Siphon (Siphon Chronicles, Book One)

by Cyndi Goodgame

  Her pink lips puckered in with a gasp, but my point was made. I gave her what she wanted to hear and then some. Her purity was not a game to me. I would honor her in every way and her dirty little mouth would be for me and me alone to hear. I knew she was only acting out what she thought I wanted to hear.

  She pecked my cheek with a quick one and said dually, “Point taken.”

  Like a cat in barbed wire that knew its capabilities, she twisted out of the small space I had her in and bounced to standing. Shocked from her breakneck speed, I followed her up and stood toe to toe.

  “You move like that and we’ll ace this place.” Wow didn’t cover my awe for this girl. Escape will be weapon number two, not punches.

  “You keep me high on energy and I’ll move like lightning.”

  I looked at her sideways and started to say something to catch her off guard again but decided to wait till we were alone. I explicitly love the little noises her mouth makes. I couldn’t keep up with this girl. I couldn’t predict her next move. And I didn’t know when she might react the wrong way to get us in jeopardy.

  In the room on a quick break before her practice and then her first dinner with the others, I asked her about her forwardness and if she intended to carry on in front of others. She played coy and acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. I liked that she felt comfortable enough with me to try so hard at catching my attention, but feared the repercussions of her going public.

  I told her about the dinner and how the Siphon Council would be watching her. When she didn’t take the bait on being tactful about our relationship, I started to feel like an old hag pointing a finger at a young girl who acted out of her range of ladylike manners. When I asked her stay in the room, she laughed in my face.

  “Lark, just back off for a little longer. You’re making me crazy with the way you look at me and I can’t show that in there. I can’t focus around you as it is. I need to know you’re okay with this.”

  She shrugged and asked what I was talking about. I was really starting to doubt my manhood.

  “You know what I’m talking about!” I was at my limit. My temper flared.

  “Um, it’s not ringing any bells.”

  She cracked a smile. Now I know she’s playing hard to get with me feigning anger that’s not really there so I let go of my own. And I know without a doubt that the way she’s licking her lips tells me she wants to be kissed right now. But two can play at that game.

  I touched my lips barely to hers. She closed her eyes and sighed into me then pulled back and watched her glow. She opened her eyes as I lowered my face again to see her eyes close again while hovering above her. She opened them to find me watching her...again.

  “You can’t play my game. I will win,” I exemplified my discovery.

  She figured me out. I used to not love smart girls. I love this smart girl. I know I do, but I’d never tell her yet. It isn’t safe and it isn’t smart.

  “Wanna bet?” she whispered.

  I smirked accordingly, “I don’t make bets where I know I’ll win.”

  “I’ll take your bet and show it up with a big whopping twenty-four hours of celibate non-kissing.”

  The look of horror in my eyes might just have given away my inability to hold to anything given her absence in full capacity. I was frustrated with her forwardness, not unaffected. “Now that’s a bit extreme.”

  “So is teasing me,” she pouted.

  I went the other approach. The one she liked. I lowered my eyes, “You know you like it.”

  “Beside the point,” she took in a breath. Any other male would be losing their years with that move. Out of my mind anyway, I held my breath just in case. A trick I need to teach her still.

  “Well, I say all bets are off.”

  “Then kiss me before I change my mind.”

  No man would ever say no to that.

  I was never a betting man anyway. To coin the phrase that seems to frame the two oddest people/siphons of this world, her kiss has just the perfect amount of loss of gravity. I was lost in a place called Lark and I never wanted to be found.

  LARK ✜ Nexus

  “What part of stay was I not clear on?”

  “Well, if you’d brought your Scooby snacks, maybe I’d have followed orders.”

  Pish!

  He grimaced at me but gave no comeback. I was lame with humor, but sometimes he needed a setback. He was too accustomed to getting his way.

  “You said it’s dinner time.”

  “I will bring you something.”

  I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster. I was not a hermit nor would I hide like one. I was already locked in the Daniel Crawford dungeon like a beaten wife. I wasn’t going to hide so the others could start rumors other than what all there already probably were despite his occupation at deception of playing the prudish watchdog.

  The route into dinner was in a word...strange. Girls stared a little too long at my clothes or my hair or even who stood directly beside me. Guys whistled and made inappropriate comments, ran against me and such. Several guys high-fived Daniel while others gave him the measuring up look. I kind of wanted to strike a pose and give them something to focus on rather than just the title, “new girl”.

  Girls galore came up to Daniel, calling him Dane, and rubbing their hands across his arm and other places. It was gross and a tad frustrating only because of my jealousy. I was the one who had just spent the day throwing myself at him.

  Once, I played with the others girls in a powder puff football game where the guys cheered while we acted like animals. At the moment, I felt like I was in the middle of a football game and the defensive line was about to overtake me where I stood. Huddled in various places, I observed that many of the groups didn’t have generic looks about them like jocks and geeks and such. In fact, they were all athletic, built like steam engines, or strong willed just by the stances they held like watching vultures.

  Out of my element, I lowered my shoulders as I always had and followed where Daniel led us. I was trying my hardest to look big and bad in front of Daniel, but much of the faces before me favored on the lethal side.

  “Don’t let them intimidate you. They are just curious,” he whispered back to me like he knew where my thoughts had gone.

  Jason squeezed my shoulder in passing acting nothing like the mood swing he held before. He joined a table of girls. All girls.

  One girl skulked about the line where I had my food choices picked and onto a tray. I headed to the pay desk and reached into my pocket to grab the few dollars I owned, but Daniel stopped me with his hand to my jeans. Somehow, a boy's hands needling the top pocket of your jeans seemed past the code of counting inches between the two and be called safe zone territory.

  “Not here. You don’t need it.”

  I wanted to ask why not, but decided that would embarrass Daniel and myself.

  “She is the nexus!” The skulky girl I recognized from Jason’s room growled like an animal and yelled like she was announcing a proclamation. The bile in the girl’s voice made her sound like the evil wicked witch of the west. I knew she watched me rather forcefully, but I didn’t expect to be approached.

  “What is a nexus?” I doubled back almost running into Daniel and ending up dropping my juice.

  He picked it up, glared at the skulking girl, and gritted out, “That’s what they started calling the prophecy child years ago. In class once, it circulated around the students and just stuck. They don’t have a clue what they are talking about though. Kristy here was just leaving."

  He knows her name.

  I kept a straight face and gave her a shrug, “Sounds offensive, but I’ll overlook it for now. Might want to stand back a touch in case I unleash my nexus abilities on you. And by the way, it’s not nice to stare.”

  The girl named Kristy glowered, but took three full steps backward only after she squeezed his arm and acknowledged his cringe. She whispered something in his ear. Daniel rested a hand on my
shoulder either to calm me or congratulate my comeback. Maybe both. I felt his touch signaled a little more than friendship on his part, but it did the trick. Kristy cast her icy stare on him. I recognized that look. This girl knew him too well.

  At the table with a dozen or so others, the questions began. Most were just curious as Daniel said, but some showed fear in their expression. One guy wanted to know if I could really sing. I told him I wasn’t a choirgirl and that I’d never had the time for it. He laughed, but it was half-hearted. The guy beside him, who was as huge as the rest, asked in his deep baritone voice, “So you never sing when you siphon?”

  “Jock, for the two weeks I’ve watched her, she has showed no sign of being the nexus.”

  His name is Jock? How fitting.

  The boy who asked if I could sing before looked at where Daniel leaned his shoulder into mine and asked, “Like you’re a good judge. You’re just trying to get in her pants.”

  The table banged with clatter as Daniel shot up towards the boy across from him. A fist went in the air just as I stood and leaned over to block him. That was saying a lot since I was a fourth his size.

  “Daniel here intends to defend me, however, I do not need it.” I was shaking like a mouse on the inside. “I can see you are quick-witted, but not without…shortfalls. If however, you lack in that department and therefore feel the need to remind others that tiny thoughts only come from tiny men, you could share that with a counselor located here. I met her yesterday. She’d love to hear it.”

  The giggles and laughter surmounted the room. The boy I didn’t know the name of still, turned a murderous red before sitting down where he was before. Shock and the need to compose myself didn’t even cover the feeling needing to release.

  “I could show you tiny, nexus. I promise you, I’m anything but.”

  The room settled into a hum of locusts after that with no other drama to fill the night. The boy in question just held a menacing stare even on me for over an hour before standing to retrieve his treat from the dessert bar. A sugar-free brownie. I only noted it because he ate each bite like it was tough jerky and needed gnawing. And because he watched me with each bite.

  Everyone left me alone after that for the most part, but Daniel and a few shy girls who must of felt I needed a few friends so they continued to make small talk. I’d come across as a bit coarse, but it did the job. They didn’t have to know I was screaming on the inside to get out of here at the first chance possible. The only thing holding me back was currently following me down the hall to the room I stayed in last night. His room.

  DANE  Karma is…a Five Letter Word

  When the door closed our hands and lips and tongues collided. I couldn’t get enough of her. Her ability to stop me cold in my step with another dude nearing a death sentence was just impossible to fathom. The way she spoke to him was ninety-nine percent vixen and one percent the innocent sweetness I knew was within her. She was pure and perfect under the surface and I sure as hell would not let anything taint it, much less me.

  I pulled back wanting more than I should, my mind a racing bull. The energy between us spiked up to a fearsome cloud above us. I could see a future of physical benefits from it instantaneously.

  “You were amazing in there,” I assured her.

  “How many of those people, er...girls in particular, do you know in there?”

  I knew the question would come. “I’m not innocent. I’ve messed up a lot in my past.”

  Lark seemed to ponder this longer than I would have wished, but smiled and hugged my chest. “We all have a past. I just was kind of hoping it wouldn’t follow. Mine isn’t as nice as you think.”

  I darkened with the idea that another man has touched her. “Do you mean...”

  She blushed as if reading my thoughts, her introspective purity shining through. The differences in her character from moment to moment astounded me, but I can’t seem to look away and miss a piece of her hard to figure puzzle of processing. I can’t seem to name what made me realize it first, but I could not stop giving this girl what she wanted. This is what your best buds termed as “screwed”, but I didn’t care.

  “NO!” She clasped her hand to her mouth. “Not that. I mean the cruelty I’ve expended to those who didn’t deserve their years taken.”

  Of course she wasn’t thinking of anything physical even with the overly dirty mouth she let go off in practice session. I should have known that. But if she left me for my past, I couldn’t hold it against her.

  “Are you disgusted with me?” I asked out of self-preservation for whatever dignity I had left. For a second, I wanted to tell her off and remind her I am a flippin’ dude. But at the same time, I hated myself for being an arrogant ass in the past.

  Thankfully, her face was horrified, but I second-guessed even the worried part of how she really wasn’t that disgusted with me.

  She left me standing in the middle of my own bedroom and headed to the only chair in the room. It was the first anyone had ever sat in it. She settled into the fabric making the bottom springs squeak as she did so. Her arms rested on the side and she crossed her legs under her before saying, “I am not going to pretend that it doesn’t disturb me that I might be considered undesirable to you because of my inexperience. I—“

  I interrupted her nonsense, but she stopped me first. “Let me finish. I may appear like this girl who has it all together on the outside, but it’s a front. I’m not that strong. I can fake the part for a while, but I’m afraid they will see through me. You have it altogether and a future and should stay far away from me. So why you are wasting time helping me, I don't have the foggiest."

  She really believes things like that? I just don’t get girls. Leaving the spot I’d rooted to for the sake of watching her every move and analyzing it to overkill, I crossed the room and bent before her on my knees. I felt like such a sap, but I didn’t want to lose this girl.

  “You really don’t know?”

  She nodded and drew her mouth in. Her bottom lip disappeared halfway under her front teeth. Her head tilted left following mine, then right. The miming thing again.

  I didn’t want to do this yet.

  “Lark, I have no idea how to act around you. I am crazy out of my mind with the fear of losing you. Every single part of me wants to consume you right now and allow no other man near you. You are pure of body and mind and I want you to stay that way. It is your greatest appeal. I am not at ease in this place and never have been. The sadistic way these people run things is not me at all. The same part you are playing, I have played for years. They don’t know me. They don’t know you. If you want me to leave and never return, so be it. But just know Lark, I am completely in love with you.”

  LARK ✜ Being Brave

  The mind does not always comprehend the way the heart does. I may not be able to say I am “in love” with Daniel Crawford at the moment as I have never known the feeling or really felt loved to begin with. But what I do know is that I can’t seem to think clearly without him present. Since the day he arrived in my life, I haven’t felt as cared for. Yes, he may have hated me at first, but the chemical reaction was there between us.

  To have a person tell you they are devoted to only you and never want another...is just plain scary. I have taken care of myself for so long. I visited the idea of him falling for me so quickly and couldn't help but now see the idea of the sylph. I would wait and see for now.

  He didn’t leave the room this time. He told me to sleep and he’d keep watch from the chair I was in. I know he noted my lack of reply to his declaration. I wasn’t sure what it might mean for the future or if there was one. So I kissed his lips and for the first time allowed myself a little closer. I pressed my lips into the bulk of his neck enjoying the scent of him. I’d dreamed of doing that to a guy and it was everything I’d imagined. If I could fall in love with someone, he was a sharp candidate for first place.

  I decided I would back off the forwardness to make sure I wasn’t causing
this telling reaction in him with some form of the sylph whatever. I didn’t want a guy to start making a fool of himself because of something I instigated. Magically or not.

  The morning afterward wasn’t much different than the day before with the exception of the tired boy asleep on the chair beside me. I vowed to make him sleep in the bed that I rolled around on with more space than I’d ever need.

  The practice session was going great till the guy named Jock and his buddy showed up. What was worse was the grappling/mat fighting they challenged Daniel and I to a two-on-two. I caught Daniel’s hesitation, but the “never back down” attitude won over.

  “The girl wins against either of us, I owe you a fist.”

  “Deal,” Daniel knuckle-bumped Jock who stole a glance at me without so much as a raised brow for reading him. I learned the other guy’s name was Tracy. It was a girl’s name, but I had a hard time believing anyone would make fun of it to his face. This guy was massive. His arms alone could be argued the size of cannonballs. The sub sandwich he built was meant for easily five people.

  “How is taking a hit a prize?” I asked desperate to catch what I missed and glad for the distraction. I didn’t know how I would beat either of them. Their bodies were built like twin machines of destruction.

  “He wins, I give a free fist to the face of his choice,” Daniel offered back. The confidence was overwhelming. They actually acted like there was a fair fight coming their way and had no predictive outcomes, not to mention treating this whole idea like a game.

  “A bit brutal.” Even Romeo went about it all wrong. I guess once a guy, always a guy.

  Jock bent over without bending his knees and picked up a short eskrima stick I recognized easily, “Not if it’s defending the right person.”