Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (22 page)

“Thinking out loud. Still doing it, actually.” He leaned closer to her. “Wonder which pair of panties she’s wearing.”

Her spine jolted straight. Every nerve in her body went live and zeroed in on Gray’s big body, shifting in the dark, two feet away from her. She forgot how to breathe. Blood thundered through her veins. Her hormone production went into overdrive.

On the TV, Scrooge begged the spirit to leave him alone.

Her brain spun. She should yawn and excuse herself. But what did it matter? She would leave soon and forget him.

Her body made the decision for her. She stood and walked to him, stopping between his knees. His heated gaze traveled up her body, lavishing attention on every part of her. He wasn’t looking down his nose at her now. His breath hitched when she crossed her arms under her breasts.

“You want to know what panties I’m wearing, Gray?” She took his hand and guided it to the button of her jeans.

He grinned wolfishly for an instant. But then the smile fell away. “Sadie, I’m marrying April. This changes nothing.”

She shrugged, hiding her irritation with herself for being irritated at his reminder. “What the hell does it matter? I’m leaving. I’ll forget you.”

Gray nodded. Shivery heat crawled up her spine as he unzipped her jeans, peeling them off like the skin of an orange.

He traced the words on her panties with his finger.
Do not open ’til morning
.

Gray showed her his watch. The hands pointed to 11:45.

“Lucky me.” His voice was a growl. And then, somehow, she was beneath him on the couch.

Everything in the world disappeared, except for Gray. There was only his silky hair under her fingers, his hard chest against her needy body and his mouth opening her own. Pleasure shook his body as he tasted her. His hand grazed the side of her breast through the fabric of her shirt and it was her turn to shudder from the sensation.

But it wasn’t enough. “Shirt. Off,” she told him, between sucking at his lower lip.

He ignored her and kept kissing, intimately invading her mouth; hot lava pooled between her legs.

“Shirt. Off,” she demanded.

He grinned a lopsided smile against her mouth. “I’d be happy to, if you’ll let go of your death grip on my hair. And stop making me talk.” His hot breath made the hairs on her nape sit up and beg. “I have better things to do.”

She lay back as he kneeled up between her thighs. The t-shirt came off. He was glorious. Michelangelo-sculpted muscles adorned his chest. Air came out of her in a whoosh.

She breathed in his cinnamon scent. She ran her fingers up the patch of dark hair trailing out of his jeans.

Sure fingers undid her blouse as her hands worshipped his abs and unzipped him.
Click
. Her bra came open.

A hot tongue left moist swirls on her aching breasts. There was an ache at the apex of her thighs, too. She arched into Gray, reached down and freed his shaft. The hard jab of it into her belly promised relief for all her aches.

The television threw shadows and light over Gray’s hard body. She nestled against him, hungry for his touch. But part of her screamed this was all wrong. He had a fiancée. He’d try to take over her life. She was terrified she’d let him.

But the way he kissed her, strong and gentle at the same time, drove logic from her brain.

He groaned animal desire and took a breast into his mouth. As he moved a tongue around her nipple, he caressed her between her legs. The double assault of masterful hand and skilled tongue was more than she could bear. She nearly shattered on the spot.

His kneading touches didn’t take long to draw her to her peak. She threw her head back and cried out her pleasure as she came. When she could breathe again, she grabbed Gray and covered his mouth with hers, desperate to communicate her appreciation.

Gray slipped out of his jeans and underwear. His shaft was long and thick, the height of male beauty, and she had never wanted anything more. She wiggled out of her trousers and was about to remove her thong when he caught her hand.

“It’s my present,” he said, referring to the words on her panties. “I want to open it.”

His rough hands explored every inch of her butt as he did.

He reached for his mug on the table. It was filled with the lemon liquid she’d tasted earlier. He tipped the mug to pour it on her. Intimately.

“Wait,” she said, shocked. “What is it?”

He gave her a heated, mischievous look. “A potion.”

“A lemon-flavored potion?”

“It’s different for every woman. You’re a lemon-flavored woman,” he said, sounding pleased. “It’s better than a condom.”

“Birth control?” She hadn’t considered protection. She’d just thrown herself into sex with Gray, forgetting the potential consequences. “It’s a prophylactic potion?”

“Completely effective. I won’t be getting you pregnant. Now, what did I tell you before about the talking?”

Lorde Gray knocking up a Non; the end of the world, thought Sadie, with a stab of bitterness. Then the sensation of warm wetness as he poured the spell on her sex shocked all thought from her brain. The citrus scent mixed with Gray’s cinnamon musk. Her thighs fell apart, and Gray growled at the view.

He positioned himself at her entrance and entered her with one hard thrust. Her eyes closed in ecstasy. He was so big and filled her to bursting, but they fit together perfectly.

“You’re tight. It’s been a while for you,” he rasped.

She nipped his tasty-looking shoulder blade. “No talking.”

He didn’t talk, but made appreciative sex noises as he rocked inside her. She locked her ankles around him and met each thrust with one of her own.

“Look at me,” he said.

She opened eyes that had closed in her pleasure. Gray stared down at her. The intensity of raw emotion between them scared her a little. She was afraid he’d see in her eyes what she was starting to feel for him. His gray gaze created a connection she didn’t want to feel. Panic whipped through her; she was going to fall harder than she already had. Not good.

She dug her fingernails into Gray’s buns, wordlessly urging him to finish her. The cords in his neck strained against his skin as he thrust.

They crashed together like a head-on collision. She shattered like glass hitting metal. She half-sung, half-screamed out her pleasure, the sound mixing with Gray’s throaty gasps.

Sated and panting, Gray lowered himself to touch lips with her in a laughably chaste kiss before maneuvering her onto his chest. She didn’t have the strength to resist the intimacy. She could only lie there, rising and falling with his deep breaths.

“God bless us all, every one,” said Tiny Tim.

*

***

******

****

*

Gray lay in Sadie’s bed in the dark and tried to think. There didn’t seem to be any room in his head for thoughts. As soon as he put together a detached argument and rolled over to wake her, she gave a quirky little sigh, forcing reason from his brain. Or shifted her thigh against his leg. Or threw off the scarlet duvet to reveal a pink-nippled breast.

All these things made him forget what he needed to say. The words to tell her they couldn’t do this again. It was particularly hard to say, since he already wanted to do it again.

Her brown hair falling over her shoulder, she looked like a slumbering sex goddess. And he was in severe danger of worshipping at her feet.

She snuggled against him, making his mouth bone dry and his cock rock hard. Still asleep, she laid her head on his shoulder. “Mmmm,” she said, and mumbled something like “cinnamon.” The feel of her soft body pressed against him sent his brain into nuclear meltdown.

He would have to be cold and hard and tell her. It was the last thing he wanted to say. But she’d recover. Eventually, he’d be another arrogant jerk in her alphabetical line of arrogant jerks. She’d move on to someone whose name started with H.

He sought a distant, unemotional place where he could deal with all of this but couldn’t get there. Dammit, he’d never had this trouble before.

She squirmed into him and yawned. He felt something warm and wet on his chest. She was drooling on him. And, God help him, he thought it was
cute
.

Her breathing changed. Her eyelids flickered against his chest and finally opened. He felt her stiffen as she woke, remembering where she was. And who she was with.

He waited, feeling the rise and fall of her breasts against him. He cringed at the thought she might regret what they’d done, something he’d never cared about with any other woman. Damn, this was seriously bad.

He ran his hand down her side. Goosebumps surfaced on the satin of her skin. She gently scratched her fingernails down his belly and into the short hair at his groin. Despite everything, he chuckled. He slipped his fingers into the cleft of her sweetheart ass and chuckled again when she inhaled sharply.

She raised hungry, drugged eyes to him. “Kiss me.”

He loved that he never had to guess what she wanted. And he was happy to fulfill her demands.

Damn,
he thought, as the feel of her lithe body hardened his already-hard shaft.
Damn, this is so right. Damn, this is so wrong
. It was an all-purpose
damn
.

He pulled her on top of him as he parted her lips, requiring access to all of her. She squeezed him between her thighs and laughed when he bucked his hips beneath her.

He grinned and rolled her onto her back. He nibbled on her earlobe—damn, it tasted good.

A buzzer went off in his head.

“Shit!” He leaped off the bed, nearly braining himself on a bedpost. He snatched his jeans from the floor and pulled them on, not bothering with his underwear.

She gathered the red sheets to herself, blushing from breast to hairline. She met his eye and looked away.

He realized how it looked. “It’s Sterling.” He pointed to his temple. “I just got a signal he’s awake.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Spell,” he explained. “I’ve got to get back to my room in case he comes.”

“Wait.” Her hoarse tone made his stomach tighten.

She squared her shoulders. “We can’t do this again.”

He went cold.

She hugged her arms to herself like she was trying to hold herself together. Words came tumbling out of her. Her eyelid twitched out of control. “There really can never be anything between us and I feel like if I get my heart broken again, that’ll be it for me. I know my brain will forget, but my heart just might remember. Besides, if Sterling finds out, this will turn into
The Christmas Uncle Gray Used Me to Get into the English Teacher’s Pants
, and he’s more important than your last fling before your wedding. Whew!” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I feel better now.”

A dark wave of anger filled his soul. He left Sadie’s apartment before he put his fist through something.

Chapter Sixteen

What had she been thinking? Sadie resisted the urge to slap her forehead with her palm. Sleeping with Gray? Big mistake.

She trudged through the two inches of snow on the path. She couldn’t stay under the same roof as Gray. After he’d run from her bed, she had lain awake, hoping for sleep. Praying to dream of Pippa and needing her wise advice, even if it was only her own imagination. Sleep hadn’t come. Neither had Pippa.

She hugged herself against the chill. Winter in the countryside was so different than winter in Toronto. The sun shone from an ice-blue sky, unobstructed by skyscrapers, warming her skin even as the air cooled it. The buildings hunkered under the snow, Chapter House’s red brick at the head of a U, its clock tower casting a long shadow into the Quad. The Arts Building and the Science Building faced each other like long, squat twins in a permanent standoff.

“Winter kept us warm/covering the earth in protective snow.” She quoted T.S. Eliot to no one as she strolled toward the Victorian gingerbread of Eastwick Hall, the smallest of the residences and home to the thirteen witches of the Senior Coven.

She slipped her sunglasses out of her pocket and onto her face but still found herself squinting at the sun’s light reflected off the brilliant blanket of white powder covering the Strange Academy campus.

A familiar dark figure darted between the buildings, startling her. Sadie headed toward it and heard a young male voice as she rounded the corner.

Sterling played in the shadow of Strange Hall. Under icicles dangling from the roof like crystal daggers. A chill passed over her heart.

“Sterling.” She kept her voice quiet, terrified to disturb the ice. She barely heard herself over the pressure in her ears. “Come away from those icicles. Now.”

Anger flashed across Sterling’s face. Then he walked toward her, out into the sun, pouting.

“I was only—”

Crack
! A splintering sound sliced through Sterling’s words. Sadie whirled to see an icicle taller than Sterling stabbed into a snowdrift. In her footprints. She forgot how to breathe.

“Cool!” Sterling shielded his eyes against the winter sun.

A few seconds earlier, it could have killed her, or at least sent her to the hospital, which would have meant crossing the magic circle and losing her memory. But it was just an accident. Like the fire and the potion? Maybe. Maybe Gray had a point and she was seeing conspiracies everywhere now. Gradually, she became aware she was petrified in place and that Sterling stared at her, one eye closed against the sun’s brightness.

“Don’t play near the buildings,” she said, dry-mouthed.

He grinned, but nodded.

“Who were you talking to?”

Sterling’s cheeks turned scarlet. “No one.”

“Hm.” He was a little old, but... “As a kid, I had an invisible friend.”

He eyed her sideways as they walked. “That’s dumb.”

“I was lonely.” She scooped up a handful of snow. “His name was Quin. He had crazy golden eyes. But you’re never lonely. I always see you with your friends.”

He jutted his chin. “They’re only around me because I’m from the Gray House and they think I’m important. The only one who doesn’t want anything from me is—” He caught himself.