Lips Touch: Three Times(18)
Author: Laini Taylor

"Sahib!" a little street boy cried, running up to him. "Yes, little man? What is it?"

"The old memsahib, she say give you this, Sahib," the child told him breathlessly, tossing something at James’s chest so he had to catch it. It was a little parcel of brown paper, and as the boy ran off, James unfolded it. It was weightless; it seemed empty, but as it fell open, a mass of darkness hit the ground at James’s feet, dark and quick as paint splashed from a bucket. It was his shadow, and it was crisp beneath the lamps of the Agent’s gates now, as if it had never been gone. Inside the little parcel, on the brown paper, was scrawled one word. Believe.

James’s soul trembled, just a little.

NINE The Kiss

Inside, Anamique was watching for James. A pianist had been hired for the evening so that she might not have to entertain at her own party, and the fellow was playing a rowdy ragtime tune. Others were dancing and laughing, but for Anamique the party wouldn’t begin until James arrived. She looked in a mirror and saw a strange girl looking out. She smiled. She’d had her hair bobbed. Her sisters had sculpted it into finger waves and it looked glossy and sleek against her cheeks. She wasn’t a girl anymore, and she wasn’t wearing a girl’s gown either. She wore a jazzy shimmering shift that fell to mid-calf, and in her stockings and strappy shoes her ankles felt naked. Her shoulders were bare too and she felt daring and sultry and alive.

She saw James reflected in the mirror and she turned. He’d just come in and was looking for her. She watched mischievously as his eyes swept the room, passing over her twice before finally fixing on her face with a flash of surprise. His startled brown eyes dropped to her shoulders, then down to her ankles and darted quickly back up to her face as a blush overspread his cheeks. He stood immobile for a moment, clutching a bouquet of flowers, before crossing the room to her in a rush.

"Ana …" he breathed. "You look … ravishing …" He was flustered, and couldn’t keep his eyes from straying down to her white shoulders. Anamique wanted to dance with him so he would touch her. She wanted him to cup her shoulders with both hands and whisper in her ear, close, his lips touching her so her whole body would shiver like flower petals in a breeze. She wanted him to kiss her. Looking up into his eyes and seeing the radiance in them, seeing the future in them, she was so full of happiness she thought she might burst. She had to bite her lip to keep from singing.

A flicker of anxiety passed through James’s eyes when she bit her lip. She laid her hand on his arm and looked up at him, silently asking with her eyes, "What is it?"

Whatever it was, he shook it off. "Look at me, stammering like a fool! You’ve taken my breath away, Ana, my beautiful girl. I haven’t even told you happy birthday yet! Well, happy birthday. Now dance with me!"

He took her hand and led her to the dance floor, and all evening long they danced and danced. Around them the party happened. There were streamers stretched over their heads, and people drank and gossiped, and khitmutgars moved among them with trays of cakes, but Anamique didn’t pay attention to any of it. She closed her eyes and felt James’s breath stir the fine hairs at her temple and, when he bent to whisper to her, she felt the softness of his lips for an instant on her earlobe. But he said very little, and late in the evening she realized that he hadn’t once implored her to speak.

He also hadn’t told her that he loved her. She saw the flicker of worry in his eyes now and again, but more often she saw a distance growing in them, like he was far away and getting farther, following some dark trail of thoughts away from the circle of their tangent bodies.

A sick dread began to fill her. Perhaps, she worried, she’d waited too long. Perhaps her eccentricity had lost its charm and become merely inconvenient. Could it be that he was bored? Happiness can turn like a tide for a young girl in love, and Anamique’s did. It turned and ebbed and left her leaden and miserable as she danced, and her misery only deepened when James didn’t notice right away what she was sure was written on her face plain as words. Indeed, whole moments passed when he seemed entirely to forget her.

What, she wondered, could he be thinking about?

She lifted her hand from his arm and laid her fingertips gently against his cheek, startling him from his reverie. He looked down at her and saw at once the misery in her eyes. His face fell. "Ana, please, don’t look so sad," he said. "I’m a fool! I’ve the world’s most beautiful girl in my arms and I let my thoughts get swept away with nonsense! You’re all I want to think about."

They were dancing past the verandah door and he swept her toward it and through it, out into the moonlight where they were alone. Truly alone, for the very first time.

James pushed the door closed, muffling the music and laughter within. And though they’d ceased dancing, he didn’t drop his arm from her waist, but drew her nearer, her body full against his. He touched her lips with his fingertips, his brow furrowed and his eyes searching her face as if he were looking for the answer to some solemn mystery.

Anamique wanted to cry out, "What’s wrong?" but speech wouldn’t come so easily. She asked him with her eyes.

In answer, James took something from his pocket. It was a little velvet box, and when he opened it, Anamique saw a small diamond on a thin gold band. She drew in her breath.

"Ana," James whispered, "will you marry me?"

She felt heat moving from her heart out through her limbs, and a flush spread up from the neckline of her gown, all the way over her shoulders and down to her fingertips. Her eyes filled with tears. All traces of misery were chased away by a flood of joy. She had dreamed of this moment so many times, and she had resolved what to do if it came. Reflexively, she bit her lip, but she released it again from between her teeth and hesitantly, wide-eyed and anxious, she opened her mouth to answer.

A look of panic flitted over James’s face, and before Anamique could really register it, he leaned down fast and kissed her. He kissed her to stop her lips and in his urgency he wasn’t tender about it. His teeth clashed against hers and her head knocked back against the wall. Her answer was lost in the jarring, and though her lips may have shaped the word "yes," she doubted James felt it, so hard was his mouth upon hers.

He drew slowly away and ventured a shame-faced look at her.

She was bewildered and breathless. That kiss, harsh with haste and teeth, it wasn’t the kiss she had imagined in her daydreams. She’d never have dreamed James’s lips could feel so hard. They may as well have been a hand clamped over her mouth.

She knew why. She looked up at him and spots of color flamed in her cheeks. He was afraid of her. After all of his cajoling and his scoffing at Providence, making her believe she could have a normal life, making her dream and hope, after all that, he was afraid of the curse!