Free Fallen: Angels in the Dark by Lauren Kate Page B

door creaked open and they stepped into the spare, clean cabin, which featured a fireplace, a small kitchen, and a very prominently placed king-sized bed. An hour ago, Luce never would have believed she’d be alone in a cabin with her crush of three whole years. She didn’t do things like this. She’d never done anything like this in her life.
    Trevor moved straight to the wet bar and started to pour something brown from a frosted glass bottle. When he handed her the small, half-full tumbler, she didn’t even know enough not to take a giant swig.
    “Whoa.” He laughed when she gagged. “Finally, someone who needs a drink as badly as me.”
    If Luce hadn’t still been reeling from the burning in her throat, she might have laughed and corrected his grammar, pointing out that what he meant to say was “someone who needs a drink as badly as I,” instead of what he
had
said—which meant she needed a drink as badly asshe needed … him.
    He took her empty glass and wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her so close that his body pressed against hers. She could feel his muscular chest, the warmth of his skin.
    “Rachel and I, we’re all wrong, you know?”
    Oh God
. She was supposed to feel bad about this, wasn’t she? He was going to kiss her and she was going to kiss him back and that would mean that her first kiss was going to be with someone who had a girlfriend. A terrible witch of a girlfriend, but still. Luce
did
know that Trevor and Rachel were all wrong, but suddenly she also knew that Trevor was lying.
    Because
he
didn’t know that. He was only saying it so she’d fool around with him. Because probably he knew she adored him. Probably he’d caught her watching him countless times over the years. He must have felt pretty certain that she wanted him.
    She wanted him, yes, but until now it had always been in a far-off fantasy kind of way. Up close, she had no idea what to
do
with him.
    Now his face hovered over hers and his lips weren’t far away at all and his eyes looked different than they did in the yearbook picture Luce had gotten so used to.
    And suddenly, she realized she didn’t know him very well at all.
    But she wanted to. At the very least, she wanted to know what it felt like to be kissed, really kissed, pushed up against a wall and kissed intensely, until she was dizzy, until she was so filled with passion that there wasn’t any room for shadows or dark woods or a visit to the sanitarium.
    “Luce? Are you okay?”
    “Kiss me,” she whispered.
    It didn’t feel quite right, but it was too late. Trevor’s lips parted and came down on hers. She opened her mouth but found it hard to kiss him back. Her tongue felt all tied up. She was struggling in his arms as if in a dream, trying not to fight the kiss, trying just to take it in and let it happen.
    Trevor’s arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her to the bed. They sat down on the edge, still kissing. Her eyes were closed, but then she opened them. Trevor was staring directly at her.
    “What?” she asked nervously.
    “Nothing. You’re just so … beautiful.”
    She didn’t know what say to that, so she laughed.
    Trevor started kissing her again, his lips wet against her mouth, then her neck. She waited for the spark, for the fireworks Callie had told her about.
    But everything about kissing was different than she’d expected. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Trevor, his tongue on hers, his roving hands. But he seemed to know a lot more about this than she did. She tried to go with it.
    She heard something and pulled away from Trevor to look around the room. “What was that?”
    “What was what?” Trevor said, nibbling her earlobe.
    Luce glanced at the paneled wooden walls, but they were bare. She studied the fireplace, which was dark and still. For a second she thought she saw something—an ember, a flicker of yellow and red—but then it was gone.
    “Are you sure we’re alone?” she asked.
    “Of course.”