by Lucia Ashta
“She even has to take him into the bathroom with her when she showers,” Rina told the others, “or he’ll whine the whole time.”
“Like a baby.” I scowled, but he did look pretty darn cute digging Adalia’s rubdown.
“He is a baby,” Adalia cooed.
“Yeah, but I’m not a pandacorn mother.” I sipped at the purple brew some more, sighing. Between Why and my pendant, I needed a whole case of these.
Dave chuckled. “Obviously. No pandacorn could house as much sarcasm as you do and survive it.”
I smiled. “Maybe. Mmm, this is really delicious. What’s it supposed to do to us? Just get us drunk?” Probably questions I should have asked before I started drinking, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
“The mystery troll didn’t really say,” Dave answered. “He just said we were in for a fun time. And to make sure not to go to the dining hall when we were at the peak of the trip or whatever. He said he’d deny ever knowing me and throw us out.”
“Sounds about right,” Rina grumbled. “Those trolls are something else.”
Wren giggled. “Orangesicle is starting to grow on me. The way he pines over Sadie is so cute.”
“There’s nothing cute about the trolls,” Boone said.
“I disagree,” I found myself saying, and suddenly noticed a warmth spreading throughout my limbs. “Their little round butts are pretty cute. Besides, they’re so ugly they can only be cute. Cute, cute, cute. Kinda like Why.”
I brought my bottle to my face and stared at it as a proxy for myself, like I didn’t know who it was anymore.
“Never thought I’d hear you say ‘cute’ so many times in a row,” Ky said, with an amused chuckle. It sent tingles flushing through me and I scooted across the blanket so only a foot of space separated us.
“Never thought I would either.” My mind was starting to feel as foggy as the brew inside my bottle, which upon inspection was half empty.
“Whoooa,” Wren said, dragging the word out, staring out at the lake.
The lake was hidden deep within the large, dense forest that surrounded the heart of the academy’s campus. The forest extended far beyond what was possible within Thunder Mountain, but then magic governed the entire functioning of the school, so it was no surprise that the lake on its own was wider than physically possible.
Why climbed into Boone’s lap, and when the werewolf started giving him the massage of his life, the cub promptly splayed out, white pompom of a tail up in the air, and fell asleep, horn pointed forward into the center of our haphazard circle. Boone grinned, and I caught Adalia eyeing him appreciatively.
“Who wants to toss a Frisbee?” Ky asked.
“Me,” Dave and Adalia answered, but neither of them moved.
Ky didn’t either, and I understood why not. A sensation like a warm breeze awakened the length of my body, tingling the stretches of exposed skin. My body was beginning to come alive in a way it never had before, and the sensations were already overwhelming enough without adding moving into the mix.
Why snored softly, occasionally mumbling incoherent baby sounds in his sleep. My friends stared blindly forward, dazed. Seconds passed, maybe minutes, before Leo exclaimed a little too loudly. “No one go in the lake.”
“But we came here to swim,” Rina protested.
“Hmm-no. We came here to party,” I said, setting the nearly empty bottle down next to me and staring at my hands. “Uh, are anyone else’s hands lighting up like they’re a mini hand rave?”
“Mine are green and red,” Dave said. “Hey, like a candy cane.” He guffawed with sudden amusement, not caring in the least that he got his colors wrong.
“Mine are…” Adalia trailed off. “Amazing.” She wove her hands in front of her face.
“No swimming,” Leo repeated, the urgency of his command dredging me slightly from my light show admiration.
“Right,” I mumbled. “We might sink like this.”
“Hm-hm. Or the lake creatures might get us.”
“Lake creatures? What lake creatures?” Rina asked with evident alarm, but Leo was staring at the bottle in his hands like it held the answer to the mystery of life itself.
“Stacy, Tracy, and Swan,” Dave said after a while, and every one of us began laughing harder than was reasonable, our bottles shaking precariously in our grips.
“They…” I wheezed and managed no more.
“They did,” Adalia said, laughing heartily at the Bitchy Bunch’s expense. I loved this side of her. This was a roommate I could get along with.
“You.” I pointed at her. “You’re being bad.”
Adalia dipped her head back, her long brown hair trailing behind her. Boone’s gaze followed her movements and he leaned slightly toward her.
“I’m always bad,” she said, “you just don’t realize it.”
A spark flickered in Boone’s eyes. Either that, or the light show was getting even better.
Bright light glowed from every bit of my exposed skin, a magical melding of golds, blues, violets, and reds. It encased my friends as well, including Why, the colors varying depending on the person.
And that wasn’t it. I lay down and flipped onto my stomach, holding my chin in one hand, my bottle in the other. The trees backing up to the lake were alight as if they were electrical and there was no end to the current running through them.
The trees were also moving.
I blinked a couple of times. Yep, still moving.
The entire world was alive, glowing and shifting, and all I did was stare at it in amazement until Ky placed a hand on my back, tilting toward me.
“You okay?” he murmured, sounding half here, half there just like me.
“Better now that your hand’s on me.” Current pulsed from his touch, sending waves of pleasure through me. I moaned softly, and then chuckled as I remembered what had happened in Marcy June’s class.
He bent lower. “I like the sound of that.”
“Well there’s plenty more where that came from.” I drank from my bottle, then set it to the side and turned back around to face Ky.
He flicked a glance at the others, and I followed the direction of his attention. Dave and Wren had pressed their foreheads together, their eyes closed, their hands joined. Rina was sitting in Leo’s lap, draped all over the elf, who looked like he saw no one but her anymore. Boone and Adalia were talking softly and intently, their attention unwavering. Why lay on his back, paws in the air, sleeping soundly.
I gestured to our otherwise occupied friends. “I’d say we’re all alone.”
“Perfect,” Ky murmured, his voice pure, vibrant sex. Excitement raced through me like a live wire, and I watched him raptly as he lowered down onto his side next to me, one hand propped under his head, and trailed the fingers of his free hand across my side, lighting my nerves on fire. His eyes never left mine, and I wondered if I might get lost in those fiery copper depths and never want to come back out.
“I’m not worried about Rina anymore,” he said.
“Yeah, Rage is dead.”
“No, I mean about how she’ll feel about you and me.”
“You and me, now that’s a much better topic of conversation.” I couldn’t believe I could speak so coherently. The sandy shore we lay on vibrated with energy beneath me, seeping through the blanket. The sky flickered as if receiving continuous shocks of electricity, and the sun … well, the sun was so damn bright that I couldn’t look anywhere near it. The vast lake glowed like it contained the Aurora Borealis within its depths.
But all of that still didn’t have a thing on Ky’s touch. Every inch of me was drawn to him. He pulsed magnetism, and my body and mind responded as if I were pulled toward him without conscious decision.
“Ky,” I breathed.
He closed the distance between us, pressing his body against me, and lowered his lips toward my face.
The moment his mouth touched mine, color exploded in my mind’s eye. My breathing accelerated along
with my heartbeat, and I thought I might burst from the intensity.
His body tensed for a few moments, as if he might be experiencing the range of sensations I was. Then one hand wrapped behind my head and he crushed my mouth against his. I melted into him, opening my lips to allow his tongue to dance with mine. He kissed me like he’d dreamt of it as many times as I had. I forgot to breathe as I gave everything I had over to this moment.
Draping an arm over his waist, I slung a leg over his hip and pulled him closer toward me. He was on fire, and yet his heat wasn’t enough. I needed more of him. I needed all of him. He kissed me like I was the breath of life. His lips never stopped claiming me as his own.
Hell, yes … the singular thought floated across my hazy mind.
His tongue caressed mine and I whimpered, wishing—
A loud splash had Ky yanking his face from mine. Immediately, I pulled him back, and he eagerly re-engaged in our kiss. He groaned softly, moving his hand from my head to my waist, my thighs, and finally back up to my back, where he pressed my chest—and my breasts—against him so that there was no space between us.
Splash.
His tongue and lips stopped moving, and he blinked a few times.
A third splash followed, and mutterings circled behind us.
When the fourth splash arrived, every one of us but Why groaned in complaint.
Ky pushed back up to check out the scene and I soon followed, regretting the interruption so deeply that it hurt. I stared at Ky instead of inspecting our surroundings as he was. His lips were swollen and bright pink. His eyes were glazed, and I thought the effect had been caused by me as much as the trolls’ brew.
“What?” Leo stammered, and I reluctantly swung my attention his way.
Rina was straddling Leo’s lap, her arms wrapped around him while he clutched her waist, holding her tight. Dave and Wren held hands, but no evidence of anything more remained on display. Boone’s hair was mussed, as was Adalia’s, her nipples pert, the two so close they were practically on top of each other.
Why, bless him, slept through it all.
“Lake creatures?” Rina asked.
Right, I told my lust and troll brew dazed mind. Splashes.
“I think so,” Boone said.
Leo carefully moved Rina from his lap, adjusted himself somewhat discreetly, and rose to a crouch, his hand on the sand beneath him to steady himself.
As one, we squinted further up the shore, where it was hard to tell what was splashing about.
Only that four very large and very fast creatures most definitely were.
19
“What should we do?” Wren squealed, freaking out in a way I’d never seen her do, not even when she’d been so terribly hurt last term. Granted, she’d also been a tree at the time of injury, but still.
Cringing at the panic in her voice, I said, “What we should do is calm the fuck down. No one says the lake creatures are gonna do anything to us.”
I mentally gave myself a pat on the back. I sounded far more lucid than I felt.
“Yeah, but what if they do hurt us?” Wren continued, totally ignoring my advice. “We don’t know what they are. They could be … huge and scary. They could eat us.”
The thing was, at the Magical Creatures Academy, I couldn’t say with certainty that there wasn’t something in this big-ass lake that might want to eat us. There might be several somethings wanting to eat us. Four, to be precise.
Even so. “Wren, chill.”
But Wren wasn’t chilling. Eyes wide, she was clutching Dave’s hand so hard he winced.
“How can I chill when we’re about to be eaten? It’s in every horror movie I’ve ever seen. A group of friends comes out to an abandoned lake and then they get eaten, one by one.”
“You should never, ever, be allowed to watch scary movies again,” I said.
“Wren,” Dave tried, rubbing his free hand along her back in soothing circles.
But Wren wasn’t listening. She shot up to her feet, dragging Dave by the hand with her. Once standing, they leaned heavily into each other, swaying for a few moments.
I blinked at the way their differently colored energy melded, the greens and pinks that surrounded Dave merging with the blues, oranges, and reds that encased Wren.
The lake creatures already forgotten, I scanned my friends. Their colors were brilliant. I could probably stare at them all day, watching the lights around them sway and shine.
No, wait. I wouldn’t do that. I should kiss Ky.
Yep, that’s what I’d do. I should definitely kiss Ky some more—lots more. I reached for him. Then there was another splash and Ky stood. Once he steadied, he offered me his hand. Taking it with no small amount of reluctance, I allowed him to pull me into his side, where I slunk into him, humming in delight at the way his energy zinged my skin. Good thing I was in a tiny bikini. Every inch of exposed flesh tingled like it’d fallen asleep—only it had really woken up.
All of us were now on our feet. Why sensed the loss of our warmth around him; he snorted awake, blinking slowly. When he turned to take in the spot where I’d last been and he discovered me standing, he scrambled to stand so quickly that his legs spun a few times in the air before he managed to focus his frenzied movements and flip himself around.
He scooted over to me and rose onto his hind legs, pressing his forepaws onto my leg, whining.
I looked down at him. When he upped the wattage of those pleading eyes, I bent down to scoop him up. He whined until he was nestled against my chest.
I rubbed my chin on the back of his head, mindful of his horn. “You’re such a big baby.”
He cooed, confirming he didn’t understand a word I said to him.
“You’d better not cut up my bikini with that ice pick of yours.”
He giggled, and Ky bent his head down. “He’d better not. I like that bikini. It’s skimpy enough to satisfy all my wild fantasies.”
Trying to salvage the moment, I fluttered my lashes at him. “You fantasize about me?”
His mouth widened into a wolfish grin, flashing white, even teeth. “What do you think?”
His eyes twinkled with naughty mischief, and I tried to press myself against him—only to discover a chubby cub between us.
“What the hell, what the hell, what the hell?” Wren squealed, slamming me with a fresh reminder of the reason I was standing instead of getting it on with the delicious mountain lion shifter.
“It’s okay, Wren,” Dave said, rubbing circles across her bare back.
“Is it? How can you be sure that it is?”
Her voice was pitched far too high. I didn’t think I could handle a single other operatic exclamation.
“They’ll eat us!” she exclaimed.
“Dammit, Wren,” I snapped. “Enough with the drama. It might just be fucking fish for all we know.”
“Big fish could still eat us.”
“I’m going to chomp on you myself if you don’t calm down.”
Boone inserted himself between Wren and me, pulling Adalia along behind him by the hand. “Let’s just go see what’s going on. That’ll settle things.”
Wren lunged for his arm. “No, Boone! Don’t go. They’ll eat you.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough to make my eyeballs ache.
Boone simply patted the hand that gripped him. “I won’t let anything eat me. I’m a big, bad wolf, don’t you know?”
“Okay, good.” Wren gushed a huge sigh of relief, surprisingly mollified.
“Wait here,” Boone instructed all of us, including Adalia, as he released her hand. Then he set off in the direction of the splashes, which peppered the calm of the day often enough to suggest that whatever was there wasn’t going away anytime soon.
When Boone started walking away, we all followed.
He spun on us, hands up. “Just wait for me. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
When he took off again, we tailed him anyway. Duh. We weren’t about to let him just go off
on his own when we were all slappy happy for the trolls’ delicious brew. He might stumble and go headfirst into the lake … where Wren’s lake creatures might gobble him up.
I hiccupped with a delirious giggle at the sudden image of an inflatable sea serpent popping up out of the water. Boone would wrestle with it until he found its blow-up valve and the lake creature withered away.
Why squirmed in my hold until I turned him to face forward so he could see where we were going.
Where were we going, anyway? And how long was this damn lake?
“We’ve been walking forever,” Rina said, voicing my exact thought. “How far do we have to go?”
“Another half mile maybe,” Boone said, but I decided he couldn’t possibly be certain. I was getting the feeling that though we’d been walking forever, we actually hadn’t gone that far. Each step felt like it was dragging through sand—or laughy taffy. I hiccupped another giggle.
“I think we’re going in slow-mo,” I commented after a bit, staring over the side of the pandacorn to my feet. They were slugging along. That, or my mind was. Hard to tell.
“Mmm, definitely going in slow-mo,” Wren mumbled, all chill like she’d forgotten about the sea monsters entirely. “My feet just confirmed it.”
I nodded.
“Mine keep wanting to connect down into the core of the earth,” Adalia said, and I nodded again. That too made perfect sense.
“Is that a … a mer-bear-dragon … creature?” Leo asked, and I snapped my gaze up from my dragging feet up ahead. I’d never seen one of those. Come to think of it, I’d never heard of one either.
“Looks like it,” Ky said. “What on earth…?”
“Where?” I asked. I was having trouble seeing beyond the glowing lights that shone from everything we passed. Even the air was composed of an incalculable amount of tiny, electric sparks.
He pointed with his free arm, squeezing me tighter with the one that held me. “There.”
I followed his index finger, but got lost in a kaleidoscope of vibrating colors. Fine. I leaned more heavily into Ky and just let him pull me along.