Free A Chalice of Wind by Cate Tiernan Page B

in his own against his chest. I could feel his heart beating. I wondered why he’d assumed that I had actually lost my parents—they could have been divorced, or in prison, or maybe just one of them was dead.
    I shook my head. I’d told him I’d always lived with my grandmother—of course it sounded like I’d never had any parents.
    “What about you?” I asked.“Where’s your family from?”
    “My parents died a long time ago too,” he said. “But some of my extended family still lives in France—a little town called St. Malo.”
    “I would love to go to France,” I said dreamily. Hint, hint. “My family was originally from there, a couple hundred years ago. I’d love to go visit.”
    “You’ve never been there?”
    “No.” I looked into his dark blue eyes. “I bet it’s so beautiful there. Bet it has good food.”
    Andre smiled easily and tapped my lip with one gentle finger. “Yes. Very good food. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll see France together.”
    Yes! “I’d like that,” I said, and put my hand on his neck, beneath the collar of his shirt. I drew his head toward me and kissed him again. “I can see us doing lots of things together,” I whispered.
    He kissed me back, pressing my shoulders into the soft ground. His dark head blotted out the day’s final bit of light, and I closed my eyes. Andre kissed my eyelids, my forehead, my cheeks, my birthmark, my chin, and I lay quietly, smiling, soaking it all up. I was filled with happiness and felt the rush of love and light and power swell inside me. I so wished I could make real magick, a proper spell, right there—I knew I’d be more powerful than ever before. I would try to hold on to this feeling when I went home. Nan would be impressed. The power of love.
    Someday I would be able to show Andre who and what I was. If he loved me as deeply as I loved him, then magick would be just another experience for us to share, another aspect of my life I would open to him.
    His hand moved slowly from my waist over my camisole, and my muscles went taut as it brushed lightly over my breast. I shuddered, eyes closed, holding him tightly, feeling his knee press between mine.
    “Come home with me.” The words were barely whispered against my temple.
    Everything in me said yes. I pictured us alone and private. I saw his skin against mine, us joining completely, how magickal it would be. All it would take was for me to stand up, take his hand, and go to his apartment. Then we could be together.
    I didn’t want to open my eyes. If I kept my eyes shut, I could still imagine us together, see how it would be.
    “Clio?”
    I sighed and opened my eyes. It was dark out. Cicadas were thrumming rhythmically around us.
    “Clio. Come.” Andre stroked wisps of my hair back against my temple. I felt my heartbeat echo everywhere he touched.
    “I can’t.”
    His dark eyebrows raised, and the phrase handsome as the devil popped into my mind. “What?” He looked taken aback, and I felt angry at reality, resentful, and . . . bound to obey Nan.
    I licked my lips. “I’m sorry, Andre. Tonight I can’t. Another time? Any other time, practically. But—”
    “I’ve pushed you.” He looked regretful.
    “No! It isn’t that at all,” I said.“I’ve pushed you as much as you’ve pushed me.” I swallowed hard, my blood still running strong and hot with longing. “It’s so stupid. But tomorrow is the first day of school. Believe it or not. And even though everything in me wants to just be with you—still, my grandmother would absolutely kill me if I came home really late on the night before school started.”
    I felt my face flush even more, if possible. I, Clio Martin, felt so incredibly uncool, for perhaps the first time in my life. Ninety-eight percent of me said to blow Nan off, to go with Andre, to seize life, etc. But the other two percent held powerful sway: I loved Nan, and I hated disappointing her or making her angry.
    Andre was expressionless,