Page 102 of Divine Oaths

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Kasem laughed, kissing me again. His tongue traced my bottom lip, his hands sliding up the nape of my neck, pulling me closer as he kissed me more.

We were both breathless and shivering when we pulled apart.

It was freezing, and without each other’s warmth, the cold burrowed in our skin. Fire burned in both of us, but the reality of our situation quieted our racing hearts.

“I don’t think our wet clothes are helping.”

“No,” he admitted, “I don’t think they are.” He paused for a moment. “We’ll probably get sick if we stay in them.”

“I don’t have anything else,” I said.

But between shivering in our wet clothes, and warming each other, we chose the latter. Kasem slipped out of his shirt, taking off his shoes and pulling down his trousers so he was just in boxers. My cheeks burned at the sight of him, but I forced myself to look away, taking off my shoes and shimmying out of my skirt.

“Can you help me with the zip?” I asked.

“Hmm,” Kasem said, his voice low. His hand came to rest on my back, and he unzipped the top half of my set, helping me fold it with the pile of our clothes. He drew the corner of the mat over us like a blanket, me in my sports bra and boy shorts, him in his boxers, spooning each other tenderly, the mat encasing us in a makeshift cocoon.

“Despite how these last few hours may seem,” I said, my heart fluttering with wings, my cheeks burning, “I’m not normally this… forward.”

“Why?” he teased. “Was that your first kiss? Though, I mean, I guess we’d have to count what you pulled back in the dining hall.”

I swallowed, shy suddenly.

“No,” I said. “Jojo was.”

It was probably a mistake, bringing up Jojo like this. But I didn’t want to lie to him. Not when Kasem and I had been kissing all night. Not when he thought Jojo was the one I loved.

Kasem grew quiet and I continued, trying to explain.

“It was during New Year’s Eve last year,” I said. “Our building was having a party, and the two of us ended up on this fire escape alone after I’d left it early.”

At the time, Jojo had found me perched on the higher ground of the stairwell. As I’d descended the steps, Jojo smiled and held out his hand for me to take. Somehow, the cheers from the floors beneath us, ringing in the New Year, drew us together. Our kiss had been tentative and searching, nothing like the fire and moonlight of kissing Kasem.

“How about we skip the play-by-play,” he said dryly. “It’s already been a long night.”

An apology burned at my lips, but Kasem wrapped his arms around me.

“To stay warm,” he explained, almost clinically. “Jay’s out there, and we don’t know what his next move will be. But at least one of us should get some sleep.”

I pressed my eyes shut, wanting to turn to him but knowing, even in our closeness, that he wanted his space.

Outside, silence finally fell over the swamp. There was nothing but the soft chirping of crickets and the shuffling of leaves. It wasn’t until his breathing stilled to a steady rhythm and I thought he’d finally fallen asleep that I let the hot tears fall.

But his wraith did not appear. And eventually, I slept.

When morning broke and Honey returned with help, we were tangled together, my head rested on his chest, his arm wrapped gently around my waist, our fingers entwined.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Shall my sister be

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING RUSH, I stayed in my dorm. I had a fever that anchored me to bed, leaving me tossing and turning with horrible dreams of limbs being torn and rope-wielding figures pursuing me. Luke was dead, and others had died that night: Pete and the three Sigma members caught in the onslaught of the swamp creature. Yet somehow, my dreams trailed again and again to Kasem, to his figure in the swampy waters of Westfield, to his brown eyes and the red veins lining them as he nearly drowned in the water that night.

My fever was vicious. I dreamed he lay next to me, his lips brushing the tip of my ear, his mouth suckling my fingertips, tasting every inch of me until I was warm and aching all over. But then the dream became a nightmare, and Kasem’s figure morphed into vultures pecking at my flesh, pushing me against the tree, gnawing and consuming me.

I woke, trembling, to the sound of my phone ringing.