Blood Kiss - Ward J. R. - Страница 44

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Which was not just about the training.

It was impossible not to remember and obsess about what she’d done with Craeg, and what he’d done to himself. Part of her was constantly re-running every nuance of the experience, all the eye contact, all the sounds, the scents … the expression on his face as he—

Okay. She was not going there at the damned dining room table.

Where she would go, though? God, much as she hated to admit it, she worried that that interlude, even if it proved to be a one-time only, made her unmateable in the eyes of the glymera. Sure she was still sexually pure, but her vein had been good and tapped and that had led to … that certain exhibition, as one might call it, on Craeg’s part.

Indeed, she hated the fact that she was wasting even a thought on that load of judgmental BS—but sitting here with her father, it was an unavoidable burden.

You didn’t ditch an entire upbringing’s worth of context that quickly.

Especially when you thought about what your next of kin wanted for you in life.

“Paradise?”

She shook herself and smiled. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I think you have enough jam on there, darling.”

Paradise looked down and saw that she had put about half the jar on a piece of croissant the size of her thumb. The red sweetness was dripping down onto her plate, all over her knife, onto her hand.

“Silly me.” She started trying to clean things up. “So how was your night last evening?”

Fortunately, he went into his work and a grand festival ball that was coming up and some other things, and she was able to listen well enough to nod in all the right places.

What were the Brothers going to do to us tonight? she wondered. And how the hell was she going to act all normal around Craeg?

Thirty minutes later, she was in her uniform, had her satchel sorted, and was out the front door, dematerializing to the meeting place. The bus was already parked in the wooded lot, and the folding door opened as soon as the driver saw her.

Going up the three steps, she loosened her coat and met the eyes of the group. Novo was lounging back, earbuds plugged in, her iPhone front and center. Boone was the same. Axe was asleep in the back again, no doubt dreaming about things that hopefully would stay in his brain. Anslam was typing into his phone, probably updating his Facebook status to being in a relationship with the Porsche his father had just bought him as a reward for being in the training program. And Peyton was rubbing his face as if maybe that would wake him up.

“Hey,” he said as she came down to where he was.

As she took a seat across the aisle from him, he shifted around, leaned against the blackened windows, and stretched his legs out.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

“I could answer that better if I knew what we were in for.”

He grunted. “Okay, I’ll change the subject. So, guess what I heard?”

Peyton was the source of all gossip—always had been. He’d been the one to tell her about the new toy parked in Anslam’s family’s garage, and the latest scandal involving his second cousin and the fact that she’d lied to her parents about where she was staying in town, and the one about some female who was married to an old goat and fucking rounds of males in her guest cottage on her estate.

But that last one had to be hyperbole.

“What?” At least the chatter would take her mind off of seeing Craeg. “And embellish if you can. This trip is going to take a half hour at least.”

“I got more stories. Don’t you worry.”

“Thank God.” And this was in spite of their having spent all those hours on the phone during the day. “Have I mentioned lately that I love you?”

“Yes, but if you really wanted to prove it, you’d get that tattoo we were talking about.”

“I’m not having your picture put on my ass.”

“When you pass me by, though, it’ll give me something pretty to look at.”

“Not if I’m wearing pants. And hey, shouldn’t I be offended by that comment?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to break this to you, Parry, but blondes with perfect bodies and smart blue eyes don’t go anywhere in this world. You might as well get used to this sad truth right now.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Okay, what’s your story.”

“My third cousin told me the Twelfth Month Festival Ball is being held in your daddy’s ballroom. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“I heard that, too,” Anslam said without looking up from his phone.

Paradise glanced around. Boone and Novo couldn’t have heard a thing, and Axe was out of it. Lowering her voice, she said, “Peyton. You need to chill about stuff like that, remember?”

Her buddy cracked his knuckles. “Sorry. But we’re basically alone—and that’s some big shit. You want to go with me? Or can I come with you.” He gave her a winning smile. “That sounds dirty, doesn’t it.”

Paradise shot him a glare, but wasn’t offended in the slightest. “You’re a pig. And yes, please be my escort. I’m going to need you to help me get through the night.”

“I shall be a gentlemale and a scholar—well, at least for most of the evening. Maybe till two a.m. I’m going to get hammered, though. Just want to warn you up front. That’s the only way I’m going to make it to dawn.”

Paradise leaned across the aisle and put her palm out. “High five.”

As their hands smacked together, she thought, Thank you, baby Jesus, at least I’m going with a friend.

Chapter Twenty-three

Britney fucking Spears.

As Craeg sat in the rear of the classroom, all he could think of was that dumb-ass “Baby One More Time” video from a million years ago. He’d seen the damn thing only once, when an older, post-trans cousin of his had been watching it with a fascination he hadn’t understood. At the time, Craeg had wondered why the hell some idiot human school girl with a pair of braids, a pleated skirt, and half her belly hanging out would be on anyone’s radar.

Now? He so got it.

“…this detonator’s primer is lead azide, lead styphnate, and aluminum, and you want to place the compound here, about the base charge, which in this case is tetryl.” When Boone put his hand up, the Brother Tohrment nodded. “Yeah?”

“Are there other primary charges?”

“Good question. There’s dizodinitrophenol and also you can use mercury fulminate mixed with potassium chlorate. But we’re ASA in the Brotherhood.”

The lesson continued, with Tohr, as he’d told them to call him, walking them through Bomb Making 101—and Boone, the class hand popper, interrupting from time to time with yet another “good question.”

If the guy hadn’t been so tight at the hand-to-hand, and otherwise quiet and not a problem, you’d have pointed to him as the classhole.

Meanwhile, Craeg was doing the right brain/left brain polka and he guessed the creative/analytic bucket labels held up: The analytical side of him was plugged into the front of the room, with its long countertop of chemicals in various forms and containers, and its blackboard on which there were scribbles and diagrams.

The “creative” side, or “nasty man-whore repository of all things heeeeeeeeey-now,” kept pulling his eyes over to Paradise. She was sitting in front of him, at the table over on the right, and unlike him, she certainly didn’t appear anything other than strictly focused: she was leaning in, intent to the point of obsession on the information being given, taking notes on a pad.

Half of her hair was pulled back into a loose knot she’d tied with some kind of thick black elastic, and she was wearing the same loose white ji-like uniform they all were. But fucking A, she might as well have been in a string bikini with all those blond waves down around her shoulders and her breasts—

Stop it.

To fuck with that, his libido shot back.

Fantastic. Now he was distracted and arguing with himself. Any more data processing under his helmet and he was liable to have a skull meltdown of Three Mile proportions.

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