I need to hide that fear deep down inside me.
I square my shoulders and keep going.
The walls are brick and the entrance has a nice little bullet proof glass window for someone to sit at, but the post is empty. My attention lingers on the dirty glass and the farther into the building we go the stranger the vibes get.
“The city donated this building when the Academy first opened in the eighteen hundreds,” my guide explains. Vaguely.
“What was it before?”
“A prison.”
Wow. Dormitory Juvie just keeps getting better and better.
“The cells have been remodeled. Bricked over. They really wasted no expense as you can see.”
“Clearly.” I cringe when I leap over a dead rat in the middle of the black tile hall. I find a fearless pace again and pretend like I didn’t just squirm because of a dead animal.
Fearless. I am fearless here.
The first friend I stumble upon in my new exciting life as a college woman, is a girl with long, white blonde hair. That’s it. I can’t make out her features because the man who’s pressing her into the wall is... eating—kissing?—her face off. In his haste, his fingers fumble with the belt buckle between them and just before he pushes down his jeans I rush after my guide.
Hall sex? Seems kind of rude to do it in front of the innocent rat corpse. And gross.
A shiver shakes through my shoulders and I force myself not to glance back as growls and moans echo down the hall after us. Luckily, we start climbing a set of narrow stairs and it muffles their sounds, for the most part.
Sort of.
Higher and higher we climb.
When we come to a platform, a door with a square window to peek through is to our right, but we keep on trailing up the stair well.
“We’re at the top. Late admissions get stuck on the fifth floor.” He says it without glancing over his crisp white-gold wings.
The higher we climb, the hotter the air gets. It’s so hot, that by the time we reach the door at the top of the stairs, I’m sweating. My long black hair sticks to the side of my face and I take small, secret gasps of air like I’m not ridiculously out of shape and completely pathetic.
Angel boy glances back at me, as perfect as if heaven just sent him down on a soft kiss.
The magical asshole.
He smirks at me before holding the door open, letting me pass and slowly trailing after me.
“Which room’s yours?” he asks quietly.
I peer back at him and his attention is slow to pull from the low place he was just studying on my body.
“Were you just looking at my ass?”
There’s that sinful smile again.
“Not at all.”
Can angels lie? I wait for him to burst into flames for his sins but it never happens.
So either he’s an honest man.
Or he’s not a fucking angel.
Definitely that second one.
I glare at his crooked smile for several seconds before cutting my attention away from him. I don’t answer him as I stalk away. When I reach 503, I turn the silver handle. The door opens with a burst of hot air that was pent up inside.
Before I slip in, his voice calls out to me.
“Not even a thank you?” His words whisper over the back of my neck and I find him right there, nearly touching me, but not.
He’s fast. But what is he?
“Thank you,” I clip out.
“What’s your name, Prodless?”
Prodless. I have a Prod, thank you very much... I just don’t know what the fuck it is yet.
“Izara Castillo, call me Izzy.”
The inky depths of his eyes flare to life, like they hide fire somewhere in the darkest part of him.
“Iz-za-raah,” he enunciates each syllable of my name like a purr. A deep, seductive sigh that I feel down to my toes.
My name. Has never. Sounded so. Sexy.
The pink of my tongue slides over my lips and he follows that move, his attention lingering on my mouth for so long that I can’t even pull my own gaze away from him.
“Castillo,” a deep rumbling voice says in perfect pronunciation. My name is spoken in slow, sexy flicks and rolls of his tongue. The sound of it circles my mind over and over again.
Everyone is really into my name right now and Juvie is finally looking like a place I want to be.
As for my jaw? It’s on the floor. I don’t need it. Talking’s overrated anyway.
The one who spoke my name in a perfect Spanish accent leans shirtless on the far wall within the room, the open window blowing a slight cool breeze into his messy dark hair. Line after line carves his chest into a solid form of strength, his abdomen holding taut lines that ladder down to a deep vee at his hips. Eyes as warm as sunlight sink into me with that penetrating stare of his.
Holy sexy supernatural.
A comparison of Sam and Dean Winchester only flickers through my dirty mind for a single second.
Another man with dark hair lies on a top bunk against the wall on the right side of the room, his elbows holding him up as he stares down at me with the brightest blue eyes. His smile spreads slowly across his face like the devil gazing upon sin in the middle of a sermon.
It’s unnerving.
And finally, my attention drifts to a man sitting on the bottom bunk on the opposite wall, his bare leg lifted, his arm slung over it in the most careless way. Fiery red hair hangs in his glaring green eyes. He’s naked aside from a snug pair of black briefs.
Thank god for boxer briefs and the massive bulges they refuse to conceal. The gift that keeps on giving.
I still haven’t spoken. I might not remember what words are at the moment.
Who needs words when three perfectly sculpted men are staring at you like you’re the person they’ve been waiting for their entire life?
“Shut the fucking door, you’re letting all our cold air out,” the hot ginger, with the apparently hot attitude, growls at me. Literally growls.
Maybe it’s not me but someone else he’s waiting on.
And then reality sinks back in to me.
“Wait,” I call after my heavenly guide, turning to him because this is all a very obvious mistake.
“Syko. My name’s Syko, in case you were dying to know.”
I narrow my eyes on him.
“Syko?” I spit the word out. “Syko? I let some guy named Syko lead me into a dark condemned building and trusted him not to murder me.”
“You trusted me with a lot more than that, let’s be honest.” I hate that smile on his lips right now.
“Syko,” I curl my lips at that name. “Why are there three men in my dorm room?”
I’m not the type to complain when gifts are given, but this is clearly a mistake.
The carving smile on his lips lifts even higher, very devilish for a man who may or may not be heaven sent. He walks backward, letting the wide hall span between us before turning the handle to the door directly across from mine. “Overcrowding. They don’t put a lot of effort into us first years. Half of us will be gone before the second semester even starts. You can change rooms then. Second years are more strict. Females in the left wing, males in the right. Until then, you tell me if any of your new friends fuck with you.” Syko slices his attention to the men standing behind me.
Syko. I’m supposed to go running to a man named Syko if anyone scares me.
What the fuck is wrong with this place?