by C. L. Stone
“Are there others like you here?” I didn’t want to say Academy just out here.
“Not that I know of.”
We went to the apartment, and Corey used a key to open the door. “Is it possible someone could be and you wouldn’t know?” I asked.
“It can happen. It’s a big building. Sometimes we can walk right past another Academy member in town and we don’t even know. We don’t know everyone.”
This surprised me. I don’t know why. Axel once told me there weren’t as many Academy people as I was thinking, but every time I heard comments like this, I second guessed their numbers.
Maybe it was to protect them while I was still new.
Inside the apartment, the space was silent. No lights on inside to indicate Raven, Marc, Axel or anyone else was home.
“Everyone’s out of the house, I think,” Corey said.
“Are they getting Marc out?”
He shrugged. “I need to find out. You should get some sleep for now.”
I pressed my lips together. The apartment being so quiet was eerie to me. “He needs to get away. We can’t trust them right now.”
He turned to me, shadows playing over his face, and he touched my cheek briefly. “He’ll be okay. I need to go monitor my setup. But you should eat and rest. Let’s go.”
I trailed behind him as we headed to the apartment he shared with his brother. After he let us in, I crashed on my back on the couch. He checked the fridge. “Not a lot here. I should have gotten something from the other apartment. Marc usually keeps it stocked.”
“Meh,” I said.
He drifted over to the computers. “I could order a pizza.”
I rolled over onto my side. “I might just be asleep before it gets here.”
“Not that hungry?”
“Hunh.” Not much of an answer. I was too busy overthinking to really consider food. Maybe I thought better with a full stomach, but for the moment, I was overwhelmed with what to do next, wondering where Marc was, hoping we could get out of there soon.
Occasionally, I would hear him typing at something or clicking the mouse. He did it quietly, his angled face glowing under the different lights of the screen.
Eventually, I was on my back, watching the glow of the monitors on the ceiling in the dark space.
It was tempting to rest while I could, but it felt impossible to achieve. There was no sleep for me tonight. Alice. Old Mr. Murdock. They needed to be removed. Quickly.
They’d had us poisoned.
Tried to frame us.
Tried to have us all killed in various ways.
It scared Blake bad enough he was running around blowing up his own house to avoid her.
I had to get to them, before they discovered the Academy and what it was, and before they could hurt us any more.
And the more I thought about it, I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
Being arrested, they could still pull strings. They would always chase us.
I couldn’t tell Corey. He wouldn’t understand. I was sure. But Raven was right to have him carry a gun and to say if you see them, shoot them. They’d kill us if they could. They were just waiting until they wouldn’t get caught.
So how did we find them before they got their chance?
I sensed movement and opened my eyes. Corey hovered over me, a knee bent on either side of my hips as he crawled on top of me. He held himself up in a push up. “You grind your teeth when you’re thinking too hard, you know?”
I hadn’t noticed, but my jaw was starting to ache a little. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Think?”
“No,” he said. “You should write it down or something productive, not destroy your teeth.” He leaned in, tilting his head, his blue eyes inches from mine. “We’ll make sure everyone is safe.”
“She’ll keep coming after us,” I said. “Even if we put her in jail.”
He shook his head. “No. There are some places people can go where that won’t be possible.” He nudged me, and I inched over, giving him enough room to lay next to me on his side. He placed a palm on my stomach and tucked an arm under his head to prop himself up. “One day, this is going to be done. Probably sooner than you think.”
My lips twitched. I couldn’t imagine. It had only been weeks, maybe a couple of months, but it felt like we’d been together for years. Through the whole time, we’d been running in fear, chased, kidnapped…
His hand twitched at my stomach, gripping lightly. “I know it’s hard to stop thinking about it, but…try.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.
His lashes swept over those light blue eyes that glowed, reflecting light from the computers nearby. “Can I just say that it’s weird to be with Raven and still want you, too? Like I think I know how you’ve felt for a while.”
I bit my lower lip gently for a second, his train of thought jarring me from my cloud of despair. “Caught between people? Not wanting to hurt anyone?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Plus, with everything going on, every moment feels like…it’s not the right time. So it makes it worse because there are these long stretches where you want to tell someone that…you really like them. Like romantically.”
Heat radiated from my face. It was an odd sensation. I didn’t blush often but this, with how his eyes became so intense and so full of something I hadn’t realized was there before, a desperate longing.
“Do you think everyone is really okay with this?” I asked.
He picked up his hand from my stomach to make light circles with his fingertip over the shirt material. He did it slow. It was soothing rather than ticklish. “I think someone would have said so if they weren’t. Maybe it isn’t what they pictured. I know at the start I wasn’t sure what to do. Since I didn’t know how Raven felt, I didn’t think that would go anywhere. And I kind of thought you and I…I mean eventually after things settled down, I was going to ask you out on a date.”
“But things never really settle around here.”
“Not really,” he said with a smirk. His hand drifted down, until he was lifting the edge of the shirt and moving it aside to do the small circles of his fingertip against my bare skin. “I’m not totally sure my life has normalized at all since starting with the Academy. It’s like every moment is now, there’s some crisis that needs to be dealt with. But I don’t want to let moments go by anymore. Not when…” He paused and his hand stopped. “Not when we never know when we’ll get another moment alone.”
“I agree,” I said, soothed in knowing he knew exactly what I was going through, that he’d been confused as much as I’d been about it all.
He hovered close.
I closed my eyes.
We’d kissed in the hospital earlier. In a way, it was rushed and desperate because of the circumstances.
This time, it was like I imagined it would be, and better. He started soft, and then slowly deepened the kiss. He scooted his arm until it held up my head, close to his. He used it occasionally to pull me in closer in the kiss.
His palm remained at my stomach, slowly drifting up.
It was like being a younger version of myself and the first time a boy kissed me. The excited feeling in my stomach, the listening out in case someone came around, the promise of much more if no one ever did show up.
And like a couple of teens, his hands went everywhere, and mine did, too. He lifted my bra under my shirt and cupped and rubbed and pinched. I moaned and bit at his lips then slid a hand down between his legs.
He did the same, although he paused in his kiss. “Keep clothes on, just in case?” he whispered.
I sort of murmured a yes. I thought I did at least. I was a little caught up in things. Maybe it was being in the hospital for weeks without a lot of touch, or maybe it was all the moments like this one where I couldn’t go too far and now there was really no one here but us.
He dove his hand in, unbuttoning my pants and shoving my underwear out of the way to get to me.
; He rubbed at me between my thighs. “This way?”
I showed him, angling myself a little so he could continue.
He leaned over and kissed at my mouth, before lowering his face to my exposed breasts.
I reached over again, stroking through his clothes until he let go of me long enough to slide himself out between his zipper.
Neither of us lasted long. Just with our hands on each other. After, I rubbed at his body, touching everything, like finally being able to do so after holding back for so long. He did the same, exploring everything on me with his fingers.
He kissed me hard. “I want more.”
“I’m not stopping you. Do we need a few minutes?”
He inhaled sharply through his nose with his lips close to mine. “I could go again…” He stopped and lifted his head up, groaning.
I hadn’t noticed until he stopped, but something was vibrating on the desk.
“Tell them no,” I said.
“Can’t,” he said, making a grunting noise as he pulled himself away. He lifted his shirt off to quickly wipe up and passed it to me to do the same before getting to the phone. “Yeah,” he said into the phone. He blew out a breath. “Yeah, yeah, I can do it.” He sat down hard at the desk. “No, I was…Don’t worry about it. I’m on it.”
I rolled onto my back, adjusting my clothes after cleaning up. “Tell them to go away,” I said in a whiny tone.
“Kayli says hi,” Corey said. “Axel says hi back.”
My heart did a lurch. I could have guessed it was one of them, but for some reason, picturing Axel had me feeling like he knew. I was pretty sure he did after the way Corey answered the phone.
I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Was this our life? Finding bits of time together with one of them and trying not to feel guilty about it? How long would it take for us, after the crisis was over, to figure out how to live like this?
WHAT YOU MEAN TO ME
At some point, Corey replaced his shirt and tossed the other into the laundry. I stayed on the couch. He had to stay at the computer, and I didn’t want to distract him. I managed to get up and take a light shower and then got back into borrowed T-shirt and boxers, I wasn’t sure whose. I ended up back on the couch and drifted into a light sleep.
It was Brandon who eventually lifted me off the couch. I’d heard him come in, but it was the first thing he did after closing the door behind himself.
“Why’d you let her sleep out here?” Brandon asked his brother, still at the monitors. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I didn’t struggle as he carried me.
“Probably better right now,” he said. “Since we were by ourselves. We need to stay together, right?”
Brandon grunted as he lifted me. I was too lazy to offer to walk myself, but I made it easier by holding on to his shoulders. “I couldn’t sleep,” I mumbled.
“You looked asleep.”
“Meh.”
Brandon nudged his bedroom door open with his foot and went in. He placed me in the middle of his bed and then walked out.
It wasn’t long before he was back, nudging me to get under the blankets.
“You shouldn’t have given up your auto shop,” I murmured to him, half drowsy. “Whatever you call it.”
“My business?” he said and settled next to me, nuzzling my shoulder with his face. His voice was muffled, and his breath was hot on my body as he spoke. “If we can get back, I can get it back. It’s just for now, if we have to go for a long time. I want to be ready.”
I still didn’t like it. “We should send them to Russia.”
“You’re talking like Raven.”
“I’m serious.”
He sighed, the breath hot against my body and making me too warm. “You really shouldn’t wish people would die.”
“I don’t think I’d feel guilty about this.” I said this and sat up, pulling away from him. I tugged off the shirt and the shorts in quick motions. Down to my bra and underwear.
He watched me do this. “I thought you were always cold here.”
“I think I’m adjusting. The hospital was super cold.” When I was horizontal on the bed again, I stretched my arms over my head, an inch away from him for breathing room. “Is it just me? Am I feverish or something?”
His palm swept over my forehead, moving a strand of hair out of the way, before pressing and feeling. “Doesn’t seem like it. But now that you mention it, it does feel warmer in here. The air conditioning for the building might be broken.” He quieted for a moment. “I don’t hear air flowing.”
“Great,” I said. “Maybe we’ve got good timing. Getting out of the building just as it’s falling apart.” I sighed. “I’ll still miss it.”
He propped his head up higher on his arm and watched me on my back. “Me too.”
“It sucks to leave.”
“Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t we have left by now? If we’re going to go?”
“Not yet. It’s kind of like we’re trying to give ourselves a head start. If we linger a bit like we’re going to stay, and shift people around slowly and leave, then we’ll stand a better chance of her not catching our trail. She’ll probably still catch on we left, but it’ll take time to follow. We want to be as ahead of her as possible. Sometimes being patient is lifesaving.”
I groaned, ending in a short grunt. “I don’t like waiting around.”
“I’d rather get out from under her radar quickly, too. But if we all disappear at the same time, it’s too noticeable. and room for error in this.” His hand stretched out until a palm rested on my stomach. “I think we’re leaving first.”
“Just you and me?”
“You just got out of the hospital, and we both got sick for so long last time. They don’t want to risk us getting caught and getting that again.”
I glared at the ceiling. “No one should get that again. Never…”
His grip on my stomach strengthened a little, for his fingertips to dip into my skin a little. “We’ll stop her.”
I turned my head, only to find his hovering close, nose to nose.
I had a brief moment of déjà vu. Having done things with his brother moments ago, and now here he was. Maybe it was one thing in concept to date multiple people at the same time, as he’d put it earlier, but given they were brothers, twins even, I was on edge.
Did they need to hear every little incident between myself and the others? In a way, I was coming to understand maybe the way this would work better was to acknowledge if they asked, but don’t push the issues or insist on talking about it.
And it was much easier to forget all about everything else when Brandon hovered over closer, his lips tracing at my mouth.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Now that you’re out of the hospital?”
“I’m not bleeding any more,” I said. “Although I think I’d like to take it easy…”
He started to pull back. “How easy?”
In reaction, I reached for his wrist, putting his hand back, and lowered it slowly downward. “I mean let’s not do any acrobatics or anything…”
There was some hesitation from him. I couldn’t tell if he was ready for this sort of thing with me. We’d danced around it so often.
I was learning to shut my inner critic up about the situation. Are we doing this, or are we going to talk about it all the time?
What if there wasn’t a next time?
I kept his hand on me, and it seemed to encourage him.
He leaned in and kissed me.
In some ways, it was like he’d never really kissed me before. This was different. This was like the depth of him, who he was, finally broke out and consumed every bit of me.
I tried to do things here and there, touch him, tug off his clothes.
He patiently put aside my hands. “I’ll take care of you,” he said every time.
Given how sleepy I really was, I let him.
It started with his hands, and eventually he switched to where he was cupping my body
and using his mouth for everything. At some point he put a pillow under the small of my back and hips and gave himself better access.
After that, I was between ecstasy and lulled into relaxing almost to sleep. I only needed to guide him a couple of times, and he knew just the right pressure to keep his mouth and suck or lick and it was enough.
Every time I orgasmed, I could hear him getting very excited, but he never pushed to do anything else and took care of himself. For the moment, he was giving me everything, showing me if I let go, he’d forever be pleased with giving.
When I couldn’t keep at it any longer, he laid beside me, an arm around my chest and a hand between my thighs, and he just cupped where I was most sensitive. He massaged gently, allowing blood to flow but not to excite me, just relaxing.
He kissed at my neck. “I’m in love with everything about you,” he said.
My heart surged, until I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t orgasm at his massaging touch with just hearing what he was saying. I whispered I loved him too, although I wasn’t sure how loud I was.
I thought I’d feel more guilty, but after having talked with everyone and understanding they knew, and knowing they could have stopped themselves but haven’t, it made all the difference.
It’s what I hated the most about the situation we found ourselves in. Just when we were figuring out how to manage this strange relationship conundrum we’d found ourselves in, with me dating them at the same time, it was like the outside world was making it more difficult. Every moment with him, I was listening out for someone to warn us something else had happened. I was aware that any second, someone could burst in.
Knowing the others could be just outside the door, I kept myself quiet, and he did, too. Even with music playing, there was always caution, things to be aware of.
I yearned for a time when that wouldn’t be the case.
TIME’S UP
It was only then I actually slept hard. The moment I was under the blankets with him at my back, I was out.
Maybe I needed to feel safe.
In the morning, I smelled coffee.
