Queen of Spades (House of Cards Series 1) [Student/Teacher Relationship]

Two of Swords

Alice slid a note under Malcolm's door and lightly hopped back down the stairs, not wanting to wake anyone up with loud clatter. The sun was up, but barely and most of the student body had only found their way back to bed three hours ago. Alice was awake and energetic, thrilled to have nine days of this! She sat on the balcony outside her hut with Lexi, swinging in the hammock and enjoying hte morning breeze, watching hte sun crest over the horizon and stain the sky a bloody red, streaking across the clouds only to be chased away by the more cheery blue blooming.

She was sipping at a large glass of orange juice and relaxing to herself. Lexi's voice murmured from inside and Alice smirked, amused that the hostile blonde talked in her sleep about nonsensical things. The smile fell off of Alice's face when she had to admit that she'd take talking in her sleep over the continuing nightmares. The change in geography had sort of helped, but after a few hours of restful sleep, Alice jerked awake when her dreams turned dark. Which explained why she was dropping notes and sipping juice at 6 am while on vacation in Mexico. The kitchen staff had seemed silently amused to see one of the students awake and moving. They had the bars open twenty-four seven inside the resort because ferries, cruise ships and flights were constantly coming in so Alice had thought nothing of it to ask for a straight orange juice to fill her stomach until breakfast time.

Ace felt one of her flipflops fall off her foot to hit the balcony with a soft slap, but she left it there and looked down at her itinerary for the trip. The biggest restriction the school had placed on the seniors, was that their activities could not take them off the island unless they were accompanied by one of the three chaperones. The GPS units that most of the students wore ensured a level of safety, but this was just an added measure. So Alice had looked at the available activities here on Cozumel alone and found enough to keep her more than entertained.

There was a jeep tour of the island. It took travellers down to see a few small ruins, but mostly explored their lighthouse, gator lookout and especially the tequila factory on the island. Most of hte students had opted to try that one because it included taster samples of tequila while there. Ace's friends wanted to check it out, but she had convinced them to delay it until later in the week, after everyone else had gone. This first day Kim and Alice had put a lot of time and effort into setting up the ultimate beach day. They were going to get morning lessons on scuba and snorkeling, and then head out onto the ocean to go swimming and snorkeling along hte reefs of the island. They were getting a lunch included with the scuba, and then spending the afternoon on another part of the island, swimming with the dolphins.

Soon enough it was late enough in the morning that hte others would be waking up, so Alice knocked on doors and rounded up her friends, herding them to the breakfast with a cheeriness that hid her sleepless night. West and his friends were giving Butch a hard time about doing 'girl s***' all day, but he took it with good humour. And Alice had to reassess his intelligence when he slyly pointed out that he was gonig to be alone with 5 women in bikini's all day long while West and everyone else was gonig to be crammed and crowded into Jeeps to go mob the tequila factory. Score one for Butch!

The other students were animatedly discussing the planned trips of the day when Alice saw Malcolm walk into the breakfast room. She wasn't the only one who noted his enterance and she fought the urge to snap at the other girls for eye raping her boyfriend.  Malcolm had on a pair of board shorts, pale blue with a black dragon climbing one leg and a white tank top that clung to the muscles of his chest. She only resisted the urgle to drag him away from everyone's greedy eyes because he met her stare and smirked. Not a single other person in the room earned his glance but her, and she knew he'd dressed this way to get a reaction out of her. And he was loving every minute of it. So she smirked right back at him, and smoothly changed the subject her friends were discussing to the bathing suits they'd picked for the day. Since she was already wearing her suit under her summer dress, inevitably her friends asked her to model it for them.