by Cate Corvin
I peeled Demonseed off his perch on my chest and flopped the limp kitten on a pillow. He glared at me with disdain. “But you wanted to,” I teased. “Did you get what you needed out of him?”
Before Lu had even looked up, I was in front of her, undoing each button to reveal her creamy skin. My cock was already stiffening just from seeing the soft swell of her breasts under the shirt.
“There are four nearly-unbreakable curses on Gilt’s safe.” She shivered when I ran my thumb over the half-moon scar on her shoulder. I felt her essence, like her emotions and consciousness had somehow twined into me through it, anchoring us together. “And you have to be a Gilt to break them without dying. Luckily for us…”
I slid her shirt over her arms and dropped it on the floor. “You’re a Gilt. He was just a few steps ahead of us, Lu. Steele’s been trying to make headway here for a lot longer than you have.” I reached around her to unclasp her bra, revealing her heavy breasts tipped with hard, pink peaks.
She scowled, yanking my shirt up. “I’m not thinking about him right now.”
Unlike Shane, who still vibrated with fury whenever Steele was in Blondie’s vicinity, I found it much harder to hold a grudge. Part of me- the overprotective wolf- hated him too, wanted to rip into him for causing my mate any distress at all. The human in me understood.
I’d fucked up once, too. And my reasons were way more selfish than altruistic.
When I wore the wolfskin, the bitterness of Steele’s hatred towards Bloom was pungent. The rest of his emotions were laid bare to me: his longing, his anger, even his lust and protectiveness towards Lu.
Fact was, much as any of us hated to admit it, we needed someone on Team Evil. I’d spied on enough of Gilt’s little tea parties to know we weren’t going to brute-force our way in.
Unfortunately, it was Lu, and not Steele, who had to be our snake in the grass.
“Yes, you are, but I’m about to take your mind off him entirely,” I said, nipping her earlobe before I tossed her on the bed.
Demonseed fled, probably taking refuge in the closet, or anywhere that wasn’t here.
I stripped off my jeans and climbed over Lu on all fours, running my tongue over the velvety skin of her stomach to the globes of her breasts. She arched under me with a gasp when I caught one of her nipples in my mouth, gently grazing my teeth over the sensitive skin.
My cock was so hard it almost hurt, the mate-mark urging me to plunge into her, but it’d been a while since I’d had Lu all to myself. Shane was running the forest, tracking Cadogan, and I intended to make the most of every minute before he got back.
She ran her fingers over my shoulders, eyes darkening with lust as I suckled each nipple until the skin was swollen, her legs opening to wrap around me…
I almost pushed forward, driven by atavistic urges, but the little gasps she made held me back. There was no rush, just me and my Blondie.
I moved back down, running my thumb along the curve of a breast as she wriggled under me. With both of her legs pinned apart, she was completely open to me, her pink, wet folds begging to be licked.
A low growl tore out of me. I ran my tongue over her, making her hips jump against my mouth, appreciating the way she gripped the iron rails of the headboard with bloodless fingers. Circling her clit with my tongue made her writhe in a way that had my balls aching for release.
She whimpered, her legs quivering uncontrollably when I sucked her clit between my lips and gently flicked my tongue against it. My cock throbbed, but there was no fucking way I was sliding into her before I’d made her come at least once… maybe twice.
But holy hell, it was hard to hold back. I slipped two fingers inside her and stroked in and out, groaning when she started to spasm around me. Within seconds her gasps became cries, her back arched as she came for me. I sucked her clit under the aftershocks of her orgasm had calmed a little, with every intention of going in for round two, but she hooked her ankles under my arms and pulled me up over her.
There were few things in this world I loved more than the sight of all that pale hair spread over her pillow, her mouth just parted as she gasped for breath.
I slid my cock over her, my balls heavy and tight, and she arched her hips towards me. Besides the wet warmth of her pussy drawing me in, it was the look on her face, pure hunger than matched the lust my wolf felt for her.
“Turn over, Blondie,” I said, my voice as rough as I felt, palming her hips to turn her over and raising her ass in the air. I nudged her knees apart, taking a hissing breath when the head of my cock pushed against her wet, swollen center.
The animalistic part of me liked it like this, how hard I could pound into her from behind. The human part of me wanted to take his time, but Lu pushed herself back, sinking onto my cock with a drawn-out moan.
All bets were off then. All I was aware of was the softness of her skin, the tight, wet heat squeezing around me, the sweet smell of her perfume filling my nose.
I thrust into her, building up into a hard rhythm, my fingers dimpling her ass and pulling her back onto me, snarling every time I heard one of her gasps and moans.
My skin prickled all over as the pressure in my abdomen increased, tiny guard hairs sprouting over my skin. I felt my teeth lengthen, incisors cutting into my lower lip with a sharp pain.
She undulated against me and I fell forward, covering her entire body with mine and snaking a hand around her hip.
Lu let out a sharp cry when my fingers circled her clit. I pumped into her, matching the speed of my hips with kneading her sensitive skin, until she clamped down on me with a scream.
Her pussy tightened, growing even wetter as she rode out her second orgasm, and the pressure finally exploded. My hips jerked forward and waves of pleasure crashed over me as I filled her.
I grazed her shoulder with my teeth, aligning with the half-moon marks. She shivered under me as her emotions poured through the bond between us, strengthening the mate bond even further: lust, love, safety, and protection.
I swallowed back the rest of the transformation, forcing my claws back into nails, the fangs back into human teeth. Those were all the things I was to her, and the confirmation of her feelings through the bond satisfied me on a primal level.
When I felt the last of her tremors subside, I slid out of Lu and carried her to the shower, where I took my time in washing her hair and gliding my hands over her body. Her eyes were still heavy-lidded, but she did the same for me, touching every part of me she could get her hands on.
I kissed her the entire time, ignoring the water beading on our faces and dripping from my hair.
She curled up on me when we were back in bed, her still-damp hair chilly against my shoulder, but the cold didn’t bother me. The rest of her was still glowing with warmth from the hot water.
Lu nestled her head on my chest as I ran my fingers over her back.
There were very few moments of genuine peace in this hellhole, even for people like Shane and I, who didn’t normally give a single fuck what Gilt or anyone else thought. Who cared what the teachers wanted? And who cared if everyone else hated therianthropes?
We were motherfucking wolves. No one else’s magic came close to touching how awesome it was to become an apex predator with no more than a thought.
True, there was the constant stress of watching over our shoulders, waiting for the next shitty thing to happen while we’d waited for Shane’s visions to come true. It may have taken a while, but I’d made my peace with destiny. Now that I was in Blondie’s arms, filled with the knowledge that she looked to me as her guardian, one of the few she trusted the most, I felt like I’d found true serenity. Now I understood why Shane was the way he was, so calm and certain that everything would turn out the way it was meant to.
Lu’s eyelashes brushed my chest when she blinked, tickling me the tiniest bit.
“What do you want when it’s over, Blondie? When we’ve won?”
She shifted against me. “I want my mastery,” L
u whispered. “I want to be free from anyone else’s control. I want to set everything here as right as I can possibly make it. What about you?”
All completely understandable things. I could cheerlead for those goals. I held back a snicker picturing myself in a tiny skirt, waving pom-poms, and Lu’s tiny schoolgirl get-up becoming a cheerleader uniform. Just the thought of her in the little skirt had my cock threatening to stiffen again, and I forced myself to be serious.
“I want a place where we can be ourselves,” I said, staring up at the smooth plaster of the ceiling. “That’s what I’ve always wanted. Before you got here, I was planning on making our own coven full of therianthropes.”
Before Lu, that had been the closest desire of my heart. A place for all beast-kind, where we wouldn’t be sneered at for what we’d been born as.
“It is a school of misfits,” she said, tracing a little circle on my chest. “I’ve been considering… what if Cimmerian stayed a school? These are all witches and warlocks who were kicked out by their own families for whatever reason. I bet there are others like us, therianthropes without homes, other forces of nature… they’ve got to be out there. You could still have your coven.”
“And you could have your school.” I rolled over and pulled her close, almost nose-to-nose. The moonlight through the window bleached her coloring to silver instead of gold. “Did you ever want your own kids?”
Her eyes widened fractionally, and I felt a sudden stab of embarrassment at the question. Kids had always been off the table for me. The dominant genes for therianthropy were a little too strong for my comfort. Even though I’d come to terms with myself, it’d taken many long, hard years to get to that point.
“I never really thought I’d be in a position to have kids, or handfast, or any of that normal witch stuff,” she said thoughtfully. “There was Jonathan Arrow… but I didn’t want to be used. I couldn’t even control myself then. But even though this is the darkest place I’ve ever been, it suddenly feels like there’s so much more hope for all those things.”
I tried to ignore the little flutter in my chest. Nope. I’d already decided I’d never condemn a child to a shunned existence as a therianthrope.
And yet…
“Then you do want them someday.”
Lu gnawed her lower lip. “Maybe. Yeah. I guess I do.” A wry smile touched her lips. “I mean, I never loved anyone enough to consider it before. Things are different now. But I’d want a few years of you guys to myself, I think. What about you?”
She turned the question around before I’d finished sorting my thoughts out. Hell, I might never finish sorting those thoughts out. Gambling on a child’s future wasn’t a snap decision.
“I… uh…”
Lu laughed quietly. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that if you didn’t want to.”
But there was the problem. After years of being good with my genetic material dying out, I was suddenly entertaining the notion that just maybe, a few years down the road…
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said, brushing her cheek. “I’ve told myself I was a monster for years. There’s every chance a child of ours would be like me.”
“And what’s wrong with you, Roman?” she asked. “You just get big and hairy. There are worse things to be.”
“Yeah. I could get small and scaly.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t have a problem with what you are, and if this is our home and coven, no one else will either. Besides, there’s an equal chance they’d have my wildfire instead.”
I mulled it over. The desire to do more than just fuck her was starting to burrow into my mind, the animal side taking over. Besides, it’d be a damn good reason to stay in bed all day…
“Oh, and there’s another thing: when it’s done, if I’ve got my mastery and I’m safe from the Tribunal, I think… I think I want to learn therianthropy.”
My body went from humming with the desire to mate her to stone-cold. “What? You- what?”
She nodded, snuggling just a little closer. “I don’t care what everyone else thinks. Being here made me realize how much it doesn’t matter. I’ve already got wildfire- I might as well go wild and do it all.”
If she became a therianthrope, people would talk shit in front of her face for the rest of her life, calling her an animal, asking if she wanted to sleep in the doghouse instead of the covenstead, treating her like dirt beneath their shoe. Just the thought sent rage boiling through my veins.
At the same time, I found myself considering what her beast-form might be; what would bookish, sweet-tempered Blondie become if she joined with the primal magic?
My bet was on a cat, all curiosity and zero sense of self-preservation.
“You wouldn’t necessarily become a wolf,” I told her. “It’s what resonates with your soul the most.”
She winced. “So I’d become a salamander, or an armadillo, or something weird like that.”
I couldn’t resist the urge to tweak her a little. “God, no. I was thinking an axolotl.”
“You’ll teach me, then?” she asked, pouncing on my momentary weakness. Definitely a cat. “And seriously, an axolotl?”
“I did not say I’d teach you,” I said, ignoring that my cock was stirring again when she moved against me. “It’s a hard life, for wolves and axolotls.”
“You didn’t say you wouldn’t, either,” she pointed out, ignoring how ridiculous I sounded. “I’m fine if you don’t want kids, Roman. But I would like to make the choice to become a therianthrope for myself.”
“I didn’t say no to kids either.” The words fell out of my mouth, catching me by surprise. Who the fuck was I becoming? Did finding a mate just fundamentally change people without their permission?
“No rush,” she said. Her lids were starting to droop for real now. “We have our whole lives ahead of us to figure this out.”
The doorknob jiggled and Shane stepped in, shutting it quietly behind him. I patiently waited for Lu to rearrange herself as Shane slipped into bed on her other side.
“Good night, Bambi,” he whispered, kissing her all over face as she curled between us.
She was out minutes later. I met Shane’s eyes over her head.
“No sign,” he said, his voice still a low whisper.
Another night, then. I hoped Cadogan would show up when Lu was nowhere near us, so she wouldn’t have to witness his death. I knew she had a soft spot for vampires, but there was no other choice.
I didn’t sleep well, churning through unfamiliar considerations. Having kids someday, half me and half Lu, teaching her to become like us… what it would be like to run together in beast-forms…
An hour later she twitched in her sleep, her fingers curling tight. Her back arched and she made a soft noise in her throat.
I made up my mind. I wanted a full life with Lu and everything that came with it: handfasting, children, the works. Just because I was a therianthrope didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to have the things other witches and warlocks had.
And I’d teach her to become one of us. It would take a long time, but someday we’d see the world together through different eyes.
Shane wrapped his arm around Lu’s waist in his sleep, pulling her closer. I wondered if he’d Seen anything like that in our future, or if everything was still too nebulous.
I stretched out and felt soft paws on my head: Demonseed, taking his usual spot. I fell asleep with the little creature purring against my ear, dreaming of Lu shifting into creatures, taking her place with me in the forest.
Chapter 5
Lu
“There are no charms here.” Shane watched Carmen Flora stride into the cafeteria, with David and Lissa on her heels. From afar, someone might’ve thought he was admiring the trio, but his eyes were slightly unfocused as he felt for listening charms planted around the school.
“Okay. There are two things we need to know: how to break the curses, and when Gilt won’t be in her office.” I piled bacon on the guys’ p
lates. “Seriously, eat. You can’t spend all day as wolves and not eat anything.”
Roman absently shoved three slices of bacon in his mouth. “Gilt’s the easiest part. We’ll just whip up a little distraction she can’t ignore.”
I sorted through my yogurt and granola with a spoon. “Last time you messed with her garden the entire school got Corrective Counseling.”
“Because she had no one to blame it on.” Shane’s smile was blinding, even more so with the silver scar cutting across his lips. “This time she’ll have one of us.”
The yogurt didn’t taste so good anymore. “Shane. She doesn’t screw around with that sort of thing. You’ll end up getting fed to her Helping Hands.”
“Nah. Only escapees get sent to them.”
“Seriously, Shane. She’s mentally unstable. What are you going to do, live out in the mines with Locke until we’ve won? That could be months from now.”
“Of course not. I’m going to take my punishment, she’ll feel vindicated, and we’ll all move on with her none the wiser.” He shoved his plate aside and took the entire platter of bacon. “What I’m concerned about is the curses. They could kill you, Bambi.”
“And how often she checks the safe. If she finds out the book’s been stolen, we’re screwed,” I said, sighing and eating the last of the yogurt.
“No, we’re not. But a certain asshole niece is,” Roman interjected quietly.
I gave Roman a narrow look. “You want us to frame Ivy?”
He shrugged, a smooth, rolling motion that belied how much thought he’d apparently put into this. “Gilt already distrusts her so much, she named you heir to the covenstead over Bloom. It’d just be another nail in the coffin of suspicion.”
I stared down at my empty bowl. Gilt knew Ivy Bloom wanted Cimmerian for herself. Making me the heir was just putting up another blockade between herself and her niece.
A rush of relief coursed through me. Grandfather might not want me at all; I could just be a convenient pawn for Gilt to play against Ivy in the meantime, ensuring all her successors were occupied with sniping at each other.
