With the air of a man who’d prefer to stay silent but whose manners won’t allow him to ignore a direct question, Drake said, “Some of it comes from cisterns of hot water that are heated, in part, by the dragons in the bean roasting department, but most of it comes from underground geothermal springs that run deep under the Academy.”
Abby nodded. “Pretty eco-friendly,” she said.
Drake, despite the mood he was in, laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “although it’s the way that the Academy has always done things. Before it was cool to care about the world.”
Abby exited the changing area and followed a passageway that led into the Number 4 Steam Chamber. She opened the door and took a seat on one of the slatted wooden benches made from the ubiquitous coffeewood. She sat back, breathed deeply, and closed her eyes. The steam was warm and fragrant, with a slight hint of aloe vera, tea tree or some other fresh-smelling plant that she didn’t recognize. She heard the door open and cracked her eyes.
Drake padded softly in, naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. He glanced at Abby and then away, then dropped down onto the bench opposite her.
For a woman who hadn’t been with a man intimately for about a year or so, the sight of Drake’s long, muscled torso was almost too much to take. Every inch of the big man’s body looked as if it’d been carved and sanded out of some sort of gorgeous wood. The smooth surfaces of his muscles gleamed as they took on a sheen of sweat. His arms rested casually, but the muscles looked tensed and ready for a fight.
As Abby explored him with her eyes, she noticed that across the tops of his shoulders and the tops of his thighs there was a subtle pattern of intricate scales. They were the same color as his bronzed skin, but glinted and shone like flecks of glass when he moved.
Giving Drake a final once-over from under her half-closed lids, Abby opened her eyes fully and said, “So what’s this steam chamber supposed to do then?”
Drake’s gaze flicked toward her and then away. A part of Abby was annoyed to see that his eyes didn’t linger on her body as hers were aching to do with his. The man looked bored, if anything.
Little did she know that Drake’s heart was beating unaccustomedly fast within his barrel chest. He was a man who had been trained to walk into a room and take in every little detail in the blink of an eye. He was able to watch and observe without the target of his observations being any the wiser – and he had applied these skills the moment he had walked in and sat down. And Drake liked what he saw.
Abby was small-boned and petite, but the weeks of intensive training had made her hard and lean. Gone was any softness that might’ve been the result of too many vanilla-bean and coconut frappes. Gone was any hint that she’d made a daily habit of sneaking a shimmering gingerbread tart when Chaz was on his lunch break. Her skin – though a mottled map of bruises – was smooth and clear. Her hair was mussed from her fight, sticking up in a way that she would undoubtedly hate had she been able to see it, but there was no disguising the girl’s general prettiness. Her feminine, delicate beauty contrasted starkly with her prickly, fiery personality. The image of a sword sheathed inside a velvet scabbard had popped often into Drake’s head since he’d met the young woman, and was the thing that drew him to her most heartily. Through his peripheral vision, his eyes traveled up from her compact feet, along the silky legs to the edge of the towel, and from there…
Drake swallowed and tried to put the brakes on his racy thoughts.
“Hmm?” he said, trying to remember what Abby had asked him. “The steam chambers? They, ah, they’re used for relaxing mainly, but this particular chamber’s steam has been infused with a selection of medicinal herbs that will help draw out the caffeine from your bloodstream and expel it as sweat.”
“I didn’t –” Abby began, but stopped herself. Who was she trying to kid?
Drake gave her a long look. In it, Abby read that he knew what she had done and that he was willing to overlook it, so long as she did him the courtesy of not lying.
Abby shut her mouth. Drake gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
“You know,” he said gruffly, going back to staring at the wall just over her head, “if you were to have managed to get some caffeine into your system – hypothetically speaking, of course – I have to say that it was a neat bit of work.”
Abby looked at him cagily. “What do you mean?”
Is this a trap? she wondered. Is this bastard trying to lure me into freely admitting that I did snort that coffee? Well, he can fucking forget about that.
“I mean that you would’ve had to have it on you while you were being tested,” Drake went on in the same neutral tone. “You would’ve had to have kept it on you while you were fighting. And you would have had to somehow take the stuff in front of a crowd, not to mention a group of Masters.” The big man grinned and his gray eyes flicked down to Abby’s face. “It was a tricky bit of work. You must have good hands.”
Jeez, Abby thought to herself, returning Drake’s gaze and holding it, how I’d like to show you how good my hands are…
She watched Drake as he gingerly touched his ear, wincing slightly as he felt it.
“That’ll teach you for carrying me over your goddamn shoulder like a petulant child,” she said scathingly. She noticed that his biceps strained and his abdominals rippled and tensed in a fashion that sent tingles of absolutely, one-hundred percent non-supernatural energy crackling from her stomach and into her groin. The rush of warmth which, after a moment, she recognized as the animal cocktail of lust and longing, fizzled out somewhere between her shins and ankles.
Drake glowered at her. “You might want to take into consideration the fact that I’m a Guardian here –”
“Oh, puh-lease,” Abby said, shaking her head and leaning forward so that her towel slipped ever so slightly down her chest, revealing more of her pert B-cup breasts than she might’ve wanted, “don’t start with the whole respect me because I’m one of your tutors' thing. That’s a load of raven crap and you know it. It might’ve worked if I was a kid, but we’re both adults. I’ll respect you because you’re a human being and because, under that admittedly handsome, macho exterior, I think you’re probably someone I could get along with most of the time.” Abby flushed. “I’ll respect you if you respect me.”
Drake shrugged grudgingly. “Fine,” he muttered. “But I think I could start this whole respecting each other thing a little easier if you’d stop assaulting me every time we meet.”
Abby’s frosty expression thawed slightly and the tiniest hint of a smile creased the corners of her eyes.
“I can try,” she said.
Drake caught her gaze, and the two of them looked at each other for that particular length of time in which two people can say a lot as long as they refrain from opening their clumsy mouths.
It was lucky that it was hot in the steam chamber because Abby thought that look might well have been enough to start the perspiration springing to her forehead if it hadn’t been there already. She broke the eye-contact and cast about for something to say, something friendly, something that would break the sexual tension building in the air.
Drake shifted his position so that he was sitting in a corner with his long legs stretched out along the bench he was sitting on. Abby, unable to stop her eyes from drifting back to his Adonis-like physique, saw to her amazement that Drake had a huge scar down his right side. It stretched from the base of his neck in an angry red rope of scar tissue down to his hip, where it disappeared into the top of his towel. Abby could see that, where it began near his shoulder, the delicate, shimmering scales were broken and marred like a chink in a coat of mail. The whole thing, she thought, was made all the more shocking by the juxtaposition of the scar on Drake’s otherwise flawless skin.
“It’s a good one, huh?” he said, not looking at her. There was a small, grim smile twisting his clean-cut face.
“It’s… it’s certainly… it’s big,” Abby managed lamely.
Drake laugh
ed. The sound made Abby flinch. There was a bottomless well of anger and hate from which that laugh emanated.
“I know propriety says that I should probably mind my own business, but I think you know that that’s not my style,” Abby said, her voice a blend of casualness and genuine interest. “How did you manage that? Were you shaving your back one day and the razor slipped?”
Drake’s head snapped around angrily at her, but when he saw the twinkle in her eye and the solemnness on her face, he snorted and relaxed.
“No,” he said. “No, it wasn’t that. I wax.”
Abby laughed. “I knew it,” she said, relieved that he wasn’t pissed.
“No,” Drake said again, “this is what happens when you let your guard down out there in the real world. This is what happens when you become complacent.” He fingered the thick rope of scar tissue over his ribs.
“What happened?” Abby asked.
Drake sighed. “It was a fight.”
“Must’ve been a hell of a fight. I’m guessing I wouldn’t have wanted to see the other guy?”
Drake gave her a look, and in the look was a flash of something that Abby wouldn’t have believed she’d see in that man’s face.
Fear.
Then it was gone, hidden – like the sun going behind a cloud – so that Abby couldn’t even be sure that she had seen it.
“No,” Drake said. “You wouldn’t want to see the other guy. Not that bastard. Not ever.”
“Where did it happen?” Abby asked.
“Over Rotwood Harbor, funnily enough. Many years ago now.”
The Harbor? Abby thought, but she said nothing.
She realized that she’d been rubbing at her leg while Drake explained his scar. She looked down and saw that a spectacular bruise was blooming across her thigh. It was yellow and green and purple and looked like an oil slick.
“Ah, the steam’s doing its work,” Drake said. He moved off his bench so that he could crouch down next to Abby. From this close, Abby could see the beautiful intricate detail in each of the little scales on his shoulders and thighs. They reminded her of snowflakes in their miniature perfection.
“What do you mean?” she murmured, watching a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face and down his muscular chest.
“I said the steam is doing its work. It’s bringing out your bruises, bringing out the aches and pains of the fight. It’ll make for a painful night, I can tell you, but you’ll heal quicker and be back to your old self in just a couple of days. Does it hurt?” He prodded the bruise on her thigh.
“Ah, fuck a duck! Yes, it hurts!” Abby gasped and slapped him hard on the arm. It was like slapping her hand against a desk. “It hurts like a son of a bitch!”
Drake was grinning. “Good,” he said. “That also means that it’s drawing out the caffeine. You’re probably going to feel pretty spent in ten minutes or so.”
Abby blinked. “I feel weary now,” she said. She lay her head back against the wall, wincing as she became aware of another juicy bruise on the back of her head. Seized by a sudden feeling of fondness for the big brute in front of her, she touched him on the shoulder and said, “Drake, I’m sorry, you know, for being a bitch to you. I’m sorry for kicking you square in the nuts in front of everyone, sorry for biting your ear.”
Drake nodded. His gray eyes were shining with laughter. “That’s okay,” he said soberly. “I’m sorry for throwing you off a roof and letting you think you were going to die. That wasn’t sociable of me.”
“No,” Abby said. “It wasn’t.”
She closed her eyes, suddenly wearier than she could ever remember being.
“Drake?” she said.
“Yes, Miss Hall?”
“What’s the deal with sleeping in here?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“It’s just that I don’t think that I’m going to be able to get myself back to my room under my own steam – excuse the pun.”
Drake ran an appraising eye over her body. Was it Abby’s imagination, or did the big man’s eyes glow for just a second as they ran up her thighs and over her chest?
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “it does appear that you’ve sustained a bit more of a beating than I imagined. That move of Radella’s where she tossed you over her head was more effective than it initially looked.”
“Witch bitch,” Abby mumbled.
“You and she obviously have differences, but as an impartial observer, I must say that, tactically, she fought very well. She tested your hand-to-hand at the beginning, lured you into a false sense of confidence by not using her powers to their fullest, and then, when she’d got your blood up and toyed with you, she used your own force and speed against you. She was savvy.”
“Savvy she might’ve been,” Abby grumbled, “but she’s still a bitch.”
Drake said nothing. He was looking over Abby’s body again. The bruises and scrapes were blossoming all over her now. Drake ran his fingers lightly over a few; there was an acutely dark one across her shoulders that he traced with his fingers, a couple on her legs, one of which he probed at for at least a minute. The feel of his fingertips brushing over her flesh, combined with the intensity of his gaze while he examined her, was enough to get Abby’s heart rate up and her breath coming more heavily than was natural.
“Abby?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Would you mind… um, would you mind pulling your towel down so that I can have a look at this bruise along your, ah, your side? If you turn away from me and loosen the towel I’ll be able to take a look where you hit the wall, without, um, without seeing anything that I shouldn’t.”
Abby blushed. Keeping her voice steady, she said, “Yeah, no problem.”
She turned so that she was facing the wall and let the towel drop from around her chest so that it was just covering her waist. She closed her eyes as Drake followed the bruise down to where it stopped almost at the base of her spine with his fingers, stopping in places to probe gently at it. The only sound was the soft hissing of his skin against hers and her heartbeat in her ears. She could feel his breath on her shoulders as he leaned in closer to examine her injury.
“Okay,” Drake said gruffly. He cleared his throat. “Okay. I think this is severe enough to merit a visit to the doc.”
Abby pulled her towel up, making a bit of a song and dance of tucking it securely around her chest so that she could press down her nipples, which had hardened to diamonds at Drake’s touch.
“The doctor?” she said.
“Yeah, I think that’s best,” Drake said. “You’ll get a proper medicinal rub-down there. Some of these contusions look nastier than I thought.”
Abby got to her feet and staggered. It was a mission just to straighten her back.
“Raven-tits, I’m sore,” she hissed.
Without a word, Drake scooped her up in his sturdy, safe arms and carried her to the door.
“If you can manage to dress,” he said, “I’ll carry you to the medical wing.” He grinned down at her, his lips close enough to her face that she could’ve raised her head and sucked on one – if she hadn’t been so fucking sore. “That is, of course, if it’s not going to make you feel too much like a – what was it again? – oh yes, a petulant child?”
Abby leaned her head against his chest. “Shut the fuck up, man, or I’ll assault you again,” she said.
Chapter 7
Abby was barely cognizant of the journey through the bowels of the S.B.A. All that she was aware of was the warm sense of security that seemed to enfold her like a mantle as she lay curled in Drake’s powerful arms. The calm, rhythmic beating of his heart seemed to emanate through his chest and into her body, like some sort of shared physiological lullaby. It lulled her, soothed her, eased the pain in her limbs. She could’ve quite happily stayed in the big man’s embrace for the foreseeable future, but it wasn’t long before his sturdy footfalls became less regular, as he was forced to stop and open doors and step around
the odd clusters of people who were abroad late. After a time she felt him come to a halt – like a steam train that has been comfortably chugging along for hours before jolting gently to a stop at its destination– and knew that she was going to have to face the arduous business of uncurling from her place of refuge and standing on her own two weary legs.
“Where are we?” Abby muttered as Drake carefully lowered her to her feet. He released her and stood with one arm still looped about her waist.
“We’re in the medical wing – the med-block,” Drake told her. “There’s a man here that I think will be able to help you. He’s the best medic we have at the Supernatural Barista Academy and has magic hands.”
“Magic as in ‘magic’?” Abby asked.
Drake laughed. “Sorry, no. I mean that he’s just damn good when it comes to healing. He helped me when I was hurt in the fight that gave me my scar.”
Whilst Abby stood swaying slightly, a door opened behind her, and the next thing she knew she’d received a soft punch in her upper arm. She turned, ready to bite the head off whoever had done it – if only she could muster the energy – and found herself facing none other than Radella.
“Well, well, well, don’t you look a little worse for wear,” Radella smirked, “and you weren’t such hot stuff to begin with.”
Abby tried to slap her brain awake so that she could call Radella something nasty, but before she could get her head in order, Radella said, unexpectedly, “That was a good fight, and you did okay. For a human that is.” She glanced up at Drake and then said, “Good thing you had your guardian angel looking after you, though. Otherwise, I think I would’ve put an end to you.”
With a parting smirk, Radella strode off without a backward glance.
Well, Abby thought, that was unexpected. I wonder if I just dreamed that?
She shook her head and looked about her while they waited for Drake’s man. The room she was in was like every other medical practitioner’s office the cosmos over. The colors were all soothing, muted pastels, there was a large aquarium with a few of the most relaxed looking fish that Abby had ever seen, and the place was dotted with a selection of potted plants – the likes of which Abby had never seen.
Caffeinated Magic: Supernatural Barista Academy Page 9
