by Lyn Forester
“Let’s go back.” Felix’s warm arm slides around my shoulders. “You can show me the map, and we’ll figure it out together.”
“We’ll have to talk Myrrine into letting you into our room.”
He grins. “Oh, I have that covered. Unlike your little halion friend, I know how to bargain for what I want.”
Whisper in the Dark
Bastian’s large body blocks the doorway to my room in a weird déjà vu of the first time we met. This time, though, his attention fixes on Felix. “You are not allowed in.”
Felix glares up at the man. “Connor was allowed in yesterday. Why not me?”
Bastian folds his arms over his broad chest. “You have proven yourself untrustworthy.”
Felix’s brows shoot up. “How did I do that?”
Blood rushes to my face, and I glare at the behemoth. “We’ve talked about that.”
Now, Felix spins toward me. “Care to share, Sprinkles?”
“No.” There’s no way I’m getting into the consensual biting thing Myrrine’s so bent out of shape over.
Felix eyes me a moment longer before he turns back to the doorway and calls, “Hey, Pinky, I have a bargain for you!”
“There is nothing I desire that will get you into our room,” she calls back from somewhere behind her bodyguard.
I dig an elbow into Felix’s side. “I told you so.”
Unperturbed, he elbows me back. “I’ll fight you for first place in class!”
A long silence follows before Myrrine’s head appears from around Bastian’s bulging bicep. “Are you suggesting I would sell Caitlyn’s honor for class points?”
I slap a hand over my face with a groan. “Myrrine...”
“I seriously want to hear that story, Sprinkle,” Felix murmurs before he raises his voice once more. “Don’t you want to know which of us is smarter?”
Her eyes narrow. “I am smarter.”
He smirks. “But you don’t know that.”
Her focus shifts to me. “You desire to have private time with Felix?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’d like to hang out with him in our room, if you’re okay with it.”
Her attention returns to Felix. “You will be supervised.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, fine, whatever.”
“And you will participate in class.”
“You let me come in today, I’ll participate tomorrow.”
My mind latches onto his wording, but I stay silent, waiting to see what Myrrine will do.
After another long moment, she disappears from view. “I accept the bargain.”
I sigh. Myrrine really needs to learn how to do this better. Felix said he’d participate tomorrow, not every day going forward. But she’ll learn her lesson come Monday and strike a better deal next time.
Bastian remains in place as he fixes Felix with a hard stare. “I am not allowed weapons on campus, but I can still disable you with my bare hands, should the need arise.”
“As can I,” Myrrine sing-songs from deeper in the room.
Felix lifts his hands in front of his chest, palms out. “Okay, I got it.”
With a curt nod, Bastian unblocks the door and walks deeper into the room.
Felix gestures for me to enter first then follows close on my heels, his curious gaze bouncing around the room. “Huh.”
I glance at him. “What?”
“I thought it would be more...”
My lips twist in a frown. “More what?”
“I don’t know.” He ruffles a hand through his hair. “I just didn’t expect it to look exactly like mine.”
“Oh.”
“I’m actually surprised they don’t have the rooms rigged with color changing walls. The technology’s been out for a while now.” He skips over to my bed and throws himself onto it, his shoes hanging off the side as he buries his face in my pillow.
“I was also surprised.” Myrrine lounges against the wall facing my bed. “At home, my walls make it look like I live in a cloud.”
Felix’s muffled voice rises from the depths of my pillow. “Don’t you actually live in a cloud?”
“We are not heathens.” She sniffs. “We have buildings with walls.”
“That are set to look like clouds.”
“It is much warmer than sleeping outside.”
Felix toes off his shoes, and they land on the floor with a heavy thunk. “Sprinkles, come snuggle with me.”
Kneeling on the bed, I nudge him in the side with my knee. “You’re not here to snuggle.”
“What are you here for?” Myrrine folds her arms beneath her breasts in a disturbing mirror of Bastian’s bodyguard pose. “You’re in a different research group, and it is late at night.”
Felix shifts far enough to eye me from the folds of my pillow, waiting for my response.
When he suggested we come back here so he could look at the map, too, I agreed without really thinking it through. Do I want to reveal my folding-port to Myrrine and Bastian? It’s far riskier contraband than the robot butler we play music on. Will it put Myrrine at undue risk to ask her to keep this secret, too?
The silence drags out too long, and Myrrine shifts on her bed. “Is this something you would like privacy for?”
The offer comes with an edge of hurt in her voice, and I shake my head. I’m being stupid. Myrrine won’t run off to report me, and Bastian follows her direction.
I shove Felix until he rolls to the side, his back against the wall and his knees curled toward my hips. I sit in the hollow he creates, the warmth from his body surrounding me, then lean down to pull my folding-port from its hiding place with an apologetic glance at Myrrine.
Her blue eyes widen for a second before her focus swings to Bastian. “I told you I could bring mine back with us.”
His braid swings as he shakes his head. “The risk is too strong.”
Ignoring him, Myrrine bounds across the room. Felix curls tighter around me, practically lying on my pillows now, to make room as she falls onto my bed, her attention fixed on my folding-port. “Do you have access to data outside of school?”
My hands smooth over the hard case. “Yeah, there are no restrictions on this one.”
She wiggles with excitement. “Can we watch Cazul Oldair’s last concert? The wavelength didn’t make it to the colony.”
“I’m sure we can find it.” I lift the monitor, revealing the lock screen, and Felix sighs with appreciation.
“Ah, look at that light ring.” He reaches out to run a finger down the side of the screen. “Beautiful.”
My throat tightens, tears pricking at my eyes. “Yeah, I miss it.”
His hand shifts to my back to rub tingling circles of sympathy. “This won’t always be our lives.”
With a nod, I press my palm against the screen to unlock it, pull up a browser, then run a search for the Koevhern vocalist Myrrine’s so excited about. While music isn’t really my thing, listening to a Koevhern sing never fails to impress, and I’ve heard the in-person experience is even better. Known for their fiery passion, the Koevhern clan cultivates the best artists and performers on the planet.
The top-level ones can instill their own emotions into their audience to the point some say it’s magic. In holo-vids, a few humans come close to matching their talent, but in live performance, there’s no comparison.
As Cazul Oldair walks onto the stage, the murmurs of the audience fade. He takes center stage; his loose, deep auburn hair, which flows down to his waist, glows with golden highlights beneath the stage lights. Sparks catch on his golden skin as he raises his arms in welcome to the audience, and the lights dim until he stands in a single pool of light among the shadows. He gazes into the camera, golden eyes seeming to jump the distance through the screen to connect with mine in real-time.
In the background, an invisible orchestra strums the intro to one of his more famous songs, and Myrrine sighs with appreciation.
One song turns into five, and slowly, the three of us settle
more comfortably on the bed, a tangle of limbs, warmth, and music. Even Bastian unbends enough to inch closer, taking peeks at the screen in between his stiff posturing.
When the concert comes to an end, I glance over at Felix to discover his eyes closed, his lashes dark fans against his high cheekbones. In sleep, he looks peaceful, more like Connor, all of his restless energy finally calmed.
Myrrine shifts quietly on my side, her cheek rubbing against my shoulder. “You should wake him and send him back to his room.”
“But he looks so peaceful.” I resist the urge to brush back his bangs, afraid to wake him.
She leans past me to study him. “His position is awkward. He will be stiff come morning.”
I close my folding-port. “Is it okay if he stays a little longer?”
She pats my knee. “Bastian will sleep with the door open.”
When I peer up at the large man, he nods solemnly. “You will not be taken advantage of while I am here.”
While I appreciate the offer, I really don’t think it’s necessary. Past our encounter in the bathroom, Felix hasn’t tried to do more than kiss and hold hands. Maybe my warning last time was enough to warn him off from moving too fast, or maybe the others spoke to him. Either way, I hardly think my virtue will be at risk from him.
Especially with Myrrine and Bastian in the room.
Myrrine scoots off my bed, crosses the short distance back to her own, and crawls beneath the covers. As her head settles on her pillow, she looks across at me. “Shall we listen to music while we sleep?”
“Sure.” I rise, slide my folding-port back into hiding, then pull out the robot butler Myrrine keeps stashed in her desk drawer. With a press on the top, the gentle sound of wind chimes fills the room.
When I turn back to my bed, I take in Felix, who curls in a loose ball on top of the covers, taking up most of the mattress. Resigned to being uncomfortable, I pull a spare blanket from the bottom drawer of my dresser and carefully settle it around him before wedging myself between his back and the wall.
Bastian moves quietly around the room, checking the lock on the door before he turns off the overhead light. The faux-window over the desks dims to blue, offering just enough light for the bodyguard to find his way to the closet where his pallet waits. The pad of his footfalls holds a familiar pattern now, a rhythm to our nighttime rituals I never thought I’d get used to and, now, take comfort in.
Now that I’m back at APA, I realize only part of my restlessness at home came from a fear of Nikola popping in unannounced. The silence also felt wrong, the absence of another person too loud. I never once considered taking Nikola up on sharing my bed, though, not even platonically as I now do with Felix.
I shift, trying to find a comfortable position that doesn’t disturb him before giving up. There’s no way for two adults to share a twin-size bed. Scooting lower, I tentatively curl my legs up under his, one arm slipping over his trim waist while the other cushions my head.
For a moment, his breathing changes, and a warm hand grasps mine, tugging me closer, before his body relaxes once more. The unfamiliar position and the added warmth of our combined body heat under the blanket join together to drag me toward sleep, and I’m out before Myrrine’s gentle coos join the ambient sound of wind.
Light pressure on my cheek pulls me from sleep, and I blink sleepily at Felix’s face on the pillow next to me. His fingers move up to my brow, tracing the shape of my eyebrow, and my eyes flutter shut once more. The dim glow of the faux-window fills the room, not even Quarter-Light yet, and my head tells me it’s still time to sleep.
An arm slides around my waist, pulling me flush to his firm length. The heat of his body melts my muscles as our legs tangle together beneath the blanket.
The mattress shifts, and soft lips brush against my ear. “You let me stay the night.”
I curl my toes around his calf. “You were sleeping so peacefully. I couldn’t wake you up.”
“That guy’s singing knocked me out.” His lips find the sensitive place behind my ear. “But I can’t sleep anymore.”
Tingles trickle down my neck, and my pulse quickens.
The arm around my back slips lower, his fingers brushing the waistband of my lounge pants as he whispers, “I should repay you for your hospitality.”
The hard length that nudges my stomach alerts me to exactly what he’s offering, and my breath catches. I thought he had decided to go slower, take things at my pace. Why the sudden offer? Was it a mistake to let him stay here last night?
A tongue traces the shell of my ear. “Don’t worry, I’m really good at paying my way.”
Ice rushes through my veins, and I push back from him as far as the limited space of the bed will allow. My back hits the wall, and I study his expression in the dim light.
The softness from last night is gone, but what takes its place isn’t Felix’s usual playfulness. Instead, a calculating stranger stares back at me, his face soft with arousal that doesn’t reach his eyes. I sense this is important to him, that rejecting this offer will break whatever we shared last night, but accepting will be equally destructive, putting a price on our time together.
While I don’t understand what’s going on, I need to find the words to make this right.
“Felix...” I lift a hand to his face, and he flinches. I freeze, then drop it to his chest instead, where his heart pounds rapidly against my palm. “This is not me rejecting you, okay? I slept...”
I lick my lips, nervous to expose myself, but something inside pushes me to be open right now.
I release a shaky sigh. “I’ve never shared a bed with anyone, and when I was back at Lonette Manor, I barely slept at all. But tonight, with you here, it was peaceful. If you feel the need to repay me, consider me more than compensated.”
He blinks slowly, the wheels in his head spinning. “You slept better because I was here?”
I nod and inch closer. “I never knew how comfortable it could be, to hold someone while I sleep.”
His lashes flutter as he looks away from me, then back. “I... like to be held.”
Slowly, I wrap my arm around his waist. “Like this?”
Equally slow, he rolls until his back faces me and tugs on my arm until I rest flush against his back. His hand clasps mine over his pounding heart. My legs find a natural place against his, and I press my face into his back with a sigh of contentment.
We lie like that for a while, listening to each other breath, before he whispers, “I have a hard time sleeping sometimes, too.”
“What keeps you awake?”
“Dreams.” He shifts to press harder against me. “Memories. You?”
A thick lump forms in my throat. “My thoughts. Sometimes, they won’t be quiet.”
Curiosity fills his voice. “What do you think about?”
“Everything. My brain gets caught on stupid things I have no control over and just picks at it all night.”
“Like what?”
I bite my lips, my nose and eyes stinging as I recall the last one that kept me awake. “My bike.”
He strokes the back of my hand. “What happened to it?”
With his back to me, it’s easier to push the words out. “My father destroyed it, then put it in the incinerator.”
He stiffens, squeezing my fingers to the point of pain. “And your brain replays that moment, keeping you awake?”
“No.” I fight down a bitter laugh. “My brain circles around things I should have said, words that would have made Father change his mind, actions I could have taken to stop it from happening in the first place. Hundreds of scenarios that would have had a better outcome than what really happened.”
“You can’t focus on the what-ifs. That path only hurts you more.” He sounds as if he speaks from personal experience, and I wonder about the what-ifs that keep him awake.
“What do you dream about?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Before the hurt of that rejection sets in, he squeezes m
y hand once more. “Not here. I don’t want that and this to be linked. Can we talk about it another time?”
“Yes, of course.” I snuggle my face against his slender back. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Silence stretches before I dare to ask, “When you stay in Declan’s room—”
He squeezes my hand. “Declan doesn’t have trouble sleeping.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say.
I shouldn’t have pried into their relationship in the first place, but my thoughts keep circling back to Felix’s offer of payment and mashing it together with Nikola’s suggestion that Declan gives Felix an outlet to escape from whatever demons chase him. My gut tells me it has something to do with whatever happened to Felix when he went missing from school all those years ago.
Felix shifts to peer over his shoulder, but I’m smashed against his back and out of view. “Does it bother you?”
My heart trips. “What?”
“Declan and me being together.”
I take a moment to sort through my feelings on that one. When I first found out, it hurt, but the pain came from a place of assumptions, that Declan was cheating on Felix when he kissed me, that they both were toying with my emotions. A few times, I’ve worried I won’t ever mean as much to them as they mean to each other, but I’m coming to realize that what they have and what we have are completely different things.
There’s no need to compare the relationship I have with Declan or Felix to the relationship they have with each other. It will never be the same, mean the same, nor should it. It would be like being jealous of Declan and Connor’s close friendship. While I’m inexperienced, I’ve seen enough to know emotions aren’t singular. They are a multitude, varied and unique in each expression.
The four of us are forging a new path, finding our way together.
All these thoughts clog my throat, blocking my ability to voice anything more complicated than a simple, “No.”
He settles back on his side. “I miss him.”
I press a kiss against his spine. “Me, too.”
“When he comes back, we should have a sleepover.”
I smile against the soft material of his t-shirt. “Where will we do that?”
