Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (51 page)

I moaned.

He peeled the cups down, exposing me. At the touch of outside air, my nipples stiffened. He rubbed his thumbs over them.

Pleasure thrummed through me. I felt a tightening between my legs. I closed my eyes. “We need to stop, don’t we?”

“Uh huh,” he breathed. He pinched one of my nipples.

I cried out. That felt so good. So, so good.

With effort, I reached out and took hold of his wrist. I pushed his hand away from my breast.

He groaned. “Cover yourself, or I’m going to—”

I pushed the cups of my bra back up. I found my shirt and shrugged back into it. I turned to see him putting his shirt on as well.

I stumbled down the steps, putting several feet between him and me. “This can’t keep happening, Professor.”

“No, it can’t,” he said. “We have to stay away from each other.”

“Do you want me to drop out of the play?”

“Absolutely not.” He looked horrified. “You’re far too good an actress to give up this role.”

“I thought I was stilted,” I said. “I thought I only got the scholarship because of my
assets
.”

“I didn’t mean any of those things I said.”

“You didn’t?” I wasn’t sure I believed him.

“You do have positively fantastic... assets.” His gaze strayed from my face, taking in my body.

It felt like I could feel the places he was looking at me. I closed my eyes. “Stop that.”

“We can’t be alone together again,” he said. “I can’t trust myself otherwise. I won’t be able to stop.”

“Neither will I.” I nodded. “Okay, good. We won’t be alone.”

“Keep our distance,” he said.

I took another step away from him. “That’s the only smart thing to do.”

“Exactly.”

So, why was I feeling so disappointed?

* * *

Carter

“You’ll need to remove your clothing,” said Adelaide. She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom in my house.

I was pushing aside the shower curtain, since she said we needed to perform this prerequisite to the ritual in the bathtub. I turned back to her, a little alarmed. “
All
my clothing?”

“Yes,” she said. “I realize this is going to be a bit awkward for both of us, but we’re adults, and we do what we can in the service of the society.”

“Right,” I said.

“So strip.”

I pulled my shirt over my head. “Anything for the society.”

“Anything to become rich and powerful, actually, isn’t it, Carter?” Her voice was biting. “I’m not sure you realize how much this ritual will demand from you.”

I tossed my shirt on the floor. “Maybe you’re jealous because the ritual demands that a man be a vessel for the power, and you don’t meet the requirement.”

She snorted. “I don’t want the power. I want the society to have the half of it that it needs to continue, but I wouldn’t be filled with the great serpent’s magic for all the tea in China.”

She was showing her age. Who said that anymore? I unbuttoned my jeans. “I don’t see what the downside would be.”

“Don’t you?” She glared at me. “It’s not a striptease, Carter. Get on with it.”

My hand rested on my zipper. “Could you maybe turn around or something?”

She gave me a withering look. “I’ve seen you naked before.”

Right. I took a deep breath. I unzipped my pants. Then I pushed everything off as quickly as I could. I had to sit on the toilet to take off my socks. “So, what is the downside to getting all the power?”

She had actually averted her gaze. “It will devour you. You saw what happened to Armstrong.”

There. No socks. Completely naked. “Armstrong was sentimental. I’m not.”

I stood up.

She eyed me. “Yes, I suppose you’ve got a massive hard on thinking about raping that poor girl while she screams.”

Raping? Screams? I flinched. But I tried not to let it show. “Massive, huh? Thanks.”

She rolled her eyes. “Into the tub.”

I stepped into it and sat down. “What does it do to the girl anyway? The ritual?”

“It takes her power,” she said, setting several vials of liquid on the lip of the bathtub. They were strange colors—green, day-glo purple, murky yellow.

“And that makes her scream?” I thought of Teagan in pain. I didn’t like the thought of it, I had to admit. “It hurts?”

“It’s like sticking an apple corer into her brain, Carter. The ritual cuts everything out.”

I furrowed my brow. “Sucks her dry,” I murmured.

“Exactly,” she said. “Lie back.”

“There isn’t another way to do it?”

She gave me a funny look. “Why are you asking me that?”

“No reason.” I took a deep breath. I lay back.

“All right, I’m going to begin now,” she said. “Please don’t interrupt me, no matter what happens, or we’ll have to start over from the beginning. And don’t let me forget to leave the tinctures with you. After we do this, you’ll need to drink a shot glass of each every morning to get your body ready to absorb the power.”

I nodded my assent.

She dipped a finger into the green liquid. She made a mark on my forehead, one on my chest, and one just above my pubic hair.

Then she took the other two bottles of liquid and started to pour them over me. She began to chant.

But I couldn’t hear what she was saying, because the minute the liquid touched my skin, it burned.

I clenched my teeth against it, struggling not to make a noise.

The liquid began to form a strange, blue smoke. The smoke rose off of my skin in lazy tendrils that curled around each other like snakes.

They writhed and coiled around my naked limbs. Where they touched me, it seared my skin. I twisted and fought, trying to keep away from the pain, trying to get up. But Adelaide reached down and grasped my shoulders, holding me in place. She kept chanting.

I couldn’t stop myself. I yelled in anguish.

And when I opened my mouth, the serpents dove into it, burning their way down my throat, burrowing into me, deep inside.

* * *

Teagan

Harper sat down next to me on the other bed in his room. He leaned in close to look at my script. “I’m thinking that in that scene, you’re almost like afraid of him.”

I pulled back. I’d been hanging out with Harper more and more, and he kept doing stuff like this, getting close to me for what seemed like innocent reasons. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Harper. I did. And Professor Alexander and I had agreed to keep away from each other. So there shouldn’t really have been a problem.

But...

I don’t know. I just wasn’t quite feeling it. I didn’t want to kiss him.

And that meant that there really wasn’t any future there for the two of us. I knew that now. But he really liked me, and I didn’t want to make things weird between us.

“Um, I just remembered that—”

“Stop.” He pulled away from me. “This is the third time you’ve run out on me the minute I try to get close to you. I can take a hint, Teagan.”

“You can?”

“Yeah, I’m moving too fast.” He smiled. “I promised you a date with white tablecloths and romantic music, and here I am trying to move in on you in my dorm room like some kind of frat dick. I’m sorry.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking, but it bought me some time.

“The thing is, with this show right now, I don’t have time to take you out,” he said. “It’s all I can think about.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m busy too.” Maybe I’d develop the desire to kiss Harper. Over time.

“Actually, it’s probably better.” He sat up. “If you and I were to get involved, it could damage the director-actress relationship we have. It might make the play worse.”

I nodded. “It might. It really might.”

“Okay, then, it’s settled. We’ll wait until after the play wraps, and then we’ll go on a date—a real date—and I won’t try anything again until then.”

I smiled. “That works for me.”

“Good,” he said. “I mean, maybe some part of me was wishing that you’d say I was crazy and you’d start ripping off my clothes, but I’m a twenty-two-year-old guy, so I kind of wish that would happen all the time.”

I laughed. Harper was funny. He was sweet. He liked me. Why couldn’t I make myself like him back? “I still should probably go. I do have a big test in my chemistry class on Friday, and I haven’t studied enough.”

“Go study,” he said. “I’m so sorry you’re still taking general studies classes like chemistry. Life is so much cooler when you get into the upper levels of your major.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said. Taking nothing but acting classes all the time? It sounded perfect. I got off the bed. “I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I bet Carter’s going to be there.”

“You think?”

“He hasn’t been in over a week. He’s due back.”

“Why do you call him by his first name behind his back anyway?”

He snickered. “Because he hates it, and because he’s a dick.”

I nodded. “Well, you’re right about the dick part. He’s a complete jerk.”

“Whatever he says to you, I swear to God, ignore it.”

“I will,” I said. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything horrible. It could happen.

I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

“Bye Teagan,” Harper called after me.

“Bye.” I shut his door.

So, I’d have to see Professor Alexander again. Nothing would happen between us. We’d managed to make it through a rehearsal last week without even looking at each other. But just thinking of him made my clothes feel tight. I thought about his gorgeous chest, running my fingers over it. I thought about his hands on my breasts.

I closed my eyes.

Bad to think about that. Bad.

“What are you doing coming out of Harper’s room?”

I knew that voice. It was Reba, the bitch who hated everything I did. She was standing in front of me, arms folded over her chest.

“You’re out to take everything from me aren’t you?” said Reba.

I sighed. “I’m in Harper’s play. For senior seminar. And I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

“Oh, you don’t, do you?”

“No.” I tried to push past her and go back to my room, but she blocked my path.

“You can’t have Harper too. You have the scholarship. You leave him alone.”

“He’s my director,” I said. “I can’t not see him.”

“You can stay out of his room.”

I held up my script. “We were running lines. What do you care, anyway?”

“He’s mine,” she said. “Harper is mine.”

“That’s funny, because he seems to be under the impression he’s single.”

“Stay away from him,” she said. “Or I will teach you a lesson.”

“What?” I said. “What does that even mean?”

“You keep messing with Harper, you’re going to find out,” she said, moving out of the way and letting me by.

I swept past her and seethed all the way back to my room. What was her problem? What right did she have to treat me like that?

Nell was watching TV. “What happened to you? You look pissed.”

“Reba Keir saw me coming out of Harper’s room.”

“Oh, God,” said Nell. “I’m so sorry.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s a little tightly wound.”

“A little?”

“She and Harper used to date. He broke up with her, because she’s, you know, insane, but she still has it bad for him.”

I collapsed onto my bed. “Great.”

Nell gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sorry. She’s not that bad when you get to know her. And she’s a really good actress. I think it’s because she lives in a world of heightened emotion all the time.”

I groaned.

“Cheer up,” she said. “There’s a party tonight.”

* * *

The party was a theater department tradition, according to Nell. They threw several of them throughout each year, out in the woods behind Slayton Hall, my dormitory. There was a natural sort of amphitheater out there—actually just a bowl-shaped valley that had been set up with old railroad ties for seats. Nell said that as far as she knew, no one ever did actual plays out in this amphitheater, but that at the last theater party in the spring, people always put together an impromptu show mocking everything from the plays they’d put on that year to the professors to the students. And that was performed in the amphitheater.

It made me feel a little weird that we were very close to the creepy tree that had come alive and tried to eat us during our first meeting with Scales and Fangs, but I couldn’t say anything about it, because of it being a secret society and all. I would have pointed it out to Nell, but she got absorbed in conversations almost immediately, and I was pretty much on my own.