19. Addie
ADDIE
PARAMORE – I CAUGHT MYSELF
I felt like the biggest idiot walking away from Evander Lockwood. Not for just one reason, no. That would be too simple. But two? Yeah, two seemed just right.
The first? Because neither Mercy nor I had even bothered to check the rest of the drawer.
How the fuck did that happen? I should be smarter than that.
The second, because I actually thought he was going to kiss me.
What a fucking idiot.
Of course, Instructor Lockwood was never going to kiss Initiate Sinclair.
I scoffed self-derisively. Physically shaking off the mortification, I shuddered, rounding a blind corner—and walked right into someone else coming the other way. “Jesus fucking Christ on a bike! You three need neon fucking signs or something!”
Pearce blinked, then threw his head back in uproarious laughter.
It did little to improve my mood, or so I let myself believe—for all of nought point two seconds.
“Do you have a habit of walking into people, Adelaide?” he asked around a shit-eating grin.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I grumbled, rubbing my nose. “Particularly of the gargantuan variety. Am I bleeding?”
He grabbed my upper arms, gently shifting me into the multihued shafts of light shining in through the stained-glass hall window. Pausing for a moment, we stared at each other—lost in the same fractured shards of colour.
“No,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the fresh dressing on the side of my neck. “No blood.”
My gaze dropped to my feet, my toes suddenly overwhelmingly uncomfortable in my boots. I made a show of wiggling them and bent at the waist to re-tie the perfectly comfortable laces.
“Allow me,” he said, beating me to the punch.
Pearce crouched and tugged on one of the cords, wickedly prolonging something that should have taken less than a second.
Instead, he stared up at me, the corner of his lip twisting devilishly as it took him three.
His perfect teeth flashed in a grin, and—gods, have mercy on me—a dimple appeared in each of his cheeks.
All of a sudden, I found it hard to stand.
“Something the matter, Sinclair?” he purred. Actually purred—or as close to one as a human could produce.
The audacity of that question grounded me, however. He really thought he could affect me so wholly—and that in itself was enough to shatter his spell.
Once he was done tying a neat little bow with the laces on my left boot, I snatched my foot back and stepped around his still-crouching form. I barely managed to traverse half the length of the corridor when the hellion fell into step beside me.
“Leaving so soon?” His deep voice rumbled the question, igniting a furnace in places I’d done well so far to ignore in this place.
I knew better. But I was almost out of here, too. What harm could a little flirting do when there was less than a week before we’d each go our separate ways, never to be seen again?
“Don’t act like you’ll miss me, Sir.”
“I never miss, Adelaide.”
Without stopping to look, I raised a brow and started down the dark, winding staircase. “Oh yeah? They say you can hit your mark from two clicks out—is that true?”
He chuckled. “I see my reputation precedes me. Is that why everyone is so shit-scared to fuck up in my class? ‘Cause they’re afraid of me?”
I snorted, my nose wrinkling at his damned ego. “No, but they’re scared of being on the wrong end of a bullet.”
“Wise,” he quipped with a shrug. “It might be true, it might not. Care to find out?”
Glancing up at him when we reached the bottom of the stairwell, I couldn’t determine what his expression was trying to convey—or what angle he was working. But I’d be damned if I was going to miss out on a one-on-one with an Eagle a week before I joined their ranks.
“Sure, why not? Might as well get some practice in.”
He hummed in contemplation. “Somehow, I don’t think you need the practice, but I’m keen to see what you can really do—outside the confines of a rigid class structure.” The left side of his mouth tugged up into a smirk, and the urge to wipe it from his smug, pretty face rode me hard.
Great. And now I’m thinking of riding things hard.
“Penny for your thoughts, Adelaide?” he drawled knowingly.
“Penny for you to shut the fuck up?” I snarked back, my tone saccharine sweet.
He laughed again—a warm, honeyed kind of laugh—which did all kinds of things to my traitorous body.
I shoved past him, pushing through the exterior doors, and breathed a sigh of relief at the instant frost entering my lungs. The cold tempered my internal heat, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks, storming off in the direction of the armoury.
True to trend, it didn’t take long-legs more than a few seconds to catch up. He threw an arm around my back, steering me towards a different building altogether. One I’d never dared set foot in.
“This way,” he murmured. His gaze darted around the empty quadrangle, flitting up to peer into all the overlooking windows.
I really shouldn’t.
But I did anyway.
I let him guide me over to the apartment building adjoining the square—the one which housed all Academy faculty and administration.
I hadn’t given a thought as to where our instructors slept at night beyond knowing that it wasn’t in the same building as us.
But now… now I was confronted by the knowledge.
Pearce held the door open for me, and I slipped inside, my skin jittery with the understanding that I should not be in here.
It was improper and strictly disallowed.
But when he hooked his arm back around my waist and led me over to an elevator bank, how was I supposed to resist when curiosity was going to kill me otherwise?
Meow.
The elevator doors slid open with a high-pitched ding, and again, he held them while I passed through.
I guess chivalry isn’t dead yet—although I might be if someone catches sight of me in this building.
The thought of Beckett—or worse, Commander Varco—finding me in here was enough for my skin to break out in a cold sweat.
“I shouldn’t be in here,” I murmured, heart racing.
Pearce hit the button for the fourth floor as the doors closed, sealing us in.
“No one will be home right now—don’t stress.”
I stared at him, pulse thudding in my neck. “Oh, cool, don’t worry about being alone with an instructor in his apartment where he eats and sleeps and lives,” I babbled, much to his evident amusement.
The smirk plastered across his devilish face widened. “Don’t forget showers. I get naked in there, too.”
Fuck.
“That doesn’t help, you arrogant ass.”
“It might be arrogant, but you can’t deny it’s a nice boulder.”
“Ugh,” I breathed, completely at a loss. “Tell me you did not just use a Shrek reference about your own ass.”
Pearce snorted, spinning on his toes just as the doors dinged open again, giving me my first glimpse of the fourth floor—and that admittedly fine boulder—where he resided while on campus.
“Donkey, actually,” he corrected.
Flummoxed, I shoved past before he could hold the doors for a third time, muttering, “I don’t need you to hold doors open for me, Donkey.”
“Ignoring that horrendous nickname, of course you don’t, but my mother raised me to do so anyway.”
Wait—somebody around here actually had a functional mother? That was unexpected.
He stopped at the door marked 402, the only one on the right side of the hall, and reached up to pull a key down from the top of the frame. As he stretched, the hem of his shirt shifted, exposing a sliver of tanned skin.
I must have made some small noise, because his face snapped round to mine. He chuckled darkly, taking longer than strictly necessary to locate said key.
“Real original,” I said, more breathless than intended.
“My mother raised a gentleman, not a genius.” His perfect teeth flashed again before he turned to insert the key into the lock far more erotically than—
Stop thinking about insertion, Addie!
“Are you coming?” he asked, voice deliciously—and irritatingly—low. “In, I mean.”
“Nope. I think I’ll wait out here, thank you very much.”
His hand whipped out to grasp mine and drag me inside faster than I could react.
“Better to wait in here than out in the hallway where anyone could see you. Don’t want someone reporting you for pining outside our doorway.”
His wink could have sold a deal to the devil.
“Our?”
“Our.” He grinned again. “Beck, Van, and I share an apartment while on campus.” He paused to consider his words for a moment. “Actually, pretty much everywhere we go, we bunk together.”
For fuck’s sake, stop thinking about the three of them sharing a bed, Adelaide.
Still holding my hand, Pearce led the way through a distinctly masculine apartment.
It was comfortably furnished with a black leather couch and a cosy armchair in the living area to the right, and absolutely no splashes of colour or knick-knacks to speak of.
A rectangular mahogany table doubling as a desk was placed to the left of the entryway, with four mismatched wooden chairs beneath it, at odds with the table’s inherent grandeur.
Finally, the kitchen at the rear of the room was clinical, pristine, and white, housing a professional-level assortment of cookware.
Either they employed a personal chef—or at least one of the three liked to cook.
“This way,” he murmured, leading me through the open living space to a nondescript door off the left side of the kitchen. “This one’s mine.”
Unsurprisingly, he held it open for me—but I was stuck frozen on the threshold, unsure if I was willing to cross over into enemy territory so soon.
“Suit yourself.” He laughed, and waltzed in to retrieve a long, black, rectangular case from beneath the bed.