Page 24 of Scorpio Dragon

As far as she was concerned, the aura she’d seen belonged to both of them.

Chapter 20 - Archer

Archer woke with a start, the smell of fresh grass in his nose and a strange warmth on his back. His face was pressed against the cool, damp earth, and when he blinked his eyes open he saw that he was lying in a flattened circle of grass, still wet with morning dew. This had happened before. He waited for the memories of the previous evening to catch up with him—it certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d partied so hard he’d passed out under the stars. He sat up gingerly, waiting for the throb of the inevitable hangover to hit him, but though his eyes were still bleary with sleep, he felt surprisingly good.

He feltgreat, actually. Archer rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms above his head, blinked thoughtfully at the bright, cloudless blue sky above him. It was only then that he realized he was stark naked. With a jolt, he scanned his surroundings, relieved to see his clothes from the night before laid neatly out on a rock nearby, stretched out to dry in the sun. Archer hurried to dress himself, worried someone would stumble upon him before he was decent. It wasn’t until he tried to button his shirt up that the memory of the previous evening hit him in full.

“Morgan?” He almost shouted her name, spinning around to seek her out, knowing already that the clifftop was empty. When had she left? Her clothes were gone, as was the telescope. It must have been her who’d spread his clothes out to dry like this. It wasn’t like he’d had any room in his thoughts for such practicalities last night… a flush rose to his cheeks unbidden as he ran his fingers over the places on his shirt where the buttons had been. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to worry too much about the damage to his clothing.

Archer walked down the winding forest path back towards the school, feeling like he was walking through a dream. The sun was warm already, though he could tell it was still early. Had she gotten up at dawn, then? Why hadn’t she woken him? He frowned, trying to shake himself into thinking more clearly. Whywouldshe have woken him? She hated him. Was it possible that he’d dreamed the whole encounter last night? The memories were incredibly vivid, but the woman he’d made love to as the storm raged around them… he was having difficulty reconciling her with the stern, icy Morgan he’d become familiar with over the last few weeks.

His roommates were eating breakfast when he got in, and he managed an absent-minded grin at the celebratory whoops with which they greeted him. They knew better than to ask where he’d been, at this point. He’d made a point of mentioning the various women of interest he’d noticed around the university over the last few weeks, wanting to distract the guys from those false rumors that he and Morgan had slept together. It seemed to have worked. None of them had so much as mentioned her lately.

When Archer got to the bathroom, he knew for sure that he hadn’t imagined the night before. There was the faint shadow of a bruise on his neck, exactly where he could remember her demanding lips falling… and when he turned to examine his back, he could see narrow red marks where her nails had raked down his shoulders. A shiver of delight ran through him, tempered by something that felt a lot more like terror. It had really happened, then. They’d made love out there as the storm had raged.

What didthatmean? He’d just been getting a handle on the new dynamic to their relationship—the barbs, the banter, the quiet acceptance on his part that she was smarter than him and he was always going to lose their clashes in the long run. He had no idea what to do with this new dimension. He’d never slept with someone who hated him before. A bit of playful teasing, maybe, in the pursuit, and more than a few women had turned cold when they’d realized he wasn’t interested in anything more than a fling with them, but this situation with Morgan was brand new territory.

Was that why it had been so good? He couldn’t get his mind off her all morning, as much as he tried to distract himself with his classes. He’d always liked sex well enough, but last night—that had been something altogether new. The way her hands had felt on his body, the way kissing her had knocked all conscious thoughts right out of his head… being with her had made him feel like a wild animal. And what was worse, he already wanted more. That alone was unusual for him. Usually once he’d bedded a woman, he lost interest in any further sexual contact. It was the chase that was exciting, and once the chase was done, so was he. But right now, all he could think about was seeing Morgan again that afternoon for their astronomy class. Even a glimpse of her in the hallways would be enough… the flash of her green eyes, a snarky little comment thrown his way if he was lucky. He got to class early and took his seat, heart pounding hard in his chest.

“Get it together,” he muttered under his breath, earning a confused glance from the guy sitting in front of him. But he didn’t care—because he’d just seen Morgan come through the door. Her dark red hair was neatly braided again and she’d changed her clothes, but when her green eyes met his, he felt electricity crackle down his spine and he knew in his bones that she was feeling it, too.

She didn’t say a word to him for the rest of the class, and to his dismay Rowton didn’t get around to giving them any class time to discuss their project. Should he leave her alone, he wondered? Maybe she was angry with him. Maybe she regretted what had happened the night before. Maybe he should go to professor Rowton right now and offer him his entire inheritance to change the partners for the project—

“I’ve got your astronomy book.”

Her voice shocked him out of a thought spiral, and Archer realized that the class had been dismissed. Morgan was standing by his desk, tapping a foot impatiently against the floor.

“Sorry?”

“Your book. It was with mine last night, and I grabbed it when I was packing up the telescope.”

“Oh.” He blinked down at the books on his desk, realizing belatedly he’d taken all of his notes in a book from another class. He really wasn’t firing on all cylinders today, huh? “Right. Okay. That—sure. Yes.”

“See?” Morgan said, glancing over her shoulder at the friend who was waiting for her. “This is the kind of scintillating conversation all the girls go wild for. You see why he’s the most eligible bachelor on campus.”

“Oh, yes. I can barely restrain myself,” Morgan’s friend said, her eyes dancing with amusement. The two of them giggled. On any other day, Archer would be concerned that Morgan’s hobby of making fun of him seemed to be spreading. Right now, though, he was so grateful that she was still willing to be in the same room as him that he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Did you want to bring it to the Great Hall tonight?”

“I’m not lugging your stupid books around,” Morgan snapped, lifting an eyebrow. “You can come get it.” She handed him a scrap of paper with her dorm number on it. “Afterdinner, not before.”

Archer did his best to pretend, as the afternoon wore into evening, that he wasn’t obsessing over the prospect of going to Morgan’s room that night. He got back to his dorm after class, put his books away, took a shower, then checked the clock. Dinner wasn’t for another two hours. What was he going to do for two hours? Time had never crept past so slowly. He was running out of homework to distract himself with. Finally, he decided to get a head start on readings for a few of his classes for the following week, feeling like the world’s biggest nerd. Dinner was out of the question. He’d never felt less hungry in his life.

He waited until he heard his housemates coming in from dinner, then took a deep breath and looked himself in the eye in the mirror. He’d already spent far too long agonizing over his outfit, over what he should say when he saw her, over whether he should mention what had happened last night, the reason their books had been forgotten… right now, he just had to go before he lost his nerve completely.

Her housemates were there when he arrived, of course, three of them sitting in a tangle of limbs on the couch and pinning him with three identical, inscrutable stares that told him in no uncertain terms that he was pushing it by even daring to make his presence known. Morgan had met him at the door, her green eyes opaque as always, and she gestured him through the living room and down the hallway towards her room with a jerk of her head. He gave the women on the couch a little nod that he hoped toed the line between friendly and respectful, only to wince as he heard them collapse into a fit of giggles as soon as he’d left the room.

Morgan’s bedroom was as he’d imagined it. Some students liked to decorate their spaces, bringing all kinds of ornaments and creature comforts from home, but Morgan’s personal touches were limited and practical—her jacket over the back of the chair at her desk, a few books by the bed with unfamiliar binding that must have come from elsewhere. She moved over to the desk and he hovered in the doorway, feeling like he’d already overstepped just by looking around her bedroom. Morgan turned back to him with his astronomy book in her hands and rolled her eyes when she saw him lingering in the doorway.

“Come in if you’re coming in,” she said, and something in her voice sent a shiver down his spine. You’re imagining it, he told himself sternly… but it didn’t stop him from stepping forward obediently. She closed the space between them with his book in her hands, but when she reached him, he blinked as she reached past him to pull the door closed behind him. Wishful thinking, he told himself as his heartbeat skyrocketed. She’s screwing with you, dude. Don’t fall for it. He reached out to take the book, forcing his breathing to stay level, forcing himself to hold her gaze. Why did she have to be so frustratingly hard to read?

She didn’t let go of the book. He tugged at it again, glancing down at it with a frown… and when he looked back at her, the edges of her lips had curled up into a wicked smile that shot straight through him.

The book hit the floor with a dull thud that Archer didn’t hear over the roaring in his ears as Morgan flattened him against her bedroom door and kissed him with the force of a tidal wave.

Chapter 21 - Morgan

It must have been close to midnight when they were finally more or less sated with each other, and though part of Morgan was tempted to ask him to stay, she forced that part of herself down firmly. There was no way she was risking her roommates encountering him the next morning over breakfast. She’d never hear the end of it, from her friends or from Archer. So after their final, exhausted, lingering kiss, she sat up a little in bed. For someone who spent so much time affecting indifference, he was well-attuned to social cues. Morgan hid a smile as he slid out of bed and began the work of gathering his clothing from the far corners of her room where they’d been thrown. Such a shame, watching that body disappearing under the cruel layers of fabric… she drank in as much of him as she could, flushing a little as she noticed she’d added even more marks to his back.

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