Page 30 of Poet & Protector

“Are you telling me you thought your key was better?” he asked with a growl.

“Hard to say.” I see-sawed my hands. “Maybe I did, or maybe I was just concerned about your peace of mind. You wouldn’t have handled the loss well…or the kiss.”

“Fuck off.” He glared at me. “I would have been fine. More than fine.”

My eyebrows lifted and I grinned. “More than fine?”

Mason blinked rapidly, a blush painting his cheekbones as he realized his misstep. “I…I meant…”

“It sounds almost like you were hoping to kiss me,” I teased, enjoying this exchange far more than I should.

His embarrassment vanished and he took another step toward me, staring me down. “I think you were hoping I was hoping to kiss you.”

“Run that logic by me again,” I scoffed, but my nerves crackled. How far was he going to push this?

“You wanted to win,” he said stubbornly. “That’s why we’re still talking about it.”

“I honestly don’t care, Mason.” I forced a bland tone.

“Prove it,” he replied, his expression had grown sly.

I frowned at him. “How?”

His mouth curved slowly into a wicked smile. “You know how.”

Trapping me with an unflinching gaze, he waited for his words to sink in. When they did, it became hard to breathe. He couldn’t mean…

“If you don’t care, it won’t matter will it?” His smile didn’t waver. “It’s only a kiss.”

Only a kiss. Easy enough to say, but it would be my first and I would take any bet that it would be Mason’s, too, given our recent conversations. I couldn’t do it. A first kiss shouldn’t happen because of a bet.

Mason won this round.

I was about to tell him as much, but somehow he was standing even closer now, his gaze cautiously taking in my features, pausing at my lips before meeting my eyes. His impish expression had given way to a strange mix of shy curiosity and regret.

He bit his lip and suddenly looked away. “Nev, I⁠—”

I reached out, wanting to turn his face toward me; needing to search for whatever had changed his mind. Because he’d been about to retreat…just like I had.

“Nev!” Sabine came striding into the garden and I instantly snatched my hand back.

When she saw me standing with Mason…standing too close to Mason…her gaze became assessing and dangerous. She approached wearing a saccharin-sweet smile. That meant trouble.

I briefly considered warning her off, which was…weird. I didn’t like that my first instinct had been to protect Mason from my best friend, especially when her arrival saved me from that awkward standoff.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sabine said, then cast a disdainful look at Mason for good measure. “Wait. No, I’m not.”

She elbowed him aside to put herself between us.

“What are you doing out here anyway?” she asked me. “It took me forever to track you down. I had to follow your scent for almost a mile.”

“We’re describing the way we’d write about three objects in this garden,” I told her.

“Are Bryn and Fey in the same class?” she asked. “Because when I walked by them on the way here they were arguing about a baseball glove in the trophy case.”

“Really?” Mason asked. “What were they saying?”

Without so much as a glance at him, Sabine’s hand flew up so her flat palm was in front of his face. A clear order for Mason to be silent.