’t appreciate it at all.

I want him to call me by my full name. I want him to call me Bronwyn.

But of course I can’t. So I try to look all innocent and outraged.

“Not a million times, no,” he says. “Just two.” Before I can figure out the math on that, on how many times have I actually told him to call me Wyn, he rasps, “And I think you like that.”

“L-like what?”

“That I’m older,” he explains. “Than you.”

I hug the book tighter, using it as a defense against the war he’s waging on me, on my senses. “Why would I like that?”

But his response to my question makes me realize that there is none.

There is no defense against him.

Against my thorn.

“Because you, Bronwyn Littleton,” he says, his eyes penetrating, “have daddy issues.”

“What?”

He usually takes his time responding to me, as if carefully choosing his words. But not this time.

This time he has his answer ready and he delivers it to me in low, rough words.

“Your dad’s an asshole,” he says. “He’s a fucking piece of shit who deserved everything you dished out to him. In fact if I could get my hands on him myself, I’d break so many bones in his body and rearrange his face in a way that he wouldn’t recognize himself in the mirror. For sending you here. For making your life miserable. For making you cry.”