Crave (Harlequin Teen)

can find each other to kiss in the dark.
    I held the kiss long enough to make us both breathless. Then I pulled away while I still could and led him down the stairs, my entire body buzzing.
    Once the building was locked up again, we headed down the cement ramp to our trucks. He shoved the pizza box under one arm so he could reach out and hold my hand. During the slow walk together across the campus in the dark, the silence broken only by the occasional cricket and our feet rustling over the grass, a sudden thought hit me.
    Mom had been a senior here at JHS when she’d met my father. Had my parents done this? Walked side by side across this same campus, defying the rules so they could be together, risking starting a war, too, just because they loved each other?
    They’d ended up getting married, yet even that hadn’t started a war between the vamps and the witches. But it had ended up getting my family kicked out of the Clann.
    Then again, what could the Clann do to us now? They couldn’t exactly kick us out again. I was already banned from learning magic. And Mom could’ve been exaggerating about our starting a war anyways. Not to mention…talk about her being a hypocrite! How could she have the nerve to tell me to stay away from all descendants when she’d married a vampire?
    He followed me to the driver side of my truck, waiting while I got in, snapped on my seat belt and rolled down the window.
    “Can I see you again next week?” he asked.
    I frowned. All arguments aside, we were still breaking the rules. “Tristan, let me think about—”
    He leaned forward and kissed me. By the time he stopped, I couldn’t think straight again. “Ohhh, no fair using kisses….”
    I felt his lips curve into a grin against mine, teasing me as he whispered, “Please, Sav? We can keep it a secret if you want. The Clann and our families wouldn’t find out.”
    Could we really manage to date each other without anyone finding out?
    He kissed me again, slowly this time, the tip of his nose nuzzling mine, robbing me of breath and reason.
    Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself nodding in agreement.
    And then praying during the entire drive home that we weren’t making the biggest mistake of both our lives.
     
    Nanna met me at the door, already dressed for bed in her favorite long, old-fashioned cotton and lace-trimmed night gown. She held the cordless phone in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. “Your father wants to speak with you.”
    “Right now?” I froze. I hadn’t spoken to my father in months, not since that phone call last spring when he’d made me promise never to dance again and passed on the council’s threat to hurt Mom and Nanna if I refused.
    “No, he left a message. But he wants you to call him back as soon as possible.”
    She took a message for him. I growled under my breath.
    “You know I don’t want to talk to him,” I said as I quickly circled around her, moving fast down the hallway toward my bedroom in the hopes of avoiding an argument.
    She followed me, her bare feet silent on the worn linoleum floor in the hall then whisper soft on my bedroom’s brown shag carpeting.
    “I know you don’t want to talk to him,” she said. “And I’m sure he knows it, too. But he said this time it’s important, and if you don’t call him back, he’ll just keep on calling till you talk to him.”
    I keept my back to her to hide my burning face as my heart pounded in my ears. Had the vampire council somehow found out about my date with Tristan tonight? “Did he say why?”
    “Nope. I wrote down the number for you.”
    Okay, then my father hadn’t called about anything too life threatening or he would’ve told Nanna. Maybe he was just in an extra-demanding mood or something tonight.
    Reluctantly, I accepted the phone and slip of paper from her. After one last stern look, she left the room, shutting the door behind her.
    I took off my socks and shoes. But that didn’t take long enough. So I went ahead and got ready for bed, brushing my teeth and washing my face in the bathroom. Then I pulled on my favorite long white nightgown, the one with the spaghetti straps that made it almost like a dress. As I brushed my hair, it tangled with my necklace. The only way to free the strands was to take off my necklace and slowly unthread it from my hair. I tried to put the necklace back on, but my hands were shaking too hard to work the clasp. After several frustrating attempts that only wound