“N-no. Don’t call him. It’s… we’ll be fine. She’ll be fine,” he says as his eyes move over my face and down my body, and even I can tell he’s saying that more for himself than for me. He disappears into the bathroom for a few seconds and comes back out wearing gym shorts.
With a softness I didn’t expect from him, he places his hand on my forehead and ripples of pleasure wash through my body.
“You really… need to… stop that…” I pant and clutch at the pillow until I’m afraid I might rip it apart. His hand immediately drops from my face, and I both love and hate him for it. What in the world is wrong with me?
“What’s with all of the… Oh my God. What did we miss?” Rory’s jaw drops as Declan slides onto the bed next to me, and I immediately wrap myself around him.
My body burns before everything seems to float away, and it’s like I’m on a bed of clouds. Sighing, I snuggle into his chest, squeezing him close to me as exhaustion fills my limbs.
“I don’t know whether I want to laugh or feel jealous right now,” Rory whispers to Paxton, who nods in agreement.
“Well, whatever happened, he needs to keep fixing it and explain,” Dane whispers, and Declan tenses at the harshness in his friend’s words, but I pat his chest and shoo the others away.
“Be gone. We’ll figure it out in the morning,” I whisper, and a wave of dizziness fills my mind, so I close my eyes and let the clouds swirl around me.
Shoes shuffle across the floor before the lights dim, and the door closes behind them. The chest underneath my ear rises high, before falling.
“I’m so sorry, Serena,” he whispers, and I shrug as I move his arms to wrap around me.
“I’d say I’m mad, but I can’t really feel mad right now. Maybe tomorrow. But I want to know what you did and how to fix it.”
He stills before his body deflates and silence fills the air for so long, I think he’s fallen asleep. But before I lose myself to slumber, he answers me:
“There’s no fixing it, Serena. I’m sorry.”
Angry voices drift around me, rousing me from my peaceful doze. God, why can’t a girl just get some relaxing shut eye? Is that really too much to ask?
I crack my eyes open and a strangled gasp rips from my throat at the room that’s definitely not my own. Declan’s familiar smell drifts from the pillow I’m constricting with both my legs and arms, and I fling it away. “What the hell am I…?” I trail off as the memories of yesterday flow through my mind.
Training.
Declan.
Pink eyes.
And everything after that is like a world filled with alcohol and hazy lust. I close my eyes, trying to clear everything away, but my memories don’t want to cooperate.
My head snaps up at the crack of the door opening, and Dane’s head pops in. “How are you feeling, Serena?”
“Mountain goat…” I whisper.
Dane’s eyebrows pull together and he gives me a quizzical smile, pushing the door open completely. “Mountain goat?”
The hazy memory of my body wrapping around his large frame, and my intense need to climb his dick like a mountain fills my mind, and I bury my head in my hands. “Seriously, Dane, what the hell happened?”
The bed shifts as he comes to sit down next to me, his arms wrapping around my shoulders. “Declan used his powers on you while you were outside training, but there was a small issue—”
“Small!” I shriek and jerk away, gesturing to him and the room around me. “I felt like I was on fire because of his lusty—”
“Voodoo?” he smirks at my confusion and my wrinkled nose.
I wave my hands. “Whatever you want to call it. Where is he? We need to have a little chat,” I growl and shove the blankets off my body.
“He left.”
I pause with one leg off the bed and stare at the empty space where his bag usually rests. “What do you mean ‘he left’? For school?”
Dane rises and helps me from the bed.
“He didn’t give us any specifics, but he said he had to leave to find out something. But he did say he would be back before the trial…” Dane trails off as he takes in my slumped expression.
He didn’t even say goodbye? For some unknown reason, the thought of him not saying anything to me actually hurts. Even if we’re not… I picture the way I’d clung to him, and I shudder.
We’re a team, and we’re friends. He should have said something. Anything.
My eyebrows pull together as I walk on my wobbly, baby-lamb legs and make my way down the stairs to the kitchen, the guys silent as they look up from their places at the table. “Did he say anything to you?”
Rory shakes his head, but Paxton nods as he glances down at his plate. “He didn’t tell me much, Serena, but whatever happened freaked him out. He left to go visit his grandma.”
“His grandma?” I ask, my exasperation growing when he nods.
“His grandmother is a seer, blessed by Psyche.” He looks up and a tight feeling fills my chest at the worry in his eyes. “He said that she may know what happened, and that he needed to talk to her, and before you ask, he didn’t tell me about what.”
I glance over my shoulder to Dane who nods at Paxton’s words. “It’s true. His grandma is pretty legendary. So, if he had to go and see her in the middle of classes, then it must be important.”
The room falls silent as we each mull over our thoughts. What’s so important that he had to go talk to her? Am I going to go nympho again?
“At least he’s a control freak and has his assignments completed, so we don’t really have
