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Sophie hesitated, brows puckering at his words, near instinctively taking a step back to put room between herself and the smirking, disheveled blond boy in front of her.
“Is it harder to be around me?” she asked, adding a clarifying bit at the end once she realized the odd implications of her words. “Since my emotions are stronger?”
His lips tugged into a smile. “Don’t worry, you’re worth it.”
This boy is going to be the death of himself— and her.
“Ugh— why didn’t you tell me?” Sophie moved toward the door, trying to put as much space between them as she could without leaving the room. It had grown to be. . . comfortable, being in her bedroom with Keefe, away from what she knew was waiting for them outside her door.
He laughed. “Trust me, a few feet doesn’t make a difference.”
“Then you should stay away from me,” she countered.
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
He strode over to her with his hands dug casually into the pockets of his dark pants, smirk tugging at the edges of his lips. She tried to back away but crashed into the wall behind her, shoulders hitting the cool crystal with an audible thump.
Sophie’s eyes darted from her feet to his face, growing increasingly worried about how close he was getting. “I’m serious, Keefe,” she told him, but Keefe continued to move forward as if he didn't even hear her words, inching further and further toward her until his boots hit the toes of hers.
This close, she could feel his breath on her cheeks, a warm, almost comforting thing. His eyes, ice blue in the sunlight, had become a murkier shade in the darkness of Sophie’s bedroom at dusk, and she noticed the darker rings of blue surrounding his pupils. She distantly wondered why she was paying so much attention to Keefe Sencen’s eyes.
“Oh, I know. But you’re forgetting something, Foster.”
He was close enough to reach out and gently tuck her golden hair behind her reddening ear as he leaned in to whisper, “I like a challenge.”
His breath tickled her skin, and her stomach filled with fluttery things. “Speechless again?” he asked, grinning as he braced an arm against the wall beside her ear, his warmth seeping through the fabric of his jerkin onto her skin. “You know, there’s a part of me that thinks you like the challenge just as much as I do.”
For an indescribable, unknown reason even to herself, Sophie began to speak, a tingle rising up her spine.
“Maybe I’m just tired of you thinking you’re the only one who can handle it,” she shot back.
His eyes flashed, brightening with something dangerous before darkening all at once. Sophie was suddenly hit with an incomprehensible urge to understand, to recognize every flicker in Keefe’s eyes.
“Is that so, Foster?” he murmured, the corners of his mouth pulling into a slow, mischievous smirk. He chuckled. “Because last time I checked, I was in the lead in this little game of ours.”
She shouldn’t respond. The metaphors were blurring together, and now she wasn’t even sure which challenge they were talking about. To make matters worse, the air around them seemed to thin with each of his words. Sophie felt herself growing dizzier with each passing second.
“You’ve been keeping track then?” she breathed instead, matching the coy tone of his words.
Shut up, Sophie!
His fingers twitched where they rested by her head, a motion she would have missed entirely had she not been tracking his movements as obsessively as Iggy chased his own tail. She felt oddly like a pioneer, discovering new things about the world she thought she knew so well, because the Keefe standing before her, confident yet affected by every word she said, seemed like an almost entirely different boy in full.
It should've been scary, the unknown. And yet Sophie couldn't help but overturn every single stone she found in their back-and-forth.
He somehow managed to lean in closer than he was before, his forehead now a hairsbreadth away from hers. "Why do you ask?" he questioned. "Curious to know where you stand, Foster? Because I've been keeping track of your points too."
"Why? You afraid of losing?"
Keefe met her eyes almost immediately, nearly as startled by her brazen response as she was. Maybe he wasn't the only one who seemed like a whole new person.
His smirk melted onto his face like a gift. As if the universe had decided to grant her a present for all her hardships in the form of Keefe Sencen's smile. It may have been working. "More like I'm preparing to brag once you realize just how far away you are from winning than I am."
His words entered her ears and left without her brain processing a single one. The slow drawl of his (likely smug) words barely registered to Sophie, not when his face was this close to hers. Every breath she exhaled was the same one he inhaled, and each word he spoke blew warm air against her lips. His warm air. It was. . . intimate. Sophie couldn't tell the difference between the breaths that were hers first compared to the ones that belonged to him. This was a type of intimacy she had never experienced, filling her lungs with the air of someone else. Her cells were being nourished with Keefe's warm, minty breaths, and his were getting hers.
It made her legs weak and her stomach twist into a million knots, except it didn't feel. . . bad. Sophie had experienced this shakiness a million times before. During her tribunals, cognate lessons, or Foxfire exams, and they had all made her feel distant from her own mind and spun her gut until it churned. But now, with Keefe, it felt different. The knots didn't make her feel anxious or nauseous, but instead they made her feel. . .
. . .want.
Like this boy so close to her, pinning her against her bedroom wall with only the sinking sun and distant stars as witness could fix it.
"Could you?" she murmured, chin tilting inward in a way that only angled her face to better fit his. Keefe's eyes widened, and he seemed to slowly lean in further as if he was falling before he stopped, sucking in a sharp breath like he needed it. Her breath, once again.
His brows were furrowed. "Could I what, Foster?" he whispered, voice barely audible despite their proximity.
"I. . ."
She should stop this. Sophie didn't before, but now, now this was undoubtedly uncharted territory. And there was so much going on, with Lady Gisela, and Vespera, and her human parents, plus everything with Keefe's legacy. But for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to pull away from him, to leave this bubble they'd created for themselves.
Keefe's other hand, formerly lying limp by his side, came up to rest on her hip, a light, barely there touch before he tightened his grasp, seeing as how she didn't push him away. "Could I what?" he repeated, matching every movement her head made to make her meet his eyes. If he was trying to get an answer out of her easily, that might have been the worst possible thing to do, because his ice blue eyes only made it harder for her to focus. How could she have ever favoured teal?
She shivered in his arms, bringing up one hand to fist his jerkin and then another, both resting at his shoulders. "I don't know. . ."
"Hey." He moved the hand on her waist to hold her chin instead, lifting her head with his index finger. His thumb was really close to her lips. "You know. I know you do, Sophie."
He spoke as if he needed her to answer. Like if she didn't, he might not breathe.
"Keefe," she tried, mouth drying up at the intense look he was giving her. It didn't even look like he could help it, but her eyes fluttered shut to avoid it nonetheless. "I need. . ."
Her voice was so quiet, breathless. Sophie felt cold and sweaty all at once, her palms heating up where they held Keefe's jerkin. She let her head drift a little closer, just a bit, making their foreheads touch and then rest on each other.
She didn't dare open her eyes. Didn't even let herself think about what Keefe's face would look like if she did look.
His hand stilled on her chin, thumb pausing its comforting strokes. She wondered if he even realized he was doing it at all. Then it moved, dragging upwards to cup her entire cheek and touch the back of her ear with his pointer finger. It felt like what she imagined clouds did, a thought she'd had soaring above the sky on Silveny's back and watching sun-bathed clouds seem to glow in shades of orange and pink. Keefe cupping her face like this felt like catapulting off of the alicorn's back and into the clouds like some sort of skydiver without a safety harness.
"Sophie," he breathed. "Open your eyes for me, please."
She made some noise of protest, a sound she would surely be embarrassed about later, when his thumb came up to delicately brush the edge of her eyelid.
"Foster," Keefe choked out. "I really need your eyes to be open for this."
He sounded so desperate, so entirely wrecked that she couldn't help but obey. She opened her eyes and let brown meet blue. Her bedroom was painted in shadows at this point, sun gone and leaving only the stars and moon in its wake. Keefe's blond hair looked more dull than when in the sunlight, but somehow it was infinitely more attractive compared to any other time, especially when it was spilling onto her head, brushing her forehead in an almost ticklish manner. And his eyes.
Keefe and the rest of their friends loved to go on about how Sophie's brown eyes in a sea of blue looked amazing (although she would forever associate them with her freakish horse genes), but she somehow never once heard them say anything about an arctic blue shade. His eyes were dotted with speckles of dark blue, cerulean, and an electric gleam that trademarked his eyes as his. If it weren't for their noses, they might have been brushing eyelashes (or at least whatever was left of Sophie's).
"Hi," he squeaked suddenly, and then immediately seemed to regret it, flushing a pink shade up to his ears.
A small smile crept onto Sophie's face. "Hi."
She pursed her lips together in an effort to not smile too wide— or laugh, but Keefe caught on instantly.
"Are you laughing at me, Foster?" Keefe accused, voice going high in mock-offense.
One giggle burst out, her cheeks genuinely aching with the effort it took to not let any more out. "No— no, of course not," she tried.
He pressed his palm into her cheek, trying to make her fumble and spill her laughter out. "Don't lie to me, Foster. You can't trick the Empath."
Sophie snickered. "Shut up, I'm not laughing!"
"You literally are right now—" he pulled one arm around her waist and pressed the other tighter into her cheeks, making her have to bite her lip to not lose— "Sophie Elizabeth Foster, you look me in the eye right now—" a choked laugh— "and tell me you aren't laughing at me!"
She took a steadying breath and met his eyes. "Okay, I'm not laughing at you— Keefe!" she squealed, twisting in his arms. He was tickling her! In her ticklish places, too (how he knew about those, the world may never know).
"No, no, no— Keefe, stop it!" she laughed, pushing at his shoulders and trying and failing to glare at his devilish smirk as he attacked her sides.
"Uh, no way, Foster. Not until you admit that I'm right and you're wrong."
She huffed in his face, trying and failing to run away. "What are you, five-years-old?"
"Hey—" he tried to protest, face twisting in fake offense, but she spun out of his grasp before he could continue. Sophie got exactly one step away from him before he wrapped two strong arms around her waist, lifted her off her feet, and swung them back into their rightful places on the wall.
Keefe laughed at her offended face. She crossed her arms stubbornly. "You couldn't even let me pretend to run away, could you?"
He placed his hands on her hips once again, tugging her into him and placing his chin on the top of her head, rocking them slightly. She smiled secretly into his collar. "Oh, no, of course not, Foster. We could never risk damage to my ego, now could we?"
Sophie hummed, pretending to contemplate, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting her elbows rest on his shoulders, and her arms crossed until they were snuggly around his neck. "Well, certainly not, Mr. Sencen. We could never damage such fine goods."
He pulled his head off of hers to meet her eyes and her smirk. "Exactly. I'm glad we're in agreement then, Ms. Foster."
Her chest was pressed up against his, and she could feel his words vibrate through his body. His hands rubbed a comforting line up and down her spine.
Keefe was looking at her again.
It still burned, still made her ache, still had liquid gold twisting within her.
But now, it felt. . . stable. Familiar.
"Keefe," she breathed, feeling all the air, the nerves, the rush of their laughter leave her body in one fell swoop. His arms were snug around her waist, pulling them in boot to boot, hip to hip, chest to chest, and. . .
"Sophie," he murmured back. His eyes met hers, then flickered lower, and back up.
She and Keefe had always had this sort of silent communication. Sophie wasn't sure she'd be able to track when it started. Maybe sometime between him saving her and Silveny's lives and them discovering that his mom was in the Neverseen. It had infuriated their friends for a while, all for separate reasons. Sophie refused to acknowledge it, but she knew it still did when she and Keefe would stare at each other across the room and just know, and when their friends could tell it wasn't telepathy, she knew they always felt out of the loop. Rightfully so.
But it wasn't something they could turn on and off. Sophie knew, just like how she knew she would never fully fit into the Lost Cities, one leg in the human world, the other in the elven, and her entire history with the Black Swan throwing everything off course, that Keefe would always know her. Better than their friends, than Mr. Forkle, than her adoptive and human parents.
Everything she was never able to voice aloud was somehow always just known by Keefe. And the same went for her to him. Everything he tried to deflect with a smirk, and every dark truth he kept bottled up inside him, Sophie would know.
She let her hands slide into his hair, a motion she'd always wanted to do but never had, not with the way he cherished his hair. But he let her. Let her tumble her hands through the blond, crinkle the strands between her hands. With each touch, he seemed to shudder as if her hands were working magic and not just touching. She never pulled her eyes away from his gaze as she did so.
One of his hands travelled up her spine to settle in her hair, pulling up the fabric of her tunic and accidentally exposing some of the skin on her back. She shivered into his arms at the cold, and his other hand came down to settle onto her bare skin, then let the tunic fall back onto his hand beneath it. His skin on hers felt like something she'd never felt before— a sort of spark that sounded like myth before this moment.
She wanted more, more of this euphoria. Sophie wanted more of him, Keefe and his electric touch.
Pulling herself up on the tips of her toes (and accidentally landing on the front edges of Keefe's boots, though he said nothing), she slid one hand down to hold his neck. Everything about them was aligned now, or almost everything.
His expression flickered. "Hey," he murmured, leaning in closer. "Are you. . . sure?"
He looked so beautifully unsure, hands twitching where they rested on her body, and she could even feel him shaking from where their bodies were pressed up together. If her heart hadn't flipped into hummingbird mode before, it definitely was now, hammering against her ribs.
"I'm sure," she said, lips curving upwards before dropping into a frown. "Are— are you sure? I should've asked you before, oh my—"
"Foster," he interrupted, voice steady. It seemed like every time one of them faltered, the other was there to lift them up. They balanced each other perfectly, how could she not have seen it before? "You're good. No, you're perfect. I just— I don't want to rush you. Especially with everything that's going on."
He waved a vague hand through the air, then went to run a hand through his hair before seeming to remember hers was in it, faltering awkwardly before she pulled her hand out of his waves to grab at it. She could feel his pulse in his fingertips. It was beating as fast as hers, she smiled.
"You're not rushing me," she promised. "I. . . I want this."
Her voice dropped an octave lower as she spoke, throat drying as he stared down at her, gaze heavy and lidded. Sophie licked her lips, trying to soothe her dry mouth when his eyes darted to her lips like a cat to a laser pointer. She flushed, something warm and heavy pooling in her gut at his stare.
He intertwined their hands, eyes still locked on to her mouth. "Shit, Foster. . ."
She tilted her chin up. He angled his downwards.
Her top lip caught on his bottom lip, and they both pressed forward at the same time.
One kiss.
They leaned back, enough to meet each other's eyes but not enough to bring their lips fully apart. "Sophie," Keefe murmured, voice a low, heavy thing that sent shivers down her spine. A beat passed.
Their lips crashed together, an aching force that knocked Sophie's breath out in one single go. His hand beneath her tunic moved to wrap fully around her waist, letting his forearm come beneath her shirt to do so, making the knots in her stomach twist and loosen all at once. Their lips parted, and met, and her brain fuzzed so dizzyingly her knees would have buckled beneath her if it weren't for Keefe supporting her weight. The thought of him being strong enough to hold them both up— with her standing on his feet— was not helping cool the ache inside her.
Her back arched into his touch, their intertwined hands separating to go on their own paths— hers to his hair and his to cup her face once again.
With Keefe's hand guiding them, his touch smooth yet burning against her cheek, his lips pressed a bruising sensation into hers. Sophie never wanted to part from this, never wanted to pull her mouth away from his touch.
Just as she had that thought, his teeth captured her top lip and grazed a scorching feeling into her. A noise she could only describe as a moan bubbled out of her throat, vibrating into Keefe's mouth through hers. He groaned in response, kissing her even more fiercely than before. There was a gnawing ache of want choking Sophie from all corners, and Keefe was doing nothing but satisfying and fueling it all at once. The Neverseen could break into her room, and she still wouldn't stop kissing Keefe.
She didn't notice him backing them up into the wall until her shoulders hit it, his hand having come up to cradle her head to avoid her hitting it on the wall. Sophie smiled into the kiss, somehow not breaking their connection. His arm moved to his previous position, braced on the wall by her head, leaving just his arm wrapped around her bare waist on her body.
Sophie allowed both her hands to then cup his face, guiding their kiss back and forth. It felt like he was swallowing her; his frame shadowing over hers, especially under the night sky, and his lips pressing into her and refusing to ever let up.
The deep press of his lips against hers, the feel of his chest to hers, and their beating hearts were the only things Sophie was aware of in the world. Her vision was narrowed down to Keefe Sencen and his burning kisses.
He was the first to pull away, tearing their lips apart to suck in deep, fast breaths. Sophie leaned her forehead against his as they panted, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.
Keefe hummed low in his throat, tilting his head into her hands. She stroked his cheek with a thumb. “You have no idea how much I've wanted that.”
Her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
"See what I told you," he smirked. "No idea at all."
Sophie huffed. "Well, I could know if you'd just tell me."
His hand was drawing patterns on her back, spirals and letters, along with other things she couldn't describe. They sent tingles down her spine all the same.
He paused at her words, a mischievous gleam appearing in his eyes. His grin turned devilish.
"I could tell you," Keefe downright purred. "Or, I could show you."
A gasp hitched in Sophie's throat as he nudged his head down to her collar.
One soft press of lips to her skin was enough to make her brain fuzz and eyes flutter. Sophie felt her throat tip back just as Keefe began adding teeth to his bites and licking them to soothe, causing soft noises to escape her lips without permission.
She wrapped her shaking arms tighter around him as he pressed her even firmer into the wall, clinging to him as shaky moans poured out of her mouth. In any other situation, she would have bit down on her tongue, stopped the noises from leaking out. But here she didn't, because each time an uncontrollable mewl made its way out, Keefe would choke out a noise of his own, muffling it against her skin. At one point, in response to her gasping out his name, a growl was made against her throat. It felt like he was on his own personal mission to see how many times he could make her moan, how many different noises he could inspire out of her.
His hand beneath her tunic seemed to have an assignment of its own, too, squeezing at her waist as if he wanted to mark it. Make this moment something real and tangible, not just a memory in their minds.
Sophie shivered at the combination, but some part of her, the still distantly aware section of her mind, had an idea of its own. It wasn't fair that Keefe was the only one who got to not be made into a mess. She wanted to see what she could get him to do, too.
Just as he licked a firm path up from her collarbone to jaw, distracting her for a long, long moment, she moved her hands away from where they'd migrated to his shoulders to clutch his muscle until her knuckles went white. They dug their way into his blond waves, holding onto his hair as his mouth worked on her skin.
Keefe had always been so protective of his hair, and when she'd crinkled it in her hands earlier, he'd seemed so. . . sensitive. Like every touch was a kiss, he reacted the same way she was now to his persistent kisses and bites to her throat. There was something there that she could use to her advantage.
So, Sophie threaded her hands through his soft strands of hair and tugged, not hard enough to hurt but with enough force to make him feel it.
"Foster—" he choked, breath hitching against her neck. She grinned and pulled at his hair again, scrunching it in her hands.
"What's wrong, Keefe?" she asked, voice breathless but tone just as teasing as his was. "For someone in the lead of our little game, you’re looking awfully flustered."
It was a dirty move, challenging him with his own words. But Keefe was the one who had decided to play dirty first when he decided to go for her neck (sure, she loved it, but she somehow loved making Keefe feel the shivers she did even more).
His eyes narrowed. "You really wanna play that game with me, Foster?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "Unless, of course, you aren't up for it—"
Keefe's lips slammed into hers with such intensity that it forced her back against the wall even more. Now, he was fully supporting her weight with his knee between her legs, but she paid no attention to it in favour of Keefe's mouth moving against hers.
He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, a wet and burning touch. Sophie's hand kept the pressure up on the back of his head, toying with his hair and also making sure his mouth never moved away from hers. She was so focused on making him feel good that she didn't notice his hand peel off the wall to rest on her neck— her very sensitive neck. Keefe pushed into one of the bruises he'd sucked onto her skin with his thumb, making her gasp into the kiss.
"Keefe," she gasped, grip in his hair tightening. At the same time, he pushed further into her mouth, making their kiss even deeper and more languid than before. Sophie thought she even felt the edge of his tongue against hers before he backed off, breaking their kiss to smirk at her.
"Don't know about you, Foster, but I'd say that's a point to me."
"That—" her mind was still whirling— "that was not fair."
He grinned. "Eh, all's fair in love and war, right?"
Sophie blinked in confusion as he settled her into his arms more securely, less like a desperate entanglement and more like a firm hug. "How do you even know that saying? It's a human one."
"Foster, Foster, Foster," he sighed playfully. "I thought you knew not to underestimate the Keefster by now."
"Don't make me get the answer out of your mind," she warned, smiling up at him despite his infuriating teasing. Somehow, she just couldn't stop smiling.
Keefe snickered, finally giving in. "It originally came from the ogres and goblins. Pretty poetic for that bunch— but don't let Sandor hear me say that. I don't really care if Ro hears, though. I could take her."
Sophie's brows raised. "You could take the ogre princess?"
"Uh, are you forgetting how I totally beat her dad? I'm very well versed in ogre takedowns by now."
Her smile sank slightly at the reminder of his fight against King Dimitar. She knew he won, and knew Keefe was healed from the fight with nothing more than a scar as evidence of it, but she hadn't forgotten. The bone-deep fear she'd felt watching the two battle, how her hands had shaken uncontrollably as she tore his cape apart to make bandages for his wounds, and the way her anger and rage and terror had bubbled into a weapon strong enough to take everyone in the room down once she'd seen the length of the damage.
Keefe made her feel all that. If it were anyone else in the ring, she wouldn't have experienced it— at least not so intensely. Sophie would have been beyond afraid, and angry, too, but in comparison to the black hatred that had racked her body each time Keefe had been hit, it would have been nothing. Even if it were her against the ogre king.
Nothing would ever compare to the fear she'd felt at the thought of losing Keefe.
"Hey," Keefe whispered, breath warm on her cheeks. "What's wrong? Your emotions are going. . . everywhere."
"I—" she began, hesitating before continuing. "What does this mean for us?"
He went silent.
"Keefe? I need to know. Because if this was just— if it was just something fun for you, I get it. You are insanely popular and, like, really cute. Girls everywhere would be all over you, and so I understand if you weren't actually into this and just wanted something casual, but I don't think it can be that for me. I need you to tell me now if your heart wasn't in this, because then, it'll still hurt, but I'll be able to—"
"Sophie," he said. He sounded awed. "My heart. . . was so into this."
Her head jolted up in surprise to really meet his eyes.
"You are. . . the only girl that I've ever loved." She sucked in a sharp breath at the word. "Ever since I saw you in the halls at Foxfire for the first time. I knew right then that beyond you being the new, mysterious girl from the Forbidden Cities, you were someone special. I never could've imagined that I'd get to become friends with that same special girl, especially after— after all that I've done." His voice took on a somber tone, and Sophie felt her heart crack in her chest. She was about to open her mouth to let him know that his time in the Neverseen had changed nothing, when he smiled at her. A slow, small expression that looked like the most perfect thing she'd ever seen.
"The thought of getting to have more with you feels like some sort of dream," he said. It felt like being the only two people awake in the world, soft, and intimate, and just for her and Keefe. Sophie knew it sounded selfish, but she wanted more. And for a girl who had already sacrificed so much for others, couldn't she be allowed to be selfish just this once? "And I realize that this could be a lot, with your human parents and my mom and everything else, but. . . I just need you to know how I feel, Foster. I want more with you— not just kisses in your bedroom at night," he said, gesturing to the room around them. "Though that is pretty good. But I want to give you more, Foster. More than just things behind a closed door. If that's not something you want now— or ever, I don't want to be the one to pressure you into anything. You mean a lot to me, Sophie."
She slowly smiled up at him, eyes crinkling at the edges. "You mean a lot to me, too, Keefe. I don't know how I didn't realize it before, but you are my favourite person. You are my person. And. . . I'd like to be yours, if you'll have me."
Keefe laughed, a low, relieved, steady sound that she felt in his chest. "I'd like nothing more than that, Foster."
Sophie beamed as she lined their faces up, and their kiss somehow had less kissing and more smiling. Either way, it didn't break, not until they leaned back to rest their foreheads together.
His grin was adorable, but it lost a bit of its spark as he moved a hand up to stroke her cheek. “I don't want to mess this up. Please don't let me mess this up.”
She couldn't imagine him ever doing so. Keefe was her rock, the person who was always there for her at every stumble. Every time she faltered, he was there to help scoop up the pieces. All she wanted to do now was learn to be that person for him, to be his.
“I won't,” Sophie promised, tilting her head back up for a quick kiss.
He leaned in just as the door banged open, sending them scattering across the room. Keefe tore away from her, turning around and cupping a hand over his mouth, and Sophie froze on the wall before fruitlessly attempting to tame the mess that was her hair and scrub at her lips.
“Good— you're together. . .” Mr. Forkle trailed off, his words dying on his lips as he looked from Keefe to her, and then back again.
Sandor and Ro stood behind him, dumbfounded expressions on both of their faces, before Ro's twisted up into a devilish grin.
“No way,” she laughed, corners of her lips tugging upwards as she moved to stand between them, heading whipping from Sophie to Keefe. “You two were smooching!”
“Shut up, Ro—”
“No, we weren't!—”
Their voices collided, sending them blushing and looking away all at once. Sophie snuck in a quick glance at Keefe, dying inside when she saw his ruffled hair and wet, bruising lips.
She did that.
Oh, no. She did that. And he also did things to her— worse things.
Considering Keefe's many kisses to her throat, she could only imagine what her neck looked like. Sophie panicked, throwing up a quick hand to her neck, guiltily trying to cover up the mess he'd made out of her.
Unfortunately for the both of them, that only brought more attention to Sophie's neck.
“Damn, kid!” Ro exploded, laughter bubbling out of her and making Sophie's face flame. “Didn't know you had it in you,” she teased, turning to a very silent, very red Keefe Sencen.
Sophie opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, only to shut it immediately once she noticed Sandor's look.
“Um,” she squeaked. “. . .Sandor? Are you. . . okay?”
He wasn't speaking. She wasn't even sure if he was breathing.
Mr. Forkle stood quietly in the corner of her room, eyes darting between every person in the room as if he were watching a tennis match. If she looked closely, she could spot a grin tugging at the edges of his mouth. Sophie wasn't sure what to think of that.
“Gigantor?” Keefe called, edging cautiously toward her goblin bodyguard. “Uh, dude, are you—”
“Grady!” Sandor finally bellowed, squeaky voice somehow echoing throughout the entire house.
Sophie didn't realize that souls could leave bodies with just one single word before that moment.
“. . .”
“No—”
“Sandor!”