The Year of the Crocodile Read online

  It’s almost arousing. I’m aware of her elbow against my ribs, her chin against my shoulder, our bodies meeting in not-quite-comfortable angles.

  The walls are thin and the bed squeaks every time we arrange ourselves. Hence the almost qualifying my arousal; I’m all too aware of the noise anything else would generate. They can hear us.

  And by they, I mean my dad.

  Prude is…maybe not the right word for my dad. But he is the most intensely private person I know. Which nobody would believe, seeing as how we seemingly serve up our family life to the entire world. But affection is not something he manages well in public.

  He would never say anything. But I can’t imagine how he’d react to being kept awake by a distinct, rhythmic squeaking.

  “I did mention this, didn’t I? About my dad?” I can smell her hair. “Insults are how he expresses affection.”

  “My mom is…” She pauses, considering. “Actually, come to think of it, my mom is not so different. She’s not like your dad, but…”

  “She teases you. Relentlessly.” I slide a hand around her hip. “I know. Why do you think you and I get along so well? I knew we would the day you first insulted me.”

  Tina considers this. “I never thought of it that way. After our first little dust up, I figured you’d think I was a complete bitch.”

  “Instead,” I say with a smile she can’t see, “I was wired to think you were flirting. It makes me physically uncomfortable if people are straight-up nice to me. I assume they’re hiding something.”

  She shifts her weight. The bed squeaks again, and I wince. She straddles me and the springs protest politely. “So I definitely shouldn’t be nice to you right now.”

  My heart thumps. My body reacts, my muscles tensing, my cock going from potentially interested to actually interested despite the thin walls and the noisy boxspring.

  My breath stutters in. “I do feel physically uncomfortable, yes. And you should definitely not stop.”

  We’re talking in whispers. She leans down and kisses me. Her body presses against mine, hip to hip, chest to breast. I slide a hand under the soft shirt she’s wearing.

  I love making her breath catch. Love it when she exhales long and slow, love it when her hands bracket my face. I love it when she kisses me harder. When her hips push against mine, pressing against my dick.

  I don’t love it when the boxspring lets out one telltale scritch, then another.

  The third time it happens, I put my hand over her mouth.

  “Tina, I’m sorry. Every time the bed squeaks, I think of my dad. Out there. You know he can hear everything, right?”

  She laughs softly. “Do one risky thing, right?”

  “Not this one.” I grimace. “It’s…kind of a fucking buzzkill.”

  She pushes up onto her forearms and looks at me. In the dim light, I see only the curtain of her hair. I feel the ends brush my chest. Yeah, I’m fucking interested.

  “What if I promised you no squeaks?” she asks.

  I look back at her. “I’m in.”

  “But you’d have to be quiet.” She sets a finger on my bare chest, drawing a line down it. “Really quiet. I’m not sure you could do that.”

  Her finger continues its journey down my abs. My navel. My body reacts.

  “Hey,” I whisper. “I’ve been giving interviews since I was six. You would not believe how quiet I can be when it’s important.”

  She hooks her index finger in the band of my boxers. “You’re on.”

  There’s one last squeak as she rearranges herself. She shimmies down my body. Slides my boxers down my hips.

  I feel her breath against the head of my penis, then her mouth against my sensitive skin. She sucks me in, and it’s damned good.

  We’ve been together eleven months, and that’s enough time for her to have learned me. She knows that I have that sensitive area right there, right on the underside of my dick, right where the loose foreskin pulls. She knows I like it when she lets her nails scratch me just a little. She knows exactly what tempo I prefer, knows where to put her hands.

  I let my thoughts dissolve into the pleasure of the moment. I give myself up to the warm pressure of her mouth, give myself over to the slide of her tongue, the feel of her fingers on my balls.

  I can tell she’s trying to get me to make noise. To break, just a little bit.

  I don’t.

  Silence is something I learned early, and to call it second nature is probably an understatement. It’s almost my first nature. I can retreat into it until words have no meaning. Until noise is unnecessary. Until there’s nothing at the core of me but fire and want and love and a hint of bitter nostalgia.

  I squeeze her shoulder to let her know when I’m about to come. She glances up at my face, but she doesn’t stop. I give everything over into one final gasp.

  When I’m finished, I’m breathing hard.

  I didn’t make a noise.

  She looks up at me. “That was incredible,” she breathes. “You were silent.”

  I sit up, set my finger on her lips, and shake my head.

  “It was—”

  I cover her mouth with one hand and nudge her down with my shoulder.

  Your turn.

  I don’t say those words, but she understands them. Enough that she rearranges herself with a single drawn-out complaint from the bed. Enough that I kneel on the floor in front of her and spread her legs.

  She’s wet.

  She’s also not as quiet as I am. She can’t help but gasp. She lets out a little noise when I slide a finger inside her. She inhales when I set my mouth to her. She tastes good—a little salty, a little sweet—and it doesn’t take long.

  She lets out a choked noise when I finally get her off.

  After, we snuggle together. We seem to have fewer hard edges; we fit together better. Her head rests against my shoulder.

  “I love you,” she whispers.

  I pull her closer. “Love you, too.”

  “Your dad gave me a hundred dollars.”

  This is a bit of a non sequitur, and sleep is rapidly pulling me down.

  “Mmm?”

  “In the red envelope. I was afraid, you know. That he might make me feel uncomfortable. But that was appropriate. Thanks for talking to him about it.”

  It had not occurred to me that this was even a thing I should think about. “I didn’t.”

  “What, you mean he was appropriate on his own? Will wonders never cease.”

  There are a dozen things I could say to that.

  Navigating our parents…

  Well, Dad managed that better than I could have imagined. Forced politeness would have lasted through one, maybe two, encounters.

  Navigating what Tina and I have—a relationship where she doesn’t want her life swallowed in the larger course of mine—is an area where my dad has vastly more experience than I do.

  But my dad is the most intensely private person I have ever met. It’s not like we talk about this shit. We don’t even think about it.

  “Tina,” I finally say, “he’s an asshole. That doesn’t make him inconsiderate.”

  “No.” This word comes out as a stretched-out syllable. “I guess it doesn’t. He’s actually not terrible.”

  “He grows on you.”

  “Go to sleep.” She snuggles against me. “I guess maybe it’s the year of the crocodile after all.”

  “Nah.” I hold her close. “No superstitions. It’s just us. It’s the year of us.”

  And on that note, we drift off to sleep.

  Note

  If you’re wondering what this means for Adam Reynolds: Yes, he’s getting a story. I don’t call it a book. It’s a five-part behemoth that, collectively, is longer than some of the actual multi-book series that I have written.

  The Year of the Crocodile falls right smack dab in the middle of his story—about halfway through, right in the middle of part three.

  If you know who Adam is writing to…well, now
you know why it’s taking me time to fix things. You also—maybe—might want just a hint of what is coming.

  For those of you who want to know, I’ve created a page with a few very minor notes that some people might consider spoilers. You can find them here:

  http://www.courtneymilan.com/tyotc-spoilers.php

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading The Year of the Crocodile. I hope you enjoyed it.

  Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at www.courtneymilan.com, follow me on twitter at @courtneymilan, or like my Facebook page at http://facebook.com/courtneymilanauthor.

  Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

  The Year of the Crocodile is a short story in the Cyclone series. The other books in the series are Trade Me, Hold Me, Find Me, What Lies Between Me and You, Keep Me, and Show Me. An excerpt from Hold Me follows.

  Hold Me: Excerpt

  Jay na Thalang is a demanding, driven genius. He doesn’t know how to stop or even slow down. The instant he lays eyes on Maria Lopez, he knows that she is a sexy distraction he can’t afford. He’s done his best to keep her at arm’s length, and he’s succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

  * * *

  Maria has always been cautious. Now that her once-tiny, apocalypse-centered blog is hitting the mainstream, she’s even more careful about preserving her online anonymity. She hasn’t sent so much as a picture to the commenter she’s interacted with for eighteen months—not even after emails, hour-long chats, and a friendship that is slowly turning into more. Maybe one day, they’ll meet and see what happens.

  * * *

  But unbeknownst to them both, Jay is Maria’s commenter. They’ve already met. They already hate each other. And two determined enemies are about to discover that they’ve been secretly falling in love…

  an unedited excerpt from Chapter One

  MARIA

  September

  Gabriel was supposed to be here ten minutes ago.

  Instead, my brother is running late—no surprise there, as he plays the role of absent-minded scientist a little too well. He double-booked dinner tonight. He forgot that he was supposed to find me after my class. And when he sent me directions to the place where he’d agreed to meet his friend…

  Go to the chemistry complex, he said. The lab’s in the basement, he said.

  Ha.

  There are multiple buildings, each with their own basement. Some have two. After a brief, maddening trip down a rabbit hole of cement walls, metal doors, and blue-green paint, I had to ascend for air—and wifi—to look up room numbers and a map.

  If I didn’t love my brother so much, I might be pissed.

  But I’m here, a mere ten minutes late, and not even slightly miffed about the number of stairs I had to tackle in heels. After all, Gabe is not a distant Skype call at odd hours coming from half the globe away. He’s in Berkeley. He’s here.

  At least, he better be here.

  I eye the door I’ve found with skepticism. A little placard to the side designates it as the Thalang group. The door itself is festooned with warnings of impending death.

  DANGER, says a sign in giant red letters. VISIBLE AND/OR INVISIBLE LASER RADIATION. Another sheet of laminated paper lists every chemical in the room that could kill me.

  It’s a long list.

  Possible fatality. Just how I like to start all my evenings.

  I knock on the door, managing to bruise my knuckles, but the fireproof door makes only the slightest, most muffled thump in response. Only then do I notice the tiny piece of paper duct-taped to the door. Ring bell for entry.

  I ring.

  I wait.

  I’m not sure what to expect from a chemistry death lab, but my imagination has always been excellent. Radioactive bees? Radioactive nanobots? Radioactive mind-controlled soldiers? The possibilities are endless.

  The door opens.

  Damn. The room beyond looks painfully prosaic—desks, bookshelves, and a couch are visible from here. There are no super-soldiers equipped with prosthetic lasers, intent on world destruction. There is no case of radioactive spiders. There aren’t spiders of any kind.

  There’s just a man standing at the door, frowning at me. He’s almost exactly as tall as I am in these heels, which makes him pretty darned tall. He’s almost as brown as I am, even though he can’t get much sun down here.

  He takes one look at me, tilts his head, and narrows his eyes. His eyebrows are thick and set in determined lines; his arms are folded in front of his chest. I’m pretty sure a super-soldier would be less intimidating. At least they might be susceptible to mind control. (I’ve never mind-controlled anyone yet, but then again, I’ve never met a super-soldier. Hope springs eternal.)

  I saw a picture of Professor Aroon na Thalang, the principal investigator of this group, on the website five minutes ago when I looked up the location of his lab. In that picture, he was thumbnail sized and serious. Between the tiny image and the CV highlights listed beneath—PhD from Cambridge, an NSF CAREER grant, awards from DARPA—I had assumed he was twenty years older than me.

  He’s not. He looks about twenty-three. It has to be the Asian genes. He’s kind of hot, in a glowering, grumpy scientist kind of way.

  “You’re late,” he says. He has a hint of an accent. A British accent, to be precise, enough to remind me of that Cambridge PhD.

  “Um.” I bite my lip and curse my brother. “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re sorry, question mark.” His eyes narrow as he says this, like I’ve committed some kind of cardinal sin, and his accent seems more marked. “Either you’re not sure you’re sorry, in which case you shouldn’t be apologizing, or you’re sorry, period, and you need to work on your inflection. Which is it?”

  This is going well. I try again. “I’m Maria—”

  “Group meeting finished an hour ago.” He looks even more annoyed. “If you want to work in my lab—”

  “I don’t want to work in your lab. I’m here to meet Jay.”

  He frowns. Shit. I didn’t think much of the fact that I didn’t see a Jay listed on the group website. It’s September, the start of a new academic year. Groups change; the website is probably out of date. Now I’m wondering if Gabe gave me the wrong group name. Or the wrong department.

  “So sorry.” He delivers the word with a period at the end. A sarcastic period, the kind that says that he’s not sorry at all. “I don’t know you, and I don’t have time for…” He squints at me, and gives me another look, this one a little more pointed. “What are you selling, anyway? Lab supplies? Amway?”

  Assumptions shouldn’t be a big deal.

  But they are. I don’t know him, but he just assumed it was more likely I was selling make-up then…any of the other many possibilities in the world.

  I know what I look like. I’m pretty. I should be; I work hard for it. I like being pretty. I like wearing skirts and heels and makeup. I’m not going to apologize for doing my hair or knowing how to contour foundation or any of the other tiny skills I’ve invested years in learning.

  I’m going to get judged for caring about how I look, and judged for not caring. I might as well dress exactly how I want.

  I know that rationally, I shouldn’t care that a complete stranger has decided that I’m an airhead. But it still stings.

  “It’s not that,” I say.

  “So you are a grad student.” He rubs his hair, making it stick up in little black spikes. “Let me make this easy: I’m looking for three-sigma students. Not people who arrive two hours late, interrupting a perfectly good work session with my post doc, and who stare at me like deer drowning in headlights. There’s no point wasting each other’s time.”

  My pulse pounds thickly.

  “I’m…sorry?” I hear that question mark again and wince, just as his eyebrow rises. “I’m not sorry,” I say, “but I really am looking for Jay.”

  �
�Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Just join another group.”

  I inhale. “I think you misunderstand. Can I just talk to Jay—”

  “Nope,” he says. “Sorry. I’ve got things to do.”

  Before I can say anything else, he shuts the lab door on me. Great. I contemplate the buzzer and wonder what he would do if I rang it again. Given the degree of asshole he just displayed, and the fact that he said he was in the middle of a perfectly good work session, he’d probably just get mad at the hapless Jay, who is likely a new postdoc in his lab.

  Fine.

  I exhale, take out my phone, and text my brother.

  Are you sure you told me the right place? The Thalang group in chemistry? Did you mean biology?

  His response comes seconds later. Yep. Almost there.

  I frown dubiously at my phone. The Aroon na Thalang Group? There’s no Jay listed on the group page.

  That’s him, my brother texts back. Jay. It’s a nickname. Nobody calls him Aroon.

  I consider hitting my head against the cement wall in front of me.

  Yay. Gabe’s friend—the one who just shut the door in my face, the one I’m supposed to have dinner with—is a dick.

  Yes, he jumped to conclusions. Yes, I’m sure he’ll make all the right pretend apologies when Gabe clues him in. But he still looked at me and decided I was a lab supply salesperson, and didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.

  Great.

  It doesn’t help that I’m staring at a poster of his lab’s work. I’ve noticed these in the hallways earlier as I was looking for this place. They’re essentially advertisements for all the research groups that are recruiting new graduate students.

  I’ve seen badly photoshopped versions representing various groups as X-Men or the Avengers. Here, someone has photoshopped Jay’s face on the massive, genetically enhanced dinosaur that wreaked havoc on a fictional theme park. I recognize the rest of the group from the picture as velociraptors.