“I look forward to getting you back in my bed again soon, then,” he said, tossing her a wink before pulling the towel from around his waist, using it to dry his hair as he stalked from the room and giving all of us an eyeful of his junk.
Blake swore at him half-heartedly as he laughed, but my attention stayed on our girl.
I didn’t miss the way Tatum’s gaze trailed him, clinging to his muscular frame like she wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at what he had to offer.
My heart pounded at the look in her eyes, my grip tightening on the edge of the table as I took in the hunger in her and a dark part of me ached to make her look at me that way too.
Kyan headed into his room and as the door snapped closed behind him, her gaze flicked back to meet mine. I expected her to balk or blush under my scrutiny as she realised that she’d been caught out, but she just raised an eyebrow at me as if challenging me to comment.
I held my tongue and she got to her feet, moving away from the balcony and out of sight as she retreated further into my room.
I grunted in frustration. Ignoring the little tendrils of jealousy which were coiling beneath my flesh as I got to my feet and gathered the plates to clean them in the sink.
Once I was finished, I intended to play out the rest of my usual day as if the timings weren’t all off and as a bonus, I doubted there would be time for me to sleep for any more than a few hours before my alarm would announce another day had begun.
In the meantime, I had plans to consolidate and work to do to ensure my grip on this school stayed firm.
The moment we could be sure that the Hades Virus wasn’t lurking within our walls, we needed to get back to classes, to normalcy, to our lives. And I intended to make sure that happened as soon as humanly possible.
I’m not fucking sick!
I laid in the exquisitely soft sheets of Saint’s bed, gazing up at the arching wooden roof with relief spilling into every corner of my body. The quarantine period was over. And I’d made it. Somehow, impossibly, despite the odds stacked against me, I hadn’t caught the virus.
These forty eight hours in quarantine had given me a lot of time to think. About the Night Keepers, about the vow, about the murder. I had so many thoughts whirling in my brain and no one to share them with. I considered messaging Mila, but when I went to do it, I hesitated. This was my fight. Me against them. And I had to decide how them helping me down in the tunnels had changed things. Or if it had at all.
How were they even going to behave now? What they’d done for me…did that mean they didn’t hate me anymore? Did it mean I was free to go the second this was over?
No…somehow, in my gut I knew I wasn’t getting out of here that easily. But maybe they would treat me with respect at last. Or was that too much to hope for?
The incredible rush of relief I got at knowing I wasn’t ill was muddied by the knowledge that I was still a prisoner. But at least I wasn’t a sick one. In fact, I was the opposite of sick, I was humming with life, energy buzzing through my veins like a swarm of bees in search of pollen. But I had no idea where to direct all of it.
“Maybe I should wake her,” Blake’s voice reached me from downstairs and I held my breath as I listened.
“No,” Saint growled. “She can have a morning off from her chores, then later things can return to normal.”
My skin prickled with heat and my upper lip curled back. Heat flared along my spine as rage dipped me in a pit of lava. Of course Saint expected things to return to normal. I didn’t get a say. But I wasn’t prepared to let that lie. Whether he wanted to admit to it or not, things had changed. Irreversibly. I just wasn’t sure how yet. Had they killed for me because they cared, or done it because they’d seen another way to bind me to them?
“You think she’s going to fall back into line just like that?” Blake scoffed.
“Yes,” Saint clipped. “Just like that. And I’m not going to waste another second speaking about it.”
They fell quiet and I took a slow breath as I tried to calm my angry heart. I guessed I had my answer.
I fumed in bed for a while longer before pushing the covers back and heading to the shower. I’d spent plenty of time rummaging through Saint’s room, hunting for who knew what. Maybe I was just curious about what the devil kept in his drawers. Turned out, not a lot. But anything he did keep was neatly displayed, perfectly aligned. There was a small metal security box in his closet which I guessed he kept cash in, that was about as exciting as his storage places got. If Saint had secrets, they weren’t hidden in drawers or cupboards. No, they were locked up tight inside his head and only a miracle would get me the key to that box. And I wasn’t sure it was a place I wanted to ever venture anyway.
Saint’s bathroom was pristine. White tiles covered the walls and floor and everything gleamed. His apple shower gel was lined up neatly beside his shampoo and conditioner while my shower products stood at the foot of the unit, half of them fallen over. Tarnishing his
