Page 67 of The Honor Society

19

Eight Days Until The Convocation

AXEL

There’s something sexy about the way a woman’s body looks under the glow of a fire bringing to life their curves, the part of their hips that meet their thighs all the way down to their toes. I study Charlie for a brief second before she pulls the black afghan over her naked body and scoots closer to me.

I frown. “Did I say you could cover yourself?”

She glances up at me through hooded eyes. “You and I just spent the last three hours naked, let me have my blanket, it’s soft.”

“I’m soft.” I argue.

Her eyebrows arch. “No, sir, you are not, there is not an inch of your body that’s soft and you proved that over and over again in multiple places, multiple times.” She adjusts her body next to mine. “Plus, I don’t think my body’s quite yet ready for round three.”

“Four,” I correct. “But who’s counting?”

“You gonna tally mark that somewhere on your body too, Proctor?”

The way she addresses me as Proctor actually sends a shiver of pleasure down my spine. I smirk and press a kiss to the top of her head. “Should I?”

“Pretty sure you’d be covered faster than you realize then you’d have to explain it to the kids and what’s the fun in that?” She looks up at me smiling.

“Kids?”

“Lilah and Jude.”

I nod. “Naturally.”

She places her hand in mine, intertwines her fingers and squeezes my hand. “So I was thinking, about being Famine, I mean, when did you know?”

“A while ago.”

“Before you met me?” She asks.

I shake my head. “Actually, no. I didn’t put two and two together until I started going through The Dean’s List more seriously and then I saw your name on the page with Sterling, Famine, and your family history, and then I saw scar on your lower back—one listed on the page--and it all clicked.”

She frowns up at me. “I never saw the page. That day, the day I shot you⁠—”

“—Hey we don’t have to do this."

“We do, have to do this.” Tears had already slowly started sliding down her cheeks. “I thought I was protecting you from The Proctor, and if not that, then protecting you from whoever was threatening me.”

“And you ended up mortally wounding him, well done, you accomplished what most cannot even begin to hope for.”

She presses a fist softly to my chest and shoves me. “Don’t remind me.”

“Promise me one thing.” The fact that Jude still has it means that a part of her heritage will always be hidden, always be protected. “If anything ever happens to me. Get that page from The Dean's List. The one I gave to Jude when a gun was pointed at my chest. It contains everything you need and or may need to know.”

“Do I need to know any of those things now?”

“That depends.” I say slowly. “Understand, I’m not withholding anything, I just don’t think it would help this current situation.”

“Like?”

Don’t hate me. “Your inheritance, should anything happen.”

She softens against me. “My inheritance. As in money?”