Secrets

When I got home and went straight to bed. I woke up to find that I had slept right through to Monday morning. I woke up at seven am and had to leave early for classes and I had never gotten around to writing the essay about Dexter even though thoughts of him floated around in my head all day, I could hardly write down any of them. Not unless my lecturer wanted to read about how nice his abs were and how good of a kisser he was.

I wrote the damn essay at the library in between my lecture and only just met the required word confines when it was finally time for class. Ben was there and he was teasing me to no end about meeting Dexter on Tuesday. Luckily I hadn't told him about the date or he would have never left me alone. I smiled to myself as I thought about the time he said that he only teased me because he liked me. He was actually nice to people he hated because it freaked them out. If he was ever truly nice to me it was either to make me stop crying or because he was really mad at me.

I laughed at the thought as I took my seat next to him. The rest of the day moved on slowly and so did much of the week. When I got home at about three o'clock on Friday after noon, my plans were to go to bed and sleep until Monday but I remembered something. Tanith had organised a dinner party for tonight. As I entered the house I heard swearing from the kitchen and so I walked in that direction.

I saw that Tanith was busy in the kitchen and she was actually cooking. I walked in and leaned on the door frame leading into said kitchen and watched as she rushed around the room. It was funny to see, as she never really cooks anything. Ghastly always did that and on the occasion me, but never Tan. She looked stressed and her blond curly hair was all frizzy and she was frowning at a bowl of what looked like brown goo, but I think it was supposed to be chocolate sauce. "Do you need some help?" I asked and she nearly jumped out of her shoes as she turned around to see me in the door way trying not to laugh at her. "I told Ghastly that I could do this myself and I tried. I really tried but I really suck at cooking. Please save me."

So I spent the rest of the afternoon helping Tanith cook the food for tonight's dinner. We made a salad for the entre and roast chicken for the main course. The desert was chocolate pudding with caramel sauce as it turned out, not that you could tell from the monstrosity that I threw out earlier. When we finally got everything organised and basically ready for the night it was almost seven, which is the time Tanith said everyone was getting here and that reminded me that I never asked who was coming. "Tan, who did you invite?" I asked and she listed off a bunch of people. "Me and Ghastly of course, you, Skulduggery, Valkyrie, Saracen, Dexter and oh, who else was there…" she trailed off trying to think of the last name, but I wasn't paying attention any more. Dexter was going to be here and I hadn't told him that I was living with Tanith and Ghastly, that I was that girl.

I ran upstairs and got changed quickly into a short, mid-thigh dress that had a dark floral pattern on it and then started to look for my phone. I dialed Dexter's number and he answered right away. "Can you please tell me why the directions that Tanith gave me to get to her house for a dinner party tonight led to your house?" he asked, slightly panicked and a little annoyed. Well the cats out of the bag now, I may as well be blunt. 'Remember how Tanith took in Marcus and Jane Grace's Kid? Well I'm that kid, but I'm not a kid anymore. I'm sorry, but it never came up the other day. Please forgive me?" I said and let out a huge lung full of air that I didn't know I was holding.

There was silence on the end of the line as he contemplated what I had just said. "You should have told me. What do we do, just pretend we don't know each other? Or we could make up something about how we met?" He asked, not knowing what to do. Ok let me think, we could tell them the truth but just not about the whole dating thing. "We'll just say we bumped into each other at a café and talked a bit but nothing more, okay? Easy as that. Oh, wait, Saracen is coming too. Can you call him and tell him?" He grunted in agreement and I hung up.

I went to do my makeup and hair. I decided to curl my hair and let it sit around my shoulders. With my makeup I did light smoky grey eye shadow and dark eyeliner, with blusher that accented my nice cheek bones making them look sharper than they were. I decided against lipstick and instead went for a lip gloss that made me lips look as if they were wet and it was a natural pink brown colour that went well with my skin tone. I looked in the mirror and was happy with the result so I put on my stockings, flats and a black jacket and went down stairs.

I arrived just in time to see Valkyrie and Skulduggery arrive in the Bentley followed by Dexter, and then Saracen. Val and Skull reached the door first and I saw what they were wearing. Skulduggery was wearing his usual pin striped three piece suit and hat, but Valkyrie was an entirely different story. She had on a really deep blue blouse that had a deep neck line that showed off her cleavage and tight black leather pants that made her butt look amazing. Her heals were at least four inched high and she towered over me as she walked by and into the lounge to great Tanith. She smiled at me as she passed and waved a friendly wave. She was a nice person, but sometimes she was too much like one of the guys to ever have a good friendship with like she had with Tanith but I didn't mind.

Next came Skulduggery who walked passed with a tilt to his head that made him look happy. "Hello Legacy, how are you tonight?" He asked with his smooth velvety voice. "Good thanks Skulduggery. And you?" I kept up the polite conversation until he too made his way into the living room. Then came Saracen who looked entirely too amused for me to talk to in a polite way. He was wearing a black suit and tie with a white shirt, that reminded me of Dexter's on the night of the ball and I blushed. I moved my head so that my hair so that he couldn't see but I suspected that he guessed.

"Hello again Legacy, you look lovely tonight." He said with a smirk. I moved down the rest of the stairs to hit him in the shoulder. "Why did you do that?" He said in mock hurt and I smiled sweetly at him. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Go into the lounge room." I pushed him in the direction of the others and he laughed as I did so but obliged anyway. I waited until Dexter reached the door step and I walked out onto the porch and pulled the door around but didn't close it completely to avoid the noise attracting attention.

I looked at him to see that he was wearing white shirt that was tucked into black dress pants and he had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked incredibly handsome and I stepped closer to him. I could see his eyes travel over my body, up and down again, pausing slightly on my breasts, as they were pushed up by my bra. He walked forward and kissed me roughly, pushing me back until I was leaning on the wall just beside the door on the side that wasn't the window leading into the lounge room. My hands wrapped around his waist and pulled him closer to me. He broke off the kiss and stood there for a second, both of us breathing hard, trying to catch our breath. "You look beautiful." He said in a slightly deep and out of breath voice that made my skin tingle. "So do you." I said and hugged him around the waist. His arms went around my shoulders.

I heard someone walk over to the door and poke there head out. 'I was sent out to look for Dexter." We jumped and sprung apart only to find it was Saracen looking at the two of us with a bemused expression. I was tempted to slap it off of his face but Dexter stopped me by pulling me close for another kiss. I was totally taken by surprise and melted into it only to find that he pulled away all too quickly. "You go in first, Saracen and I will stay out here for a minute and have a little chat." He said and pushed me slightly in the direction of the door, Saracen stepping out onto the deck and out of my way.

"You might want to freshen up before you go in to meet everyone." He said in my ear as I passed him. I blushed and went into the downstairs bathroom and looked in the mirror. My lip gloss was smudged a bit over the bottom half of my face. I grabbed a face cloth and put some hot water on it and started to clean away the mess. I didn't reapply my lip gloss just in case Dexter surprised me again with another kiss. I walked slowly into the lounge room to find that Saracen and Dexter had already entered and were sitting next to Skulduggery on the couch, with Ghastly on the armchair, both of the other women absent from the room. They were talking about the sanctuary and Ghastly's job as one of the elders.

I didn't really care much about sanctuary business so I made my way into the kitchen to see that Valkyrie and Tan were having a glass of wine each and had poured me one too. They looked up as I entered the room, stopping there conversation to greet me. I sat down on the only empty bar stool and took the glass of wine and downed it in one go. 'Hi." The said in unison with identical expressions of surprise and amusement on their faces. 'Are you ok?" Valkyrie asked and I looked up at her from the empty glass in front of me. Her face was striking and beautiful, almost as beautiful as China's but in a different way. China's was artificial but Valkyrie's was natural.

'Not really." I said and she looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. But before she could say anything else the timer on the stove went off and Tanith jumped up to get the chicken out of the oven. She had decided that she wasn't going to do courses and would just put everything on the table and let them eat away, not that Skulduggery could, but nobody really cared about that. I helped take plates and cutlery into the dining room and set the table. Dexter came out of the lounge room, saw me and came to help. I didn't look up at him, because it I did I knew I would want to kiss him again. He didn't try and talk to me which told me he probably felt the same way. Everyone else came into the room; Tanith and Valkyrie with the food and we all sat down. I ended up sitting in between Saracen and Dexter which really got on my nerves a bit because Saracen kept on looking at me and winking, laughter in his eyes.

As the dinner wore on conversation got onto the topic of me. Great. Skulduggery started it and I swore if he ever grew organs spontaneously, I would stab him in eye. "So, have you met Dexter yet?" he asked and I looked up from my food. I had kept quiet throughout most of the conversation over the course of the dinner, only answering with one syllable replies if people asked me anything and soon, everyone pretty much ignored me.

But now everyone was silent for some reason and really interested in my answer. "We met last Tuesday actually, at a café in Roarhaven. We talked a bit I guess." I said looking over at him to see him shrug as Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at him. The conversation ended there when Tanith abruptly stood and said "Fuck." And ran into the kitchen. Everyone laughed at her expletive and started to clean up our finished dinner items. I took all the plates and cutlery back into the kitchen and put them next to the sink. I would wash them up later, when everyone was talking and socialising.

I took bowls back into the dining room along with the spoons as Tanith followed me with the pudding and sauce. It looked a bit black on the top but nobody commented. She served it up and everyone tool a serving. Dexter handed me mine and as he did our hands touched briefly. He smiled at me when they did and I smiled back and took the bowl from him. I ate in silence again, not wanting to talk with anyone.

Dexter's leg bumped mine occasionally and I looked over at him to see that he was in a conversation with Ghastly about something. His hand went under the table and opened up as if inviting mine into his. I placed it into his and he smiled. The table was relatively small and so we were all squished up. Nobody noticed that we held hands under the table because our shoulders were almost touching anyway. Our hands hung in between our chairs and his thumb traced patterned on my hand, making me shiver.

As everyone finished up their desert Tanith called not doing the washing up and so did everybody else but me and Dexter. They all looked at us and said "You guys are on washing up duty." We let go of each other's hands as we stood up and made our way to the kitchen as everyone else made their way back to the lounge room to open another bottle or two of some kind of alcohol. As soon as we got into the kitchen Dexter shut the door and leaned against the kitchen bench like he had done the morning after the ball. I leaned against the door and watched him. He was thinking about something and then his face turned from one of deliberation to a smile.

He walked over to me and took me into his arms. I looked at him in shock. Anyone could walk in the door at any moment and he was going to kiss me. "They are hardly going to come in here when they think we're doing the washing up. They know me and I would try to get them to help me so I would have less work to do." I smiled up at him and kissed his cheek. He did the same to me, pressing my body up against the door, and leaning away a bit to continue the trail down my neck. He kissed my neck and I moaned his name, obviously getting turned on.

He silenced me with his lips as he came back up to my face. He moved his hands to where mine were on the door and took them in his. Intertwining them the same as when we were holding hands under the table a few minutes ago. He raised them above my head and pressed them against the door. I moved my body forwards, wanting it to be closer to him. But he broke away, leaving me breathless and railed up, wanting more. He looked the same but I saw the logic in his decision to stop. We didn't want to be seen having sex in the kitchen because that would be a bad way to tell people we were seeing each other. "To be continued." I said as I made my way over to the sink and started doing the washing up. He looked at me with a smile and helped me.

We got it done in about an hour and then made our way into the lounge room to see that everyone was really drunk apart from Skulduggery because he couldn't drink anything. He smiled at us as we entered the room. Tanith and Ghastly were sitting on the arm chair, Tanith in Ghastly's lap, kissing. I was used to it by now but Dexter cringed at the sight of his friends making out. I laughed at the face he was making and he moved on to see Saracen sitting on the floor by himself drinking from the bottle looking like he was about to fall asleep and then Valkyrie laying in the door way laughing at nothing.

I burst out laughing at this as they were meant to adults and they were so immature. Skulduggery stood up and made his way over to his friend and picked him up and chucked him over his shoulder. "I'll take Saracen home. Can Valkyrie stay the night in your spare bedroom?" He asked in an amused voice, the question was directed at Tanith and Ghastly but they were so absorbed in each other that he turned his head to me. I nodded and went to get Valkyrie out of the way of the door so that Skulduggery could leave.

"Oh, and next time you two decide to make out in the kitchen, do it quietly, I heard you." He said and then left. I looked at his back in shock as he left but then remembered he told me one time that his senses were acute only because he was magically enhanced in that respect. I sighed relief when I realised that meant that nobody else heard. Dexter came over to me and picked up Valkyrie. "Which way is your spare room?" He asked and I walked in the direction, him following me. I heard Ghastly get up and carry Tanith into their room on the first floor. I walked up the stairs quickly and then moved aside as I pointed to the room that was empty. Dexter went in with Valkyrie and returned without her moments later.

We stood awkwardly in the hall way, not knowing what to do now. He was standing awfully close to me and I was still hot and bothered by his kiss earlier. "Do you want to see the rest of the house?" I asked and he nodded seeing in my eyes that that meant seeing my bedroom and in turn my bed.