“Garrrrrr!” Elodie yelps. “It’s burning my eyes! It’s stinging my face! And it feels like a thousand little knives.”
I’m drenched, soaked to the point that my clothing is like a second skin. Elodie’s sweater clings to her shoulders, and her dress is now also like a second skin.
I leap up and offer my hand. Mine meets hers, and those bubbles go zipping and racing through my veins again. I look up to see if I just got electrocuted, but I haven’t heard any thunder again since the first loud rumble.
“Come on!” I have to yell over the ferocity of the rain.
Elodie’s fingers curl into mine. She hikes up her sodden dress, and together we run from the pool. I look back and see that the drops of rain are hammering the surface of the green scum, making little clear divots in the field of mossy substance. I shudder hard. My wet feet slap against the pavement as we run across the parking lot toward our room. I really hope Elodie wasn’t right about the pool having the itch. Is that really a thing? Maybe she was just fucking with me.
The rainwater is taking care of the green residue on my skin anyway.
By the time we’re standing in front of the door, and I’m fumbling with the room key, my feet are lean and clean. Well, maybe only somewhat clean, but at least they’re no longer green.
I finally get the door open, and we burst into the room. Then, we look at each other in shock. Elodie’s eyes rake over my face, taking in my plastered hair, my second skin of a T-shirt, and my soaked jeans. I, in turn, take in her soaked hair, the droplets on her eyelashes, her flushed skin, and her parted lips. My eyes flick lower, and I also realize just how incredible air conditioning and soaking clothes can be. When I realize I’m staring at her chest and the twin peaks of her hard nipples through the soaked fabric, I wrench my eyes away. But not before my dick leaps up and pelts the underside of my soaked jeans.
I quickly angle away. Good thing Jeffers jumps off the bed where he was snoozing and comes over for pets. “Good thing you already went out there for a pee,” I tell him, even though I know he loves getting soaked.
“Oh, he loves getting soaked.”
Elodie and I share the same thoughts a lot of the time.
Except right now. Because I’m sure that she’s not thinking about how my ass looks in my wet jeans or how my nipples are cutting at my T-shirt because I’m soaked, and it’s bloody cold in here. She’s surely not thinking how my wet clothes outline my form to perfection because she wouldn’t. She’s too honorable and decent for that.
Myself, on the other hand…I was. Honestly, I’ve never checked Elodie out like that before. This is another instance to add to the list of messed-up things that keep happening.
Maybe blaming the curse is taking the easy way out, but I do. Because it’s the only thing that makes sense. Elodie’s had the brooch since the night before last, and everything went wrong for me after. In the not-so-friendly thoughts department, I mean.
I don’t know if there’s a way to break the curse, but I need to find out ASAP because I can’t keep having these kinds of thoughts and reactions. It’s dirty and wrong, morally wrong. Wrong because Ell is my best friend. I know she’s right about us being friendly soulmates, but that’s not the kind the curse had in mind. Or my meddling granny, for that matter.
“S-shower,” Elodie stammers. “I’m going to take a shower to warm up. If you want to get changed, I’ll be in there for fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks.” I duck my head as she walks past, and I don’t look up until she’s safely in the bathroom.
Except even that backfires because when I hear the shower go on with a gurgle and a clang of pipes, I think about Elodie getting in naked, soaping herself up with the shitty motel soap, and shampooing and conditioning her long blonde hair.
Jeffers growls at me, low in his throat, as if he knows I need a stern talking to.
I set my hand on his head and ruffle his ears. “I’ll get it figured out,” I promise him. “There has to be a way to break the curse.”
If there is, Ash, Toren, and Kirian haven’t shared it with me yet. In fact, they’ve all fallen victim to it.
But they’re happy.
They’ve found their soulmates, and they’re happier than they’ve ever been. Ellis, Luna, and Lindy have completed their lives. Toren even has a kid. My cousins and brother are all now part of a family beyond the small group we had before. But they’re still fun, still them, and they’re living their best lives, or so they say.