Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

“It’s always better safe then sorry.” Ezra nodded, as if that settled that. “I’m going to go look for the alarm manual, and I’ll get back to you when I have codes.”

“Alright.” Jack gave me a weird look, and he was as skeptical about Ezra’s intentions as I was.

“I don’t how you guys can just sit here!” Jane whined, getting to her feet after Ezra left the room.

“Jane, relax. Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” Milo tried to reassure her.

“No! I don’t mean that! It’s just so boring here!” She pulled at one of the bangle bracelets she had taken from me, and her eyes darted all around the room. “You just sit here all the time!”

“Jane, its four in the morning. What do you suggest we do?” Jack asked her honestly.

“And we don’t sit around here all the time,” Bobby countered. “I went to school, Jack went out, Milo goes places too, I’m sure. But just you’re not because you’re still not feeling well.”

“I’m feeling fine!” Jane stomped her foot and tried to take off the bracelets. “If it weren’t for these damn bracelets! They’re like handcuffs!”

“Jane! Just calm down and watch the movie!” I snapped. “We’ll go somewhere tomorrow night. Okay?

But right now, it’s too late. So just relax.”

“Whatever.” She finally managed to get off the bracelets and chucked them to the other side of the room, startling Matilda into barking.

“Is everything alright in there?” Ezra shouted from his den at the end of the hall.

“Seriously. What’s going on?” I looked at Jack. “Is there like a carbon monoxide leak?

Everybody is being a total freak today.”

“I am not being a freak!” Jane protested, then collapsed heavily back onto the chaise lounge.

“I’m fine.

Let’s just watch the movie. I wanna see what happens to this Sid guy.”

Before the credits started roll, Jane fell asleep, but she was twitching a lot in her sleep. It was actually super creepy. We all watched with mild fascination until Mae came out of the bathroom and yelled at us for just staring at her. She carried Jane up to Peter’s room, but she came down a little bit late because Ezra enlisted her on his search for the missing alarm manual. It was the first time they’d really interacted in awhile, and she seemed to bare a grudge about the whole thing. The rest of us did not wish to participate in that search, so we headed up to our respective rooms.

“You know, Ezra’s in the den,” I said to Jack when we got to our room. He had already taken off his tee shirt in preparation to put on pajamas, but when he turned to look at me, I started slipping off my jeans in the most seductive manner I could manage. “So you can’t really sleep there.”

“Here’s the funny thing.” Jack grinned at me and walked over to me. He’d come into the room and gone straight to the closet to get ready for bed, but I had other plans for the night, so I stayed next to the bed.

“I’m not really all that tired anymore.”

“Really?” I took a step back, so my butt hit the bed. “You wouldn’t want to crawl into bed at all?”

“Oh, no, I definitely wanna crawl in bed,” Jack smiled wickedly. He took another step to me, so he was right in front of me, and put his hands on my bare thighs. Slowly, he slid them up under my shirt and let them linger on my waist. “God, you’re beautiful.”

I looped my arms around his neck and stood on my tiptoes so I could kiss him. He kissed me deeply, cupping his hands on my butt, and holding me to him. Gently, he pushed me back onto the bed. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling me closer to him. He pushed against me, and I moaned. His mouth trailed to my neck, and suddenly, I wanted it.

“Bite me,” I breathed, burying my fingers in his hair.

“What?” Jack stopped kissing me so he could look at me. He was trying to play it cool, but his excitement was unmistakable. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I looked up at him. Being bit felt amazing, and he was in control enough where it wouldn’t be dangerous. I’d be the weak one, so there was no risk of me hurting me.

“When was the last you ate?” His happiness momentarily broke.

“Jack!” I protested. “Don’t break the romance with logic. I’m fine, okay?”

Jack bit his lip and looked down at me. He was making sure that I was completely okay with it, but he pretty obviously wanted to do it. I could feel his hunger, hot and eager, flowing over me. His heart was pounding heavily, and it was just above mine, so I could almost feel it. His eyes were all fading translucent, the way they did when he really wanted me. The more passionate he got, the lighter the color of his eyes.

When his lips pressed against my veins, I moaned involuntarily, and I arched my back, pushing closer to him.

“Alice!” Mae screamed and threw open the bedroom door.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Jack yelled incredulously and sat up, and I agreed entirely. He turned to glare at her. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing!”

“I don’t care about you!” Mae snapped. She looked positively stricken, so I sat up and pushed Jack back out of the way. “Jane is missing! I think something’s happened to her!”

In the panic over a possible Jane-napping, I didn’t think to put on pants and Jack didn’t put on a shirt, so we both got dirty looks from Milo, who rushed out of his room when he heard Mae screaming her head off. I returned his dirty look evenly since Bobby was shirtless and guilty looking. We were all crowded inside Jane’s room, since that seemed to be the source of the evidence. Mae had tired of her pursuit of the alarm manual, so she had gone upstairs to bunk with Jane again, but when she’d come in the room, Jane was gone. That was all her evidence.

“Did somebody ransack the room or something?” Bobby asked, admiring the disheveled state of Peter’s room. Somehow, half of my wardrobe had migrated over here and had been strewn around everywhere. She’d only been here for two days, but she needed to try on most of my clothes.

“No, it always looks like this,” I said. I hadn’t seen her room lately, but this was her natural state of being. Bobby was just unaccustomed to the rooms of teenage girls.

“Not to sound, you know, like a dick,” Jack said carefully. “But you just dragged us out of bed to show us Jane’s messy room? That’s not really an emergency, Mae.”

“She’s not here!” Mae shouted, gesturing to the mess around her. “That’s the emergency.”

“Again, not to be a dick, but that’s not really emergency,” Jack said.

“Something could’ve happened to her!” Mae insisted. “She wouldn’t just leave like this!”

“She might,” Milo shook his head. “She was bitching downstairs about how boring we are.”

“But she didn’t tell me where she was going!” Mae was looking at us all with disbelief. Jane had really gotten to her, and she wasn’t willing to let her go so easily.

“You know what? I’m sure she has her phone on her,” I suggested. “I’ll call her, and we can figure this out right away.”

“Good idea,” Mae looked slightly relieved at that.

“Well, I’m going back to bed,” Milo yawned. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

“How can you be so callous?” Mae snapped at him, but he just shrugged.

I hurried across the hall to my room, and Jack trailed behind me. Mae stayed behind in the hallway to argue with Milo about how innocent Jane was while I pulled my cell phone of my pants pocket. Jack rubbed his bare arms and shook his head.

“You don’t really believe something happened to Jane?” Jack asked quietly.

“I don’t really know, and I’ll feel better making sure.” I scrolled through my phone for her number, then hit call. I wasn’t even sure if she would answer, but it was better than nothing. The phone rang in my ear, and I watched as Milo and Bobby slunk back to their room. Mae looked at me expectantly, and I started to tell her that Jane wasn’t answering when Jane answered.