by Cate Corvin
While she’d been between my knees, she’d shed whatever panties she wore… if she was wearing any at all. The hot wetness of her pussy slid over me then ground down, using me for her own needs.
She gripped my cock and ran the head over her clit, moving lower… and gasped when she sank onto me.
I thrust up, unable to resist the tight heat squeezing my cock. I buried myself in her to the base, every little gasp and moan she made making my blood run hotter, threatening to boil me alive in my own veins.
But we were still playing by Lucrezia’s rules. She pushed my arms above my head and slid her hands over my biceps and forearms, stopping at my wrists and pinning them there. Right where she wanted me.
Every time she pushed back, her heavy breasts bounced, nipples already swollen and pink with lust. I caught one in my mouth, rolling the tender flesh between my teeth until she let out a sharp gasp. Her hips bucked faster, the slick wetness around my cock squeezing tighter.
Her fingers tightened around my wrists. A groan rumbled out of me as I suckled her hard nipple, my balls tightening every time her hips ground down against me.
She belonged to me, my ring on her finger, my cock in her tight pussy, all mine.
I pushed up into her, filling her completely. My stomach flipped just from the look in her light eyes, both languid desire and predatory intensity, a sigh slipping out as she rode me. Part of me still wanted to toss her over and pound into her, make her submit to me… but this was what she wanted.
A faintest memory of my nightmare slipped between the stars in my head. “Why do you always have to be in control?”
I gripped the edge of the mattress, driving into her, letting her take her time exactly how she liked it.
A fine sheen of sweat covered her skin like tiny pearls when she began to come apart, the steady slow-fast rhythm of her hips becoming erratic. She sat up and braced her palms against my chest, fingers splayed out and nails digging into me as her pussy clamped down tight.
Her breathy moans became low and urgent when she came, biting down hard on her lower lip.
That was all that was needed to tip me over the edge, the primal need to mark her as mine, the pressure building in my balls reaching a fever-pitch.
She spasmed around me and I released myself, my own gasps mixing with hers as I filled her. The tightness of her pussy squeezed every last drop out of me, leaving me feeling like I’d just been drained of everything, but the desire to fuck my fiancée had been replaced with bone-deep satisfaction.
Lucrezia collapsed onto me, her long hair tickling my neck when she buried her face against me and peppered butterfly kisses over my skin.
“Wasn’t so bad to be the student for once, was it?” she whispered.
A laugh escaped me, even though my lungs still seemed to be figuring out how to work again. “Was that my first Counseling session?”
A fingertip traced my jawline, catching on the stubble there. “Consider it half of one. I still have some pent-up frustration to take out on you.”
I ran my hands over her, from shoulder to hip, enjoying the way her warm, silky skin gave under my fingers, the downwards dip in the curve of her waist. “I’m always available for punishment, Professor Lucrezia.”
She shook when she laughed silently. “I might try out your handcuffs on you.”
That was the sort of idea I might’ve had a hard time with before, but it turned out that giving up control wasn’t bad. Not when it was Lu holding the reins and using me for her own pleasure. “As long as they’re not fuzzy.”
Lu propped herself up on one elbow, smiling brightly. “Pink and fuzzy.”
“Absolutely not.”
“With rhinestones.”
I grabbed her and flipped her onto the bed, bracing myself just above her. She arched her back, squirming against me in a way that had my cock stirring again. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
She raised on eyebrow. “Am I? Or are you just stubborn?” With the angle she was laying at, all I had to do was push my hips forward to slide my hardening cock into her…
Which I did, drawing a low moan from my intrepid witch. “Maybe just a little stubborn,” I said, cupping her face as I pushed in further. She was still tight from her orgasm, writhing against me and grinding her clit against my lower stomach. “But you’re still dirty and incorrigible, and I love it.”
Lu threw her leg over my hip, opening herself to me, digging her nails into my back and biceps. “Oh, fuck, I’m going to come again,” she whispered, her voice ragged. I rocked against her until she came apart again, her moans verging on screams, then cradled her as close as possible.
After weeks of being on her blacklist, I felt like I’d been given a second chance at being happy again. I could’ve spent all night in her arms and inside her, but her lids were drooping with tiredness and satiation.
“Fuzzy handcuffs?” she whispered.
I got dressed and wrapped her in a blanket, then wrapped my arms around her and activated the runestone clutched in my palm.
We vanished and reappeared in her bedroom. Roman was flopped across her bed, dead asleep. Shane was in his wolf form, lying in front of her door. His ears pricked up when we appeared.
He sniffed once, twice, and let out a low grumble before lowering his head.
I picked her up and laid her next to Roman, brushing a kiss over her forehead and lips. “No fuzz.”
“Well, fuck,” she whispered. Her eyes were already closing. “I love you, Dom.”
My throat tightened painfully at the admission. Everything I’d done, and she still loved me. I didn’t deserve it. “I love you, Lucrezia.”
Shane let me leave the room without so much as a snarl, which was better than I’d hoped for.
Maybe he sensed that I felt genuine, painful remorse. That there was nothing I wouldn’t do for our lover.
I’d even wear the damn fuzzy handcuffs if it made her happy. Only on her birthday, though.
But first, Mallory Gilt and her fucked-up family needed to die.
Chapter 12
Lu
The only thing I admired about Gilt in the following week was the fact that even after a vampire attack that had resulted in five deaths and an injury, she herded us back into classes with the efficiency of a cattle dog and its sheep.
Roman’s leg wasn’t healing as quickly as he’d promised, but it was still much faster than a normal warlock’s healing rate. Shane had explained to me that a therianthrope’s healing process was significantly increased once he’d marked a mate. My presence alone would help him.
It was a relief to be able to do something to help someone.
My mind seemed to be in a constant whirl of anxiety and dread, even though I was overjoyed that I had Dom back. Locke hadn’t reappeared yet, and Shane checked both the forest prison and tunnel every day.
I poured my thoughts out to Holly in a letter I couldn’t deliver yet. If we survived the coming storm, I’d send it to Whitefawn. I hoped I could hand it to her myself in person, but we hadn’t heard a word from her. I wondered if Whitefawn’s covenmaster or mistress even believed her wild tale of a coven where the students were prisoners and kept within the walls by curses and spirits.
Before I’d been sentenced here, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Dominic continued to pore over the blueprints without Locke, making notations and relentlessly searching for curses when he wasn’t teaching class, and I openly invited him to my room when the twins were running as wolves.
I felt like I was stuck waiting, trapped in a bubble of time with a cataclysm looming over us and helpless to do anything about it. I was afraid to face Albrecht, and afraid not to face him. Just thinking about walking into the depths again, smelling the rotten stench of death and feeling the earth pressing down from overhead was enough to make me break out in goosebumps and start shuddering.
Am I a man? Albrecht’s words echoed in my mind. What he wanted me for scared me more than anything.
/> But life went on. Classes switched; I was shuffled into Coven History in the mornings, Herbalism in the afternoons. Like the delicious food and training program, the constant schedule-switching took on a new element of insidiousness. It was hard to keep track of your missing friends when your schedule was disrupted every other week.
But it was more obvious than ever. We were down to six.
Daphne and I huddled together in the back of Divination. The girl was tough, I’d give her that. Clarimond, Lissa, and Petra, her three closest friends before we’d reached our truce, were gone now.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her un-lipsticked mouth set. But she did everything with a fierce, almost violent determination.
I made up my mind, even if it was a stupid idea. Locke or another vampire could break into Cimmerian if they wanted to again. There might be no way out this time. No second chances.
“I can get you down to Waverly,” I said, my voice no louder than a whisper. Ivy was in the conservatory.
Daphne smirked, but it was a cold, mirthless expression. “A few weeks ago I would’ve been jumping for joy, Darke. But I’ve got a new mission in life.” She pruned the datura bush with brutal efficiency. “It’s a game called ‘make Mallory Gilt’s life a living hell until she kills me or I kill her’.”
“Welcome to the club,” I murmured.
We walked to dinner together, barely slowing this time when we crossed into the cafeteria. The first time we’d come back, it had taken us almost ten minutes of stalling to set foot in it.
The blood was gone, the damage repaired by the manor’s magic, but when I looked at this room all I saw was blood, gore, and panic. Daphne sat with me and the Frosts now. The Cinders were clear on the other side of the cafeteria, huddled together.
It was so hard to bring myself to eat. I couldn’t stop glancing at the boarded-over windows.
I would’ve died of happiness to see Locke alive and well out there.
“Mind if I join you?” a deep male voice asked.
All four pairs of eyes snapped up at once, snarls readying themselves in Shane and Roman’s throats.
I realized I’d forgotten one of our number, one who was unaccounted for most of the time, existing in a half-state thanks to Gilt.
Beckwith Tatter smiled, but he had eyes only for Daphne.
Amber eyes, with slit pupils.
He seemed to have been subtly perfected, his skin glowing and almost glass-like, features chiseled. Standing up, he was at least six feet tall, corded with lean muscle.
While everyone else had been screaming, Tatter had been bitten. Even without drinking a sire’s blood, Cadogan must have injected enough venom to force the virus into him anyways.
And he was sane.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Daphne asked, her mouth slack.
Tatter looked down at himself and back up at her. “Well… I think I’m a vampire.”
“No shit, Sherlock!” Roman snapped. “How? You’ve been catatonic for over a year!”
Tatter shook his head, brow creased, and sat next to Daphne with the sort of fluid grace only a vampire could achieve. “I don’t remember any of that,” he said, eyeing her as he settled down. “I remember you, Daphne Vega. You called me Spec-with Splatter, dropped my lunch in my lap, and stole my glasses.”
Daphne scooted over, putting a solid foot of space between herself and the fresh fledgling. “There’s other vamps here,” she said. “You should be blood-crazed right now.” Now that her shock was fading, fear was flooding to the surface.
But Tatter surveyed all of us with calm curiosity, with no hint of turning into a dazed, ravenous creature. “I don’t feel crazed.”
We all looked back at him with a mixture of fascination, trepidation, and outright shock. “Maybe the catatonia shielded his mind during the turn,” I suggested. What the hell would Locke make of him?
A familiar figure appeared in the doorway across the cafeteria, her dark eyes boring into me. Ivy lifted a hand and crooked a finger, then walked out of sight.
My stomach dropped somewhere near my feet, but I got up, touching Shane’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll be right back,” I said. The mystery of Tatter would have to wait for a little bit.
Shane and Roman were both focused on the vampire. “We didn’t even see you get bitten.”
“Because… I was catatonic? I’m not sure if I was supposed to feel myself turning, but I woke up like this…”
I followed Ivy into the North Entrance, schooling the shock out of my features. If she didn’t know Tatter was a sane vampire, all the better.
“Our covenmistress has a task for us,” she said, looking me up and down. Her hatred was palpable just being this close to her. “You’ve enjoyed all the benefits of becoming a Gilt so far. Now you get to see the hardships.”
Benefits? Did this bitch seriously think that the interest of Gilt’s eight-times-great mummy of a grandfather was a benefit?
She pushed through the doors. We stepped out into a balmy night, the sky still just tinted pink from sunset, stars already peeking out behind the thin clouds.
Locke was somewhere out here. My breath caught in my throat.
“I hope you’re happy.” Ivy’s voice was taut as a wire, the line of her shoulders drawn up. “You’ve gotten everything you wanted now.”
“What should I be happy about? You forced me to become one of you.” My sharp nails dug into my palms when I clenched my fists. The wildfire stirred, awakened by my irritation. “I was perfectly fine with being a Darke.”
A strange sort of smile stretched across her face. I only saw her profile as she hurried to the conservatory just ahead of me. What did Gilt want us to do now? I wasn’t going near the walls or hedges after dark. I didn’t trust my family name to protect me from the creatures hidden in them, and I’d never taken the periapt out of my arm.
“You got the family name and stole the one warlock who was worth an inheritance. I underestimated you, Lucrezia. I thought you were a silly little girl, playing games too big for her to understand, but I was wrong. I admit that.”
The conservatory was lit with the afterhours lamps, lending the faintest tinge of light to see by. Ivy unlocked the glass door. It rattled under her touch.
I’d never wanted to play her games. The only thing I wanted was to live my own life. “It wasn’t a game to me, Ivy.”
“No,” she said, striding in. I followed her, my heels clacking on the rough wooden floors. “It wasn’t. The stakes have always been real and tangible.”
Ivy picked something out of the corner, a long, thin piece of wood she tossed to me.
I caught the practice sword automatically, my trained muscles responding precisely as she’d mean for me to.
Understanding washed over me in a cold flood.
“You took everything from me, including the one person who could’ve changed my life,” she said quietly. Her own sword wasn’t a fake. The polished wood gleamed with spells, polished with care, the spirals of silver catching the light. The spell-hardened wood could slice through my body like so much butter. “One person who’s made their unrelenting devotion to you quite clear. I’m not sure why he’d feel that way at all- you have the animals. You dirtied your hands when you stooped to fucking a therianthrope. Nothing about you is worthy of the Steelblood name.”
I held the practice sword on guard. Ivy was too wily for me to turn my back on her.
But I’d beaten her once. I could do it again.
“When you’re dead, Dom will understand the consequences of a warlock breaking his word.” She ran the pad of her forefinger along the dull edge of the rowan blade. “And as for you, Lucrezia… your flaw was never naïveté. It was hubris.”
“You’re one to talk,” I said. My mates’ emotions emanated through the half-moons on my shoulders, confusion and alarm. They’d find me soon enough. All I had to do was outlast her.
Ivy raised her sword, her face perfectly blank, the lines of her body betraying nothing. “N
o,” she said. “I learned my lesson about trust. No one is coming for you.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, I felt the twins’ emotions explode into something else: shock, rage… pain. “What did you do?” My chest felt like a giant hand had clamped around me
Ivy only shook her head a fraction and lunged for me.
The sharp rowan sword split the air between us. I jumped aside and stumbled as something caught my ankle.
Barbed vines had grown through the planks while my attention had been on my coven-sister, wrapping around the ankles of my boots and holding me fast. They crept upwards like plants growing in fast-motion, the sting of tiny thorns biting into my calves.
Thirty seconds of inattention, and I was screwed. She’d been sending her magic out the entire time.
I ripped my feet upwards and the torn vines curled on the boards like worms. Now that she was no longer pretending to teach me, she was fast as hell, raising another round of twisting vines to grab at my ankles and slicing towards me with the sword.
The blade caught the edge of my sleeve, cutting right through it like paper. The Razor’s Edge cantrip was no joke.
Something tugged at my hair. I let out a small shriek as vines reached down from the ceiling, trying to tangle themselves in the roots of my hair, and whipped the practice sword overhead to cut through them.
They were eating the building.
If I let my wildfire loose now, we might both die, trapped in the burning structure.
But cold, vicious look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. One of us was dying tonight anyways.
I reached for the embers of wildfire, hoping I could stop her before the flames burned my only weapon to useless ash.
My mates were furious, both of them yearning towards me. A steady drumbeat of desperation began pounding in the back of my head: survive. Kill her. Survive.
Ivy’s blank expression had given way to a grim little smile. She turned on me with a series of vicious chops, hacking and slicing as I stumbled backwards and ran into the wall. Squirming tendrils of plant reached out for me, pushing through the groaning boards.
