3 Conjuring by Amanda M. Lee

theatrical sid e. Still, something about this situation seemed off. Apparently Aric had grown bored with the topic, though. “So,” he said, running his hand up and down my arm enticingly. “I was thinking that maybe you’d let me take you to my place?”
    “Really?”
    “Why not?” Aric looked momentarily crestfallen.
    “Why don’t you just stay here?” I countered.
    Aric looked both intrigued and freaked out by the concept. “You want me to stay here? In the dorms? In a room you share with another chick? That’s going to seriously cut down on what I had in mind for you.”
    “Laura says she’s going to be gone at the computer lab unt il at least 2 a.m.,” I pointed out. “That’s plenty of time to do whatever freaky thing you have in mind.”
    Aric glanced at my bedroom thoughtfully. “I suppose i t wouldn’t be so terrible,” he said. “That bed is really small, though.”
    “You afraid you’re not going to fit in it?”
    “I’m afraid we’re not going to fit into it together,” Aric admitted. “Still, it could be cozy.”
    “So, you’ll stay?” I was surprised he was giving in so easily.
    “You had me at freaky,” Aric admitted.
    Kelsey sighed. “I’m sleeping with headphones on tonight.”
    Paris couldn’t help but smile. “I’m going back to my room. This is just dirty enough to make Brittany’s head implode.”
    Aric had lost interest in both of them, though. His g aze was fixed on me. “So, when you say freaky, just how freaky are we talking about?”
    I tried to keep the smile from my face, but I wasn’t ent irely successful. It was going to be an interesting night.

Ten
    “You might have been right about us not fitting into this bed together,” I grumbled the next morning, trying to shift so I wasn’t actually in danger of falling off the bed and onto the cold linoleum.
    “I slept fine,” Aric murmured sleepily, pulling me closer to his warm body as he attempted to drift back off to dreamland. “You didn’t?”
    “No, I did for most of the night. This bed is just a little narrow compared to yours.”
    Aric’s bare chest rumbled. “So, I’m guessing most of our sleepovers are going to be at my place from now on?”
    A thought suddenly occurred to me. “That’s why you a greed to stay,” I accused him. “You knew this would happen.”
    “I did live in the dorms at one time,” Aric replied. “I l earned this lesson a long time ago.”
    I elbowed Aric in his stomach sharply. “It’s probably not a good idea to talk about learning lessons from sharing a bed with other girls when you’re in bed with me,” I suggested.
    “Another lesson learned,” Aric teased, rolling ov er on top of me and pinning me beneath him. “I’m a fast learner.”
    He pressed his lips to mine and, just when I was sinki ng into the kiss, he pulled up short. He adjusted his body so he could look to the other side of the room before sighing in relief. I followed his gaze to Laura’s empty bed. “Laura didn’t come home last night?”
    “I guess not.” Aric climbed off of me and stood next to t he bed. I took the opportunity to enjoy the view, every hard-muscled angle of it. “You don’t think anything happened to her, do you?”
    I snapped back to reality – mostly – and stood be side him. “Maybe she came home and saw you were here and was too uncomfortable to sleep in here?” I suggested guiltily.
    Aric cocked his head to the right before shaking it. “I don’t think so.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I can hear Kelsey getting dressed in the othe r bedroom, and I think I would have heard if the front door opened in the middle of night.”
    “You can hear Kelsey getting dressed? Is that a werewolf thing?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “You can’t see her getting dressed, right?”
    “I’m a werewolf, not Superman.”
    “That’s not what you said last night.”
    “That’s not what you said last night,” Aric countered. It was a flirtatious moment, but neither of us had