Dark Days: Semester 1

by Liz Meldon

  I could barely come to terms with it. Wanting a shifter—this shifter of all creatures, a wolf so palpably my opposite that it ought to make my skin crawl. Yet I craved her scent, her voice, her blood. I desired every inch of Emma fucking Kingsley, right down to the way she absent-mindedly toyed with her hair while she wrote lesson plans.

  Honestly, the way she popped it between her lips, gnawing at it like a hound with a rawhide—it should have repulsed me.

  Instead, all I could think about whenever I saw her was pressing her up against the nearest wall and sinking my teeth into her neck, then fucking her into oblivion.

  It was a nightmare, for more reasons than one. Not only had she dangled herself in front of me by agreeing to engage in a little extracurricular sexual activity, but then she had made all these damn rules, and I knew that should I break them, should I push too hard, she would rescind her invitation.

  And while I was all too happy to take what I wanted, I refused to do it when the other party explicitly said no.

  So, over the last few weeks, we hadn’t been at each other’s throats, not once, but I had been chomping at the bit to get her alone.

  Pathetic, really. A shifter with so much control over a vampire. I shook my head and took another long, luxurious slurp of my midnight meal, then reclined in my high-backed leather chair, clothes still stinking of turkey and gravy, apple pie and cinnamon. I’d only been able to conquer one essay since the feast ended, but at least it had kept me busy enough to stop obsessing about her. Mind you, if the rest of the pile was as absolute shit as what I’d just read, the distraction might not hold out for long.

  Even though we had sat beside one another at the staff table, I had been able to ignore Emma for most of the dinner. Not only had the art students made horrendous hats for all of us faculty, but there had been plenty of other entertainment before the main course. Poems from the English students. Skits from the drama enthusiasts. Foster gave a never-ending toast to what he was thankful for this year—the academy, unsurprisingly, and all the people in it. The head chef had his moment in the sun, explaining all the dishes as his horde of underlings served them.

  It had been a pleasant enough night, and had I Emma’s shifter appetite, I probably would have overindulged too. As it were, my tastes had become very specific since I’d turned, and nothing could ever please me again like the lukewarm liquid in my mug.

  And now, it seemed, the scalding hot blood of a wolf shifter—so sweet, so different.

  That had to be it—why I was so infatuated with her. The sex had been excellent, but the blood. It was something else entirely. Something I had never tasted before, and Emma Kingsley wasn’t the first shifter I had sampled in the last two hundred years.

  She was an enigma. A curiosity.

  Emma Kingsley was a fucking distraction.

  I cleared my throat and sat forward, grabbing the next essay from the pile.

  Fortunately, the following two papers proved to be more worthy of my time, written by a pair of my top five-percenters. They were spared the wrath of the red pen and had lifted my mood considerably by the time two o’clock rolled around. Just as I was about to make another blood run, I heard it—the click, click, click of heels along the hardwood corridor outside. I hesitated, checking the time again on my wristwatch, and straightened when the heels clicked right by my classroom door, then backtracked to it and stopped. Even without a window set in the old wood, I knew who was standing on the other side, could feel that wild aura. The knob creaked when it turned, and I sat back in my chair with a barely contained grin.

  Finally.

  Emma poked her head inside, scanning my bare-bones classroom until her gaze found me. Around us, every inch of wall space had been plastered with campaign posters from the two world wars, both of which I had lived through and were the sole course content for my upper-year classes. Between us sat a sea of unremarkable desks. Other teachers saw fit to arrange them in configurations: pairs, clumps, quads, one giant square. I preferred to keep everyone separate to limit the nonsense, but kids these days were connected to the internet twenty-four seven—plenty of opportunities for nonsense.

  It was why I also made them handwrite all their notes. No laptops or cell phones beyond that door; if I saw either device outside of a backpack or book bag, it was mine for the rest of the term.

  And as Emma strolled in, she adhered to that rule without realizing, wearing nothing more than the slim-fit black dress that had caught my eye at supper, a half-drunk wine bottle in hand. I could smell that it was a red from here, and from the slight teeter of her heels with every cautious step, I deduced that this wasn’t the first bottle she’d worked through. Shifter bodies could metabolize alcohol faster, but that certainly didn’t mean they couldn’t get intoxicated.

  I only hoped, as she strode toward me, skirting along the last row of the desks, that she wasn’t so drunk that I would have to send her away.

  After all, I was trying to listen to my conscience after so many decades of outright ignoring it.

  Sporting a wry smile, I tossed my pen down and pushed my chair back, legs crossed at the ankles, hands threaded on my chest. Emma said nothing as she stopped at the nearest empty desk, then heavily plopped her wine bottle on top. I lifted an eyebrow, canting my head toward it, soundlessly demanding an explanation for all this. Still she said nothing, just stepped out of her heels, then slid a hand up her dress…

  And tugged down her stockings. I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to sit up straighter as she rolled them down her thighs, over her knees, along her calves, dragging with them her black panties. Once she had stepped out of the nylon and cotton, she unceremoniously bundled them up—in stark contrast to my instinct to neatly fold the lot of them—and tossed them next to her wine.

  My cock twitched, swelling eagerly as she strolled over with her bare legs, her uncovered cunt. I shifted up and settled my hands on the armrests, studying her in the quiet, in the dim lighting that wasn’t a problem for either of us. While she appeared drunk, the line she walked far from straight, her eyes were less hollow now. Sure, she had laughed at the feast, chatted, but there had been an emptiness to her smile that I couldn’t place—nor was it my responsibility to do so.

  All the makeup from before had been removed, the skin around her eyes slightly pink and swollen, perhaps from the cleaning agent. The braid had vanished, in its place a slovenly bun with a lock of blonde coiling out the back.

  Yet if my steadily hardening cock had anything to say about it, she was still beautiful.

  Lower lip caught between her teeth, she hitched her dress up her thighs with one dainty hand, then climbed onto my lap, straddling me, looming over me as she settled. Each soft breath smelled of red wine, but her natural scent won out—every time, no matter the occasion, there was that damn lavender. I fought the urge to sweep the backs of my knuckles up her cheek, to smooth the flyaways, to catch her lip with my thumb. Instead, I kept one arm where it was, lazily hanging off the armrest, while the other hand curved over her ass.

  Just because I could.

  She arched like a cat in a sunbeam, her hands on my chest, her hips tilted, her backside filling my cupped hand. I would never admit just how well she fit to me—but I’d known that from the first day we met, when I had her pinned to my office desk, our bodies molded together like two pieces of a whole. It was more obvious now, how snug she felt against me, her curves encouraging my body to yield after a lifetime of standing rigid as a fucking mountain.

  I swallowed hard, tipping my chin up when her fingertips grazed my neck to my jaw, burning my flesh with her touch.

  Scorching me, right there, her body’s intensity unlike anything I had ever experienced before. So fucking hot, Solskinn’s own little blonde ray of sunlight—sunlight I had yet to seek shelter from, against my better judgement.

  Eyes heavy-lidded, face cast in shadow, Emma brushed her lips against mine with a soft sigh. I watched her, even as her eyes closed, thinking it a sigh of surren
der, responding to her tentative little kiss with the last of my self-restraint. When her little pecks and nibbles had gone on long enough, I surged up, catching her mouth in something fiercer, darker, something that had her soft sighs sharpening, her eyes snapping open.

  She tasted of red wine and temptation. Dangerous. Seductive. Sweet, too, her tongue flicking at mine when it invaded her mouth, nothing more than a tease, beckoning me to chase. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? There was no teasing a vampire—we had never had cause to hold back.

  With a growl, I slipped both hands under her dress, kneading the firm, round globes of her ass. Her hips rocked, grounding down against my shaft. If I pushed her off, would I find her arousal smeared across my trousers? I gripped harder at the thought, fingers bruising the womanly flesh beneath them, marking it, albeit temporarily. Shifters couldn’t scar, couldn’t bruise—and while I hated the fact that Emma hadn’t been forced to hide my bite from the rest of the school in the days that followed our first tryst, it certainly made the prospect of drinking from her simpler.

  I nipped at her lip, hard, relishing her gasp, the trickle of blood spilling into my mouth. Planting a firm hand on my chest, Emma pushed—pushed herself back, pushed me into the chair. She fought for breath, chest heaving, and my cock responded eagerly, painfully hard between us. It took such effort to make a shifter’s heart race, but Emma’s danced for me whenever we were alone.

  “Bite me,” she whispered, her voice low and silky, and had my heart been capable of it, the damn thing would have danced too. My lips twitched up, canines elongating the few millimeters necessary to pierce her skin. Bite me. Had she any idea what a command like that did to me? Such an enticing invitation—how could I possibly refuse?

  I shot up, one hand under her dress as the other fisted around her messy bun, and dragged her neck to meet me. There were so many more enjoyable places to sink my teeth into, but Emma’s neck was exquisite; it screamed for my attention, the skin begging to be broken with my teeth. They sunk in, hard and true, piping-hot blood spilling into my mouth, and I groaned the moment the sweetly metallic liquid flooded across my tongue.

  So good. So… unique. I’d never tasted someone like her before, never enjoyed the way someone responded to me as I did with Emma. The second my fangs pierced her, she was off, moaning and writhing on my lap, her head thrown back in wild abandon.

  We all knew what our bite did to others, the pleasure it induced. I’d once been told it was a toxin vampires released, rendering our prey useless, but I had never cared for the science before. In fact, I had never cared that it pleasured anyone before, but hurling Emma into a whirlpool of desire from which there was no escape, to make her feel like she was drowning in it, brought out the smug bastard in me. All her underhanded comments, her curses, her glares, her indignation and anger—all erased by my bite. Just for a moment, I had her. I owned her, and she fucking asked for it.

  As she writhed, trembling, rocking her bare sex against my bulge, I could have sworn she whimpered my name. Thinking it a shame to ruin what was probably the one nice dress she owned, I drank carefully to avoid the mess I’d made on Halloween.

  Back then, covering her in blood, even if her body’s essence regenerated within minutes, had been about sending a message. It had been purposeful—and fun. We were past that, onto another chapter of this tumultuous relationship, and I didn’t want this to be the last time she showed up, drunk, looking for a good, hard fuck because I had sullied her dress.

  Nimble fingers found their way to my belt, plucking at the buckle, wrenching it open. Her breath quickened, body shaking in my arms as the venom of my bite worked her into a frenzy. With the zipper vanquished, Emma slipped a hand under my briefs, and I groaned against her throat when she found me and pulled me out—not exactly difficult, given all the blood I was taking from her had gone straight to my cock.

  She stroked me, up and down, rocking her hips in time with her hand, and I tightened my fist around her hair as pleasure ricocheted through my body. My hips jerked in response, a puppet on the end of her string, and before I could even entertain the idea of her mouth around my shaft, Emma hoisted herself up—and lowered herself onto my cock. I exhaled sharply the moment my head speared her molten opening, so deliciously tight and wet that my eyes all but rolled back. She sank all the way down, her channel dancing around my length, adjusting to the size as she moaned.

  Ordinarily, I preferred at least some foreplay. Blood wasn’t the only part of a woman I loved to taste—but that wasn’t what this was between us. We weren’t tentative kisses and languid groping. We were speed and certainty, seeking out our own pleasure, using the other to attain it.

  Emma rose up and down twice before I tore my mouth from her throat. Blood dribbled down my chin, coated my lips, and I let my head fall heavy against the leather padding behind it, mouth open, fangs exposed, utterly transfixed as she rode me. In an instant, the puncture marks on her throat healed, leaving only a faint red stain across her skin—and nowhere near her dress, I might add. The corners of my mouth twitched upward, pleased, but my lips snapped together seconds later when she purposefully clenched around me like a snare.

  Now she wore the dark grin, bucking her hips, undulating on top of me as her fingers bit into the leather on either side of my head. Bracing herself, she rocked harder, rising up and slamming herself back down, dragging me one step closer to oblivion with every move she made. Enigma. Curiosity. Fucking distraction.

  How was it that all I wanted to do, from now until the end of days, was watch her swirl her hips, forehead pinched with the effort, eyes half-closed as she chased her high? I could sit like this for hours, a king on his throne, enraptured by the concubine on his lap.

  Why?

  How had this woman ensnared me?

  Something in her blood?

  I swallowed thickly, still tasting her sweetness. No, the blood was different, but not tainted. Not poisoned.

  Preferring not to dwell on my newfound weakness, I finally moved. Hands planted on each armrest, I stood, easily lifting her and savoring her squeak of surprise, her eyes wide, breath catching as she clung to me. With a sweep of one hand, I cleared my desk, sparing all those Hitler-Mussolini-Stalin comparison essays what was bound to be a rough, unbridled, unthinking fuck.

  I set her at the edge of the desk, then hoisted her knees up higher, shifting the angle and plunging deep inside. Emma threw her head back with a cry, lips parted, chest heaving—an utter vision. Ordinarily, she drove me mad, but when I had her like this, so raw and exposed, so open and vulnerable, she was a fucking masterpiece.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  Scowling, I took her by the hips and retreated, only to pound back in moments later. If only I had no qualms about tearing that dress to pieces; I would have liked to watch her bounce in all the right places. Emma’s hands scrambled for purchase, one reaching back to support her on the desk, the other skittering up my arm and curving around my neck. I gave her that, a few precious seconds to find her bearings, before brutally driving into her, over and over again. The desk creaked beneath us, its legs scratching across the hardwood with every savage thrust.

  Her lips soon found mine, desperately, if only to muffle her cries, and I slanted my mouth over hers, swallowing each one with the same eagerness I did her blood. They were addicting, all the little sounds she made, all the sounds I tore from her. Almost as addicting as her taste, her smell—the way she kissed me. Every kiss was fire, biting, relentless fire that threatened to consume me from the inside out.

  Yet I craved that too. I craved this shifter’s burn.

  I took her harder, faster, refusing to admit something so preposterous—even to myself. Her elbow buckled, and she crashed down with it, yanking me along too. Smirking, I hauled her over the edge of the desk and wrapped an arm around her waist, pistoning my hips as she scrambled to reach the far side, fingertips just catching over the ledge.

  If only I’d stripped her naked. What a sight to
behold.

  In need of another taste, I dragged my tongue across the bloodstain on her neck, lapping up what was left with a growl. As soon as the sweet red liquid touched my tongue, I turned wild, fucking her like I hadn’t been able to with any human lover in years—decades. Emma could take my brutality. She could withstand the creature, the predator, the monster I truly was, the one I was forced to hide in front of everyone else.

  She took it all—and asked for more, nudging my head with her chin, steering me to the other side of her neck.

  “Insatiable wretch,” I hissed, brushing my fangs against her skin, dragging it over her racing pulse.

  “Shut up and just do it—”

  I complied happily, plunging into her throat just as fiercely as I did below. Her whole body lifted, molding to me, legs snapped tight around my waist. She abandoned the desk in favor of clutching at me, hands buried in my hair, hips rolling to meet my every thrust. Sweet lava oozed into my mouth, and I drank greedily, fucked greedily, taking all that I wanted and still hungry for more.

  I was the insatiable one, not her.

  Pathetic.

  I blocked out the needling little voice by losing myself in her, by drowning in Emma Kingsley until I plummeted into the abyss. My climax hit hard, pleasure surging like a roaring tidal wave, and I ripped my mouth from her throat, only to slam it to her lips instead, staggering forward, pushing us back up the desk until my thighs collided with the wood.

  Until my desk slammed into the row of student desks, initially a good six feet away, and sent my gas lamp tumbling. By some miracle, it didn’t shatter, though the light immediately extinguished.

  “Calder, fuck—” Emma’s moans turned ragged, her body quivering beneath me, perhaps assaulted by her own climax. Combined with the thrill of the bite, it must have been quite overwhelming for a creature with such heightened senses. I, meanwhile, couldn’t feel my fingers, my toes. Couldn’t think clearly. Certainly couldn’t speak clearly, so I didn’t dare. As I waited for the sensations to settle, for the pleasure to ebb, I just sprawled on top of her like a lead weight. Forehead pressed to the desk, hands on her ass, her thigh, I listened to the rhythm of her strong heart, her gasping breaths.