Spycraft Academy B. Miles (new ebook reader txt) 📖

them, he wasn't thinking about the sounds they were making as they touched each other under the blankets, he wasn't thinking about the suddenness of any of it. All he could think about was the hand wrapped around his length and the girl arching into his front, thrusting her chest out and quietly whining for more.

"Honestly, would you two cut it out?!"

They stopped completely. Sam felt himself twitch in her hand. He wanted to ignore the request and keep going. He didn't want to stop until he'd spent himself between Mattie's legs, but then she huffed and withdrew her hand, breaking the moment. He wanted to stop her movements and tell her not to worry about the others, but he knew he wasn’t thinking reasonably.

Mattie pulled his hand from under her shirt and flipped on her other side, pressing her back into Sam's chest. His hand twitched. It would be the easiest thing in the world to slide her trousers down her legs and slide into her from behind.

She sighed and pulled his hands around her until she was nestled in his arms. She held his hand and brought his arm under her chest, kissing his knuckles sweetly and snuggling into the curve of his body. She fit perfectly.

Sam sighed and wrangled his imagination before he actually did what he wanted to do, which would’ve been a bad idea now that the nobles had taken notice of them. Their job was to graduate from the Academy, preferably while keeping out of everybody's way and avoiding certain death.

"I've wanted to do that for years," Mattie whispered.

Sam's hand tightened in hers and he nuzzled into the crook of her neck. How did he not know that, considering he'd wanted the same? Maybe he wasn't as observant as he thought. Or maybe she just hid it well.

"Me too," he whispered back. "I wonder what took us so long?"

She huffed a quiet laugh, "You're dense and I suppose I got tired of waiting on you to make the first move. And now, being near the school... I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't want to die without having you at least once."

Oh, wow. He was dense, wasn't he? Had she been giving him signals? What were they? How long had she been making them?

Damn it. They could have been together long before they got on the damn boat. Instead of telling her his thoughts, he smiled into her hair. "We won't die, but I wait in anticipation for your next move."

She ground her backside into his lap in response and he nipped her neck playfully. "You'd better quit before I do something drastic."

Mattie giggled and didn't do it again. She went quiet and still and before long, her breathing evened out and she was fast asleep. Sam watched her drift off, saw the tiny smile on her face that didn't go away until she was far away in her dreams.

This had been the best day of his life. It was almost as if somebody heard the wishes in his soul and decided to grant them.

He looked up and spied the tall towers of the Academy over the crest of the hilltop. Tomorrow was the beginning of the rest of their lives, and he dared anybody to get in their way.

3

When the sun peeked over the far northern mountains, Sam and Mattie rose with it. The two recruiters were already awake, but everybody else was sound asleep. It had been quite amusing to watch Lebert and Synjon rouse the camp. A few of the girls tried to negotiate 'five more minutes' while still half asleep, and one of them told Synjon to 'fuck right off.' Most unladylike, Lebert had said, right before threatening to make her walk to campus in her nightclothes.

That got her, and the rest of the girls, right up. The boys were harder to coax to their feet, some of them didn't even wake up when Lebert shoved their shoulders or shook them. Eventually, though, they were on their way to the campus.

As promised, the trip across the valley was near four hours. Sam figured that if they walked four miles an hour, that gave the valley floor a sixteen-mile diameter. It was a strategic position. If the campus were ever attacked, they would see the aggressors coming from the sea, and they would also have four hours to pick them off as they advanced toward the Academy.

The walk itself was surreal, every step closer pushing him toward something great. If he wasn't throwing Mattie sly smirks, he was imagining himself as Tosher, one of the great Roslavian heroes that he loved so much as a boy. Tosher was once a farmer's son who had risen to greatness and slain Morkaks, the beast of Meera, with only a kitchen knife and his sharp wits.

Most of his favorite heroes had slain champions of Meera, the country to the west of the Varin Empire. They'd been at war with Meera for almost a hundred years with only short breaks of peace every now and again. These respites, brokered by concords and marriage alliances, were inevitably ruined when a new ruler succeeded their late parent. And it all started when a power-hungry Meeran king decided to claim his 'right' to the Varin throne through his mother's distant relations.

When the first fighting started, the battles were vicious and bloody. Sam had heard that only one in five men came back from war in those days. Now, they didn't have full-scale pitch battles; they had become too costly and too many men were dying. Instead, they used cold-wolf tactics. Spies and assassins won battles now, not warriors, which is why the school was as prestigious as it was—the government invested a lot of specs in their weapons of war.

Sam might not have had an education like most people in the school, but everybody knew about the Long War. And now he was going to be part of it.

They finally arrived at