Last Chance Reform

by Alex Lidell

  Seriously?

  He raises one dark brow. “If I smack your wet ass right now,” he whispers softly into my ear, “it will sting very much.”

  Heat rushes from my cheeks right to my sex, which is wet from more than shower water. I unclench my fingers from my training pants and press them against the cool tile. For a moment, nothing happens, and a shiver runs over my skin. Then I feel Reese’s callused hands brush over my aching muscles, gently washing away the dirt and sweat.

  No one does this for me, much less a hot navy SEAL vampire with a British accent and a way of sending electrical pulses from my breasts to my clit just by ordering me to turn around and shut up. Holy crap. A shudder I can’t control escapes me as Reese’s hands lift my aching breasts and brush away the grains of sand that managed to get there too.

  I don’t remember anyone ever helping me bathe before, even as a small child. Most foster moms tried to touch me as little as possible, as if being an orphan was somehow infectious. And then I learned that not being touched at all was better than the alternative.

  Until now. I’m just beginning to relax under Reese’s touch when his hands drop to the top of my pants.

  “Don’t even think about moving,” Reese says hoarsely into my ear. I can barely force the air back into my constricting lungs, my sex pulsing with ever brush of Reese’s words over my skin. “Or speaking.”

  I’m still wondering whether vampires can smell arousal when my sweatpants drop to the tile floor with a wet slap. Reese has me bare, and all coherent thoughts simply disappear. Something brushes my ass—the wet cotton of Reese’s pants as he steps closer to me. His hands slide competently along my thighs, the scrape of his calluses along my skin making my core sing like the most clear fucking soprano I’ve ever heard.

  But he never touches me. Not that way. And I don’t know whether I love or hate him for keeping his word.

  13

  Reese

  Reese never meant to watch Samantha sleep.

  He’d meant merely to help get the sand off her, to take the reins long enough to give her the respite she needed. She deserved. To prove that she did not always have to be the only one looking out for herself. Yet the whole of his self-control had been strained to the limit at the sight of her delicious body, small and leanly muscled, water running down her smooth skin, beading in the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, the tiny dimple over her ass.

  And then he’d meant to make himself scarce—give her his bed to sleep away what was left of the morning. It wasn’t as if he actually used it more than a few hours every month or so. With some luck, Sam might sleep well into the morning—after what he’d put her through, she’d need it.

  It hadn’t gone as planned. And that was the bloody understatement of the century.

  Reese had started the night fully expecting to force protocols on the witch. Then she’d mouthed off enough for a change of plans, Reese’s military training taking over to put a young recruit into place. And then…then the world shifted around him.

  He hadn’t meant to care. Certainly hadn’t meant to take control of her the way a vampire did for a mate in need. But she’d given him her trust, and the gift of that was too precious to resist, to treat with anything but the utmost reverence it deserved.

  Even then, it was supposed to have been all about her. Educating. Correcting. Protecting. But then, somewhere along the way, it became about him too.

  In the shower in the wee hours of this morning, when he smelled Samantha’s arousal, his world had shaken hard enough that he’d had to brace himself against the tiled wall. Arousal meant, if not complete trust, an openness to it. After he’d shoved her through hell, slicing open the limits of her physical and emotional endurance to expose the wounds deep inside—she was still willing to trust him. Allowed her body to want him.

  It had taken all of Reese’s strength not to give her body what it wanted and sink his fingers deep into that warmth, to drop his own pants and take her hard against the tile wall. She would have let him. And she would have hated him afterward, undoing all the work he’d done to get her to open up.

  She had been asleep nearly as soon as her head touched the pillow. And then semiawake just as quickly moments later, gasping. Screaming in the throes of a nightmare. When Reese heard her scream Quinn’s name in utter terror, he had to leave the room to put his fist through a wall. He’d have to explain that hole to Asher.

  Something was happening to him. A protective instinct coiling everything inside him into a tight, uncomfortable knot, redirecting all his senses toward a new north—toward her. And it terrified him.

  He’d meant to wake her when he returned to the room, but for some reason known to Hades alone, her muscles relaxed when he sat beside her. Her breathing eased as he slid his hand along her soft, trembling back.

  That Samantha’s nightmares eased with his presence only tightened that knot further, made it rise into his throat with the strength of a vise. He hadn’t felt this way in four hundred years, and he’d planned to never again.

  Reese had tried to leave two more times, but each time, her terrors started again, with only the names she screamed changing. The girl was reliving things she should never have dealt with. And, if Reese heard right, things that had not happened to her at all.

  It was five in the morning when she first shouted Sienna’s name, thrashing against the sheets as if she’d been strapped down. A scene all too familiar from Reese’s own—mercifully rare—dreams. A scene that happened centuries before Samantha was born.

  What the bloody hell?

  Rolling up his sleeve, Reese ran the tip of his finger over the five-pointed star Sienna’s ministrations had left on his forearm. The same one that was on Sam’s palm, finally splayed open as her breath slowed with his touch.

  So he hadn’t left. Sleep was not something that came often to him, but after he wrapped Sam in his arms and felt her sleeping body ease against his, he’d actually settled into the first slumber he’d had in months.

  It was already past seven when he blinked awake, the noises outside his bedchamber announcing that Asher had company. Buttoning his sleeve, Reese closed the door behind him as he walked into the common room and cut his gaze over his visitors. The sight of Ellis made him tense.

  She is likely your mate too, Ellis had told him.

  Reese wanted to kill him for that.

  Ellis’s nostrils flared delicately, a sly grin coming over his pain-filled features. “I smell Samantha Devinee all over you, Reesand,” he said, cocking his head.

  “She’s sleeping in the other room,” Reese answered curtly. There was little point in denying it. “I smell fever all over you, Ellis.”

  Ellis’s grin faltered for a moment before returning. “Then you and Asher can commiserate about your oversensitive noses. Excuse me.”

  Asher blocked Ellis’s path, crossing his arms over his chest. It was still strange to watch Asher give Ellis orders, much less have the fae warrior accept them. But this was more than an instructor and cadet—Asher was standing before his half brother because he was truly worried. And while Reese would be more than happy to see Ellis disappear, Asher wouldn’t be.

  And neither would Sam. Hades take him.

  “Take off your shirt,” Reese said, rolling up his sleeves and heading over to the kitchenette sink to wash his hands.

  “Why, Reesand, I didn’t know I was your type. Won’t you buy me a drink first?”

  Reese didn’t bother answering the provocation, but the fact that Ellis was complying with no more than a cursory fuck-off made him as worried as Asher seemed to be. Then he turned around and swore.

  The male’s wounds weren’t healing. In fact, red streaks now spread onto previously untouched flesh, like a network of angry welts. It was a miracle the male could move without screaming in pain—but then, Ellis was good at hiding such things.

  “Why the fucking hell am I only seeing this now?” Reese snapped, keeping his voice low to keep from waking Sam. “If
you wanted to kill yourself, Ellis, I would have happily done the deed for you. So want to tell me what stupidity had you curled up in your quarters like a cub with a tucked tail?” Reese palpated along the injured flesh as he spoke, pressing just hard enough at the end of his statement to hear Ellis hiss in pain instead of giving him a smartass reply.

  “Iron poisoning,” Asher said, his face grim. The male blamed himself. Of course he did. “All because I—”

  “All because I killed Victor’s pet crony.” Ellis snatched his shirt from the table, pulling it back on with a wince. “The point is that this reaction should never have happened. Not from a few lashes.”

  “A hundred,” said Asher.

  “We’re all proud you can count that high, but there’s no need to keep showing off,” said Ellis.

  “I should have checked the whip, seen if anyone tampered with it.” Asher rubbed his face.

  “Tampered with a bit of leather and iron that Victor handed you directly?” Reese demanded. “What would you have looked for, pray tell? A hazmat sticker?” Reese turned toward Ellis, who, for once, was acting like the more rational of the brothers. “We don’t know that’s the root cause. Maybe there was something on the whip. Maybe it’s your unlucky streak. Maybe the witch makes you more vulnerable than you thought. Right now, Ellis, it no longer matters. You need to go back to Talon. Your magic will be stronger there, and there are healers who can deal with it in a way I can’t.”

  “No.” Ellis’s face hardened. “I’m not leaving Devinee here.”

  “You aren’t going to do her any good being dead either.” Reese spread his shoulders. Ellis wasn’t easy to loom over, but it helped that he was in pain, and Reese wasn’t above using any means at hand to get his point across. “Stupidity is more deadly than iron.”

  “I never knew you cared.” Ellis swallowed, his chin lifting in that way that said arguing would be futile. “If you so badly want me to live, then come up with a better idea than using the witch or getting me a ticket to magic land.”

  Right. Throwing one last look at the closed door where Sam was sleeping, Reese felt his poor judgment taking over. Fine. Fine, he would do something—though waiting until Ellis went unconscious and then throwing him bodily through the gateway still seemed the better option.

  Tightening his jaw, Reese pointed to Asher. “You. Infirmary. Now.”

  Ellis raised a finger. “Point of clarification—”

  “Shut the fuck up, you arse,” Reese snapped at Ellis before twisting to Asher. “You are donating blood. Let’s go.”

  14

  Sam

  Sitting beside Mika in the library, I try to follow the equations she’s writing in a notebook, her voice way too excited to be explaining exactly how two numbers fit together. They make no more sense to me now than they did in calc, when the vamp teaching the class covered a whole chalkboard with examples.

  Or maybe the problem is that no matter what I do, I can’t escape my own thoughts of Reese. The way he cracked through every one of my shields. Pushed me to misery and beyond. The way he touched me afterward. The way he didn’t touch me.

  The Mahogany Hall Library is the perfect place to put that steamy shower out of my mind, with its whispering silence and towering shelves of knowledge. It’s the research center for the entire island, not just the reform school, so it’s proportionally epic—we sit huddled together at a round table on the ground floor, six levels towering above us in the vaulted space. Slants of light shoot down from a massive octagonal skylight at the very top, catching dust motes on their way down.

  “…and then aliens landed.”

  I nod along before shaking myself like a dog. “Wait. What?”

  Mika snorts delicately, flipping a strand of black hair out of her eyes. “Just checking how much you’re listening. By my count, you’ve written down notes on aliens, raccoons, and cockroaches at least three times in the last fifteen minutes, so…”

  Looking down at my notebook, I see that Mika is right. “You’re no better when it comes to art history,” I say, reaching for the old strategy that got me through foster care—a strong defense is a good offense.

  Mika snorts again, pointed canines flashing with a little grin. It’s school hours, so she’s in the same uniform I am—the only girl at the Academy who manages to make the blue skirt look modestly long. But somehow, she’s found a way to make it her own—geometric neon-pink stud earrings peeking out of her spiky black bob, oversized old-man glasses that she says are for “blocking blue light,” a tiny round pin on one of her shirt cuffs that says, “Machine shop.”

  The girl and I turn out to have remarkably convenient interests when it comes to schoolwork—in that they’re the direct opposite of each other. If we could divide up the exams so she covers all the sciences and I take the creatives, we’d be golden.

  Mika shifts in her seat, her features twisting sourly as she focuses on something over my shoulder. “Don’t look now, but His Highness Count Victor just graced the Mahogany Hall Library with his immortal presence.” She mimes sticking her index finger down her throat.

  My shoulders tighten. “The rest of the demivamps are falling over themselves for a chance to lick his shoes.”

  “I’m smarter than them.” Mika chews on her pen. She isn’t smart—she’s fucking brilliant—but she’s also the kind of genius who sometimes has little common sense to speak of. There is literally nothing to gain and lots to lose for a demivamp who refuses to play along.

  Shit. I sound like Reese.

  “Incoming,” Mika murmurs.

  Turning around, I see that Victor isn’t just taking a stroll down the hardwood library aisle, but has set sights directly for the table where Mika and I huddle. The demifae students rise to their feet, saluting the dean as he passes. Most of the demivamps choose to drop to their knees instead, or at least those seated drop their gazes to the floor. It looks like a wave at a baseball game.

  Mika and I get to our feet as Victor stops beside our table, and I lower my gaze to the floor. Not as a way of groveling, but because Reese is right, it’s only surrender if that’s the meaning I give to the gesture. Otherwise, it’s just an arbitrary set of rules in a game of etiquette.

  “At ease.” Victor’s voice echoes through the cavernous hall as he waves his hand in the air, sending the rest of the library back to their studies. Without looking away from the floor, I slide back into my books as well, hoping the vamp is going to move on. But I can feel his gaze on me. Cool, like little snowflakes dancing along my skin.

  “I’m pleased to see you’ve located your manners, Ms. Devinee,” Victor says, his voice slow and cultured. He’s wearing his signature outfit, a fine silk suit, this one with tiny gray pinstripes and a single red rose pinned to his chest pocket. “It would have been such a shame if you’d lost them for good and all. Perhaps now we can start over from a place of mutual respect.”

  I swallow against the bile gagging my throat. Last time Victor felt insulted, one of my friends got hurt. Keeping Mika safe is more important than fighting centuries of lore. Arbitrary rules can’t make me inferior without my consent. “Yes, Your Excellence.”

  He smiles. “I wish to discuss a few things with you, if this is a convenient time.”

  “Of course.” I’m smart enough by now to know that only a masochistic idiot would find a meeting with the Talonswood Reform dean inconvenient. “I am at your disposal.”

  “Lovely.” Victor gestures toward the huge spiral staircase that is the crown jewel of the Mahogany, winding through the center of the hall.

  With the vampire in the lead, we climb the steps though all six floors, stopping by the huge bay window at the very top. Outside, the pristine, tree-filled green sprawls below a cloudless blue sky, surrounded by tall gothic buildings with delicate ivy climbing up their walls.

  “The librarians tell me you’ve been inquiring after texts on witchcraft,” Victor says as we both look out the window.

  I tense. I did inquire, was hopi
ng to learn more about who I am without bringing the world down on top of my head at random intervals. Neither the librarians nor catalog searches led me anywhere, though. “I did not realize researching witchcraft was against the rules, sir.”

  “Of course it isn’t, my dear.” Victor places his hands behind his back in a courtly manner, the motion looking utterly natural on him. His pointed features are relaxed, his dark eyes eagle sharp. “But some of my colleagues have thought to remove such literature from student reach. They feel it is a threat to have witches run amok with power, you see.”

  “They?” I also put my hands behind my back, gripping one of my wrists. “That’s a very specific choice of pronoun, sir.”

  Victor chuckles. “Ah. That fire in you. There it always is, burning so very bright. Very few creatures would permit themselves to be quite so direct with me, and yet I find you refreshing, Samantha. All right, let us both be more direct. Most of the texts on witchcraft were destroyed right along with the witches themselves. Mind you, there were few texts to begin with since the witch covens had oral traditions. The fae-vampire wars brought a dark time for creatures, with a great deal of animosity toward the witches specifically.

  “Ultimately, the fae made an effort to take all the remaining books on witchcraft into Talon, both to secure their position in the mortal realm and to see whether they could assimilate any of the witches’ knowledge. In short, vampires got the science and the fae took the magic.”

  “Can they?” I ask. “Can the fae use any witchcraft from the texts they took?”

  Excitement simmers in my veins as Victor opens a door I’ve been pounding on for weeks, but I do my best to keep it from my face. I’m not an idiot. I know that anything he says to me could be a bald-faced lie—but when it comes to magic, I’m just desperate enough to listen anyway.

  “I’ve not been to Talon in some time, but if anything was developed, it would be there. As I’ve no doubt you learned by now, the mortal world inhibits organic magic for all but the witches. Except for certain innate powers, such as shifting and compulsion.”