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Chapter 37

The kiss is electric and alive. I don't know how, but our mouths move together like they were made for each other, as if this kiss were a part of the plan from the beginning.

Blake pushes and I pull. He squeezes his hands on my upper arms, and I dig my fingernails into his wrists. His mouth tastes like mint toothpaste and the foam I blew in his face.

When he puts his hand on the back of my head and pulls me towards him, it makes the kiss deeper, wilder, like something we might destroy each other with. His teeth nip at my lips, not gently, and it makes me moan. I curl my fingers against his neck and press the filed curves of my nails into his skin until his pulse is something I'm practically holding in my hand.

I feel like any moment one of us will draw blood.

The fire is alive within me. Rage consumes me, fueling my hate, which feels so much like passion. It'll poison me to death before I get the chance to see my seventeenth birthday, just like my brother. Its heat flickers against my skin.

No, that's not the fire of my rage. That'srealfire.

I yelp and push Blake away, stumbling back. The hem of my grungy white vintage dress has caught on fire. Somewhere in our painfully pleasurable make out session I got too close to the candles.

"Here!" Blake pulls his dark blue Coleridge blazer off and beats the hem of my dress, while I jerk it away from my body, dancing and hissing. "I think I got it."

Patting away the last bit of the flame, I look up at him. "I guess that adds a bit of realism to the production."

We stare at each other. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and another kind of heat travels up my body. There's gold and yellow in his eyes from the reflected candlelight.

Looking at him now, with his hair mussed from my hands and his shirt still hopelessly smudged and wrinkled, he looks like a boy. Not a statue come to life, or a photo in a magazine. Just a boy, with a complicated life and a difficult past, staring at the girl he just kissed.

Hisfirstkiss.

I don't think either of us expected that it would be me.

For some reason I'm waiting for him to say something. Maybe,we shouldn't have done this,orthat was a mistake.I would even settle for a cutting insult about my skills, or a revelation that he lied, and he's actually kissed every girl who attends Coleridge, one by one.

Blake says nothing at all.

He just pulls his blazer back on, buttons it up, pats down his jet black hair, then turns on his heel and leaves.

Reminding me all at once what he really is: the boy who left my brother high and dry, when he quite probably knew it wasn't him who assaulted Mariana that night.

Suddenly my stomach turns, and if it weren't for the fact that I have a show to put on and a job to do, I'd run right out of here and let all of my dinner loose on one of the porcelain thrones of Rosalind Hall. Instead, I have to back up into the shadows and let myself become the darkness again, listening for the sound of giggles and screams approaching me, prepared to play the part of the dead girl seeking revenge.

* * *

Our scare shifts last two hours, which gives me plenty of time to mingle with the other guests. Though the front lobby, a few of the rooms, and the upstairs study nooks have been turned into the haunted part of the house, the dining area and the back garden we share with the Lovelaces are free of the spooky and the scary.

Pulling my hair back into a ponytail, I head to the dining area. Tricia and Sasha are already hanging out by the drink station, swapping war stories.

"I swear, I thought she was gonna piss herself."

Tricia's eyes are wide. "You dropped the whole skeleton on her?"

"Hey guys."

They glance over at me, and my heart does a little skip beat as I wonder if my makeup is so messed up that it's obvious I just had a very weird encounter with Blake Lee. But that's ridiculous—they wouldn't know it was him just by looking.

Sasha says, "Hey Brenna. You frighten any of the other girls tonight?"

"There were a few that were definitely freaked out. I really used the darkness of my corner against them. More than once I waited until they were within arm's length to pop out of the shadows."

Tricia grins. "Spooky. We had fun too."

Glancing around, I ask, "Have you guys seen Chrissy? I was just about to ask her how she did."