Page 57 of Entangled in the Woods
The quick sex didn’t bother me. I was sore, and the fast sex had relieved some of the feeling. It was Everett’s ability to talk so openly about our sex that threw me. Even having a mother like mine hadn’t prepared me for his openness.
“Are all of you shifters so expletive?” I asked.
Everett lay down after pulling himself out of me. “What’s expletive about sex? It’s natural.” He sounded just like my mother. I made a mental note to never introduce them.
“I guess I’m not used to it. I don’t usually talk about sex with my partners,” I said.
Propped up on an elbow, he played with my hair. “You don’t talk about sex with your partners? Well, now you do. How do you expect to have good sex without talking? Oh, wait…have you never had good sex before?”
I scoffed and smacked his chest playfully. “Nope, never in my life.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Lyka.” Everett leaned in and grabbed my chin. “You’ll findus shiftersto be very open and very good at sex. Another thing you’ll have to get used to.” He planted a kiss on my lips. I could smell his body again. Damn pheromones.
“I have to go,” Everett said. “Today starts the last weekend of the tournament.”
I groaned as I tried to roll over. Unable to move and still stuck in the mattress hole, I stuck my arms up, asking for help. He easily climbed out of the bed and lifted me up out of the depression.
We stood next to the bed, looking at the mattress. It looked like a folded soft-shell taco. Everett’s massive body must have bent the mattress coils in such a way that there was no fixing it.
He smirked, catching my eyes. “Whoops.”
“It’s not even my bed!” I screeched.
I couldn’t imagine how I would explain the state of the bed to Professor Robinson. I was already in enough trouble with him with the sneaking out and accusations of falsifying data. What had happened last night was the opposite of my strategy to fix everything with the university. But I couldn’t deny the pull between us—it was too strong. Everett was a part of me now. By claiming me as his mate, he was also inheriting my problems.He had shown me that he was just invested in saving this forest as I was. We could be a team, two advocates saving the forest together. My heart warmed at the thought.
Everett stripped the sheets from the bed and handed them to me. Standing there with a mound of sheets in my arms, I watched as he easily flipped the mattress over. Now it looked like a small mountain, bowed instead of concave, but I could try to flatten it by putting my textbooks on top of it. I threw the sheets on top of the bare mattress to deal with later.
We quickly got dressed and opened the door to my room. The cabin was quiet. Jenny’s room was still empty. I wondered what had happened between her and Gavrill. Leo’s door was closed, and I grimaced, hoping he hadn’t heard any of the activity in my room last night. Or this morning.
Before Everett opened the front door, he pulled me in for a deep kiss. It was like he was still starved for me. I kissed him back just as hungrily.
I watched him walk out the door. For a minute, I wondered how he was going to get home without a car, but then I remembered—he could run just as fast as a car in his wolf form. It wasn’t a shock when he disappeared behind a tree, the black wolf with gold eyes a moment later from behind the same tree. It looked back at me before it ran into the woods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With Everett gone,I was ready to listen to what Leo had to say. Everett would be back Sunday after the tournament was over. I had all weekend to get some research done, and I couldn’t waste any more time. My mantra sounded like a broken record in my head.
I walked back down the hall and knocked on Leo’s door quietly at first, in case he was sleeping. The door wasn’t latched closed, and it creaked open slowly. He was at his desk writing in his notebook, unaware that his door had opened. I put a foot in the room and called his name softly so as not to scare him. He whipped around in his chair, suddenly aware of my presence.
“Leo?”
“Elise! Sorry I didn’t hear you.” Leo looked lost. Dark bags hung under his eyes. “I’m so confused about this rot. I’ve been plotting where I found it on a map, and I can’t figure out the pattern. Usually decay travels through waterways or underground in groundwater, but all the rot on Daniels’ land is coming from a tree on his property. It makes no sense.” He was visibly flustered. I had never seen him ramble like this before.
“Slow down, Leo. Show me what you have,” I said, walking over to his desk. Leo moved aside from the map he was plottingon, and I leaned over the desk to look at it. Hand drawn by him, the map was very detailed. “Did you minor in cartography?”
Leo shook his head, unable to follow my jest. “Look, Elise. I’ve been meeting with the property owner, Charles Daniels, for the last week or so, and he’s just as confused as I am,” he said. “He asked if I knew anyone from the university who knew more about plant life and conservation science, and I told him you were already looking into the rot. He wants to meet you. It’s all over his property, the rot. It’s the worse around this giant oak tree here.”
Leo pointed to a circle on the map that denoted the tree. He had carefully filled in the land where the rot had spread with a brown-colored pencil. Indeed, the rot was thickest surrounding the tree and thinned out farther away from the tree.
I took note on the map of where I had taken my samples from—about a mile away from the tree. I obviously needed to see the tree. I also wanted to know more about this Charles Daniels. I had never been one to stray from a challenge.
“This is good, Leo.” I patted him on the back. “Can you bring me to the tree so I can get some samples? I think you’re right that this is the source. All the rot seems to begin at this tree. It could be traveling along the root system.”
Leo looked back at me with a skeptical face. Even I wasn’t confident in that answer. I’d found rot a mile away from the tree. I didn’t know of any oak tree whose roots stretched that far. Until I could investigate it myself, I couldn’t imagine what I would find.
“We can go right now.” He began packing up his backpack. “Daniels is always around. I’m sure he’ll want to get your opinion.”
I nodded and turned back to my room to retrieve my backpack. According to Leo’s map, it would be at least a five-milehike to the tree. I grabbed my trail shoes and a shirt to go with my leggings, then tied up my hair.
