Into Your Gravity ( Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle )

Chapter seventeen: Boys Will Be Boys

"There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not."
-Francois de La Rouchefoucauld
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From the way she suddenly tensed to the way she kept her eyes open, it was painfully obvious she had never been kissed before. Her mouth was stiff against his. He held the kiss for a long moment, only pulling back when one of the several students watching made a ridiculous growling noise.

Her eyes were wide, wider than usual, and her soft lips hung slightly apart. She stared at him, but said nothing.

His heart was pounding and he could feel its pulse throughout his body rather than just in his chest.

She finally spoke. "You kissed me."

He looked down at her and met her grey-blue eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but she interrupted. "What was that for?"

"To get you to shut up," he said coolly.

Another eyewitness shouted, "Go, Tom! Go! Kiss her again!"

Luna ignored the shouter, and, taking Tom's arm, she dragged him outside the castle.

Looking into her face he saw confusion mostly, but also a little bit of something else that he couldn't put his finger on. He allowed her to lead him away from the castle and deep into the forest. For a moment he thought she was taking him to the thestrals again, but instead she stopped by a pair of large rocks in the shelter of the trees. She shoved him down on one of the stones, crossed her arms, and watched him.

After a moment, he said, "Are you really that offended by it?"

"Well, I don't know if offended is the right word. Annoyed, yes. Surprised, very much so. But I don't know about offended."

"It was just a kiss," he said, sneering.

"It was not just a kiss," she replied.

"Yes it was, I didn't put any rock in it or anything," he said innocently.

She wrinkled her nose. "You think you're so clever."

He nodded amiably.

"I don't appreciate you going to such lengths just to get me to shut up," she said, eyeing him.

"How else am I supposed to get you to be quiet? Nothing else I've tried so far has worked that well."

"You wasted my first kiss!"

"I what? Wasted your first kiss? Are you kidding me, Lovegood? It's not a big deal," he said.

"It's a big deal to me, Tom, and you knew it was and you still had to go off and make it a personal vendetta to ruin it for me," she insisted.

He was upset by her accusations. "I did not make it a personal vendetta to ruin your first kiss! You aren't that important!"

"Oh, well that's even better, then! You did it all on a whim!" she said, her voice rising.

He stood up from the boulder and paced back and forth furiously. "Did it ever occur to you that I kissed you because I wanted to?" he snapped.