“Is that a complaint?” she demanded stiffly, her shoulders rising as her tits began to shake with her outrage.
“Nope,” I replied immediately. “It’s a statement. Do you like wearing those clothes? Don’t you ever want to wear something different? It’s a uniform. Just like the dress you came in. We all wear different shit to reflect our mood. When you’re feeling down, don’t you just want to wear something black or blue, but when you’re happy, something bright and breezy. Like yellow or green?”
I watched her lick her lips, surprised when she took my words to heart. I let her think about them, let her consider what I was saying, and grabbed my weight and began to pull some bicep curls. Nothing major. I’d already done the majority of my workout. But it was easier to do something with my hands when all I wanted was to haul her onto my lap and claim those drool-worthy lips for my own.
“I-I guess. I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, now I’m making you think about it,” I told her kindly, even if I was huffing slightly from the thirty-pound weight in my hand. “Where the way you look is concerned, you can do whatever you want to do. Hell, if you want to wear yoga pants and big shirts for the rest of your life, I’m not about to complain, baby. Those pants do the finest shit to your ass, and when you bend over, I get the most perfect view of your tits.” Another squeak as she slapped one hand to her breasts and the other to her butt—I had to withhold a laugh at her gesture. “So, I’m saying this for you. I want you to be you. I want you to be happy, and not to be wearing something because it fits what you’re used to. Does that make sense?”
After a few seconds, her hands dropped before they surged once more and hovered around hip height. I could tell I’d surprised her with my comment, but she didn’t call me on it. If anything, she stepped away from the shelves and headed to the bench where I’d left the book.
“You got me a book?” Any other woman might have been disappointed, but not Eve. Another smile graced my lips at the thought of all the women I’d known in my life who would have wanted jewels or expensive clothes for their birthday, not some used book that was dog-eared and well-read.
“I did. But it’s more than a book. It’s the last gift my cousin gave to me before she was murdered.”
Eve froze, her hands stilling as she flipped through the pages of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ “Why are you giving me this?”
“Because it’s one of two of the most precious possessions I have, and you’re not ready for the other one.”
She blinked at me. “What is it?” she asked softly. “The other one, I mean.”
“I don’t think you’re even ready to hear what it is, honey—”
“Tell me,” she urged.
I dropped the weight and shrugged. “My heart.”
For a second, her mouth opened and closed, and I knew my statement was correct. She hadn’t been ready, might not be for a while.
Being Chosen worked differently on a man than it did for the female doing the Choosing. Females held more power in our relationships, and yes, that was unfair, but it was just how it went. Maybe it was karma, because the truth was, human females flocked to creatures like moths to a flame, and we usually fucked them over because we didn’t have any other choice.
There was no mate for us outside of our people, so humans were just the providers of an itch we needed to scratch. By contrast, the females of our creatures were picky but usually polyamorous when it came down to it, mostly because of the cultural norm of being shared by a Pack.
Take mine, for example. If all three of us had been Chosen by three different women, we’d all have shared them. There’d have been no boundaries. Some females even chose lovers outside of the Pack, whereas that wasn’t something a male could ever do. Not because our cocks were in Venus flytraps, but because we were hardwired that way. Sure, we could get an erection for another woman, but the desire? It wasn’t there. Our souls were in control, and they wanted Pack.
So, while I fully accepted I was in way over my head where she was concerned, and maybe not wholly in love with her but falling, I knew she wasn’t ready for a declaration of any kind from me. Not when shit was so up in the air for us.
“You freaking out?”
She blinked at me slowly. So slowly it was a robotic move, and trust me, I was in a Pack with Samuel. I knew what a robot was.
“No,” she admitted, and I could tell her answer surprised her.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I think I’m freaking out about not being freaked out.”
I couldn’t refrain from laughing about that. “Well, that’s a good step. You’ve had a shit ton of overwhelming days, Eve. I don’t want to add to the burden.”
“I didn’t think you did.” She dipped her chin and began to leaf through the book that had been leafed through a thousand times before. “Why is this special to you, Frazer?”
Didn’t she like it? Discomfort powered through me, but this was Eve. She needed to know eventually.
“When I was twelve, I was dumped in this mental health facility. My parents called it that, but it was an asylum. Before that, I’d had a charmed life, Eve. Like, that sounds as though it’s from a book, but it was true. My parents didn’t give a fuck about me, but I had one of the best nannies and a blank check on anything I wanted. Not the best childhood but not the worst.”
“Then the souls revealed themselves,” she stated softly.
“Yeah.” I blew out a breath. “Things got bad quickly. My dad’s a politician. He couldn’t be seen with a whack job kid hovering in the background, messing up his campaigns with freaky shit because he was dealing with split personalities. So, I got dumped in the asylum, and it was hell. With a capital H.
“I dealt with it, though. Handled the shit thrown my way because I had no choice, but what got me through was that book.”
She gaped at me. “Shakespeare got you through?”
I snorted at her amusement. “No. We used it as a reference code.”
“What do you mean?”
My lips curved. “I like to draw. It’s a family thing. From my mother’s side. Her dad was a famous artist.” I didn’t bother name-dropping because I doubted she’d know him. “So, we used to send each other messages within the pictures.” I shrugged. “We built up a code, and we used to talk that way.”
“That’s pretty cool,” she blurted out.
“It was a survival mechanism,” I countered. “In each image, from left to right, there’d be symbols. It would tell us which page to go to and which line and word.”
“That must have been a detailed picture,” she exclaimed.
“It was. Very detailed. More like…” I thought about it. “You know a rug? How it has a repeat pattern? Kind of like that. But that is what got me through.” Scraping a hand over my hair, I stated, “I wasn’t allowed that many visitors, but one day, Louise turns up and she’s about forty pounds lighter than before. She had raccoon eyes and she was spaced out. I didn’t think anything of it because, to be frank, my family was fucked up. The women were always dieting to be thinner for the Press, and the men were always beefing up for the same reason. We always had to look perfect. If anything surprised me, it was the raccoon eyes. We usually left the house pristine, to the point of narcissism.
“She was zoned, dazed throughout the meeting, and I didn’t realize it, but it was her goodbye.”
Her mouth rounded. “What happened?”
“My uncle owed a debt to someone you should never owe money to. My family is wealthy, but our money is tied up in a trust. We can only cash it out four times a year. In between those times, you’re fucked if you don’t manage your funds well.” I shrugged as though my words weren’t slaying me. “He didn’t, was an inveterate gambler, and he sold her to pay off the debt. She was a virgin, and they auctioned off her virginity like she was a cow at a market.” My throat tightened as rage and sorrow for what couldn’t be changed hit me. “Didn’t matter that we came from a pol
itical dynasty, it only just drove up her price. She came to visit me a few weeks after it happened, and that was the last time I ever saw her.
“She might have killed herself,” I said, my voice a low rasp. “But my uncle and the bastards who sold her murdered her, and I’ll never see it any other way.”
She strode over to me, her hands coming up to clasp my forearms, which had bunched with tension. The desire to strangle those men who had hurt my cousin was an ache I lived with daily. I’d never get over her death, never. Not as long as I lived.
When she stared up at me, those amber eyes so soulful I felt like she could see into my heart, she whispered, “When we’re out of here, we need to pay them a visit.”
My mouth dropped open. “Huh?”
“We need to pay them a visit.” She grunted. “I feel like…” She stopped talking, her lips quivering as she worked out what she wanted to say. “Dre’s parents were murdered, Stefan was abused, something happened to Eren which makes him have a panic attack when he’s in the dark, and Nestor…” She swallowed. “You all have stories. Even you. Reed has one, but he doesn’t have someone to blame except himself. And I don’t know Samuel well enough to know his story, but the five of you? We need to get some vengeance.”
I stared at her, because whatever the hell I’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “Who are you right now?” I blurted out, but my words weren’t cold. If anything, they were on fucking fire.
Her cheeks burned with it, and those honey eyes glittered as she said, “I’m yours.”
How I stopped myself from kissing her, from planting my lips on hers, I’d never fucking know. It was hard. So fucking hard. I wanted to eat her up, devour this sweet girl who had suddenly gone Old Testament on my ass.
As my gaze burned into hers, branding her with my want for her, she whispered, “Why did you give me the book, Frazer?”
I swallowed. “So that you can always find a way to communicate with me.”
Her nostrils flared and when she stepped onto her tiptoes, she took my choice away from me.
Her mouth was on mine, her tongue thrust between my lips in a way that told me she’d been practicing on one of my new brothers, because Reed and Samuel would have told me if she’d kissed them. I didn’t mind, though. I enjoyed the tentative exploration backed by a curiosity that made my skin sizzle.
Her hands slipped up my forearms and over my biceps, which she raked with her nails, and then up to my shoulders. When she dragged them over my scalp, I hissed as sensation flared, and I couldn’t stop myself from bending down and grabbing a hold of her. She parted her legs and let me haul her into my chest.
As she ate at my mouth, tangling her tongue with mine so ferociously that the pair of us were barely even breathing, I staggered forward and slammed her into the wall. The second she was there, she grunted, and I arched my hips, rocking my pelvis forward so I could drag my hardness down her soft core.
The second I did that, she pulled her mouth from mine. I fully expected for her to pull back, to turn away from me. This was too fast, too soon, and I knew it. Knew I’d taken this to another level she couldn’t be ready for, and yet, she stunned me.
Again.
She pulled her head back so she could exhale on a groan. Her hands tightened around my neck as she began to writhe against the wall, her soft pussy rubbing against the tent forging its way in my shorts. When I shifted my hold, settled my hands under her knees, she moaned as I spread her legs wider apart. Moving deeper into her, I pressed harder, rocking faster and faster with each moan that escaped her lips.
I wanted in her more than I wanted my next breath, and when she latched on to my throat, sucking down hard, something shifted inside me.
What she’d done this morning, she did again.
Did she know it?
Was she aware of what she was doing?
Nestor had intimated it was instinctive, not something she did on purpose, and since her focus was elsewhere, I knew he was right—but I didn’t even want to think about how he’d learned that though.
The Sin Eater inside me jerked to life in a way that only ever happened on the battlefield. The last time had been in Aboh when I’d separated a soul from a Ghoul.
I almost pulled back, not wanting to hurt her. We couldn’t hurt creatures, only Ghouls, but my protective instincts were flaring to life with big red and blue lights. Fuck only knew what Eve truly was. We couldn’t label her, and because we couldn’t, we didn’t have a clue what might hurt her.
Only trouble was, she wasn’t letting go.
I dropped her like a hot potato, knowing I needed distance, but when I looked into her eyes, I knew the Succubus was there. How did I know that? When it should have been technically impossible as the reason for our meeting was because her Sin Eater was in charge? Because Eve didn’t flush, didn’t even turn pink. She didn’t try to dash off or try to apologize for kissing me that way. No. She reached down and began to tug off her yoga pants, and in the next breath, she slipped her shirt over her head, revealing a body so lush my mouth began to water.
Even worse, my dick started to pulse and the Sin Eater roared to life once more.
As she stepped toward me like she was some kind of femme fatale who knew how to seduce a man in three simple moves, I questioned what the fuck was happening.
How had it gone from a simple conversation, one that had the power to traumatize me and put me in a bad mood for days, to this?
When she hooked her hands in her panties and slid them down over her hips, I knew my control had been breached. She was pale and soft, all curves and luscious ripeness. I wanted my hands on her, wanted to pound into that willing flesh she had bared for me. Just for me.
She was a virgin. I knew that. My Sin Eater told me. How the fuck he knew, I’d never figure out, but it was like he could scent that tiny piece of flesh deep in her core.
The beast wanted it.
Wanted to claim her more than he even wanted vengeance for Louise.
I balled my hands into fists as I stared at her tits, watching them bob and sway as she moved, and I recognized I was a goner.
Striding forward, I slammed her into the wall once more. She deserved soft, warm sheets and candlelight, but I wasn’t capable of giving that to her right then, and I knew she didn’t want it.
She wanted me.
Raw and ready.
Because she was mine, and I was fucking hers.
The second her tender skin brushed mine, it was like being touched by silk. Her scent, the feel of her, washed over me. In my mouth, I could still taste her. In my ears, I heard the roar of her heartbeat. My senses were aflame with everything she had to offer, and deep inside me? That sixth sense was roaming around the confines of my psyche, demanding to be let loose.
God, I wanted to.
I wanted to free him, to release him from the cage he should be in until I was twenty-one, but what if it hurt her?
What if I couldn’t control myself?
I wasn’t like the others. My soul was different. Sin Eaters didn’t shift, per se, but they were able to access a lot more of their powers than the rest. On the battlefield, I could eat a soul, where, before graduation, a Gargoyle, for example, couldn’t shift. Not even to protect himself. Nestor was case in point.
But me?
My soul was close to the surface.
My skin felt too tight, too hot, and it only felt like its regular temperature where she touched me.
Shuddering, I pressed my face into her throat and whispered, “What are you doing to me?”
“Liberating you,” she purred, and her voice was Eve’s but not.
It didn’t frighten me, because as much as a freak as she was with those magical powers of hers, I needed her more than I needed air.
She was my crack. My crystal meth. My drug and poison of choice.
My jaw clenched as I fought the Sin Eater for a second more, and then she did it once more. Touched me. Not where she should have, but inside me.
> She soothed at first, gently calming me, cooling me down while riling me up in other ways. Then, just when I could breathe easier, it was like she squeezed. Hard. Until I had no choice but to rip myself open, to let the thing out of me that demanded freedom.
My head fell back, and how I didn’t scream was a testament to how much control I truly had. The pain was debilitating, enough to knock me to the ground if I hadn’t been pressed into her, keeping her high against the wall. My knees busted into the mirror, and though they’d ache in the morning, that was nothing compared to the other agony roaring around my system.
As I processed the pain, I noticed she was there again. Deep inside. Soothing once more. As I absorbed it, absorbed her touch, the ache dispersed like I’d taken a shit ton of Ibuprofen.
When I raised my hand, finally able to do so, my vision was different.
I’d always seen well in the dark. Not just because of the Sin Eater, but I’d always just been able to. Now? It was like it was daytime.
My senses were hyperalert. I could hear the throb of Eve’s heart like I was wearing a stethoscope, and the blood swishing through her veins? It sounded like it was in a tumbler being swirled around on the rocks.
On the floor above me, forty students slept. A tree out back held the parrot Eve had taken to gaping at every morning at some point—I heard its gentle caw, the ruffle of its wings.
My senses scanned for a predator, and when they found one, I froze.
A female. Sneaking down the steps.
Rebecca.
I snarled, tipped my hips into my woman’s and bit off, “Someone’s coming.”
Excitement flared in her eyes. “I know,” she whispered, and that stunned the fuck out of me. How did she know?
Was she tapped into me somehow?
How was that even possible?
Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO Page 22
