Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (13 page)

He slid his other hand down the back inside of my jeans and panties. I pivoted my hips and pushed tight against him so that my clit was rubbing against his dick and his fingertips were wedged against the opening of my cunt. I knew he could feel the tight circle of muscle dancing against his touch.

A desperate little moan escaped me. "Chris."

He caught my gaze and held it. "Rapunzel."

My blood fangs were out but hidden behind the tight press of my lips. I nodded at him, letting him know I was coming. The tip of one finger found its way into me and I closed around it. I bit down on my lip, sucked on a thin ribbon of blood as my body started to contort from my climax.

As I subsided, Chris's finger slid deeper in, stroking me mad all over again.

"Too much," I moaned, wanting more but not sure if I could control my other impulses when we were this intimate, his body a furnace against mine.

He eased his hand out of my pants, but still cradled my bottom as I rested against him. When I finally stood, he leaned forward and kissed me deeply one last time. "Lucky for me you're never hungry."

Shaking my head, I caressed his neck for a second. "You don't know the half of it."

Chapter Four

It's hard to be simultaneously happy and miserable, but I did a fair job of being both in the days that followed. At school, I thought almost exclusively of Chris.

He made it easy, always being ready with a smile, never hiding in his office reading gruesome reports about hits ordered by Mexican cartels, never once suggesting I let someone else take me to the Leavers' Ball.

There were no more trips to the greenhouse, but wherever we walked together, we held hands or had an arm around the other's waist. At lunch, we'd pick a distant table, me half on his lap sometimes or my legs draped over him.

Our public displays of affection were so bad the lunch monitor would come by several times each day, rap the table and tell us "Six inches. Remember to leave room for God."

Every third or fourth time, Chris would rap the table back and say something outrageous like, "Only six inches? No wonder he got pissed and flooded the earth."

And then the school day would end, Chris would walk me to the front of the school, no longer letting go of my hand as we left the building. Danny would be standing at his car and it was like a knife in the heart - mine, Danny's and Chris's.

On Thursday, with six days of school left, we were leaving the building and Chris looked from Danny to me and then squeezed my hand. "You still have a thing for him."

I stopped walking, looked at Chris and squeezed his hand back. "I have a thing for you."

"But for him, too." The dark circles were back under his eyes. Not because of Danny but for reasons he wouldn't tell me. He had offered me lies about some more tests and interviews to ensure his scholarship. I knew they were lies by the change in his voice and all the subtle body responses that it would take a heart monitor and blood pressure cuff for anyone else to detect.

But I didn't press him because he didn't press me on my secrets and it all felt like it was going to work out in the end - at least until seventh period was done and the three of us were within a hundred yards of one another.

I gave his hand a little tug. "Look, he's booting me when school is up."

Chris looked over at Danny, studying him intently for a second, and then looked back at me. "No, he's not. He just wants to think he is."

Right now I wasn't worried about Danny or if seeing me standing there holding Chris's hand was hurting him. I was worried about those circles under Chris's eyes, and a dozen other little signs I could catalog but find no explanation for why they worried me.

I caught his free hand and stood facing him. Standing on tiptoe, I kissed him. It was short, but it brought a smile to his face.

My hair was falling over one shoulder. He pushed it to the side and then straightened my sleeve as if he were putting me back in order before sending me off to Danny for the night. As I turned to leave, he caught me one last time by the sleeve.

"I'm out tomorrow."

I lifted a questioning brow. "More rings of fire to jump through for that scholarship?"

"Yeah, my grades weren't that good before I had such a beautiful tutor." He looked away for a second then looked me in the eyes and smiled. "Don't worry about it - I just wanted you to know that tomorrow is not a convenient day for another kidnapping."

Laughing, I shook his hand off, calling back as I walked away. "Right, Kennedy, I'll make sure we schedule it for next Tuesday."

My remark, loud enough to reach Danny's ears, earned me a short interrogation inside the car.

"Tuesday?"

I glanced at his face to see if it was Danny or Officer Gutierrez inquiring. All I saw was the cop mask. Whether Danny was still in there behind it anymore, I couldn't tell right then.

"Yeah, his foster parents are out, so I thought I'd meet him at his place and we could fuck - be a real couple at the Leavers' Ball." I lobbed my words at him in a dry monotone, carefully watching his expression. It was a shit thing to do, but not as shitty as what I did when he offered no response.

"So, you think you could drive me over and pick me up after?" This time my voice was sweet and sincere.

He shook his head at me. It wasn't a disgusted shake, or a "No, I won't drive you" shake. It was one of those "You'll understand when you're older why I did this" sort of shakes.

I hate those.

***

It was Friday and Chris was out, but there was still one boy at school who could make my slow beating heart do a complete back flip. Of course, "boy" is relative and he wasn't a student, although he sometimes played one.

I closed my locker to find Oscar reading a flyer for the Leavers' Ball. He didn't look at me, but I was sure he knew I was looking at him. His mouth quirked to the left in a cruel smile.

"Up for a visit to the greenhouse, mija?"

"Fuck off, de la Royo." I said it low under my breath while I tried to cover my shock. How the hell did he know about the greenhouse? What else did he know?

"You don't want me to leave, Lee. I can offer so much more than some dry hump charade." Oscar touched his index and middle finger at the bend of my elbow to keep me from turning away.

I glared at him while I felt around inside my skull and wondered if I would be able to tell if he was in there fucking with my brain.

His fingers moved up to my throat, the pressure whisper soft. "Baby girl, you shouldn't play so hard to get. It makes a man
loco
."

"I'm not playing." I closed my locker and shouldered my book bag.

"Neither am I." He handed me the flyer. "Your little masquerade of still being human is almost up, Lee."

The school bell rang and he faded into the crowd of students rushing to their next class.

***

Danny picked me up from class just like every other day. I didn't meet his gaze. I wasn't sure if he knew Oscar had been on campus. No one had pulled me out of class after his visit. No emergency bells had gone off. But, in my gut, I felt like Danny had watched the whole exchange.

It wasn't impossible. There were over twenty-six hundred students at the school. I knew less than three dozen by name. Outside that small circle, any student I passed in the hall outside my locker or classes could be an undercover cop. Even if I wasn't considered worth the surveillance cost, Oscar was most-wanted-list material.

"How was school?"

I gave a dismissive wave. "Nothing gets discussed or assigned this close to the year end, especially for seniors."

Danny didn't push beyond that. He put the car radio on, talked to it and the other drivers on the road. I might as well have been riding in the trunk for all he seemed to notice or care.

At the house, he had college applications for me. They were all local. He'd found scholarships I could apply for, too. There was paperwork for FAFSA, Pell grants, student loans.

"It's kind of confusing the first time," he said, pointing at the stack of financial aid material. He pulled two Cokes from the refrigerator, sat down at the table and placed the second Coke across from him, clearly expecting me to sit down.

I did and dutifully took the top sheet of paper off the stack. It was the FAFSA form. I read the first group of questions and then put the form back on the pile. "It's got a lot of questions on parent income."

I didn't know where my father or step-father were. Sandy was, of course, dead.

Too bad there's no real vampire academy.

"Yeah, I talked to a couple of financial aid staff today. We need to fill out what we can and then take it into them. And you'll need to sign this."

He handed me a request for a copy of Sandy's death certificate. Just as casually, he reached under the table and pulled my book bag over to him. I signed while he emptied the bag. He stopped at last when he reached the red flyer Oscar had handed me that afternoon.

I reached over and took it from him. "You're not thinking of going now, are you?"

Danny took it away, carefully looking it over front and back. "Just checking the time."

"You could have asked." By now I was about 80% positive he knew, but the other 20% of my brain was telling me I just felt guilty for not saying anything.

Danny nodded at the pile of paper. "But you're busy."

I gave him a tight smile. He had played it skillfully. I couldn't argue any further without admitting Oscar's visit. The only way to tell if he knew was to admit something I didn't want him to find out about in the first place. Chasing after Oscar would put his life at risk.

At an impasse, we worked at the pile of papers for a couple of hours. Danny ordered pizza, fussed over my eating only a single piece. He would have fussed worse if he'd been able to follow me into the bathroom and watch me vomit it and the Coke up.

The whole scene was too damn normal on its surface. He could have been my big brother helping me prepare for college. He pretty much had me convinced - not about the big brother thing, but about the normalcy of the evening.

At ten, feeling like I'd narrowly escaped the possibility of an inquisition, I called an end to the paperwork for the night and headed to my room. When I came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later after a quick shower, he was sitting on the edge of the bed.

He was shirtless, his muscles occasionally rippling with the tension running through him. The physical effect on me was immediate. Blinking, I slowed to a stop. My gums swelled, my blood fangs already extended. At the same time, my nipples went rock hard and I felt a warm flush of heat at the junction of my thighs.

In the back of my mind, while I was soaking in the golden brown skin, the planes of muscle, the thin line of hair from below his belt up to his navel, I was thinking that he knew. If this had been about Chris, he would have done it sooner - last night after the kiss he had witnessed, or after any of the afternoons Chris and I had left the school building holding hands.

The only thing different today was Oscar's visit. He knew and he thought I might be planning another meeting. The only reason Danny was sitting on my bed - what for a short time had been our bed - was because he wanted to stop me from going to Oscar.

Pride made me bypass him and walk to the closet. I was wrapped in a towel and I opened the door to block his view while I pulled out a set of pajamas and put them on. I took the towel back into the bathroom and hung it to dry.

He was sitting in the same spot when I re-entered the room. I sat on the opposite side of the bed and brushed my hair. It wasn't easy. My long hair was still damp from the shower and my hands had a slight tremble. Danny slid across the mattress, took the brush from me and placed it on the nightstand.

I folded my hands in my lap. Part of me was mad. It was a small part, but powerful. Most of me, however, wanted to wrap my body around him. Which only made me mad all over again, but at myself because I didn't want to hurt Chris.

"You know?"

"That Oscar was at school? Yeah."

There was a thread loose along the bottom hem of my pajama top and I picked at it. "And you think we made a date or something?"

He closed one hand around mine. In taking the brush, he had pushed my hair to one shoulder, exposing my neck. I could feel his breath on my skin.

It wasn't fair. I was ready to cave with just the press of his hand and a little air along my throat. I scooted up the mattress a little more until the contact was broken.

"Is that what you thought?"

"I didn't think anything, Lee."

Now who was the liar?

Part of the brush's handle was over the edge of the nightstand, and I pushed it to the center. "He was warning me to keep my mouth shut."

"Really?" He touched my elbow with the same two-fingered touch Oscar had used. And then my throat, again mirroring Oscar. It was intimate, just as it had been in the hall in front of my locker. "What kind of warning is that?"