Last Chance Academy

by Alex Lidell

  “All right, now, talk,” I say.

  “I said I wanted to touch you, not just look.” Straightening his legs across the floor of the cage, Ellis pats his lap.

  27

  Sam

  I make myself crawl toward Ellis, hating how much my body wants to know the feel of him even as my mind knows that I’m nothing but a sex toy to amuse a wolf. And yet my traitorous sex clenches as I inhale the male’s clean wild scent, beads of moisture soaking into my panties.

  Ellis smiles, the rare sight making my stomach flutter, and I suddenly suspect he can smell my arousal.

  My face heats. Well, if he can, he’ll also know that it comes with a healthy dose of hatred.

  I’m stiff as a board as I settle onto his lap. The feel of his hard thighs beneath my backside makes me aware of every awkward curve of my body beside the powerful perfection of his. I’ve been on a man’s lap before, mostly in foster care—and soon learned that it is the last place I ever want to be again.

  Ellis’s arms come around me, pulling me into his warm chest.

  Right. Here we go. My heart pounds as I make my mind go blank, casting my thoughts into numbness. Imagining that I’m watching a scene happening to someone else. Someone who isn’t wrong to enjoy the feel of the muscled thighs beneath her, who is free to savor the little jolts of heat wherever skin meets skin.

  Shifting me until my head fits perfectly into the grove of his shoulder, Ellis brushes his callused palms along my hands. My forearms. My upper arms. And—and stops. Stops and just holds me against his body, not venturing to where I so loathe—so want—him to go.

  “Relax, Devinee,” he murmurs in my ear, his clean scent washing over me. “I can hear your heart racing.”

  I don’t reply. I can no more stop my heart’s gallop than I can pretend I’m not terrified of what’s about to happen. That I’m not terrified of how much I want it to happen. “Just get it over with, Ellis.” I tell him. “A deal is a deal. I’m here. Touch and be done with it.”

  I feel more than hear his sigh of frustration, but his voice is hard when he speaks.

  “All right. As you wish.” With one arm shifting to grip my waist and hold me in place, his free hand slides along my arm to my elbow. Strong callused fingers press into the flesh and joint from every angle imaginable, releasing the pressure just as tenderness turns to pain.

  Confusion washes through me, prickling my skin. I know something is coming, and I want to skip to that part already. I don’t need this foreplay. I don’t want it. I want to get this over with.

  Ellis moves my arm back and forth as if testing a hinge.

  “You have an elbow fetish?” I ask through clenched teeth.

  “Yes, very much so.” He continues the motion a few more seconds before his hand slides to a new target: my bare torso.

  I shiver, as much with the growing cold as with the light contact. My stomach clenches as his fingers slide across my skin, my heavy breasts tingling in anticipation of being touched. Despite myself, I can’t help wondering what it will feel like to have this powerful male’s hand slide over my breast, cupping its weight. Any moment now. Three. Two.

  My nipples peak, poking harder through my flimsy bra, begging shamelessly for Ellis’s fingers to tweak them. My breath stills.

  But Ellis’s hand skims over my ribs instead, tracing each one.

  What the hell? I tilt back, looking at his face in question. But his eyes are intent on my body, examining it with a doctor’s steady remove.

  Changing course again, his touch returns toward my midline. Back to that breast he all but promised to fondle and never did. Closer. Closer still. And then he brushes under it, and under the strap of my bra, as if the tender orb was nothing but an obstacle. Reaching my sternum, he drops his perusal to the next rib down, the pressure firm and steady.

  I jerk involuntarily, having somehow forgotten the huge-ass bruise blossoming along my side.

  Ellis’s hold on me tightens. In restraint. In comfort.

  Lightening the pressure, he taps against the bone, watching my face intently.

  I blink up at him, his broad shoulders and yellow eyes tightened with focus, and the pattern of his touch suddenly hits me. The male isn’t fondling my breasts because he is busy retracing all the places his practice blade rapped this morning. Hell. He made his deal not to molest me, but to check whether I was all right. Because I would not let him check when he tried earlier.

  “It’s…sore.” I whisper, surprising myself at the honesty.

  Ellis nods, his face contrite instead of derisive. “I went too hard. I was angry.” His jaw tightens. “I was jealous,” he amends, his hand tightening into a fist that he slams against his thigh. “Bloody hell. You are mortal. I could have busted a rib. I’m glad I didn’t.” The last is said under his breath, his hand now openly moving among all the tender spots across my flesh without needing to search.

  “Do you remember everywhere you struck?” I ask.

  “Of course.” Ellis sounds surprised at the question. “I know when I hurt you, Sam. I just don’t let that stop me.”

  The sound of my first name on his lips sends a shiver through me. Something so simple made so intimate.

  “It wasn’t just my pride,” I say, the words surprising myself as much as him. “When we were sparring. It wasn’t just my pride keeping me from surrendering. It was… It was something else. I knew I couldn’t make you stop, not if you didn’t want to. And tapping to you just then, it—”

  “It would have given me another weapon to use against you.” Ellis finishes my sentence with all too much understanding. “And you didn’t trust me not to do that.” The statement carries no judgment.

  I shiver suddenly, the cold autumn night roaring back in now that my mind doesn’t swirl with confusion.

  “Trust me, Sam,” he murmurs, waiting for my nod before pulling his shirt over his head, the shifting muscles in his chest and shoulders even more overwhelming up close. When his arms tighten around me again, I slowly relax into his hold. His deliciously warm, velvet-skinned hold. Heat radiates off his body now that his sweat-soaked shirt is gone, and I can feel my own skin nearly purring in contentment as it warms back up.

  For the next quarter hour, we settle into a comfortable silence, Ellis’s cheekbone resting on the top of my head, the heat from his body seeping steadily into mine. I don’t wonder at it. I don’t question it after everything Ellis put me through. I just accept. I’m too tired and sore and scared to do anything else. With his heart so near my ear, I can feel and hear the lub-dub, lub-dub of his pulse. And I resist the fierce, crazy urge to shift my head until my lips press against it.

  After a bit, his hand rubs gently over my ribs again, though this time, the touch is soothing instead of probing.

  Too soothing. Too comfortable.

  Finally, I jerk away from him, reality coming back to crash over me. This was a deal. And if he’s decided he doesn’t want to be sticking his cock into me just now, then I better take that and run. Especially given the very hard and very large bulge growing between his thighs.

  Just because my body lusts after his just as badly as his seems to want mine doesn’t mean I’m dumb enough to follow. “A deal is a deal, Ellis,” I say. “Now, pay up.”

  He lets out a long sigh, the arms around me loosening to give me free rein to climb off his lap. “You’ll find your answer on my chest,” he says, shaking his head when I raise a brow. “That’s the truth, Devinee. One you’d have seen already if you paid any attention. Left side, just over my first rib.”

  “Put your hands down to your sides,” I instruct, half surprised when he obeys, the loss of his touch leaving me cold. A good reminder of reality. Twisting around to straddle his thighs, I lean down, looking for something—anything—in the dark, feeling the male tense under my inspection.

  Now that I think about it, for all his muscled perfection, Ellis doesn’t walk around without a shirt the way I’d expect a male like him to do.


  My fingers join the search, smooth warm skin over taut muscle shifting under my touch. Ellis’s ridged abdomen tightens, his breathing picking up slightly. Finally, not getting anywhere in the shadow, I take his huge shoulders and shift him firmly toward the moonlight—and gasp.

  A star-shaped scar, about two inches across. Just like the one on Cassis’s back. The same one a foster mother left on my palm. I open my hand to check, just in case.

  “Did Sienna do this?” I ask, my fingers tracing the puckered flesh on Ellis’s breast.

  “Yes.” Ellis flinches. “Cassis told you?”

  “Only about himself. And when I asked what happened to her, Cassis said that what four immortals couldn’t accomplish, the Spanish Inquisition took care of.” I swallow, the thought of someone having cut into Ellis making my stomach turn. “That’s why you sent me to Cassis, isn’t it? You’d seen my mark, and you wanted to be sure I wasn’t the same witch somehow. You knew Cassis would freak out and take a bite, learn the truth about me through my blood.”

  Ellis nods, his whole body tense as if bracing for a blow. He wants to discuss this topic as little as Cassis did, and yet…yet he put it on the table for our bargain.

  My breath halts. “Why?” I ask. The intelligence in his eyes says he understands the question.

  “Because the only way you’d let me touch you was if you thought I wanted something out of it.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” I whisper, my hand tight on Ellis’s shoulder. “Why do I have the same mark as you and Cassis?”

  “And Asher,” Ellis says quietly. “Reese too. The four immortals who thought they could change the world and shattered themselves against it instead. The four horsemen.”

  “Weren’t those supposed to bring about the end of the world?”

  “They did,” Ellis says softly. “The end of our world.”

  My heart squeezes at his words. Before I can think better of it, I flatten my palm over Ellis’s chest, my scar covering his.

  “No, Dev—” Ellis’s panicked words cut off with a gasp as the marks…waken, pulling toward each other like magnets that guide each tiny groove into place. As a jolt of energy races through our joined bodies with the force of a lightning storm.

  Power zaps through me.

  One moment, I’m kneeling on Ellis’s strong thighs, indulging in a curiosity. The next, the cold doesn’t feel cold anymore, the woods blossoming into a rich bouquet of smells that separate each oak and fern and maple. Where a moment ago the forest’s gentle shifting was a mere backdrop of white noise, now the whispering leaves and the rustle of a startled rabbit are as different as chords of music.

  I swallow, my eyes focusing on Ellis’s golden ones, my body knowing intuitively that it’s his senses I’m looking through. And it’s like putting on a pair of glasses after a lifetime of myopia. Except the shared sensations don’t stop at the nice ones.

  As I settle deeper into this strange shared bond, my heart pounding harder with each new sensation, a new feeling floods my veins. Pain. Burning pain encircling my wrists and ankles as if the metal bands touching my skin are made of hot coal. My breath catches, tears pressing against my throat, the shock nearly cutting off my air.

  I feel as much as see Ellis’s hand in motion, his intent clear. To break the connection, stop me from feeling his agony.

  “Keep your hands where they are,” I say, gritting my teeth, breathing through the pain. He opens his mouth to protest, eyes blazing, but I shake my head roughly.

  Ellis lowers his hands obediently to his side, though I can feel the effort of will it takes him. His instinct screams at him to shield me from his pain. To protect his own soul from my scrutiny. But he fights it off. Because I asked.

  “Why does it hurt so much?” I ask.

  “Iron,” Ellis says. “The same magic that makes me strong also makes me vulnerable.”

  I reach for his shackled wrist, and the male’s arm shakes with the effort of keeping still while I trace the cuff, the angry red streaks snaking along his skin. When I touch the iron itself, I feel the phantom heat coming off it, burning away Ellis’s magic bit by bit.

  I hope iron doesn’t hurt witches. Wrapping my fingers around each cuff, gripping all that searing heat, I pull it into myself. More and more, not knowing how I’m doing it, just knowing that I have to try. I pull every bit of fire into me until my nerves scream, until the feeling of a cool paste soothes the pain in Ellis’s wrists.

  “Devinee!” Ellis grips my arm, the red streaks now blistering my skin instead of his. “Stop.”

  I shake my head, my mind turning and fitting facts together like a game of Tetris. “I think it goes both ways, Ellis.” I pant, watching my blistered skin settle into something calmer, my body fighting off the effects of iron more easily than Ellis’s can. He looks dazed, his eyes wide on my smooth skin. “You share your strengths, and I share mine, even if my contribution is a simple tolerance to iron. We can do this. Survive. But we need a stronger connection.”

  Rising onto my knees, letting my screaming instincts lead, I press my mouth against his, my tongue brushing to part his lips.

  Ellis gasps, his mouth opening to allow me inside, letting me explore his delicious heat for one stunned moment. And then he takes charge, surging off the cage bars into me. Gripping my face, he takes possession of my mouth with a power that echoes through every fiber of my body.

  Our tongues tangle, magnifying our shared pain, yes—but magnifying our shared power even more. My sex clenches with the need for him, moving of its own accord in search of what it wants. I ride Ellis, grinding against his hard length until he pants with need. Each stroke of his tongue sends a new rush of sensation through me, my thighs and feet and breasts all tensing. Tingling.

  “Devinee,” Ellis growls against me.

  My free hand slides down his hard body, splaying over the ridges of his abdomen, teasing the waistband of his pants. His own fingers tangle in my hair, and he groans as the strength flowing through our connection overwhelms my soul.

  28

  Ellis

  It took everything, every ounce of strength in every fiber of his being, for Ellis to pull his lips away from Sam’s. Her hand was still on his heart, the connection between them filling him with a strength he’d not felt in centuries. Not since the witch Sienna had ripped him apart. Now, with Sam in his arms, Ellis wondered if perhaps the part of his soul he thought was dead had just been sleeping.

  The pain in his wrists and ankles, where iron was slowly burning away his magic, had lessened beneath the cool balm of the witch’s connection—even the red streaks of iron poisoning were now a gentle pink. Ellis didn’t understand how the little witch had pulled the iron toward herself, but he knew for certain that he couldn’t let her do it again. Not when he’d seen how it hurt her.

  She was so small, so vulnerable, goose bumps breaking out on her skin as he pulled away from her, her dusky nipples hard under that threadbare white bra.

  “Ellis,” Sam whispered. The wind was ruffling the red streaks in her hair, her hazel eyes wide and glazed.

  She wanted him. Her arousal had been there for a while, but Ellis could now smell the moisture slicking her thighs—though it was a wonder he could focus on anything over the painful pulsing in his cock. Gripping the bars of the cage on either side of him to keep from pouncing on her, Ellis took a ragged breath. He couldn’t do this to her. Wouldn’t risk what sex would do when a mere touch let her drag his poison toward herself.

  “Move away,” he whispered, flinching at the look of hurt that passed over Sam’s eyes. “I want you, Devinee,” he explained quickly. “I want you badly enough that I’m…I can barely hold myself back. But it isn’t … I don’t know what it’s going to do to you. I’m not willing to risk it.”

  “So you get to decide for me?” Sam shot back, her forehead tensing with that spitfire spirit that made Ellis long to sheathe himself deep inside her in a single stroke. She stood suddenly, moving to the oppos
ite-side cage bars. “What I should and shouldn’t be risking. In what world is anything about my body your decision?”

  Ellis laughed without humor. Oh, there were a lot of things about the witch’s little body that he’d love to make decisions about. And despite Sam’s words—which Ellis fully believed she believed—he could smell the excitement her body whispered to him at the mention of his control.

  But with that connection of marks, that sharing of soul and pain, it scared Ellis as badly as anything he’d ever faced. What if Sam’s desire was simply a mirror of his own? What if his overwhelming want was somehow coercing her?

  More to the point, perhaps, was that Ellis was primal in a way Sam didn’t understand. He didn’t want to fondle and caress. He wanted to mate with every predatory wolfish instinct in his body, to take her. No reservations. The witch couldn’t bear to have him on top of her in a sparring match, could not trust him to stop without savoring her surrender. If he were to allow himself free rein with her, it would require she trust him in a way he’d not yet earned. In a way she wasn’t ready to give.

  “Have you had sex before, Devinee?” Ellis asked, savoring the way the tips of her ears reddened at the bluntness.

  “Yes.” Her body tensed.

  Ellis cocked his head. “By your own choice?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.”

  Ellis’s focus narrowed on the spike in her scent, the way her face paled with the answer. “You’re lying.” Rage filled him at the thought of the girl being forced. And the way he’d take her… Bloody hell.

  “If you’re so big on me making a choice, then maybe you should respect mine now,” Sam shot back at him, her confidence faltering a moment later. “Unless you don’t—”

  “I want you,” Ellis assured her with a frustrated chuckle. “But you deserve better, Samantha. Better than me.” Rising and walking over to where she stood by the opposite cage bars, he crouched to keep from looming over her. “It won’t be what you imagine. I won’t—can’t give you free rein over my body. I’ll claim yours. Hard. And you…” He snorted softly. “I can already see you shaking at the thought.”