Page 22 of Tempest (The Scarab Beetle 6)

“Are there others like you here?” I didn’t want to say Academy just out here.

“Not that I know of.”

We went to the apartment, and Corey used a key to open the door. “Is it possible someone could be and you wouldn’t know?” I asked.

“It can happen. It’s a big building. Sometimes we can walk right past another Academy member in town and we don’t even know. We don’t know everyone.”

This surprised me. I don’t know why. Axel once told me there weren’t as many Academy people as I was thinking, but every time I heard comments like this, I second guessed their numbers.

Maybe it was to protect them while I was still new.

Inside the apartment, the space was silent. No lights on inside to indicate Raven, Marc, Axel or anyone else was home.

“Everyone’s out of the house, I think,” Corey said.

“Are they getting Marc out?”

He shrugged. “I need to find out. You should get some sleep for now.”

I pressed my lips together. The apartment being so quiet was eerie to me. “He needs to get away. We can’t trust them right now.”

He turned to me, shadows playing over his face, and he touched my cheek briefly. “He’ll be okay. I need to go monitor my setup. But you should eat and rest. Let’s go.”

I trailed behind him as we headed to the apartment he shared with his brother. After he let us in, I crashed on my back on the couch. He checked the fridge. “Not a lot here. I should have gotten something from the other apartment. Marc usually keeps it stocked.”

“Meh,” I said.

He drifted over to the computers. “I could order a pizza.”

I rolled over onto my side. “I might just be asleep before it gets here.”

“Not that hungry?”

“Hunh.” Not much of an answer. I was too busy overthinking to really consider food. Maybe I thought better with a full stomach, but for the moment, I was overwhelmed with what to do next, wondering where Marc was, hoping we could get out of there soon.

Occasionally, I would hear him typing at something or clicking the mouse. He did it quietly, his angled face glowing under the different lights of the screen.

Eventually, I was on my back, watching the glow of the monitors on the ceiling in the dark space.

It was tempting to rest while I could, but it felt impossible to achieve. There was no sleep for me tonight. Alice. Old Mr. Murdock. They needed to be removed. Quickly.

They’d had us poisoned.

Tried to frame us.

Tried to have us all killed in various ways.

It scared Blake bad enough he was running around blowing up his own house to avoid her.

I had to get to them, before they discovered the Academy and what it was, and before they could hurt us any more.

And the more I thought about it, I knew I couldn’t do it alone.

Being arrested, they could still pull strings. They would always chase us.

I couldn’t tell Corey. He wouldn’t understand. I was sure. But Raven was right to have him carry a gun and to say if you see them, shoot them. They’d kill us if they could. They were just waiting until they wouldn’t get caught.

So how did we find them before they got their chance?

I sensed movement and opened my eyes. Corey hovered over me, a knee bent on either side of my hips as he crawled on top of me. He held himself up in a push up. “You grind your teeth when you’re thinking too hard, you know?”

I hadn’t noticed, but my jaw was starting to ache a little. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Think?”

“No,” he said. “You should write it down or something productive, not destroy your teeth.” He leaned in, tilting his head, his blue eyes inches from mine. “We’ll make sure everyone is safe.”

“She’ll keep coming after us,” I said. “Even if we put her in jail.”

He shook his head. “No. There are some places people can go where that won’t be possible.” He nudged me, and I inched over, giving him enough room to lay next to me on his side. He placed a palm on my stomach and tucked an arm under his head to prop himself up. “One day, this is going to be done. Probably sooner than you think.”

My lips twitched. I couldn’t imagine. It had only been weeks, maybe a couple of months, but it felt like we’d been together for years. Through the whole time, we’d been running in fear, chased, kidnapped…

His hand twitched at my stomach, gripping lightly. “I know it’s hard to stop thinking about it, but…try.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.

His lashes swept over those light blue eyes that glowed, reflecting light from the computers nearby. “Can I just say that it’s weird to be with Raven and still want you, too? Like I think I know how you’ve felt for a while.”

I bit my lower lip gently for a second, his train of thought jarring me from my cloud of despair. “Caught between people? Not wanting to hurt anyone?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Plus, with everything going on, every moment feels like…it’s not the right time. So it makes it worse because there are these long stretches where you want to tell someone that…you really like them. Like romantically.”

Heat radiated from my face. It was an odd sensation. I didn’t blush often but this, with how his eyes became so intense and so full of something I hadn’t realized was there before, a desperate longing.

“Do you think everyone is really okay with this?” I asked.

He picked up his hand from my stomach to make light circles with his fingertip over the shirt material. He did it slow. It was soothing rather than ticklish. “I think someone would have said so if they weren’t. Maybe it isn’t what they pictured. I know at the start I wasn’t sure what to do. Since I didn’t know how Raven felt, I didn’t think that would go anywhere. And I kind of thought you and I…I mean eventually after things settled down, I was going to ask you out on a date.”

“But things never really settle around here.”

“Not really,” he said with a smirk. His hand drifted down, until he was lifting the edge of the shirt and moving it aside to do the small circles of his fingertip against my bare skin. “I’m not totally sure my life has normalized at all since starting with the Academy. It’s like every moment is now, there’s some crisis that needs to be dealt with. But I don’t want to let moments go by anymore. Not when…” He paused and his hand stopped. “Not when we never know when we’ll get another moment alone.”

“I agree,” I said, soothed in knowing he knew exactly what I was going through, that he’d been confused as much as I’d been about it all.

He hovered close.

I closed my eyes.

We’d kissed in the hospital earlier. In a way, it was rushed and desperate because of the circumstances.

This time, it was like I imagined it would be, and better. He started soft, and then slowly deepened the kiss. He scooted his arm until it held up my head, close to his. He used it occasionally to pull me in closer in the kiss.

His palm remained at my stomach, slowly drifting up.

It was like being a younger version of myself and the first time a boy kissed me. The excited feeling in my stomach, the listening out in case someone came around, the promise of much more if no one ever did show up.

And like a couple of teens, his hands went everywhere, and mine did, too. He lifted my bra under my shirt and cupped and rubbed and pinched. I moaned and bit at his lips then slid a hand down between his legs.

He did the same, although he paused in his kiss. “Keep clothes on, just in case?” he whispered.

I sort of murmured a yes. I thought I did at least. I was a little caught up in things. Maybe it was being in the hospital for weeks without a lot of touch, or maybe it was all the moments like this one where I couldn’t go too far and now there was really no one here but us.

He dove his hand in, unbuttoning my pants and shoving my underwear out of the way to get to me.

; He rubbed at me between my thighs. “This way?”

I showed him, angling myself a little so he could continue.

He leaned over and kissed at my mouth, before lowering his face to my exposed breasts.

I reached over again, stroking through his clothes until he let go of me long enough to slide himself out between his zipper.

Neither of us lasted long. Just with our hands on each other. After, I rubbed at his body, touching everything, like finally being able to do so after holding back for so long. He did the same, exploring everything on me with his fingers.

He kissed me hard. “I want more.”

“I’m not stopping you. Do we need a few minutes?”

He inhaled sharply through his nose with his lips close to mine. “I could go again…” He stopped and lifted his head up, groaning.

I hadn’t noticed until he stopped, but something was vibrating on the desk.

“Tell them no,” I said.

“Can’t,” he said, making a grunting noise as he pulled himself away. He lifted his shirt off to quickly wipe up and passed it to me to do the same before getting to the phone. “Yeah,” he said into the phone. He blew out a breath. “Yeah, yeah, I can do it.” He sat down hard at the desk. “No, I was…Don’t worry about it. I’m on it.”