Page 2 of Virgo Queen
Not on a school night.
Especially right before midterms.
But my dorm mates will seize any excuse for a party, and I’m First Girl on the Dean’s List. The resident, apple-polishing good girl.
In other words, a faculty favorite.
That’s why my classmates figured Mistress Agrippina (our rule-enforcing headmistress) would turn a blind eye.
I’ve never had a real birthday party before. My kind doesn’t celebrate them. So it feels really magical to be getting one now. Even if my birthday’s just an excuse for an unsanctioned party, I’m allowed to let myself enjoy it.
I’ll soak up every magical second of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Caught up in the floaty euphoria of sex pheromones and anticipation wafting up the stairs, I descend like I’m dreaming.
As I wobble my way down in my borrowed heels, the unruly cloud of carroty curls I can never seem to tame rises from my bare shoulders and starts to frizz and float in the psychic charge I’m generating.
Tonight’s the night, McSnicker,I tell myself like a mantra, trying in vain to tame my rebellious curls.It’s your twentieth birthday.It’s a real party. You’re at least gonna get a real kiss.
Because I refuse to count as real kisses those sloppy, totally underwhelming fumbles in the broom closet with Cletus, my equally awkward third cousin, when we were both a pimply fourteen.
All that distraction and commotion below, plus the reek of cheap beer and salsa,andthe need to concentrate on my rickety footing on these stairs, are all reasons why my typically acute secret senses fail me tonight.
Right when I need them most.
That’s when I blunder around the bend like the same complete social disaster I always am—
And walk straight into the two guys I’ve been crushing on for literally myentiresophomore year. Who are, themselves, making out on the stairs.
With each other.
I practically run into Draco Mars’ broad back before I pull up short with a thunderous gasp. My heart jams up against my lungs and hammers so hard it practically makes the whole house vibrate. Dizzy with the dark spice of Mogadon pheromones flooding the air and the adrenaline rush of my own endorphins, I grope blindly toward the wall for balance.
Draco’s Icelandic and he’s a big guy, like the tallest guy at Icarus (but his colossal build is only one of the reasons I’m crushing). However, I’m currently standing above him on the stairs. That vantage gives me a total view, past his pale blondhead and those muscled shoulders encased in a worn black tee that looks soft as suede, of myothercrush.
Jean-Emilien Labête, the Cajun, who goes by Jae.
The werewolf.
(Which I mean literally, because shifter.)
Ohmygosh.
I can’t even believe what I’m seeing.
Jae’s, like, going down on Draco. Right here on the school stairs!
No one else in the whole Academy even knows those two are together. Clearly, they’ve been keeping their whole thing secret.
But I’ve been watching these two particular guys like a creeper all semester, and it’s hard to hide stuff from someone like me, so I kinda guessed.
Due to the angle, I can’t see much past Draco’s powerful frame, beyond his big hands threaded through the mass of dreadlocks and beads and juju Jae likes to twist into his long black hair. I do have a direct view of Jae’s hungry hands, which are cupping Draco’s always impressive ass (an ass that’s even more impressive now, encased in black leather, than when he’s wearing his Academy uni). Jae’s fingers are kneading and his curvy black claws are out, sharp and deadly as box cutters. Which totally gives me a shiver that runs all the way down my spine to my tailbone.
Underneath my sparkly dress and virginal panties, a sudden flood of tingly heat almost makes me moan.
I suck in a lungful of air and reel under a head-spinning hit of juniper and bergamot—that’s Draco, he’s part of the Mogadon race, so it’s a genetic trait that he scents. Underneath that truckload of come-get-me biochemicals he’s pumping out, my enhanced senses pick up the dark green aroma of patchouli and moss and fertile New Orleans soil. The shifters scent too, andthat verdant spice is drifting from Jae’s sleek braids and amber skin.
Normal humans—even normal witches—wouldn’t hear a thing under the staccato grind of death metal rising from the basement.
