Jenna Black - Shadowspell

So it was a good thing Finn was acting as chaperone as well as bodyguard. The last thing I needed was to fall for Ethan, no matter how tempting he was. Not when I couldn’t be sure what he really wanted from me.

I spent the rest of the movie fending off Ethan’s subtle advances. His eyes sparkled with humor as I glared at him, and I realized it had become a game to him. What could he get away with? What could he do that Finn wouldn’t see? I might have been offended by his refusal to take no for an answer, if I weren’t so aware of the mixed signals I was sending him. Yeah, I fended him off—but he couldn’t help but notice that it always seemed to take me a while to get around to it.

“You’re being a jerk,” I told him at one point as I grabbed his wrist and moved his hand off my thigh. My upper thigh. My voice was a little too breathy to be convincing, and I’d let his hand move way higher than I’d intended to.

His arm—which remained steadfastly around my shoulders—gave me a squeeze. “I’m being a perfect gentleman,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to.”

Yeah, well, that was sort of the problem. I wanted things I had absolutely no right to want. Or at least that weren’t sensible for me to want. And everything I let him get away with gave him that much more reason to take another shot at it every time I shut him down.

By the end of the movie, I was so turned on it was a minor miracle I hadn’t started tearing my clothes off in public. If Finn hadn’t been back there, I’d have had to rely on my own willpower, and who knows what stupid things I’d have done. I had a feeling I was in way over my head with Ethan, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

We walked out of the theater hand-in-hand. I’m sure Ethan would have walked me home if he could, but I was currently living in a secret underground safe house in the heart of the mountain on which the city of Avalon is built. You could count on one hand the number of people who knew where it was, and Ethan wasn’t on the list.

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles as we stood under the protection of the marquee. A gentle rain was falling, the cobblestone streets shining from the reflected glow of the street lamps.

Ethan let go of my hand, and I immediately missed the warmth of his touch as he helped me into my raincoat. He looked over my head, presumably at Finn, who was hovering behind me.

“Will you flatten me if I kiss her good night?”

“Probably,” Finn said drily. He wasn’t much of a talker.

I could have called Finn off just then. He wasn’t my dad, and “chaperone” wasn’t really in his job description. I don’t think he much liked Ethan, but I was pretty sure he liked me, and a kiss good night was relatively innocent. But I’d let Ethan get away with more than I should already, and it was time to put my foot down.

“This isn’t a date,” I told him for the millionth time. “You don’t get to kiss me good night even if Finn wouldn’t flatten you.”

Ethan flashed me a rueful, if somewhat skeptical, smile. “Right,” he said. “I keep forgetting. Not a date. Got it.” He reached out and pulled up the hood of my coat. His finger “accidentally” stroked the side of my face as he pulled away. I couldn’t suppress my shiver of pleasure.

“Maybe we can fix that next time,” he suggested. “Wanna be my date for Kimber’s party?”

Ethan’s sister, Kimber, was my best friend. Her birthday party was on Friday night, and I was looking forward to it more than I could say.

“Nice try, Romeo,” I said, though I doubted I sounded as sophisticated as I was trying to. “Kimber gets to be the center of attention at her party, not you.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Obviously, you’ve never been to a Leigh family party before. But I get the point. Just save me a dance, okay?” He gave me another grin. “Friends are allowed to dance with each other, aren’t they?”

Internally, I groaned. I had a feeling dancing with him would entail another battle of wills—angel me vs. devil me.

“Sure,” I said. “As long as you keep your hands to yourself.”

He raised one eyebrow, and I remembered how badly I’d enforced that rule tonight. I think I blushed again, but I met his challenging gaze as boldly as I could.

Mischief twinkling in his eyes, he winked at me, tweaked my nose like I was a little kid, then headed out into the rain, not seeming to care that he had neither a coat nor an umbrella. I watched, unable to turn away, until he’d rounded the corner at the end of the block.

Ethan spelled trouble for me, but if he were the only trouble I had to deal with now that I lived in Avalon, I’m sure I could have dealt with him a lot more smoothly.

I’d come here under the mistaken impression that life with my father would be closer to normal than life with my mother. What a joke! I’d been in Avalon only a handful of weeks, and already I was looking back at the days when I’d been my mother’s keeper with something almost like longing. I’d really thought it sucked at the time.

I’d been a total loner at school, not because it was my natural inclination, but because my mom made us move every year or two to keep my father from finding us, and because I couldn’t risk letting my classmates/potential friends find out my mom was a drunk. I’d learned that the hard way at one of my least favorite schools, where I’d been ridiculed relentlessly.

I’d also had to act as the adult in our family, because my mom was often too drunk to bother with little things like paying bills or buying groceries. And let’s not even talk about how closely I had to watch to make sure she didn’t get behind the wheel when she was plastered!

Never in a million years would I have imagined myself looking back on that life with nostalgia. But then, there wasn’t a single aspect of my life in Avalon that met the hopes and expectations I’d had when I decided to come.

Instead of living in a nice, normal house in the beautiful city of Avalon, I lived in what was basically a glorified cave, located deep within the mountain. My safe house had all the modern conveniences, such as electricity, running water, and an Internet connection. It was nicely decorated, and if you could get over the total lack of windows, you might even say it was comfortable. But it still felt like a prison to me, complete with a guardroom that was situated between my suite and the front entrance.

I think my dad would have preferred it if I stayed in my safe house twenty-four/seven, but—thank God—he seemed to understand that I would go nuts if he didn’t let me out on a regular basis. I never got to go out alone—I always had to have either my dad or Finn at my side—but at least I wasn’t a full-time prisoner. I still spent half my time feeling completely stir-crazy, though. I understood Dad’s caution, and I didn’t want to risk getting myself killed, but I hated living in such isolation. Sometimes it was hard not to hate my father for it, no matter how well I understood.

Mixed feelings or not, when my dad showed up unexpectedly one Sunday at noon to take me and my mom out for brunch, I was so happy at the prospect of going out I could have hugged him. I restrained the impulse, though. He carried himself with the typical icy reserve of the older Fae, which meant a pat on the shoulder was a gushing display of affection in his book. He might not have known what to do with a hug.

My mom was another story. The moment she saw me, she threw her arms around me and hugged me as if she hadn’t seen me in years. It had actually only been three days since the last time she’d visited me, but my mom was as much my dad’s prisoner as I was, seeing as how he’d bribed or manipulated the courts of Avalon into declaring her legally incompetent. It had been one hell of a dirty trick, but there was a definite upside. As long as my mom was under my dad’s thumb, he wouldn’t allow her access to alcohol. This was the longest she’d been sober for as long as I could remember, and I found it hard to be mad at my dad for what he’d done.