“Smell you later.” Zehra flashed a brilliant smile and stalked away into the trees. Ayaz flung himself after her, but Trey pulled him back, placing him in a chokehold until he stopped struggling.
“She’s leaving.” Ayaz slumped in Trey’s arms.
I knelt down beside him and kissed his forehead. “Of course she is. She’s spent her whole adult life trying to get you out. Now that we’ve found a way to make that happen, you’re seriously going to keep her out of it because you want to be the caveman protector?” Ayaz frowned. “I didn’t think so. We’ve all got a role. Hers is to ensure the Eldritch Club makes it to the school. Yours is to be a King. And that means honoring your royal subjects with your presence in the biggest party of your decades-long high school career.”
“The last thing I want to do is party,” he muttered.
I grabbed his hand, yanking him back toward the school. “Tough. I need you. The whole school needs you to do what you do best – give in to your base urges and get absolutely, completely, monstrously freaky tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time we clambered down the steps to the pleasure garden, the party was in full swing. The air swam with the alluring scent of wild drugs and sexual tension. Students passed around pipes and openly tossed pills down their throats, washing them down with bottles of expensive Scotch and champagne from their private stash. What seemed like every student who could play a musical instrument jammed together on a makeshift stage while others stamped their feet and danced in giddy circles. The maintenance staff circled around, dressed not in their grey uniforms but in bright clothing borrowed from the students. Tables groaned under the weight of platters of food and even more booze., Ayaz told me that the Edimmu didn’t need to eat – that placing food in their mouths only elicited the ghost of its true flavor. But I knew that some of us took great comfort in our ghosts.
As I stood at the edge of the grotto, surveying the scene, Courtney ran past wearing nothing but a silver thong and a pair of nipple pasties. She’d painted her entire body like a tabby cat, complete with stripes and whiskers across her cheeks. I noted with glee that she’d teased her hair up into cat ‘ears,’ which looked completely ridiculous, but wouldn’t result in her having to cut out clumps of hair after I had glued them to her head previously. She yelped in faux protest as Derek and John took turns slapping her bare ass cheeks.
I glanced at my phone. “It’s only 6PM.”
“Right on time.” Quinn grabbed me and Ayaz and dragged us toward the dance floor. “Let’s make Ataturk forget about his sister.”
“That’s not possible,” Ayaz growled, but then we were surrounded by gyrating students and Quinn was twerking against Ayaz and laughter bubbled up inside me as I gave myself over to the music. Ayaz turned to me, and the moonlight glinted off the fathomless depths of his eyes and I knew that, right now, he was one hundred percent in the moment with me.
Trey’s hands skimmed my thighs, drawing lines of heat across my skin. Quinn’s lips grazed my bare shoulders, sending delicious flickers of fire all down my spine. We’d all left a change of clothes in the tree where we left Zehra, and I now wore the black dress with the white lace collar Greg had found in the costume department. He’d chopped up and re-sewn the neckline and now it was a halter-neck with an open back, which in the hands of my Kings was fucking dangerous.
“You look amazing, Hazy.” Ayaz placed two fingers beneath my chin, tipping my head up so he could claim my lips in a searing kiss. As his tongue stroked mine, rising the flame higher inside me, he spoke with his body what he couldn’t say with words – that as much as he was here to fight for Zehra, he was also fighting for me. That he trusted me. That he might not remember how we fell for each other the first time, but he was falling again.
I poured my own feelings into that kiss, knitting my fingers through his hair and pulling him closer, longing to fall into him and lose myself. In my mind, I saw those pictures he’d drawn of me – the way he’d conveyed me on a page with strokes of ink, not an exact image of me but of how he saw me in his mind. A warrior with fury and soul behind her eyes, a foil for his introspection and the fuel for his passion. My artist who’d never had the chance to truly express himself.I will give you a future. And it will be so wonderful that one day you will forget me. And you won’t be sad. And that knowledge will carry me across the stars with joy in my heart.
While Ayaz kissed me, Trey’s lips trailed across the top of my shoulders, the nape of my neck. Not to be outdone, Quinn’s fingers brushed over my breasts, and I hung between them, suspended, while Trey’s erection dug into my thigh and the fire inside me raged into an inferno—
“Fuck!” I shook the corner of my dress, putting out the flame that had sprung up. Dancers shuffled away from me, eyes wide and frightened. Ayaz pulled me out of the fray.
“What happened?” Quinn touched the scorched corner of my dress.
“I got… um,excited.”
Quinn’s smile could have lit up the sky. “You know, you’d be less of a fire risk if you took your clothes off.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” An ache followed the trail of fire through my body. My skin still burned from their touch. All I wanted was to have them pressed up against me again.
But it wasn’t time for that. Not yet.
Trey swallowed and stepped away. The tension crackled between us, and I knew he used every ounce of willpower not to throw himself at me. “You should give your speech now, before everyone is so off-their-face they don’t remember it.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Quinn stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. A couple of people turned their heads, but the party went on without incident.
“Time to pull out the big guns.” Quinn flexed his muscles. He sucked in a deep breath, opened his mouth, and…
Feeling emboldened, I flipped my palm up and let a pillar of flame cascade toward the heavens.
That got a reaction. Heads whirled around. Students screamed and clutched each other. Amber teetered on her six-inch spiked heels and fell on her ass. A glass bowl shattered as Nancy dropped it on the rocks. Instruments squealed as the band ground to a sudden halt.
Hundreds of eyes bore into me, wide and terrified, as they once again grappled with my command over their greatest fear. I cut off the flame and folded my arms, meeting their gaze with firm confidence. Tonight, I had to make the whole school listen to me, believe me, accept me – the gutter whore. I couldn’t let them see weakness or feel the nervous flutter of my heart in my chest.
“Now that we have your attention, gather round, everyone.” Quinn waved his arms. “We can return to the drinking and shagging forthwith. But first, our fearless leader wants to say a few things.”
“I don’t see nipples!” Derek yelled, beating his naked chest. His bloodshot eyes and slurred speech suggested he was already well gone. “I’m not listening to her unless she shows us her tits!”
A shudder ran through my body as I flashed back to that night in my bedroom, where Courtney had Derek and John and some other guys break in, where they were going to…
