QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (draft)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Let me repeat that.

On my mouth.

I’ve just been kissed by Logan Sangre, full-on, lips against lips.

I’ve been dreaming of this moment for the last three years. No, strike that—I’ve been unknowingly dreaming of this moment for as long as I can remember, since I first became conscious that there was such a thing as girls and boys and kisses, and that I was a girl and that somewhere out there was the one perfect boy for me. . . .

Talk about uber-pathetic, I know. . . . The idea of the one perfect soulmate—whether it be girl, boy, or flying chipmunk—is right out of an old-fashioned romance novel (okay, maybe not the chipmunk part, unless he’s a shape-shifting paranormal chipmunk who turns into a sexy tattooed hunk when the moon is full—yeah, you can tell I’m babbling even in my thoughts). Honestly, I should know better. But I can still dream. . . .

Furthermore, I’ve been dreaming of that one perfect boy seeing me and naturally falling in love with me at first sight. And then I visualized what it would be like to have that first magical kiss.

And now, the impossible has come true. My first kiss happened with Logan Sangre, the perfect guy of my dreams.

Okay, no, strike that again. This, just now, was my first real kiss.

Because there was another awful stupid kiss in first grade, a kiss that doesn’t really count except in the technical sense. It happened when a bunch of class bullies gathered around me and another nerdy loser kid—the wimpiest, skinniest, shortest little boy in class, the one who had the huge glasses and the stick arms and whose name I don’t remember—and they chanted “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” as they crowded around us and pushed and shoved the two of us together until the poor boy reluctantly planted a sloppy fish-wet smooch on my mouth. I remember shoving him away immediately and then spitting in disgust, wiping his disgusting saliva from my lips while saying “Eeeow, gross!”

That was my one and only “kiss” experience before the real thing just happened, seconds ago.

Wow. . . .

I had no idea that a boy’s lips could be so soft.

Because his lips that are so beautiful and naturally well-shaped are also soft as a dream as they press against mine with gentle sensuality, sending all kinds of electrical impulses coursing down my body. . . . My lips are now the center of the universe—all feeling, all sensation and focus is there.

Logan draws back, and his hazel eyes never look away. Meanwhile I exhale in wonder, and find that I am trembling.

“What—what was that?” I say like a total fool, even as my lips remain parted still.

He looks at me and then the faintest shadow smile comes to him. “I thought you might like a little support. . . . I felt like it—and like it was what you needed. I hope I didn’t screw up just now? Please let me know if I did!”

“Oh, no!” I blink rapidly, and my lips are still ringing like silent bells from the touch of his against mine. “That was—that was good! Thank you! I mean, it was amazing, and it was—”

“Gwen,” he says. “I really like you.”

I stare, just dumbstruck.

“And maybe I’m wrong,” he continues, “but I think there’s something there too on your end, something between us. I get the sense that you—”

“Yes!” I say. “I do!”

And then I realize how idiotic that sounds—it’s like I just said a formal marriage wow! And now he is probably going to be all disgusted and turned off by my needy clingy response. Oh lord, what have I done?