Spycraft Academy

forward just enough so that her generous cleavage peeked from the curve of her shirt.
"What's the matter?" She twisted a lock of hair around her finger and kept looking at him like that. Like she was going to ride him into the ground. Or break him. Maybe both. "You don't think you're right?"
"What?" Sam lost track of what they were talking about for a moment, but then he remembered. "I, ah, I don't have twenty . . . on me."
She bit her lip and giggled. "Well, my mother always told me that not all exchanges need to be monetary."
Sex. She was talking about sex.
"Okay," he breathed.
"Okay," she echoed, "how about instead of twenty specs, you come to my room and let me do whatever I want to you."
"Yes." In his mind's eye, she and Mattie were on the bed with him.
"HA!"
Sam frowned and leaned back as her smoky eyes widened and her dimpled little smirk turned into open-mouth laughter. Her entire body language changed, no longer crossing her legs and aiming her cleavage at him but cackling as she leaned back against the couch, her legs wide open like an arrogant pirate.
The girl with her held a hand over her mouth, probably to keep herself from laughing as well. Mattie was hiding her face and laughing madly with the other girl. He didn't even know what . . . oh.
"Ah, fuck," Drina said. Her laugher calmed into a quiet snigger. "See? You'd already be dead by now. I could have taken you to my room and thrown you out the spirits-damned window if I wanted to."
"That doesn't count." Sam folded his arms and frowned at her. He should have put two and two together—if Drina was rooming with Mattie, that meant they'd get along, presumably because they were similar in personality. "You're a student," he said. "If you were a mark, I wouldn't go with you."
"Ah." Drina held up a slender finger. "But what if I weren't a mark? What if I were a Meeran agent posing as a student? You would have never known." She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "You still don't know."
Sam pursed his lips. She was right, but he wasn't about to tell her that. Always appear more competent, knowledgeable, or stronger than you actually were—one of the top rules of surviving in the city.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I didn't have twenty specs either. Hell, I don't have any specs." She shrugged, her expression full of smug victory. "Anyway. If that didn't prove my point, allow me to demonstrate." She turned to the slender girl beside her. "Alright Nubia, lady's choice. Pick a victim."
The other girl—Nubia—perked up and started scanning the room, her full lips quirking in thought. She smiled at something and the rest of them looked. Sam's eyes darted around the generous group standing by the refreshment table. There were a couple of men, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out which one she was aiming for. Nubia was petite and sweet-looking, and Sam had observed plenty of instances where the smaller women actively sought out the bigger men regardless of the man's face or character.
The biggest man in the group was talking to a girl already. He was bigger than Sam in terms of height and bulk, but not by a great amount. His hair was dark blonde and artfully tousled, his chin dimpled and his teeth straight.
"Good choice." Drina patted Nubia on the knee. "The prettiest ones are the dumbest ones, you know. They never think twice about somebody talking to them out of the blue. They're used to it. Now, behold the floundering incompetence of the perspective male spy."
Drina tossed her hair, crossed her legs again, and then looked at the man. Her body language flowed back into something too dark and alluring to resist, so convincing that it was as if another person had taken control of her body.
Sam ran his eyes over her when she wasn't looking. She looked so different from Mattie, but just as tempting. He shouldn't be thinking that way, though. He shouldn't be thinking about any girl like that, not after Mattie had finally opened up to him, not after he'd gotten a hint of something he'd dreamed about for years. But the way her dark eyes drank him in was intoxicating, like he was someone she would have given her soul to have. Even if it was fake, even if she was just trying to prove a point, he couldn't help but let his mind wonder 'what if.'
He looked at Mattie, but she was totally engrossed in the show. Maybe she just didn't notice how much he'd been looking at Drina. Hopefully. He wouldn't do it again; he'd just been caught off guard. No woman had ever looked at him like that before, not even Mattie. Or maybe she had and he just never noticed.
The blonde man looked away from the girl he was talking to in order to sip his drink, but then his eyes hitched on Drina and his goblet froze halfway to his lips. Sam could see Drina's inviting smile from where he was sitting and it was a helpful reminder that, no, really, the small spark of want he felt from her was utterly false. The evidence slapped a bit of sense into him, and Sam was able to remove himself from the situation and look at Drina's work objectively. Despite tripping him up earlier, there was the issue of the bet. Sam may not have any money to put down on it, but the call of a challenge warmed his blood and he wanted, very badly, to answer the call.
The blonde man's drink finally unfroze long enough for him to take a gulp, put his goblet on the drink table, and then walk away from his conversation without excusing himself. The girl he'd been conversing with was left talking to the air.
That was . . . incredibly rude.
Sam observed the blonde as