Page 76 of Love Bites

At the first sign of Damian’s motion, I pushed my magic to the surface, focused completely on drawing him in.

He was on me in a heartbeat, colliding with me and swimming me deeper into the water as I released my hold on my magic. The water dissipated it smoothly, and I crossed my fingers that no one else had time to feel it.

We surfaced a moment later, and I laughed as whoops and cheers erupted through the room so loudly my ears rang.

“Cheater,” Damian said with a grin. There was no heat behind the accusation—he actually looked kind of proud.

“If you get to use your magic, so do I,” I tossed back.

“She could wipe the floor with all of us if she tried,” the first shark guy declared, swimming up to us and tossing his arm over my shoulder.

Damian’s eyes narrowed at him, and he quickly removed it.

“Don’t touch Big Mama B if you like having hands,” someone called from across the room.”

Damian made a noise of exasperation, but I laughed so hard that my eyes watered.

“Is there room for us in there?” Clementine called out, approaching the edge of the pool with the rest of my sisters. Izzy seemed reluctant, but the rest of them actually looked excited.

“Hell yeah!” the shark guy said, gesturing for them to get in. “I think we need the sirens to play minnows while the rest of us are sharks.”

My sisters all jumped in, heading for the wall when they were pointed that way.

“Someone has to teach us how this works so we can kick your asses,” Zora announced, and someone launched into another explanation.

“Go to the wall, little siren,” Damian said, a wicked gleam in his eyes as he shooed me toward the minnows’ starting point.

I was totally going to lose…

But I’d have a blast doing it.

Our pool crewended up in the dining hall around two AM, feasting on ice cream from a soft serve machine that I’d foolishly never visited before. Everyone was spread out across different tables, and though we were sitting with my sisters, we were still interacting with the other vampires a lot more than we usually did.

“We need one of these machines in our room,” I told Damian, my legs draped over his lap as I relaxed in the chair next to his.

“We need one in one ofourrooms,” Zora corrected. “Maybe we can come up with a way to make it a tax write-off.”

“Ice cream?” Avery asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Seems like a stretch.”

“It can be our mental-health soft serve machine,” Zora said, biting into her fourth or fifth cone. Luckily, someone in our group had a key to the place they kept the machine’s refills.

“Ice cream is good for the soul,” Clementine agreed.

“Someone better talk to our government about that.” Zora fixed her eyes on me.

I laughed. “My connections aren’tthatgood.”

She looked at Damian.

Everyone else did too. Except Izzy; she was keeping to herself and still looked a little uncomfortable.

“Her connectionsarethat good. Write it off,” Damian said with a shrug.

“Blair totally took one for the team when she mated with you,” Zora said.

I glanced at him, worried he’d find that offensive, but he just chuckled. “You aren’t wrong.”

We ate ice cream and chatted for another half an hour before people started peeling away from the group, finally heading to bed.

---