Nina Berry: Othersphere

“My fault,” he said, descending the ladder with light quick steps and stooping to pick up the paper.

“Mine, too.” I mimicked him, flitting down the ladder and jumping down next to him, one hand on his shoulder.

He dropped the wallpaper and grabbed me, something dangerous in his eyes. I gasped, and he stopped my mouth with a kiss more urgent than any other we’d shared. His belt buckle scraped against my abdomen and he pressed my body against the length of his. I could feel every hard muscle on his frame. His hand supporting my lower back skated lower, lingered over my curves there, and then descended more to grip in and around my back inside thigh.

I writhed, held fast. A moan escaped me. He kept his hand there and lifted me up, off the ground, guiding my leg around his waist. The other leg wrapped around, too, my feet locking together behind his back as my hands pulled his T-shirt up so I could slide my hand over his smooth bare back.

My hip pocket buzzed. For a wild minute, I though Lazar was somehow making that happen. Then it buzzed again, and I realized. It was my phone.

“Ignore it,” he said and bit my shoulder lightly. I shuddered.

The phone buzzed again, and through the heated red fog in my brain, I remembered one thing, one reason not to ignore my phone. A reason I couldn’t reveal to Lazar.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unwrapping my legs from around him and pulling away reluctantly. “I have to get it if it’s my mom.”

He lowered me, but his hand loitered a long moment, caressing, before I tugged myself away. His blond hair was pushed to one side from my hands, his eyes bright and hot.

The phone stopped buzzing. I looked down. It was the alert I’d been waiting for. Why did it have to happen now?

“I have to call her back,” I said. A lie. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyebrows angled in puzzlement. “For being such a good kisser?”

I laughed, more out of unrelieved tension and desire than anything else. “Well, my ability there is kind of criminal.”

He laughed, running a hand through his hair, and nodded.

“Just sorry to, you know . . .” I looked down. “To not be moving things along faster. I want to, but . . .”

“Between us?” He put his hands on my arms, rubbing them lightly. “I know. I’m sorry for pushing.”

“No, no, no.” I leaned my forehead against his chest. He smelled like incense and amber, mixed with a little wallpaper paste. “I like it. Just please keep being patient with me.”

“The past couple of months have been full of troubles,” he said. “The psalms say at such a time to search your heart and be silent.” He smiled, the dimple showing in his cheek. “I haven’t allowed you much time for that.”

I shook my head. “You’ve been great. Sorry, but I really need to . . .”

He exhaled, shaking his head in amused resignation, and waved me away. “Go. I got this.” And he started back up the ladder with the wallpaper strip.

I backed up, checking my phone to confirm. It wasn’t a call; it was an alert I’d set up. Amaris had just received a Skype call from an unidentified number. The first time anyone had called her since Caleb had left.

I hadn’t been spying on Amaris. Well, sort of. I was keeping tabs on her calls because I knew that if Caleb got in touch with anyone, it would be his beloved half-sister.

Okay, so monitoring her phone calls is an invasive violation. I felt bad about it. But compared to all the other terrible things I’d done recently, this barely registered.

I looked up at Lazar, now back at the top of the ladder, holding up the strip of wallpaper, aligning it just so. He trusted me, and I was about to violate that. I nearly put the phone away then. I wanted to shake the legs of the ladder and bring him back down to finish what we’d started.

I just need to know Caleb’s okay. Then I’ll be able to move forward.

“See you later,” I said.

He grinned down at me. “Shirker.”

“Workaholic.” I smiled back, not quite as broadly, and left, straightening my T-shirt as I moved with practiced quiet out of the boys’ dorm into the hallway. A sliver of light reflected off the whitewashed walls from the half-closed door of the main computer room. We had monitors and wi-fi throughout the school now, thanks to Lazar, but I sensed movement in the computer room. Sliding into the darkest corner of the hall, I stilled and waited.

Within a minute, Amaris darted out of the computer room, completely unaware of me, and dashed up the steps, doing her best to be quiet. She had her heavy winter coat in hand. She was sneaking out of school, and that could only be for one reason: to see Caleb.

It was wrong to secretly follow her. That fact alone should have stopped me, but it didn’t.

She’ll never know , I told myself as I padded up the stairs after her. If she did find out about it, Amaris would forgive me.

Caleb wouldn’t. But Caleb still hadn’t forgiven me for going behind his back to meet up with his hated half-brother, Lazar. Twice.

And because of me, Siku was dead. If I hadn’t fallen for Ximon’s trap . . . Stop it! Don’t think about that now, or you’ll get clumsy and she’ll hear you.

Besides, I hadn’t seen Caleb in six weeks, and no one else had heard from him since. It was making me more than a little crazy. Any chance to learn more had to be taken. Just a glimpse of him was all I needed, the knowledge that he was alive and well would sustain me through this, the worst time of my life.

I could hear Arnaldo’s voice in the dining area, giving his two younger brothers a lesson in shifter history—the jaguar-shifter kings of ancient Central America—so I avoided that area and went straight to the front door of the school, grabbing my own coat off the hooks there. I slipped out in time to see Amaris zip up her coat and head for the garage.

I lurked behind some trees next to the hill the garage was concealed under until she backed the SUV out and turned it around. Then I walked in myself, ignoring Raynard’s red pickup truck, and headed right for the ancient motorcycle.

The SUV was moving away pretty quickly now. The motorcycle’s engine sputtered and nearly died before I remembered and put one foot to the ground, focusing on sending all my anxiety down into the earth. Technology had a tendency to stop working around me, particularly when I got emotional. Wearing the Shadow Blade around my waist all the time had helped with that a lot, and I was wearing it now. But I’d also gotten better at directing my feelings into something natural like soil or wood so that my anti-tech vibrations didn’t destroy the metal I was touching. I’d also improved at using it to deliberately sabotage technology, but this was not one of those times.

Tonight I was particularly tense. Amaris was sneaking out to see Caleb because he wanted to avoid me. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to see him again, knowing he hated me. I couldn’t let him see me, or he’d despise me all the more for invading his sister’s private life.

I had a nice boyfriend now. True, he reminded me of my first boyfriend because they were half-brothers, but that shouldn’t matter. I really should let Caleb go.

The red lights of the SUV got smaller as it disappeared down a hill, leaving only tire tracks in the snow.

And what if Lazar finds out?

I pushed that thought into an imaginary Dumpster and kicked the bike into first gear, carefully coordinating the throttle and clutch. Ice-covered tree branches brushed my face as I lifted my feet from the ground and puttered forward. I couldn’t follow too closely, or else even Amaris, with her ordinary human ears, would hear the noisy old machine’s engine.