“Definitely,” I said, pecking him on the mouth and then finding myself held tight by his big hands, his beautiful scent overwhelming me, pebbling my nipples into fine points and leaving me with a very vivid daydream about what our second time in bed together might be like. “Stay safe, my little mate,” he whispered against my mouth.
I was too struck by his kiss and his touch and the way my heart fluttered in my chest to bother protesting that one.
Besides, so what if I wanted it to be true? There was nothing wrong with that, was there? I might not have known the man long, but he’d more than proven himself to me.
“Have fun,” he said, giving Eli, Spicer, Trubble and Jas a little nod before heading in the direction of the cityside gates.
“Fat chance of that happening,” I whispered as Jas grabbed my arm and just managed to shove me into the classroom before Professor Tiukka appeared and slammed the door on the empty courtyard.
Hours six and seven were boring, but at least they were horribly predictable. In maths and history, there wasn’t much to screw up or get in trouble for, not like in my spirits and shadows class. No, I seemed to do everything wrong in there which wasn’t much of a confidence boost. I was still fighting just to stay awake during that class, let alone practice any of the professor’s ludicrous exercises.
Today, she’d demanded we each identify a new ghost or spirit in the room, one that nobody else had yet pointed out. Of course, I went last, and I was so overwhelmed with spirits and shadows that I relied on Elijah to appear out of nowhere at the front of the class so I could point him out.
“I’m so tired,” I groaned, slumping into a big, squishy chair in my last class of the day, hour eight, whisperers: general studies. The classrooms of the Royal College were as varied as the students and their professors.
This one just happened to sit at the side of a pond, one whole wall of windows with French doors in the middle that opened out onto the water. A tiny bird—called a humminglight—danced across the surface of the water, its tail lit with tiny glowing gold orbs that it used to collect mates. Like most Amerin women, it was a female looking for a dozen or so males to protect its nest and care for the two dozen eggs it’d lay in full spring.
I just stared at it as the class filled with students of all backgrounds, races, and magics. There were a few poison whisperers in this class, so I kept my eyes averted. Every time I saw them with their leather bandoliers strapped over their chest, I thought of Talon.
“You’re doing great,” Jas told me as Trubble lumbered in and sat down on the chair with me, basically spilling himself into my lap.
“Get out of here,” I growled at him. He was most definitely not allowed in Professor Tiukka’s class, but my professor for hour eight—a Vaennish man named Oni, which literally meant demon in their language—was so relaxed that both Trubble and I knew he’d hardly notice or care about an extra student.
I tried to scoot away, but the chair was deep and squishy and I was exhausted, so all I ended up doing was adjusting us so that I was sitting in his lap.
“Good evening, everyone,” Professor Oni said, flicking a series of five fluffy black tails as he approached the front of the room. There was a couch with a small table in front of it, but no desk. No, this professor liked to keep things casual. The entire classroom was hung with Vaennish ofuda, these rectangular strips of paper with calligraphy on them. Each one meant something different, from protection to fertility to offensive magic.
“I don’t want you here,” I whisper-growled at Trubble, but all he did was smile at me and lounge back on the seat, folding his hands together behind his head. My ghosts were welcome in this classroom and not part of the curriculum, so Elijah and Spicer were clearly visible, lounging in chairs outside and enjoying the sunset.
“So? Make a scene then,” Trubble challenged, “and I’ll be gone in an instant.”
With a sigh, I just slumped back into his hard chest and chose to ignore him.
Well, sort of. Actually, even as tired as I was, as soon as I did that, I could every hard, wonderful plane of him, from his tight chest and belly all the way down to his … yeah, uh, that was hard, too. That should’ve been my cue to stand up and walk away—or at the very least, punch him in the throat. But I didn’t.
Instead, I just sat there. In fact, I may have possibly … adjusted myself a bit.
As soon as I did that, Trubble’s relaxed posture stiffened slightly and his hands dropped to the arm of the chair. I wasn’t the only person in that classroom hanging out in someone’s lap—we were all adults, after all, and this was college not secondary school—but I felt like there was a spotlight on me, like everyone in that room was aware of what I was up to.
And what was I up to anyway?
“You want your textbook?” Jas whispered as the class mumbled lazy evening greetings to our professor. Hour eight, it seemed, was a very laidback sort of class with snacks and drinks and heavy-lidded eyes. Or maybe it was just because Professor Oni burned incense and lit candles and didn’t bother with gas lamps, even though it was verging on sunset.
Jas didn’t wait for me to answer, tossing the heavy tome into my lap and then slapping a Whisperer Card right on top of it. She didn’t want or need one—she was determined to memorize very god and every classification on her own. Me, on the other hand, I needed one of these babies in my life.
Shifting my wings out, I rested them on ether side of Trubble’s shoulders, using the chair to keep them propped up. There was no way he could see the professor smooshed back there behind them like that, but he didn’t seem to mind … especially not with I shifted and adjusted myself again.
He smells like lotus flowers and damp, sweet forest shadows.
Gritting my teeth, I flipped open to the page Professor Oni was suggesting and tried my very best to pay attention.
“What I want to do here,” he was saying, as I most definitely did not think about how good Trubble felt beneath me, “is to start with the more obscure goddesses and gods, and then work our way up to the most common. Any clue what the most common whisperer in Amerin is?”
“In Amerin, the most common profession is flora whisperer, as we produce and export the most food on the continent of Europia.” Felixa answered the professor’s question as smoothly as if the whole thing had been scripted out in a play. She flicked some blonde hair over one shoulder and turned this look on me that, interestingly enough, didn’t seem able to affect me when I was doing … semi-inappropriate things with Dyre’s twin.
He’s a fucking shadow for fuck’s sake! I thought and lost two feathers all at once.
Felixa gaped at me and then flipped me off, losing a feather herself. She probably thought I was thinking awful thoughts about her when, really, all I was doing was rubbing on some guy I didn’t know and didn’t even really like.
I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a sex whisperer around her somewhere, casting strange spells on me.
“Generally,” Professor Oni continued, oblivious to basically everything that was happening inside his classroom—I wouldn’t be surprised if he were high on rose dust, a legal, relaxing substance that was generally rolled in paper and smoked, “each region or country will have a different whisperer population that far exceeds the others. This can be because of industry, like here in Amerin, or because a certain deity has taken a liking to a particular race, culture, or country. In Vaenn, for example, the kitsune are beloved by the fox god Inari, so there’s an above average number of flesh whisperers.”