Page 38 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

“That we might shine as well.”

“This is a supremely impressive display of maturity, Courtney.”

The fire popped, sparks exploding. I yelped and fell back. The bark pizza roll platter teetered. Bryce fought to rebalance it. It swayed, almost fell, but then righted itself.

I let out a sigh of relief—

Eeeeeaaaaakkkkk!

A deafening, high-pitched screech split the night, followed by the bone-chilling beat of dragon wings. Wind swept my hair back. A dark blur shadowed the corner of my eye. Then rows of wicked teeth filled my vision.

“Watch out!” I yelled, ducking.

The dragon dove for us, its wings snapping open at the last second. One claw grazed my cheekbone, barely a brush, not even hard enough to scratch. Its wing clipped Bryce, throwing him off balance.

I glanced up, but the dragon was already soaring toward the horizon, its chilling scream fading away.

I looked down in time to see the pizza roll platter tipping in slow motion.

“Nooooo!” I reached a trembling hand.

One square pillow of goodness after another plopped into the white-hot coals. Logs popped, sending embers prickling across my skin. The fire flared high as it consumed our dinner.

Anger fueled by hunger burned in my gut. I pushed myself off the ground and flailed around for my weapons. Finding a knife, I ran a few steps farther into the field, scanning the sky. “Come back here, you overgrown arthropod!”

“We missed our chance, Courtney,” Bryce said. “It’s gone.”

A stress migraine throbbed behind my eyeballs. “So are the pizza rolls.” That fact shouldn’t have felt critical after the reappearance of the dragon, but I hadn’t eaten in hours, and my temper had ignited faster than my dinner had. “We’re going to starve.”

“I’ll get right on that next time.” Bryce scrambled to his feet. “Saving pizza rolls from giant flying spiders will be my number one priority.”

“Well, you certainly weren’t busy chasing the dragon.”

“At least I bothered to make food in the first place.”

I marched up to him. “I haven’t asked you to do any of the things you’ve done for me. I never wanted you to bother .”

“No, your stomach demanded it.” Bryce waved his hands over his head, his shadow stretching behind him like one of those red dancing men found outside sketchy car dealerships.

“What does that even mean?” I asked, temper and voice rising.

“Oh, you knew what you were doing.” His lip curled.

“Standing there looking all innocent in the wildflowers while your stomach growled and growled and growled .” Bryce let out a growl of his own, running a hand through his hair until the wild orange strands springing around his head resembled the still-growing fire.

“You think I can control my stomach growls ?” I practically screamed.

“God, you’re annoying!”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Your voice gets scratchy when you yell, and it’s really hot!” he yelled, a vein standing out on his forehead.

A strange mix of desire and white-hot anger shot up my spine. When he yelled, his voice got all throaty and rough, and it. Was. Really. Hot.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “You make me so angry with your stupid shirts that you never wear and your annoying five-o’clock shadow.”

“How is that annoying?” he bellowed.

“Because it’s impractical! I bet it takes you more effort to look like you don’t care than if you actually didn’t care.”

“If I actually didn’t care, then I’d look like you, and what a nightmare that would be!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you !”

We panted and glared. Fire and heat raged between us.

Oh. No.

Actual fire raged between us.

The flames roared as tall as us, wild and out of control. Somewhere, in another universe, Smokey Bear cried. Argument forgotten, we stared at the pillar of flames as it raged taller. Strangely, it didn’t spread much, only mounted higher and higher, lighting the entire field in flat, white light.

“Either dragon fire is the trick candles of the fantasy world, or pizza rolls are more flammable than I thought,” I said.

“Amy is going to be so pissed if we burn down the sacred field,” said Bryce.

“There’s no if ,” I said, backing away from the flames. “The sacred field is toast.”

“I like toast.” Bryce’s arms dangled pathetically as he looked up at the flames.

“You know,” I remarked after a minute of watching the sparks dance overhead, “if you die here tonight, consumed by the pizza roll fire, nobody back home will ever find your body.”

Bryce turned on me. “Did you know that every time you wish me dead, you look at my mouth?”

“I do not.” I looked at his mouth, and an ache tightened between my thighs.

He wet his lips. “You can pretend you’re frustrated about the pizza rolls, but we both know—”

“Don’t speak of the pizza rolls,” I hissed. “It is too soon .”

“Oh no.” His eyes widened. “The condoms.”

I gasped. “The condoms.”

United once more, we charged into the flames, gathering as many stray condoms as we could.

As the heat licked around my skin, all I could think about was each foil wrapper and what it represented.

Each one a symbol of what could be. The burning within me transformed as the world burned around me.

I met Bryce’s eyes, lit by the inferno. I didn’t know what the burning transformed into , only that it made me want to sacrifice my eyelashes to gather as many condoms as I could.

Which meant a lot. Because getting my eyelashes done took up a substantial portion of my minimum-wage budget.

At last, when we could bear it no longer, we tore away from the fire. We burst into the forest, breathing very hard for two people who had just run very little.

Gasping, I looked from the strands of condoms in my arms to Bryce’s face.

Chest heaving, he nodded, dropping everything he held. With a giant, determined fuck it written all over his face, he stepped over all the crap littering the ground and strode forward until he stood right before me, toe-to-toe.

“Don’t stop shaving to try to look like you haven’t shaved,” I said, weirdly choked up—maybe from the smoke, maybe not. “You look ridiculous how you are, but you’d look worse any other way.”

His eyes were glassy, no doubt stinging from smoke like mine. “I don’t shave at all,” he said simply with a little shrug, like we were sharing a deeply intimate moment of revelation. “This is legitimately all I can grow.”

My breath hitched. “Oh.”

Holding my gaze, he slipped a strand of condoms from my fingers, tearing one off and tossing the rest behind him. “I want you. Now. Against a tree,” he said hoarsely. “Or something.”

“Uh-huh,” I squeaked out because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than Bryce pinning me against a tree and spreading my legs. Not even pizza rolls.

Everything tumbled from my arms. The distance between us vanished. Bryce’s hands found my waist, pressed, urged. Back, back, back. My heels scrambled over roots. Before I could decide if I was falling, my shoulders crashed into a wide, smooth tree trunk.

He hesitated, palms pressed to the bark on either side of me. I saw the question in his eyes. When he tried to voice it, he only managed a whispered “Please.”

I nodded, and he collapsed against me, his mouth finding my neck, all hot breath, gentle teeth, and urgent lips.

He didn’t ask to kiss my mouth, and I was glad he didn’t push it.

I clutched my fingers around his arms as he grabbed my hips, sliding his hands low to pull me against him.

My blood ran heavy in my limbs. My head spun.

I might’ve been asphyxiating, not entirely because of Bryce’s charms, but also due to the fact I’d never caught my breath, and I was very out of shape.

His lips found the space where my ear met my jaw, mouth caressing my skin. While heat from the raging inferno out in the field wafted over my skin, a different sort of heat ravaged my insides. Molten rivers of desire flooded my veins.

His thigh slotted between my legs, and he pressed against me, hard.

A muffled sigh escaped my lips. I slipped my hands under his shirt, around his back, drawing him closer, closer, closer.

I tried not to moan as he rocked against me.

It rubbed me the wrong way, him knowing how much I liked it when he rubbed me the right way.

It felt like giving him the upper hand in an unspoken power struggle.

Regaining my footing, I brushed my hand over his hip, found his belt. My fingers fumbled. Reaching down, he helped me, and metal clinked as the buckle unfastened.

A tremor ran through his fingers, and I paused. “Good?” I whispered.

When he nodded, I slipped my hand past his loosened waistband.

Eyes shuttering, he moved against my palm.

The only evidence of pleasure he displayed was a barely audible groan stifled by tight-pressed lips and a knotted jaw, but it was enough.

Enough to validate my own burning want. Resting his forehead against mine, he watched me with glazed eyes, his breaths matching the rhythm of my hand.

He explored the bodice of my dress, thumbs trailing over my nipples and sending a tug of desire down to my core.

His lips skimmed across my cheek, breath warm where it ruffled the hair at my temple.

I arched against him as he teased me through my bodice, letting a gasp slide free of my lips, and at last, he smiled.

Movements growing urgent, his fingers tangled with ties and fabric.

“Fuck these damn laces,” Bryce growled, as though laces had been his personal vexation his entire life.

“Do the bodice-ripper thing,” I urged in a breathless rush. “Rip it.”

For a second, Bryce looked at me with the wonder of a man who’d been handed keys to a Ferrari. Then he gripped the top of my dress with his fists and pulled. And pulled again. “It won’t tear.”

Scrunching my neck, I looked down. “Have you tried trying harder?”

“Wow, stellar advice.” His voice rose.

“I’m sorry!”

“Stop yelling at me, you dick.”

“I’m not yelling; I’m encouraging,” I yelled, coiling my fingers in his shirt and yanking him against me. “Forget it.”

I redirected his hands to more accessible locations, and we became a blur of hands under hems, fingers over skin.

There was an intense moment where my heavy skirt threatened to best our frenzied fingers.

Bryce dug through yards and yards of fabric, and the sight of his frustration made me suppress a laugh.

Then his hands were on me, skin against skin, brushing over my hips, nudging my thighs apart, and my laugh turned into a sigh.

He hiked my leg to his hip, hooking my ankle around his waist. An ache, heavy and empty all at once, swelled between my legs.

He slid his hand between us, thumb finding the spot that needed him, fingers filling the emptiness until I clutched his shoulders and arched against the tree.

I ground against the heel of his hand as his fingers massaged a place deep inside me that made my vision tunnel.

My breaths quickened as pressure built. My limbs trembled, then trembled again, harder .

A low rumble filled my ears.

If Bryce turned out to be my most earth-shattering sexual encounter, I’d be shook.

My whole body shook.

CRACK! The sound split the night.

Bryce flinched, dropping my leg. My eyes flew open.

The ground rattled beneath our feet.

“Oh,” I said, “that makes more sense. It’s just an earthquake, not your sexual skills.”

“ Just an earthquake?”

A second gut-wrenching crack thundered across the field. I stumbled away from the tree, staring out into the clearing. The earth churned as though it had transformed into a raging ocean, sucking grass and wildflowers into its earthy folds.

Bryce began gathering condoms.

I straightened my skirt and helped, scooping up everything I could. Because when the earth splits open, the first thing on everyone’s mind is save the condoms .

I found my senses somewhere under the subsiding sexual sensations ebbing from my body. “Let’s get out of here.” The ground rattled, and I stumbled, catching myself on a branch.

The dirt boiled under my foot. I tried to back away, but more earth gave way beneath me. Clods of soil bubbled up, revealing pale flashes of bone, lit by the blazing field.

A skeletal hand burst from the dirt and wrapped around my ankle.

I screamed.

Bryce looped an arm around my waist and pulled, but the cold bones tightened, squeezing sharp pain into my ankle.

The dirt churned, and a smiling skull rose to the surface, soil trickling from its eye sockets like tears. Another scream ripped from my throat. I clutched the condoms to my chest like a security blanket, pulling helplessly at my ensnared foot.

Bryce stepped around me and stomped hard on the skull, driving it back under the dirt. “Back to Hell, asshole.” He stomped again, heel connecting with the skeletal wrist, bones crunching under his boot.

The fingers released, and I flew backward.

Bryce steadied me until I found my footing. I looked toward the field and caught one glimpse of a skeletal army clawing its way from the earth, silhouetted in the flames of the unnatural pizza roll fire that should have long ago burned out.

Then Bryce was yelling in my ear, “Run!”