Surge - Maya Nicole Page 0,22

if we pushed her enough. My own father was certain of it.

"We need to tread carefully with this girl." Morgan shoved his hands in his pockets and followed me inside. "That includes keeping your lips off her."

"Wait a fucking second. You kissed her?" Blake was pissed. I was pissed at myself for having no self-control. "When?"

"At the yearbook retreat." I headed toward the elevator, but Blake stepped in front of me. "And Monday after class." Plus, I thought about it multiple times while jacking off and in my dreams. Oh, and anytime I saw her.

"I thought we agreed not to take things there. I mean, shit, she is cute as hell, but we can't... I mean, can we?" Blake put his hands on his hips and then a grin spread across his face. "Maybe we should take it there. I bet she's a virgin."

"We?" I clenched my fists and resisted the urge to punch him in the gut. We might have been close, but that didn't make them immune to getting the beat down if it needed to happen. "I'm not sharing her."

"Then stop fucking kissing her." Blake stepped out of the way. "We'll go see your sister. I'll put a call in for us."

"I don't need to see my sister."

"We're supposed to be proving we're ready." Morgan's reminder felt like a kick to my balls. "We need to keep our eyes on the prize."

I pressed the button and the elevator dinged open. They followed me inside and we stood in silence as it descended to sea level. We stepped out into the cave and started removing our clothes.

"She has a knife that looks an awful lot like a siren's." I had considered not telling them about it because I wasn't one-hundred percent sure it had been real. It couldn't have been real.

"Excuse me?" Morgan's eyes went wide as he folded his pants and put them on a bench. "How?"

"I didn't get that good of a look at it, but I swear I saw abalone insets on the hilt. She had her fist pretty tightly wrapped around it." I rubbed the back of my neck. "That would be impossible though."

"I'd have to see it." Blake stood at the edge of the platform. "It's doubtful it's real."

I stood next to him. "I hope you're right." Because if it was real, we needed to worry about where she got it.

Morgan was practically vibrating standing on the edge of the platform. "We can't go this long again. It hurts to shift."

Our house sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and in the cliff was a hollowed-out section with boats and jet skis. With a push of a button, the cliff opened to the wide-open sea. There was also an exit under the water for us to swim through.

"Stop being a guppy." Blake dove into the water, his body instantly morphing as soon as his fingertips hit the surface.

Morgan whooped and dove in after him.

Even if I did want to kiss Riley more, she would never accept this world. Humans could never know of our existence, which was the entire purpose of some of us being on land in the first place. With tritons being entrenched in the human world, we could squelch any discovery of our existence.

I dove off the platform and the change ripped through me, my legs burning as the connective tissue grew. Morgan was right about it being uncomfortable. Freshman year we could only go a day without changing.

With swimming practice three days a week, the urge to shift was strong. Only true tritons from an elite bloodline could manage to keep the human appearance for as long as we could, and even then it took years of training to work up to a solid week of being bipedal.

Blake and Morgan stared back at me under the water with their amber-colored eyes. Our eyes were similar to a feline's which allowed for quick adjustment of the pupil underwater.

I swam toward the exit of the cave and then we were free. My mind and body became relaxed as we raced out to sea.

Chapter Seven

Riley

After the night I had, I knew I would be struggling to focus all day. It didn't help that Blake was in my first three classes. If Jax was willing to break into my house and scare me half to death, how far were Blake and Morgan willing to go?

"Do you hear that?" Blake scooted his chair over so he was closer. "That's time, ticking away. Tick, tick,