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“It’s just you and me, Kat, like it always should have been,” he murmurs.
Goodness. I feel every shred of resistance fade as he licks up my neck, sucking in my skin, his beard scratching me. I want to know what that beard feels like between my legs.
“No one is going to keep me away from you,” he groans, pulling me into another deep, lingering kiss as his hands start gathering up my skirt and his erection is pressed into my hip and everything rolling off of him is hot, dark energy, like I’m being enveloped by a living, breathing tornado that I want to destroy me and—
“Kat?”
The sound of Paul’s voice makes me gasp and I immediately spring into action, breaking away from Brom’s mouth and shoving him back from me as hard as I can. He stumbles back a few steps, looking completely bewildered, like even he wasn’t sure what just happened.
“No,” I whisper to Brom, all my resolve coming back into me. “This isn’t happening and you know exactly why.”
“Even though you want it?” he asks, his voice breaking slightly, brows creating shadows over his eyes.
“Even though I want it,” I admit. I can at least give him that much.
Then I brush past him toward the sound of Paul’s voice that came from around the corner.
But Brom is right on my trail and ends up walking beside me as we see Paul approaching the dorm.
“Sorry,” I tell Paul, clutching my books to my chest and pasting a smile on my face. “I got stuck talking with Brom. You know Paul, don’t you Brom?”
Brom just nods and Paul gives him a faint smile that borders on suspicion. I suppose that tornado energy is palpable to more people than just me.
“Lucky we all have the same class,” Paul says flatly as the three of us walk down the path toward the building that houses Crane’s classroom. To say that it’s an awkward journey would be an understatement. I know that Paul knows there is something going on between Crane and I but he must wonder about the degree of my friendship with Brom. If he only knew the truth.
Chapter 14
Brom
Eleven years ago
“Where do you want to live when we get married?” I ask Kat.
We’re sitting on a log under the Hollow Creek bridge playing troll and princess, a game that is starting to feel too young for me, now that I’ve just turned twelve and my father says I should start acting like a man, but Kat was insistent. As usual. We always do things her way.
“I suppose my house,” she says, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulder, reminding me of the silk that comes off the corn at harvest time. “My house is bigger,” she adds brightly before throwing a stone into the creek.
“No,” I say to her, picking up an even bigger rock and chucking it into the fast-moving stream. “I mean, what town? City? Where do you want to go?”
She stares up at me, puzzled. “Why would we leave? My father and mother are here.”
“Mine are here too,” I point out but I don’t say anything else.
She just gives me a nod, because she knows. She goes into deep thought, rubbing her lips together as she does so.
“I think I’d like to stay in Sleepy Hollow,” she eventually says. “I like it here.”
“You’ve never been anywhere else.”
“Neither have you,” she says, poking me in the arm.
“But I read about other places, in books,” I say. “And I’ve been on the riverboat once and I’ve been to Tarrytown.”
“Everyone has been to Tarrytown,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I’m not moving there.”
“So then pick a place. Any place. How about London? I like the idea of moving to England And what type of house? Do you want horses?”
“Of course I want horses,” she says excitedly. “I want horses and goats and chickens and pigs and cows. I’ll make them all be my friends. I’ll be a mama too, so we’ll have lots of babies running around. It will be fun.”
“Well I’m going to buy you the nicest carriage that you can ride around in,” I tell her. “And all the ladies will look at you in envy. They’ll go, there goes Brom Van Brunt’s wife. Isn’t she the luckiest girl in town?”
“That would be nice,” she says shyly. Then she grows serious, her lip pouting. “Do you promise to take care of me?”
“Of course I’ll take care of you,” I say imploringly. “I’ll be your husband. That’s what husbands do. They take care of their wives.”
“And you’ll protect me?”
I put my arm around her and hold her to me and her hair smells like meadow flowers. “I will always protect you, Kat.”
She rests her head on my shoulder and I feel like I’m melting on the inside. “Because my father once told me that he won’t always be here to keep me safe,” she says quietly. “And my mother won’t be either.”
