Free Othermoon by Nina Berry Page A

three a.m. when we arrived, pulling the car next to an ancient pickup
     truck inside an underground garage area. The truck belonged to Raynard, the gruff
     school handyman and Morfael’s apparent boyfriend, though the two of them never talked
     about their relationship.
    Raynard was also compulsively neat. He’d thoroughly organized building tools, saws,
     and planks of wood against the back wall in stacks or on shelves. The floor was firmly
     packed earth, the sod over our heads reinforced with what looked like logs from fallen
     trees. The overhead light was dim, and the automatic door to the outside cleverly
     planted with grass to look like the rest of the hill.
    The others headed out of the garage door, muttering about bed, toward a low hill,
     which had been partially cut away to reveal a wooden door. That had to be the entrance
     to the school, embedded in the side of the earth like a human-sized hobbit hole. One
     by one, they disappeared inside it, like rabbits into a burrow.
    I started to follow them out into a cold forest landscape with the stars overhead
     so clear I felt like I could reach up and stir them around.
    Warm hands enclosed my waist from behind, and Caleb’s lips pressed against my ear.
     “You’re so beautiful,” he said, voice low and soft. “I’ve waited so long for you.”
    I turned in the circle of his arms, hands sliding up his chest. “You’ve been with
     other people, and I haven’t, which means I’ve waited even longer.”
    He kissed me, his lips curving upwards in a smile. He smelled like grass after a passing
     cloudburst, clean and just warming in the sunshine. “Ah, but waiting for you is different.
     You’re not like any other girl. Waiting for you is like saving the best bite of cake
     for last.”
    His words and his touch flooded me with a heat so intense, I knew that it was time
     for the wait to end. We hadn’t been alone together in weeks, and we might not have
     another chance soon. The craving to show my love for him, to satisfy the desire inside
     me, was overwhelming.
    Caleb had been my first kiss, and now he would be my first lover. The images conjured
     by that thought sapped all the strength from my knees even as it strengthened the
     need to press my skin against his, to make the union of our bodies match the harmony
     of our feelings.
    “I vote we have a large piece of cake tonight,” I said, then lowered my voice to a
     whisper. “Or maybe the whole thing.”
    His arms tightened around me, pressing me full length against him, my hip bones grinding
     into his hips, thigh to thigh, heart to heart.
    “If you’re sure. I don’t think I can wait a minute longer. . . .” His lips trailed
     kisses down my neck, hands up under my shirt tracing the bare skin of my back, between
     my shoulder blades. He was so strong, so certain.
    How different things were, how much had changed since I’d hidden from sight and touch
     because of the back brace I’d worn for so many years. Caleb’s unabashed admiration
     and love, his desire for me even when I’d been wearing the brace, my decision to own
     my own body, had wiped all of that away.
    Caleb’s hands stroked the bare skin at my waist. I slid my hand a few inches down
     the back of his jeans.
    “Where can we go?” I said. “Now.”
    He said nothing, only kissed me again with a craving that pulled the breath from my
     body. I was light-headed, floating, and at the same time never so certain about anything.
     His hands were guiding me, pulling me back into the dark enclosure of the garage.
     “All the rooms inside the school are communal,” he said. “There’s nowhere else. .
     . .”
    I didn’t care. “As long as we’re alone,” I said.
    I leaned back against the side of the SUV and pulled him to me. Something like a groan
     escaped him as he dipped his head to kiss me again, crushing me against the metal.
     The boundaries between us were dissolving. I pulled his long black coat from his shoulders,