“When you pass me by, though, it’ll give me something pretty to look at.”

“Not if I’m wearing pants. And hey, shouldn’t I be offended by that comment?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to break this to you, Parry, but blondes with perfect bodies and smart blue eyes don’t go anywhere in this world. You might as well get used to this sad truth right now.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Okay, what’s your story.”

“My third cousin told me the Twelfth Month Festival Ball is being held in your daddy’s ballroom. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“I heard that, too,” Anslam said without looking up from his phone.

Paradise glanced around. Boone and Novo couldn’t have heard a thing, and Axe was out of it. Lowering her voice, she said, “Peyton. You need to chill about stuff like that, remember?”

Her buddy cracked his knuckles. “Sorry. But we’re basically alone—and that’s some big shit. You want to go with me? Or can I come with you.” He gave her a winning smile. “That sounds dirty, doesn’t it.”

Paradise shot him a glare, but wasn’t offended in the slightest. “You’re a pig. And yes, please be my escort. I’m going to need you to help me get through the night.”

“I shall be a gentlemale and a scholar—well, at least for most of the evening. Maybe till two a.m. I’m going to get hammered, though. Just want to warn you up front. That’s the only way I’m going to make it to dawn.”

Paradise leaned across the aisle and put her palm out. “High five.”

As their hands smacked together, she thought, Thank you, baby Jesus, at least I’m going with a friend.

Chapter Twenty-three

Britney fucking Spears.

As Craeg sat in the rear of the classroom, all he could think of was that dumb-ass “Baby One More Time” video from a million years ago. He’d seen the damn thing only once, when an older, post-trans cousin of his had been watching it with a fascination he hadn’t understood. At the time, Craeg had wondered why the hell some idiot human school girl with a pair of braids, a pleated skirt, and half her belly hanging out would be on anyone’s radar.

Now? He so got it.

“…this detonator’s primer is lead azide, lead styphnate, and aluminum, and you want to place the compound here, about the base charge, which in this case is tetryl.” When Boone put his hand up, the Brother Tohrment nodded. “Yeah?”

“Are there other primary charges?”

“Good question. There’s dizodinitrophenol and also you can use mercury fulminate mixed with potassium chlorate. But we’re ASA in the Brotherhood.”

The lesson continued, with Tohr, as he’d told them to call him, walking them through Bomb Making 101—and Boone, the class hand popper, interrupting from time to time with yet another “good question.”

If the guy hadn’t been so tight at the hand-to-hand, and otherwise quiet and not a problem, you’d have pointed to him as the classhole.

Meanwhile, Craeg was doing the right brain/left brain polka and he guessed the creative/analytic bucket labels held up: The analytical side of him was plugged into the front of the room, with its long countertop of chemicals in various forms and containers, and its blackboard on which there were scribbles and diagrams.

The “creative” side, or “nasty man-whore repository of all things heeeeeeeeey-now,” kept pulling his eyes over to Paradise. She was sitting in front of him, at the table over on the right, and unlike him, she certainly didn’t appear anything other than strictly focused: she was leaning in, intent to the point of obsession on the information being given, taking notes on a pad.

Half of her hair was pulled back into a loose knot she’d tied with some kind of thick black elastic, and she was wearing the same loose white ji-like uniform they all were. But fucking A, she might as well have been in a string bikini with all those blond waves down around her shoulders and her breasts—

Stop it.

To fuck with that, his libido shot back.

Fantastic. Now he was distracted and arguing with himself. Any more data processing under his helmet and he was liable to have a skull meltdown of Three Mile proportions.

And what do you know, he went right back to staring at her.

The root of his problem, apart from the orgasms he’d had in the shower, was the nape of her neck.

That skin right there had to be as soft as the stuff on her foot.

Had to be.

Shifting in his seat, he surreptitiously dropped his hand under the table and rearranged himself. Damn it. He really had to reel this shit in.

And yet even as his stare went back to Tohr and the bomb talk, he had a fantasy of getting out of his chair, going up behind her, and running his lips across the pale stretch between her hairline and the collar of that loose white shirt—

“Craeg?”

“What?” he squeaked to Tohr. Clearing his voice, he tried again in a more manly tone. “I mean, what.”

“Come up here and walk us through all this.”

Craeg glanced down. And wondered exactly what kind of a tent show he was going to give everybody if he got to his feet. Big top. Three ring. Barnum & Bailey. Yup.

And then he felt Paradise look at him—and his cock kicked hard enough to make his hips jump.

Right. He was pretty sure that was not the kind of detonation the professor had in mind.

“Craeg?”

As an awkward pause ground things to a halt in the classroom, Paradise braced herself and glanced over her shoulder.