Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance)

by Wilde, Teresa

  Ah, Sterling. She should have helped him, poor kid. It was what Pippa had wanted. “I think I’ve already figured it out,” she said.

  “That he got the worst phone call of his life?”

  She snapped to attention. “What phone call?”

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  “I wanna play Half-Life,” Sterling demanded.

  Gray swallowed the sour taste left in his mouth by his nephew’s whine as he tossed the keys he’d just used to open his apartment door on the table. “After you finish your homework.”

  Sterling’s lip sneered as he folded his arms over the fierce-looking Chinese dragon on his t-shirt. Gray was developing a foul mood to match Sterling’s. He tried to shrug it off, but the kid’s snarking was getting to him.

  Sterling narrowed his eyes and threw his heavy knapsack on top of his keys, guaranteeing a gouge in the antique tabletop. His stress knot flared.

  “I’m talking a shower. Do your homework.” He unbuttoned his shirt.

  When he got the bathroom door shut behind him, he tossed his shirt onto the blue bathmat and leaned over the marble countertop. His reflection looked scruffy and worn, as if spending time with the kid could give him five o’clock shadow at three-thirty. Either Sterling is pushing your buttons on purpose, he told himself, or you need to kill something.

  The crack of glass interrupted him. He didn’t hesitate, racing toward the source of the shattering noise.

  What the hell? Sterling stood in front of the plasma TV, fists balled at his sides. The cracked screen fizzled with electricity as neon gas leaked out in small waves. In the center of the damage was a black Xbox controller.

  Sterling lifted his obnoxious chin. “It wouldn’t load.”

  His swelling stress knot grew to the size of a small planet. Too angry to trust himself, he clamped his jaw.

  When he heard a knock on the door, he was half annoyed and half grateful for the interruption. He strode over to open it.

  “Hi.” Behind Sadie, the statue of Thalia smiled.

  Her hair was wet. She’d been caught in the recent storm. A white strand stuck to her cheek, winding a path from her temple to her pointed chin. Her black t-shirt scooped low.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  “The crash was nothing.” Please, please, come in and take care of this, he pleaded silently. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “Can I say hi to Sterling?”

  Confusion drew his eyebrows together. “How did you know he’s here?”

  Her voice lowered, softened. Dark eyes searched his face openly, making him oddly uncomfortable. “Have you made any life-altering decisions lately?”

  He tried to keep himself from inhaling her citrus scent in the very public hallway. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Fine.” Sadie sighed. “Can I come in?”

  He hauled her inside before someone caught them together. Once inside, she ignored him, walking straight toward Sterling, who was still frozen in front of the sparking screen.

  “Hello, Sterling.”

  Sterling’s head bobbed down between slouching shoulders. She turned Sterling to face her. Gray’s throat caught. The kid’s lip trembled in misery.

  “I thought so.” She wiped a thumb through the track of his tears. She pulled Sterling into a hug. His self-control broke and he sobbed into her shoulder. She patted his hair, telling him it—whatever “it” was—would be okay.

  “It’s not so bad,” Gray said. “I can get a new TV.”

  “No. I—” Sterling collapsed into tearful hiccups. Humiliation radiated as he tried to rip out of Sadie’s hug.

  “Shhh.” She pulled him to the leather couch, where he curled into a fetal ball with his head on her thigh. Gray felt like he was watching a movie dubbed in Swahili, with no subtitles.

  “His dad called.” Sadie stroked Sterling’s hair. “The divorce is final. If you feel like breaking the rules—”

  “I’m going to get Argent,” he said, standing.

  The scene of Sadie running her hand over Sterling’s back stuck in his mind while he pulled an instantaneous transportation spell out of his apothecary cabinet. He tried to picture April comforting their child this way. He couldn’t.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Less than an hour later, Gray used the spell to create a portal in Argent’s dorm room doorway, so they could both return to Strange Academy. With the time change, it was midnight in Switzerland, but Argent had been sitting awake.

  Through the portal opening, he saw Sadie sitting with Sterling at the dining table. The kid tapped a yellow pencil with a gnawed eraser on a sheet of math problems. Her hand hovered protectively on the back of his chair.

  Her gasp of surprise at his sudden entrance shot a dose of cocky pride straight into his veins. The admiration in her eyes made him want to strut around the room.

  His sense of superiority didn’t last long. Argent ran to Sadie, who hugged him like he was her own nephew. He stood useless at the door. Redundant. Again.

  All his life, he’d had a potion to solve every problem. Where’s the magic to fix this one? he wondered. She pushed Argent’s glasses up his nose. Then again, maybe he was looking at it.

  He escaped into the kitchen, away from the pain his brother’s disregard for rules caused, damn him. He gripped the countertop. Dom was probably celebrating with the tart he thought he was in love with while his kids were miserable.

  Gray closed his eyes and let his forehead fall into the cupboard door. The resulting thump echoed in his ears. You’re breaking the rules, too, whispered an evil voice in his head.

  It’s Sadie, he argued. It’s different.

  Yep, said the voice. She’s a Non, Dumbass. It’s worse.

  But I love her.

  Dom loves his mistress, said the voice.

  But I love her. Gray’s thoughts had the tone of a whiny child grasping at his favorite toy.

  “Of course you’re still brothers,” Sadie was saying when he returned to the living room. “The divorce doesn’t change anything.”

  He set a tray in front of her and the boys. Coffee for himself and Sadie, soda for the twins, and brownies for everyone. He might be emotionally useless, but he knew chemistry. Caffeine to keep the adults awake. Chocolate to release endorphins into the bloodstream. Sugar to perk the boys up.

  In tandem, the twins reached for brownies.

  “The magic circle,” she asked. “The one you make before you cast a spell—what’s it for?”

  “It protects you from evil spirits,” Argent said.

  “When you’re inside, they can’t get in,” Sterling said.

  “You two need to make a magic circle of your own,” she told them. “Keep your relationship inside it. Don’t let anything else get in.”

  His heart started to pound as she took the twins’ chocolate-stained right hands and joined them.

  “Nothing else matters.” Sadie’s voice took on an ethereal quality. She wove a web of words tangling the boys up together. The boys looked at each other as if they were seeing something for the first time. “If you don’t do this, other things will keep you apart. If you do, you’ll always be together.”

  In the frozen moment of silence after she stopped speaking, Gray wondered why she was looking at him.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  “Your lover—” Aunt Pippa said, as Sadie tossed her skirt into her closet, adding to a mound of discarded black clothes “—is about to open your door and throw you down on the bed.”

  “What?” She was pulling her black t-shirt over her head when a sudden pressure in her ears signaled the truth of Pippa’s prediction. The dark shirt blinded her. She struggled to free herself and look into smoky eyes.

  Her t-shirt twisted around her head. She struggled but couldn�
�t escape. He’s holding it, the alumnus, she realized. She was totally exposed.

  She imagined what her body looked like to him, with the black of her thong riding low beneath her flat belly, its ribbon bows at her hips, and her pinned arms raising her breasts high. He must have appreciated the sight; a masculine chuckle filled the dark space. Rough hands slid down her ribcage, then curled under her black lace thong to cup her buttocks. She shivered, knowing he could do anything he wanted to her.

  She also knew he’d never hurt her. She didn’t need powers to know it was Gray. She knew it from his dark laugh, from the cinnamon scent of his shirtless chest, from the way he pretended to be tough but flicked his tongue lightly over her breasts. She really hoped Pippa wasn’t watching this.

  “I could be anyone.” Through her shirt, hot breath teased her earlobe through the shirt. “Anyone you’ve ever fantasized about.”

  “No.” The word came out of her angrily. “Gray. Only you.”

  The arm around her back flexed, turning into a solid iron band constricting her chest until she had trouble breathing. A subtle shift in the air signaled playtime was over. He released her and she felt his hands easing her shirt over her head.

  Her breath caught. She’d seen his bare chest before—seen his bare everything before—and it never failed to make her burn in every way a woman could. Please run your fingers through me, requested the splay of fine black hair. His dark nipples asked, Do you think I taste like chocolate?

  She wasn’t done looking at his chest when the floor under her feet disappeared. He lifted her. She drank in his cinnamon scent as she nuzzled the sinews between his neck and shoulders.

  Pippa was wrong. Gray didn’t throw her on the bed. He lowered her reverently. As she sank into the dark red duvet, he followed after, rolling on his shoulder to land beside her.

  He propped himself on one elbow to look down on her, as if he was desperate to memorize every contour of her face.

  “What’s wrong? Something shifted there before you took my shirt off.”

  “You said you only want me. Do you know who my wife will be fantasizing about on our wedding night?”

  A sour taste filled her mouth. She shook her head.

  “Me neither,” he said. “But it won’t be me.”

  She struggled to understand how a woman could be tied to this beautiful, self-sacrificing man and want someone else.

  For once, she didn’t have the words. Instead, she reached into the soft hairs at the nape of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. She whispered his name as she nibbled at his lips.

  When he tried to push her back, down into the covers, she resisted with her own insistent pressure, shoving at his shoulders. He tensed, his mouth buried in the crook of her neck, as if deciding whether to overpower her. They both knew he could have her at his mercy in an instant.

  But he relaxed, giving in to her urging, rolling onto his back. She ended up sitting astride his chest in only her panties. From his roving gaze, he seemed to like the view.

  “What are you going to do up there?” he drawled, pretending tepid interest.

  But he was interested, oh yes. Every muscle in his neck strained against his skin, tense and hard. The flare of his nostrils betrayed his excitement.

  For the first time, she considered that she might have some power over him after all, even if it was only between the sheets. “Anything I want to,” she said, her voice husky from desire. “I think I’ll start with this.”

  She inched back until she sat lower on his body, and put her hand on the crotch of his jeans. He responded with a heavy sound of appreciation as his penis stretched the fabric. She lowered the fly and slipped her hand inside, capturing his cock, wrapping it in the silk of his boxers.

  She stroked, moving the fabric against the sensitive skin that covered the hot, hard member. His jaw twitched as he visibly fought for self-control. The sight set off a responding warmth in her own body, heating her thong.

  “Enough.” He growled it like an order she must obey, his pupils nearly black with passion.

  She swallowed the urge to crow with laughter. She drove him to the edge, but she knew that he, unlike any other man she’d dated, would never lose that last inch of control. Love washed over her, mixed with pure animal lust for the perfect male lying under her.

  He fumbled at the button of his jeans, unfastened them and kicked them away, his underwear inside.

  Which left only her thong between them. He clasped her hips in a possessive grip, as if he were the one dominating this. But she knew the truth. He was hers in every way that mattered. He just couldn’t admit it to himself.

  She pushed away the bitter thought and toyed with the ribbons of her thong as if she could wait forever to take him inside her. As if the smell of aroused male, tangy on the air, and the sight of his hard-muscled chest didn’t drive her wild.

  “Take it off,” he ordered in his throaty baritone.

  “Hmmm. No.” She put a finger to her lips, feigning innocence, and leaned over him, dangling her breasts in front over his face. He grasped the opportunity to nuzzle them, taking the sensitized tips into his mouth. With pleasure spiking through her body, straight to her core, she barely had the brain cells to remember to take the prophylactic potion out of her bedside table.

  “If you don’t take those off,” he warned, “I’ll just make love to you with them on.”

  She caught his beautiful, silky, hot mouth in a kiss that had him groaning.

  Breaking it off, she gave him a feline smile. “You do it. With your teeth.”

  His lips curled back in a grin of a predator, but he obeyed. When the silk fluttered away, letting cool air onto her overheated flesh, something seemed to snap inside him. He grabbed the potion from her and poured it on his hand.

  He pressed thick fingers over her, slickening already wet flesh. Deep inside, he probed, explored, learning every inch of her all over again.

  “Stop,” she cried, feeling the warning spasms start.

  He’d barely taken his fingers out of her when she impaled herself. Only he could give her this pleasure, touch her this intimately in her secret places. She couldn’t seem to get enough of him, and she greedily lifted herself so she could drive him inside her again, as deep as she could.

  Her body clenched around his invading cock, wanting more, wanting everything. And Gray watched her, just as greedy for the sight of her taking her pleasure.

  When he touched her clit, the rasp of his thumb sent her spinning into pure sensation. She gasped at the intensity of the orgasm that came over her, throbbing around his pulsing cock. The force of her joy wrung every ounce of energy from her. And Gray joined her, straining up and spurting hot liquid with a strangled cry.

  She collapsed onto him, limp and satiated.

  He held her to his chest for a long time, stroking her hair like she was something precious.

  “Thank you,” he said, his softening cock still inside her.

  Something about the breathlessness of his words told her this wasn’t about the sex. She rolled off of him and waited for him to continue.

  “You always know what to do for the kids. If you were...”

  This was about Sterling and Argent and the divorce. And she knew what he refused to say. If you were a Meta. If you were a Meta, I’d marry you. If you were a Meta, I’d let myself love you.

  Telling him would make everything easy, but she would always have that doubt, niggling inside her, that she hadn’t been good enough for him.

  “Gray, I’m the same as always. I’ll never be anything else.” Please, tell me you want me, she begged wordlessly. Tell me that it doesn’t matter. That you love me, no matter what.

  “I want to...” His voice trailed off.

  “Please, Gray, you’re so close.”

  Gray stroked the white hair at her temple.

  Hot desperation filled her, like acid that ate away at everything it touched. If only he could take this one leap. “You can have anything. You look
after everyone else—look after yourself. Look after us.”

  Gray’s turned away from her to stare at the ceiling. “School ends next week.”

  That was the answer. This was the end. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She closed her eyes, needing darkness. “You won’t be back, will you?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I want you to know I admire you for putting your family ahead of your own feelings.” Just not enough to give up my own self-respect, she didn’t add.

  “If things were different...” Gray held her tighter.

  There was only one thing left to do now. Something she’d been putting off. “I’m meeting Sterling in the library tomorrow after last period. Will you come?”

  “The library?”

  “Please,” she said. “It’s important.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gray had never thought much about the library. As a kid, he’d spent most of his time in the science labs, cooking up—and blowing up—spells. The only memory he had of the library from his youth was playing on the wooden ladders, sliding on brass rails until Mr. English, the librarian, had treated him to a week of detention.

  Only the library and the bell in the Quad had survived the 1864 fire. No one remembered how old the building was. Well, Cross might, but like most things, he wasn’t telling.

  Gray stepped through the glass doors, a recent addition since his student days, and noticed the place was deserted. But Sadie’s voice came from between the freestanding walls of books stretching out from the wooden card catalog like the fingers of a Japanese fan. He strode toward her voice and saw her distracted by a burgundy leather-bound tome, wearing a shoulder-baring sundress. Had she planned to pose spotlighted in a slant of yellow late-afternoon sunlight pouring in from the overhead windows? The light gilded the white lock in her dark hair. Gold flecks of dust danced around her like magic.

  She tossed her head and laughed for no reason. He smelled her distinct citrus smell. And tea, again.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Sadie said to thin air. She lifted the book. “Just reading out loud. Is there anything you want to tell me, Gray? Have you made any—”