Page 8 of Caelum

SEVEN

FRAZER

“Did you see her?”

I snorted. “How could I miss her?” Not only was she the new student in school, but she was two months late for the beginning of the year, and to top it all off, was the exact opposite of our females.

Creatures were slender and lithe. The new girl wasn’t. But I wouldn’t deny that the contrast wasn’t as much of a turn off as I’d have expected.

She had more tits and ass than any one woman should know what to do with, and that was for damn sure.

Reed shrugged. “Thought if you had then you’d have lured her away from the dark side.”

I had to laugh. “Yes, Luke, she needs to be saved.” When he grinned at me, I told him, “They’re not all bad.”

His grin faded into a grunt. “They’re like fucking fleas. Once they’re on you, they won’t get off.”

He wasn’t wrong. Stefan and his Pack had serious attitude problems. They liked to think we were in their faces all the time because we came from rich countries while their backgrounds were the opposite, but money didn’t make you any less of a dick.

Nestor and Eren weren’t too bad. They were actually decent, but Stefan and Dre were constantly hormonal.

I wasn’t sure what their problem was, but whatever… Dre, for all his attitude, had suffered for his arrogance in the ring a few days ago. Reed ha d pounded him into a whole other world of pain, and I’d been cheering him on.

“She look lost to you?” Reed asked, breaking into my thoughts.

“We’re all lost at the start,” I excused, watching the new girl, Eve, as she stared up at the TV on the wall like it was a safe she needed to crack open.

If it weren’t for the intelligence in her eyes, I’d seriously think there was something wrong with her. And I really felt bad for thinking that, considering for most of my life, people had thought there was something seriously wrong with me too. If I heard any more ‘he’s a cookie short of a full jar’ references, I’d probably lose my fucking shit, but Eve? There was definitely something weird about her.

She stared at TVs like Reed stared at the chocolate muffins in the cafeteria. Half like they were his reason for living, and half ‘why do you make me eat you when Coach has told me to cut back?’

As I watched her press the frame of the TV, I cleared my throat. “Is she looking for buttons?”

“I think so.” Reed tilted to the side, and I knew exactly where he was looking—ten guesses that it wasn’t the TV.

“Her ass is fine,” I admitted.

“Fine?” He grunted. “You need to check the dictionary for a definition on that word. I bet it bounces when you fuc?—”

“She’s too innocent. Any dope can see that,” I interrupted, but my cock did harden at the image that shimmered into being at his words.

It would totally bounce and would undoubtedly be a perfect handful for grabbing and tugging her back onto my dick.

I shifted in my seat, faintly embarrassed to be sporting wood over a few dirty thoughts. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was almost twenty. Jesus, you’d think I’d have more control over my cock by now.

“Innocent or slow?” Reed whispered, and I elbowed him in the side.

“Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not. You didn’t see her yesterday trying to figure out the e-readers. I mean, seriously, one button and it turns on, bro. It’s not hard.”

My lips curved. “No, but I did see her clothes when she came in. She’s obviously from somewhere…” I grimaced. “Like a cult or something. That outfit was pure The Handmaid’s Tale without the red cape.”

“No, just a brown one.” He shuddered. “Sticky beak alert, but…”

“But?” I asked, cocking a brow at him. It wasn’t often his Australianisms came out, but when they did, it always made me want to laugh.

“What’s Stefan’s game?”

“He wants into her panties,” I hazarded a guess .

“Yeah, of course, but there’s more. He almost bitch-slapped James the other day for checking out her ass.” He snorted. “In fact, look over and you’ll see we’re being graced with his attention too.”

I cut Stefan a look and saw Reed was right. We had one side of the common room and they held state at the other. Since we were the two Packs who were constantly fighting shit out, trying to best each other to get to the top of the class, it fit that we had our eyes on each other during downtime.

And Stefan’s ire was definitely more than just territorial…

I could see why Reed was so curious.

Stefan had banged most of the girls in our year without forming any attachments. But the new girl? The chick who didn’t know how to turn on a TV? No, he was pissing on her like a dog would his yard.

I watched as Eren got to his feet and approached Eve. He showed her the remote and pushed the big red button. She jerked back when the sound came on, and I had to snort at the look on her face when the first scene that came on was a knife going through someone’s belly.

She staggered back like she’d been hit herself, and though the screen was 3D, it wasn’t that good.

Her mouth dropped open as she composed herself, then she reached up and touched the screen.

“Is she an alien?” Reed whispered, making me laugh. The noise jerked her from her study, and when she saw we were watching her, her cheeks burned a bright red and she scurried away from the screen and over to the sofa where Stefan and his buddies were slouching, sans Dre since he was still recovering from the beating Reed gave him.

Stefan shot me a dirty look for embarrassing her, but I hadn’t particularly meant to.

His crew thought I was a dick, but I actually wasn’t. Sure, like any guy I had my moments, but they thought I was a twenty-four-carat jerk. When, at most, I was fourteen-carat.

“She has to be from Mars.”

“Or from some backwater town that didn’t stop a cult?” I cocked a brow at him. “It’s obviously the first time she’s seen that kind of tech.”

“You think?” he jeered, rolling his eyes. “Took your genius to figure that one out, Fraze.” Before I could do more than grin, he murmured, “But that’s what doesn’t fit. Stefan is out for what he can get. You know that. He wants to be the Alpha and picking up a girl like that doesn’t fit in with that plan.”

Reed wasn’t wrong, but then the dick rarely was. He might have been the brawn in our Pack, but he had brains too .

I sank back into the thick leather sofa and let it comfort me as I thought about Stefan’s end game.

In a world where the human’s concept of zombies existed, people like me, Reed, Stefan, and his cronies were the future enforcers who’d stop them from taking over.

We didn’t call them zombies though. They were Ghouls. And they were our kind turned bad, and that was how we knew when to destroy them.

Caelum churned out units like mine and Stefan’s, elite forces that were trained to destroy Ghouls and the nests they inhabited. We had our own inbuilt ranking system, one that set us up for bigger jobs in the future, and that was what our two Packs were constantly bickering over.

The place as top dog.

Unfortunately, Samuel’s soul had been fucking with him lately. We knew he was going to present as a Vampire, but for whatever reason, it had been making him sick on those days.

Wouldn’t you know it, those days were the ones where we needed him to fight? Needed him to be at his best?

There was no point bitching about it though. This shit happened. We weren’t all perfectly formed, and our souls could make fools of us at their whim.

And they often did.

It was why Sammy was in the sickbay now. His Vampire had decided that refusing to feed was a good thing to do, so he was having a transfusion instead.

“Yeah, it makes no sense,” I confirmed after thinking about it for a few more minutes. “Stefan didn’t let Becky get her clutches into him, even though she’d have been a smart choice considering how often she’s sucking Dre’s dick and wants on his, plus she’s a good little fighter…”

“Yeah, so totally makes no sense.” He pursed his lips. “Should we keep an eye on her?”

I shrugged. “Would do us no harm.”

Reed cut me a look. “You want to tap that ass?”

Laughing, I shot him a grin. “What guy here doesn’t?”

Even though she was like ET in some regards, she was beautiful and that more than made up for her inability to switch on devices. With her dark hair that she wore in a bun, and a face that would make angels cry with dark honey-colored eyes, rounded cheeks that were usually pink from her shyness, and a mouth with a pronounced Cupid’s bow that had me thinking of BJs all the time, she looked like a woman who belonged in a classical painting. Not the ugly ones either. The hot ones. She had the same body too. Bit plumper, maybe, but I didn’t have a definitive on that one.

I could see some of her body thanks to her yoga pants—thank God for yoga pants—but she wore men’s shirts that covered her top half. Well, she thought they did. Somehow, they just made her tits look even bigger.

Nestor’s laughter grabbed my attention, and I realized he was showing her something on his phone. Her fingers were tracing the screen like it was magic, and I couldn’t deny that my cock ached to feel that touch too. Every part of me wanted to show her my own specific brand of magic.

Ha.

Corny? Maybe.

True? Definitely.

My lips curved as I turned to Reed and said, “First one to tap her?—”

He held up a hand. “Bets can only be discussed when Sammy’s around.”

“He likes her too?” That surprised me. Sam had a thing about blonde-haired girls, not dark ones.

“He has a cock, doesn’t he?”

Sheepishly, I nodded, but Eve was that kind of woman.

She’d turn any man’s head, and even though we were a thousand times more than just ‘men,’ we were no different where it counted.