Page 27

She nods, a smile appears, and dissolves again until Poppi and Merda, along with Finley’s crew, pass by her desk on the way out of the classroom.

“Fucking suck ups,” Tali huffs out as we approach the door from the other direction with Fox behind us. He passes me a note when we are out in the hall. A scrap of paper, not from his journal pages, but torn from another source. Unfolding it several times, the neat block capitals want to know if I’m down to have lunch with him. “Yes, of course,” I say, handing the paper back to him. Tali loops her arm through mine, and we continue past loitering students, outside into the glare of midday and around the fountain depicting a bear holding a fish to its mouth. The bear has already swallowed the tail portion, meaning only half of the fish’s body and head is visible, with water pouring from its open mouth. The bear and the partially swallowed salmon are centered in a circular pool with granite blocks surrounding the cool water. Nullum refugium praedae is engraved into the stonework, grayed and ancient. No escape for prey is the Latin translation into English. It’s the basic law of nature: the food chain and the circle of life. A world of prey, chased by hunters. Wild salmon and bear in a stream not surrounded by a granite circle, Ashes and Larchers in the woods beyond. Two opposite sides of the existence coin. I was prey in the Larch, hunted down in a primal search and claiming. For a twenty-two-year-old woman confident in her skin and attuned to new and confusing sexual desires, I believe I need to be both prey and huntress. I have no problem going after what I want. I’m here to seek answers besides education. No one said sexual gratification had to be an optional side dish. I like Fox. I like Lukaz. I’ve been intimate with Jackson Bonner and Elijah Wyldan, along with four masked Larchers. And if my feeble Latin wasn’t so goddamn rusty, I’d be able to declare I regret nothing with all the pomp and hand flourishes the ancient language requires. Nihil paenitet!

Chapter Fourteen

Lukaz

MALCHOYDIAN PEPPERBERRY

Fox’s eyes almost bug out of his head when Aspen strolls through our dorm door and into our cramped living space. With his long legs stretched out in front of him, and the coffee table being too big for the room, the three of us are literally on top of each other. Well, not… yet, but guys can dream, right? I should have told him to expect a visitor. It was a dick move to keep the secret to myself, and judging by how flustered he is, patting the sofa cushions to find his journal, she’s having some kind of effect on him.

“I didn’t tell Fox you were coming over, and he can’t communicate more than basic stuff without his journal or something to write on. He texts, but his phone is probably charging in his room.”

Aspen nods, blonde hair swishing about her chin and shoulders. “Sorry if I’m invading your boys night. It’s just, Tali is working, and I wanted some company.”

“Your company is always appreciated, beautiful,” I add, tucking a stray strand behind her ear. Fox nods, waves, and beckons her over to sit next to him on the couch, now that he’s found his only means of communication. He speaks under extreme circumstances, and I wonder just how extreme a category Aspen Aldereyne will be? I’ve busted him sneaking glances at her when he doesn’t know I’m looking and saw the drawings of her in his journal. It is a woman’s head and shoulders with short hair—it could be anyone, but it’s her, I know it. Then there was the Larch… and their lunch date yesterday. The four of us sat near the bear fountain, eating sushi in the sunshine. The day was exceptional until the cirrus clouds gave way to cumulous and a colder wind blew in, dropping the temperature. The weather aside, Aspen radiated enough heat for us all. While Tali talked our ears off about the mechanics of soap lather, Fox and I were intent to take in the vision of Aspen bringing a California roll to her pouty lips, imagining it was our cocks. Only I didn’t have to imagine; she’s swallowed my cock before, and I have been rubbing one out multiple times a day hoping for a repeat.

This time, though, I want to take my time with her, laid out in my bed. I want more than her silky lips wrapped around my shaft; I want to bury it deep inside what I just know will be a wet, tight cunt. Fox and I have been racing to the masturbation finish line, if his showers are any indication, and holy fuck his room smells nasty. As much as I want to strip her naked and get her under me, she’s here for a reason other than sex.

After the bombshell of her mother’s death and her dad’s disappearance, Aspen needs allies for her research, and Fox and I, along with Tali, are her logical accomplices. Tali might be questionable; she talks like she’s being paid by the word, and I know if she was caught doing something she shouldn’t be, she’d spout verbal diarrhea to cover up her crime. Fox is the opposite—the guy is fucking mute. Secrets are safe with him, and even if someone held a blowtorch to his balls and demanded he write what he knew, he’d throw up a middle finger and probably fucking whistle. Well, not whistle because I have no clue if he can, but the middle finger would be guaranteed.

I am more than happy to help her out. I like her… a lot. I want to get closer to her… inside her. What better way than to help her do a little digging. One-night stands are all fine, but Aspen is different. I crave her just as much as Fox does, or more. We have similar interests; she’s crazy sexy and smart, and the way she looks at me has my dick hard no matter where we are. I want her, want us. I’d wanted to fill Fox in on what she had told me, but as it was her story to tell, and I had promised not to tell a soul, I respected her wishes and stayed quieter than the six foot, four descendant of Yukon Southern Tutchone first peoples who keeps his voice to himself.

Fox scribbles on a page in the back of his book. Why he’s choosing to do this, and not type and delete on his phone, has Aspen’s posture tensing. She’s determined to keep this circle tight, and any evidence could threaten her progress if it found its way into the wrong hands. I mean, either her old man Arty was up to some sketchy shit, or he pissed off the wrong people if he was taken, and Aspen’s recount is correct. Fox flips the page. What do you need help with?

Her shoulders sink. Recounting this, even to a guy who doesn’t speak and doesn’t judge, could be too taxing to do again. Just when I think she’s going to bail on the idea of adding Fox into the loop, she surprises me.

“My father went missing years ago. When I say missing, I believe he was taken. There is no way he would have left me after Mom died. He saw what that grief did to me, and to him. He struggled for years with her loss; there is no way he’d inflict any more of that on me. No way. Something untoward happened to him.”

Fox looks at me and back to Aspen. Her fingers interlace before she lays them flat and starts again. Fox mimes a drinking motion. Good idea, bud. A drink might help relax her obvious nervousness.

“What’s your poison?”

Fox grins.

“What? Is this some private joke between you two?”

“He’s probably referring to Donnelyn’s poisons and toxins assignment. I’ll pass on the beef wellingtons, but beer is fine. Or vodka, if you have it. Just not gin, please,” Aspen explains.

We have a shit ton of beer and vodka. Fox looks like he could have been purchasing liquor since he was ten, given his size. Hell, given his life in the foster system after his family died, maybe he was? I flip the caps off three beers and return the three steps to the couch while Aspen continues with details of her father’s disappearance.

Fox scribbles another question. What about him being in an accident? He could have hit his head or suffered some memory loss?

“The police ran a parallel investigation,” she continues. “They checked hospitals within eight hundred miles, stating that people can sometimes go off the rails and do things outside their normal character. When I got home from school, and he didn’t arrive home for dinner, I knew it was bad.”

Fox lays a hand on her thigh, the contact making her shiver. When he stokes her creamy skin languidly, I cannot look away. This time he doesn’t urge her on with further written questions; he circles his hand, urging her to keep going with a visual cue.

“At first, he was listed as a missing person. No one in the morgue or any hospitals matched his description, so it was a search and rescue case. His sister came to live with me in the house while the investigation was underway, so I could continue with a life as normal as possible.”

If her change in posture is any indication, life was far from normal.

“You and your aunt got along okay?”

“We did. She was my aunt—my father’s much older sister. I was sixteen, being looked after by a sixty-four-year-old woman who never married nor had children. She lived closer to the mountains in Colorado and hated suburbia. She didn’t tolerate noise at all, so our house was quiet for the first time. Mom used to play Otis Redding and Ella Fitzgerald records, humming along as she worked or did chores. Dad had this crackly radio in his study. That’s what I associate with him, that kind of static white noise when a station wasn’t quite set, prior to digital radio.”

Fox and I both dip our chins in approval. The picture she’s painting is a happy home full of normal anecdotes. Two parents invested in their research, and a home filled with sound and love, until it wasn’t. The similarities between Fox’s childhood and Aspen’s are profound. Sure, Fox lost his family in one go, all dead instantly, save for the sister he cradled until exposure claimed her, too. When authorities found the mangled wreck and bodies, they counted four. Fox had a faint pulse, but it was enough. His body temperature was critically low; the tomb of ice licking at exposed limbs like icy tongues. Every window had blown out in the crash, so for anyone to survive what Fox did was insane. Aspen’s loss is just as profound; only her grief stretches years, losing one to disease and the other to disappearance. Not knowing would gut me, and for Aspen to forge forward with their research front of mind is, well, it’s just fucking astounding.

Fox flips his journal again. This time, the question is more specific. What was your father working on when he disappeared?