Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) Page 5

  “And you’re mean,” she answered, to his surprise. “Werewolf. Basement. Careful.”

  He rolled his eyes. “My spells always work, so I know you’re unconscious. Won’t anything shut you up?”

  “Brain awake, even when asleep. ’specially when asleep,” she slurred.

  “This is the weirdest side effect this spell has ever had.” He bumped against the balustrade and her face shifted into his neck. Her breath warmed his jaw. Lashes tickled his Adam’s apple, sending shockwaves further south.

  “Why is your hair so shiny?” she asked. “Black. I love black. Wanna run my fingers through it. Can’t lift my arm.”

  He was suddenly sorry for that. “Why did you go into the basement?”

  “Kids scared.” Her lips moved softly against his throat, which went dry in response.

  “And it never occurred to you that if they were afraid, there was something to be afraid of?”

  “Didn’t know about werewolf,” she huffed. “Kids should feel safe.”

  He pressed her to the sudden strange ache in his chest. “You don’t even know them. Why would you care?”

  “They’re kids.” Her voice took on a protective tone. “Call Animal Control. Or Sam and Dean.”

  “I took care of the werewolf. Regina’ll be fine.”

  In his arms, she stiffened. “Werewolf hurt Regina?”

  “The werewolf is—” On second thought, there was no need to tell her that. “No. Regina’s not hurt.”

  “Killed werewolf.” She went boneless again, soft and pliant. “Hero.”

  Gray felt a couple of inches taller.

  “Be mean to me, Gray.”

  Confusion solidified into a lump in his gut. “Why?”

  “To remember you’re bad,” she said ruefully. “Not a hero. Hurt me.”

  He had trouble swallowing. “I’d never hurt you the way that Fabian guy did.”

  “Hurt my heart,” she clarified.

  There wasn’t much chance of that. “We can’t have a relationship, or whatever you want.”

  “Want you—” She yawned and he wished she’d just stop there. She didn’t. “Leave me alone.”

  “Women don’t say no to me.” Hell. He might as well tell her. He cringed at the thought of what he was going to have to do to this woman whose warmth seeped through his shirt to sear his skin. “I can have any woman I want. Except you. It’s forbidden.”

  “You don’t want me anyway.”

  Right. No. He didn’t. “Works out well then.”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. He kept walking down the hall. When he got to her door, he put her feet on the floor, propping her against his chest as he fumbled in her coat pocket for her keys. She only came up to his armpit. He kept forgetting how small she was. She seemed bigger when she talked.

  “You’ve got a nice ass, though,” she said.

  He grinned, in spite of himself. “And you’re cute when you’re calm,” he admitted, kicking the door shut behind them.

  They were alone, the world locked out. One of her thighs caught between his legs, sending heated messages to his groin. Only thin layers of fabric separated them. She could have died. And then what? No more Sadie Strange. Gone forever. He would never have known this moment where their breathing matched and he felt every beat of her heart.

  The heart she didn’t trust him with.

  “Right.” Holding her close was suddenly less fun. He tossed her on the brown curlicue couch and stood over her. Unfortunately, he had another task to perform. It would bring him far too close for comfort.

  “I have to check you for bites.” She lay still, soft sleeping noises coming out of her. A tendril of dark brown hair fell across her face, floating up with each quiet breath. His hand wandered to it, as if controlled by unseen forces, and his fingertips brushed the softness of her cheek as he tucked it behind her ear. “I might need to take your clothes off.”

  Eyes still closed, she developed a sultry Western accent. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

  “I’ve met some weird women in my day, but you’re the first one who could imitate Mae West in her sleep.”

  Rage rose in Gray’s stomach at the small slash in Sadie’s white blouse when he removed her worn wool coat and suit jacket. Nothing personal, though. He just didn’t like to see helpless Nons hurt.

  It looked more like a sliver from the wooden stairs than a werewolf bite, but he wasn’t taking any chances. With a werewolf on campus, he carried a vial of lykoktonon at all times. She swallowed half the grassy herb infusion without protest—almost as if she trusted him. He took the rest himself, as a precaution.

  “Sadie, I have to erase your memory. It won’t hurt.”

  “No. Please. Gray.” Panic tinged her voice.

  “It’s better for everyone if you don’t remember the last hour.” He sounded so reasonable to himself.

  “My decision,” she pleaded.

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  There was a pause.

  “You’re gonna do it anyway,” she stated.

  He unclenched his painfully tight jaw.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He knocked the side of his head with the palm of his hand. There had to be something wrong with his ears. He laughed. “You’ll never believe what I thought you just said.”

  She sleep-wiggled into the couch. “No one will know. Not even me... Nothing to lose...At your mercy...” Her tongue darted over her lips, leaving them moist. “Don’t even have to buy me dinner.”

  Talking about it irritated him. He’d always imagined getting physical with Sadie would be a grabbing-each-other-in-the-heat-of-passion thing.

  Always? He scoffed at himself. Since when was two days “always”?

  He knelt beside the couch, not giving himself time to think about all the reasons he really shouldn’t be doing this. Like she’s a Non? supplied his inner voice, helpfully.

  Exactly, he argued back. This is the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity about them. About her. I’m in control. I can stop this anytime.

  Dumbass, concluded his brain with a mental eye-roll.

  Their mouths connected.

  The world faded and there was only Sadie, her sweet lips tasting of the herby lykoktonon as they parted in invitation to her secret places. Her heart pounded against his ribcage. Blooded thudded a matching beat in his ears.

  She wasn’t content to be kissed but invaded his mouth in return, slipping in deftly. Every muscle in his body tensed. Sweat pinpricked his forehead. She moved forward, tasting every part of his tongue.

  All thought disappeared. She moaned into his mouth, and the vibrations made him desperate for more. Nothing mattered but the two of them together and what they felt right now. He grasped her, taken over by the need to have her as close as she could get. Hell, taken over by the need to have her. Period. And damn, her erect nipple felt good in the palm of his hand.

  His back stiffened. Nipple?

  The sweat on the back of his neck turned cold. He broke the kiss, and in slow motion, turned his head to establish the position of his hand. How had it gotten inside her bra? His stomach clenched.

  Sadie panted beneath him. Her head fell back over the muscle of his arm. Her shirt was open to the last button, revealing curvy breasts and a black lace bra. With his hand still inside it. Quick breaths made her breasts throb under his fingers. He slowly withdrew his hand, the act giving him almost physical pain. A mewling noise came out of her.

  “Remember, Gray. For both of us.”

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Five minutes later, Gray watched Sadie’s eyelids burst open. She threw off the blanket he’d covered her with and leaped from the couch. She charged at him, homicide flashing in her dark eyes.

  “Gray.” She growled low in her throat.

  Gray frowned. Why hadn’t he stayed in the basement with the werewolf? “Yes?”

 
She seemed to lose track of what she’d been about to say when she got a good look at him. “Why do you have a cut on your cheek?”

  Because you hit me with your shoe, he managed not to say.

  “Never mind. I don’t care. I am so mad at you.” She punctuated her words by poking his chest.

  “I can see that. Why?”

  “Because—” Her sharp chin jutted up at him. Her breath smelled like a mix of the grassy lykoktonon and the peachy memory potion, but what if his spell hadn’t worked? What if she realized she was pissed off at him for knocking her unconscious?

  “Because...” She faltered. Her eyebrows pinched as she searched her mind for events no longer there. She looked down at her bare feet. “Where are my shoes?”

  He let out his trapped breath. “This is the thanks I get for helping you. You fainted in the lobby. I carried you up here.”

  Even though her pink lips were a tight bow, he burned to grab her and kiss her stupid.

  Well, of course he did. Their kiss still scorched the blood in his veins. Anger flooded him. “Dammit. Now I get it.”

  She thrust a hip in his direction. A sexy but devious hip. “Now you get what?”

  “How underhanded you really are.” It was a miracle he’d gotten the words out past his gritted teeth.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the floor for an explanation.

  “‘Remember for both of us.’” Like an idiot, he’d fallen for her plan. “I’ll be thinking about it. You won’t. You set me up.”

  “Thinking about what?” she practically yelled.

  “‘Nothing to lose. I’m at your mercy.’” He turned to leave. He had to get away before he lost his temper. “Be careful, Sadie Strange. It’s dangerous to toy with me.”

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  “‘It’s dangerous to toy with me.’” Sadie mimicked Gray’s lordly tone with a sneer. “You might cut yourself on my pointy Roman nose.” She popped her plugged ears. Her mouth tasted like peaches and some herb or something. Weird.

  Her anger boiled. She was angrier with Lorde Gray than she’d ever been at anyone. Except Fabian. And herself. Because despite his attempt at sabotaging her classroom authority—okay, successful attempt—she was hot for him. Oddly, ridiculously aroused. Moisture pooled in her panties.

  What kind of person wanted someone who hated her? One who hated herself. Someone who thought she didn’t deserve a nice man. A masochist who sought out aggressive men.

  She marched into Pippa’s kitchen, wrenched off her pantyhose and threw her moist panties in the garbage. She was so hot for him and he hadn’t even touched her. The metal lid of the trashcan came down with a purposeful clang.

  Odd, she thought in sudden distraction. Hadn’t the cardboard box from Pippa been over by the avocado-colored stove last night? Now it was here by the cookie jar. Her stomach clenched.

  She pushed aside the obvious suspicion. The only person who had been in her apartment besides herself had been Gray. If he was afraid of what was in the box, he could have just taken it. Same for anyone who broke in. She must have moved it absentmindedly.

  Or she had a poltergeist. Ha.

  Still, putting on the deadbolt at night would be a good idea. Or would they let her change the locks?

  Cool it, she advised herself. This place is making you twitchy.

  “At least I have a goddess for a guard dog,” she told the cardboard box as she carried it into the living room. Oddly, seeing the muse still standing outside her door when Gray had made his grand exit had made her feel less alone here.

  Sadie tugged open the string on the brown paper package. She couldn’t help holding her breath as she folded back the cardboard flaps.

  What the...

  Chapter Five

  “How are you doing, dear?” The ghost of Aunt Pippa settled herself on the edge of the bed where Sadie slept, indenting Sadie’s scarlet duvet as if she had weight. She looked younger than Sadie had ever seen her. These crazy dreams had been the only thing keeping her sane these past weeks.

  “Not well.” Sadie sat up and hugged the blankets around her. Pippa wore the yellow sundress again. The chill in the evening air might not bother a ghost, but Sadie shivered. “The kids behave themselves but spend my class watching the clock. Not just the fifth graders, either. They’ve decided I’m not worth their time, thanks to Gray. Did you have this problem?”

  Pippa looked down and smoothed a wrinkle out of the quilt. “Uh, no.” Her voice was apologetic.

  “What should I do?”

  “Sadie...”

  “Right. This is a dream. Though you look like my aunt, you’re a manifestation of my subconscious. Since I don’t know, you don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I can’t shake the feeling something weird is going on.”

  Aunt Pippa rolled her eyes in an uncharacteristic fit of sarcasm. “No, it’s perfectly normal to spend your sleeping hours talking to a dead woman who thought she was a witch.”

  “They had a school assembly last Monday and I wasn’t invited.” The past few weeks had been filled with incidents that didn’t mean anything on their own but, when added up, seemed like something more. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t shake the feeling everyone knew something she didn’t. “Sometimes I walk into rooms and conversations just stop. It’s bizarre.”

  “That is strange,” agreed Pippa, as if reassuring a child there wasn’t a monster under the bed.

  “And no one ever brings me house problems. All the kids go to Gray or Jewel Jones.”

  The other teachers were politely distant. Jewel seemed more open but sometimes said odd things—like when she’d said she was taking her class to scry a meteor shower. “Jewel’s a little scatterbrained. But nice. Is it a bad thing that no one’s moved the statue from my doorway?”

  “I think Thalia mistook your cookie for an offering. It’s never a bad thing to have a goddess on your side.”

  “Thalia?”

  “Muse of comedy.”

  “I didn’t know I knew that.” Funny the things your subconscious picked up. Dream Pippa seemed wiser than her real aunt had been. “I keep overhearing the word ‘meta.’ I asked Jewel what it meant once, but she changed the subject.”

  “You know,” Pippa said dreamily, “I like having these talks with you, dear.”

  Pippa was so—wait a minute! “You did it, too.” Sadie’s eyes went hot with irritation.

  “Sadie, you’re imagining me. So if I change the subject, whose fault is it?”

  A crack of moonlight slanted across the bed. Both she and Pippa watched the silvery dust motes dance in it for a moment.

  Sadie broke the silence. “I’m sorry we never talked this way when you were alive.”

  Pippa nodded and said, with genuine regret in her tone, “You didn’t want me to be a witch.”

  Sadie winced. At her sixteenth birthday party, Pippa had given her a ceremonial carved magic wand. Her friends had laughed and made fairy godmother jokes. She’d laughed too, trying to fit in with the clique. Despite Pippa’s pained expression, she’d spent the afternoon granting wishes.

  What a stupid kid she’d been. Not a single one of those girls from the party was her friend now. And Pippa was dead. “I missed out on a lot.”

  “Don’t make me into a perfect person just because I’m dead, dear. I held a grudge too long, and it cost us both.” Moonlight bleached one side of Pippa’s face, while the other darkened with shadow. “But at least we can talk now.”

  “I know, it’s great, except for when—”

  “I bring up Gray?” Pippa interrupted, her face brightening with mischief.

  Sadie flinched. “That part makes me nervous.”

  “He’s just so dishy.” Pippa’s voice went dreamy.

  Sadie’s stomach churned. “I wish you’d stop saying those things.”

  “I’m a figment of your imagination, re
member? So you’re the one saying them.”

  “That’s why I wish you’d stop.” She rubbed her forehead. “I saw him with his son yesterday.”

  Pippa started, her back snapping straight. “Gray doesn’t have a son.”

  “Sure he does,” Sadie countered. “Sterling.”

  “Nephew.”

  “Nephew? How do I know that?” And why did she feel so relieved there wasn’t a Mrs. Alumnus somewhere?

  “Um.” Dream Pippa bit her lip for a second before snapping her fingers. “Sterling doesn’t live in Gray’s apartment. If Gray was the boy’s father, he would, wouldn’t he?”

  “Right.” That made sense. “Now if I could only work out who murdered you. Pippa, I don’t understand any of the clues in the box. The symbolism of the skull is obvious—”

  “His name is Yorick. ”

  “The silver earrings are nice, too, and I’ve always wanted a bust of Athena, like in Poe’s ‘The Raven,’ but what kind of clue is a game of tiddlywinks?”

  Pippa sighed in exasperation. “How many times do I have to tell you no one murdered me, dear? And they aren’t clues. They’re just things you need.”

  She wished for the real Pippa, not her subconscious’s version. But it was the real Pippa who had given her these obscure clues instead of just telling her who she thought was going to kill her. “I saw Gray with Sterling yesterday. I walked around the corner and Gray was hugging Sterling. In a very manly way, of course—”

  Pippa shivered. Since she couldn’t be chilly, Sadie didn’t want to think what it meant. “Of course.”

  “Sterling had this miserable look on his face.” She frowned at the memory. “It’s the first emotion I’ve seen from him. He’s a cold little kid.”

  “Maybe not so cold.” Pippa pursed her lips. “Poor boy.”

  “His uncle looked almost as miserable, like his heart was breaking. Then he saw me and ripped into me for something. I can’t even remember what. Breathing, possibly. Nephew, huh?”

  “What are you thinking?” Shouldn’t Dream Pippa already know, being a manifestation of her own subconscious?

  “Family must be important to him.” Really important. The way he’d menaced her... “He put himself between me and Sterling like I was some kind of threat. I think he would have done the same thing if I were a rampaging elephant.”