The girls run down the porch with their ear-buds secured in position, ready to trek over to the Mecca of shopping nirvana.
Just as I’m about to sink into the driver’s seat, my mother appears with an overstuffed diaper bag, along with a bloated backpack, and she’s schlepping the baby in his bulky carrier down the rain-slicked stairs. Maybe she wants me to take Beau as a punishment for running away?
I rush over and help before she twists an ankle and cracks someone’s skull open, namely Beau’s. God forbid I have to do a Celestra-based infusion right here on the front lawn for all the Counts in question to witness. If Tad knew how valuable my blood was, I’m sure he’d add another beverage to the moronic business venture he’s climbing into with the crazy Kraggers.
“What’s going on?” I pant as my mother makes her way over to the minivan.
“I’m going on a little vacation. I just need to get my head settled, that’s all,” she confesses while strapping Drake’s bundle of boy-joy into the van in a five-way harness.
“A vacation?”
“I’ll be staying at a friend’s,” she’s quick to accommodate.
“Does said friend happen to live in an overgrown house that eats small shanties like this one for breakfast?” Literally.
“Skyla…” She sighs. “Yes, I’ll be staying with Demetri. I’ll be back before the weekend and I suggest you come with me.”
Right.
“No thanks. I’ll be staying at a friend’s myself.”
“Brielle’s?” She ticks her head with a hint of concern.
“Not that one.” And only because I don’t want to deal with the baby drama, or the fact I might be pressed to leer out the window all night, wondering if Gage is making his nightly appearance in the butterfly room to entertain someone other than me.
“The Oliver’s.” She gives a knowing blink. “You are not allowed to share a room with Gage—with any boy for that matter. I’ll call Emma later and see if this is OK. If it’s not, I expect to see you at the estate by nine. I’m not playing games, Skyla. My life is a big enough mess as it is. I don’t need you adding to the clutter.”
“Right,” I say, artfully avoiding the fact the friend I have in mind is Marshall.
“Skyla…” She leans in. “I promise you, I’ll fix this chaos by summer’s end. There’s no way I’m going to let anything ruin your senior year.”
Chloe catches my eye. She’s texting someone from the front porch, most likely her accomplice in prophylactic crime—Gage.
“You won’t ruin my senior year,” I say.
Chloe beat you to it.
***
Rain pimples the windshield as I drive my sisters to the mall.
“I thought you girls were off at camp.” I say, eyeing Melissa in the back seat like a hawk. After that stunt where she hacked off my sister’s tresses, I’ve been monitoring her in the event she decides to rain down anymore of her homicidal tendencies on us Messengers. Not that she would. She looks rather benign sitting back there with her baseball cap, a smattering of freckles on her nose from the one day the sun decided to show this summer.
“It was stupid,” Mia is quick to report. “Mom signed us up for an overnight trip to the museum like we’re twelve.”
“You’re thirteen,” I point out the flaw in her argument.
“Exactly,” Melissa pipes up from the back. “So where you going to stay?” She twitches her cheek with indifference and looks decidedly like Drake.
“Mr. Dudley’s. He’s got a spare room—in the stable.” Shit. They are so going to think we’re getting it on.
“I knew you were getting it on with that teacher!” Mia chirps. She turns and hacks out a laugh with Melissa as they pretend to gag while making disgusting kissing noises.
“That’s ’cause he’s cute!” Melissa barks, attesting to the fact she’s in possession of some serious overactive hormones.
“I know, right? He’s like a freak!” Mia shrills.
No wonder they’re fighting over boys, Marshall has them worked up in a frenzy.
Well they can’t have him. He’s mine.
What did I just say?
I slide into the curb outside the ice skating rink at the distal end of the mall and they charge out of the Mustang like it were on fire. I listen as they go on and on about Marshall as they charge up the steps.
Perfect. They’re both fantastically disgusted and excited beyond reason at the prospect of me “getting it on with that teacher.” And they sure didn’t bother hiding the fact they think Marshall is “cute.” Marshall is a lot of things but cute isn’t one of them—more like smoldering, intoxicatingly good looking, a sexual god of alien descent.
The wind picks up as I maneuver down the road to Marshall’s palatial estate.
Just the thought of shacking up with Marshall is a bit unnerving. Although, if he wanted, he can practically gift me an entire wing. It’s not like we really need to see each other.
I pull into his driveway and park off to the side. I’d like to surprise him, make it sound like this was his idea in the event he decides to get sexually self-righteous—although, that’s sort of inevitable.
I cinch my backpack over my shoulder with my overnight things, as I give a quick brisk knock at the door.
It takes several minutes before Marshall appears, clean-shaven and vexingly hot.
“My betrothed.” He waves me in, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He’s still sporting his younger self which ever so slightly freaks me out. “You’ll be staying three days and eleven minutes before you so rudely leave.” A devilish smile rides low on his lips.
“And you know this because?” Figures, Marshall probably has a crystal ball hidden in his pants—a pair of them. That would explain the oversized bulge, which has distracted many a female student from finishing his mind-numbing exams.
“It’s true?” He straightens as though he had simply guessed the aforementioned details.
“No, I’ll be living here until graduation to be exact.” I slump my backpack onto the floor.
“Do pick it up, dear. I tend to dwell on the tidy side of hygienic living. I’ve a space for you in my chambers. An entire closet has been cleared.” He purrs out that last part as if it were the very nexus of spousal sacrifice.
“No thanks. I don’t want to sleep in your chambers. I’ll take another bedroom.”
His lips twitch as he tries to hide a naughty smile. “I’m afraid they’re all indisposed at the moment.” He no sooner gets the words out then a series of doors slam in quick succession.
“Let me guess, you’re bolting them shut as we speak.”
“Done.” His cheek slides up one side. “I’ve just come from an appointment with Delphinius. He’ll be at the local faction meeting. I assume you’ll be informed of the gathering sooner than later.”
“Great, because I have important questions to ask him, like where the hell was he in the last region?”
“Delphinius is a gift, Skyla. Perhaps you’ve lost the right to have him guide you and Jock Strap around like school children on a trip to the museum. It’s your war. You guide the troops. And by the way, it was Delphinius who suggested you might be a guest at my quarters for a time.”
“Back up, buddy. What do you mean he’s not going to help guide us? How the hell are we supposed to advance to the next region? What did I do to get cut off like this?” Ezrina bolts through my mind and I’m quick to change the subject. “Anyway, wasn’t he the one who said we were going to get hitched?”
Marshall gives a slight look of disgust. “Your phraseology leaves something to be desired, but yes, it was he. Delphinius is never wrong. He holds victory in visions down to the most minute detail.”
I nod, holding back a devious grin. All I have to do is either shorten or prolong my stay to knock mister soothsayer off his prognosticating pedestal. That should cure all matrimonial misinterpretations as far as Marshall is concerned.
“Three days, and eleven minutes, huh?” I dig in
with a sly smile. I can’t wait to prove him wrong.
***
Marshall helps me unload my junk from the trunk and organizes it in his closet with meticulous order and symmetry.
I take in Marshall’s cavernous bedroom—the chocolate comforter with gold rope trim and the dark wood that encases the walls with an echo of midnight.
“So where are you going to sleep?” I already know the answer but I figure we should have our first lovers’ spat while I’m still bright eyed and bushy tailed and not wait until I’m so exhausted I don’t care whether or not his heavenly bod is snuggled up to mine, or whether or not he’s wearing any clothes while doing so.
“Where will I sleep?” He leers at me suggestively. “Beside you—on you if you prefer.” He nods at the oversized four-poster bed. It’s behemoth in nature. The post themselves are thick as tree trunks.
I dip my chin, feeling very much like Little Red Riding Hood at the moment. There’s definitely something erotic about Marshall as the big bad wolf.
A dirty smile blooms across his face as if he heard.
My phone goes off. It’s a text from Gage. Can we talk?
“Can we talk?” I hack the words out like a joke. “Come here.” I lean into Marshall. “Do something that will drive Gage totally insane,” I say as I snap a picture of the two of us in front of his forest-inspired bed that’s just begging for some S&M destruction.
I don’t hesitate in sending the picture to Gage along with the text, I’m about to get busy. It’s not until after I hit send do I notice that Marshall had somehow magically undressed me down to my bra for the shot. I grip my T-shirt—thankful it’s still on my person.
“How did you do that?” I ask horrified of his latest, not-so-greatest trick of the day.
Marshall opens his mouth to answer and Gage appears in the room.
I can see he’s using his teleportation capabilities for evil now, i.e. to stalk me.
“What the hell is going on?” He looks from me to Marshall in a fury. His dimples dig in and he looks as if he’s about to beat the living shit out of the Sector whose bedroom he so rudely crashed.
Where the hell are the binding spirits when you really need them?
“Skyla…” He strides over with a look in his eye that suggests Marshall’s inhuman beauty should watch its back. Gage is a dark knight in this den of forbidden pleasures. Maybe it’s Gage I should tie to the bedpost. “I did not sleep with Chloe last night in the butterfly room.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Sounds like your indicting yourself to another occasion and venue.”
“Not true.” He speeds it out. “She was there with Pierce.”
“And you know this because?”
“I asked her.” His voice remains strong and caustic, alerting me to the fact that maybe Marshall isn’t the only one in the room he’s pissed at.
Pierce? Why would Chloe do me a solid and confess to Gage after I gave her a broth based hair treatment?
“Sorry,” Marshall growls, “I have a strict no-boys-allowed policy in my private chambers.” Marshall flicks his finger and Gage begins to dematerialize, slow and lingering like a vapor.
“Faction meeting tonight at six,” he says as he evaporates into a disorganized fray of molecules.
“Now,” Marshall says, straightening my shirt at the shoulders and patting my stomach as if ironing out a wrinkle, “how shall we pass the time?”
A loud click emits over the window, prompting Marshall and I to head over. Gage stands in the bed of his truck, flaring his arms up over his head, shouting my name with muted anguish.
Marshall widens the thick velvet curtains—the same crimson color as his eyes. He cranks out a large casement window the size of a refrigerator. There’s no screen, just a decorative wrought iron bar split down the middle. I peer below as the ground pulsates in and out in spasms of vertigo.
“It’s so far down,” I whisper.
“Focus on the task, love.” Marshall leans out. “Did you leave something behind?” he shouts to Gage. “Your phone perhaps? A condom? Your dignity?”
Gage glowers up at Marshall. His sky-born eyes defy the morose world and siren through the fog like headlamps.
Marshall grabs me by the waist and spins me so that my back is against the window. He rides his hands up and down my spine, soft and lithe. A pleasure-filled tingle rides over the waves of his requisite vibrations.
“Tell me how he hurt you.” Marshall leans his head against mine.
I so know what he’s doing. It must totally look like we’re making out from Gage’s vantage point, and rather passionately with Marshall slathering me with affection.
“He did hurt me.” I sigh. “I came home last night and found Chloe in the butterfly room getting it on with some guy and it totally sounded like—” I tilt my head down at Gage in the event he hears. The human brain is trained to pick up its own name at alarmingly low decibels. Similar to how Chloe is trained to pick up on the most innovative ways to smash my heart to pieces.
“And you caught them in the act?” Marshall ceases all movement as though this were a level-five breach of security and now the free world is in danger from Chloe’s vagina.
“No.” I look briefly over my shoulder to see Gage standing below with his arms folded across his chest like he was disappointed in the show. “She left, and I found him up there by himself.”
“And he was undressed?” Marshall cocks his head, awaiting confirmation of his theory.
“No, he was completely dressed,” I say, “and he claimed he had just arrived. He totally denied it.” I shake my head incredulous at the thought.
Marshall arches his head back, his neck peaks in ridges and I trace it out softly with my finger.
“So you’ve falsely accused him.” Marshall doesn’t look amused.
“Hello? I found a used condom wrapper just sitting there on the floor. And the bedding was all rumpled and it smelled like s-e-x,” I hiss.
“And how are you familiar with the scent of s-e-x?” His brows narrow. He’s holding back a smile. I can tell.
“Just…” I smack him across the chest. “Would you kiss me?”
“No,” he flat lines. A wisp of fog filters in and gyrates between the two us like a belly dancer. Her ghostlike curves linger over Marshall’s face as if she were trying to seduce him away from me. “I don’t involve myself in jealous games. It’s morally bankrupt to drive another person insane by making them desire what you have.”
My mouth hangs open. It’s like Marshall fell into the deep end of the righteous indignation pool, and I need to lure him out before he turns into a saint and loses all his charm.
“I think this falls more under the guise of ethical relativism,” I say. “Gage doesn’t have any problem driving you insane.” I pull him in by the shirt. “In fact, he openly parades your future wife around town like he owns her. Like he owns, you.”
Marshall clenches his jaw before breaking into a naughty smile. “This might be a good time to let you know I don’t mind infuriating those who take pleasure infuriating me.”
I jump up and sit on the windowsill, tossing my hair wild in the wind.
Marshall dives over me, and my back curves out dramatically. His lips fall over mine and I acquiesce to the pleasurable sensation that extends from the portal of his mouth. A loud thump knocks Marshall on the head and he pulls back, stunned, leaving me to plummet out the window. There’s nothing but sky and the black hole of Marshall’s bedroom gaping at me from above.
I land with a soft whoosh into a pair of strong arms that just so happen to be connected to the boy I’m still very much in love with.
“Are you all through breaking my heart?” He gives a half-smile, and his dimples explode in concert.
“Are you all through breaking mine?”
Chapter 60
Feels like Forever
Gage drives us down the main thoroughfare that splices the island. I watch from the passenger’s side mirror as the fog lift
s her skirt in our wake. We haven’t exchanged two words after I agreed to get in the truck. I’m starting to wonder if we really are irreparably broken—the impossibility finally coming to pass under the duress of my worst nightmare. In addition to being taken by the Counts and losing every region so far in the faction war, Chloe has hijacked my boyfriend. It’s safe to say, everything has fallen spectacularly to shit.
Even my mother taking a break from Tad is depressing in its own right. If they do split up, I’ll lose Melissa, Drake and Ethan—not that Drake and Ethan were such prizes, but still. And what about baby Beau? Will I still be his aunt? I guess I could be through my friendship with Brielle. But everything that felt so secure only a few weeks ago feels like it’s teetering on the edge of oblivion. Chloe walked Gage and me to the brink and now we’re about to free-fall into a bottomless pit that leaves you with a broken spirit, your shattered heart in pieces.
Gage pulls off on a narrow dirt road that I’m all too familiar with—the Black Forest.
“Turn around.” I hate it here. Last fall Carly Foster and Carson Armistead stranded me in this very same location. Then Ezrina showed up and officiated it as the worst day ever by hacking off my arm.
“I want to show you something.”
God—isn’t that just what they said?
“Turn the car around. I wanna go home.” And by home, I mean Marshall’s, even if he did send me sailing out of a two-story window on my very first day as his live-in girlfriend. He’s going to make a lousy husband if he keeps launching me off tall structures. He knows full well I’m afraid of heights.
Gage presses his lips together in discontent as he parks and kills the engine.
“Are you really afraid of me, Skyla?” He reaches over and picks up my hand, rubs a small circle on the soft part of my palm, and I melt at his simple touch.
“Did you give Chloe a ride home from Emily’s party?” I ask point-blank. I’m not quite ready to graduate to the butterfly room-used-condom conversation—not sure I’ll ever be ready for that one.