by A. K. Koonce
“What are you doing?” I lie flat on my back, looking up into the shine of those dark whiskey-colored eyes.
“What’s the deal with you and Phoenix?” he asks with so much seriousness in his features that it’s unsettling.
Instead of searching for a real answer to give him, the memories of my dream flood into me and heat creeps over my cheeks until it’s hard to pretend to breathe rationally.
Little clips of air meet my lungs and I try my very best not to sound like an orgasmic, breathless idiot. “What do you mean?”
He shifts at my side and tries again. “He said you were dating. Why would he say that?”
Right. Dating. Kind of.
“Phoenix protected me yesterday. Several people keep telling me I’m weak here. I’m not. I’m not fucking weak. I’m...careful.” My head shakes at how off track I’m getting. “I need someone like Phoenix to help me. Not only to protect me from the others but…”
His thick brows lower over his pretty eyes. “But?”
“But to protect them from me,” I whisper so quietly the words barely come out.
His fingers lift and just faintly, his fingertips skim along my hip.
“What’d you do to get here, Izzy?” There’s so much concern in his rasping whisper, the sound of it making me shiver with the feel of his touch gliding back and forth along my skin just above my underwear.
I’ve never lain with a man like Malek in my entire life. I lost my virginity to a human last year before I graduated high school.
Adam did not look like Malek one little bit. He was a boy in comparison.
And speaking of Adam.
“I hurt someone. I hurt him bad.” A tremble of a different kind consumes me as images of Adam’s severed head flicker through my mind.
“Shit.” His palm splays wide across my stomach and I force a steady breath through my lungs.
“I don’t remember it. I grew up in the human society in the city, and I always knew there was a beast inside of me, but I have no idea what it is.” My gaze holds his and he just lets me fall apart in his arms for a little while in the darkness away from everyone else. “That’s the worst part. Not knowing. Not knowing if I’ll hurt my enemies, or the people who get too close, or even myself. That’s why I need Phoenix. I just need him to keep everyone away.”
Even you.
Malek’s sweet. He’s kind and caring. And it’s dangerous for me to get too close.
And yet, here I am, snuggled up against his smooth, hard chest and pouring my heart out more and more with each ticking second that slips by.
“I know what you mean.” His head settles on my pillow, his gaze trailing along my features while his big hand sweeps back and forth across my ribs, inching beneath my haphazardly buttoned shirt, but never veering too high. “I don’t know what you are, Izzy. It’s hard for me to want to help you because I could hurt you too. I don’t think you’re weak, but I know I’m reckless. The full moon is in five days. Stay far, far away from me then, okay?”
I nod slowly but my gaze catches on the fullness of his lips.
He has nice lips.
“You should get some sleep,” he whispers, and the moment his body shifts to leave, my hand settles over his.
“I’ve slept for twenty-four hours.” At the sound of my words, he lingers there in my bed. He hesitates for so long I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.
“Slip your clothes on.” His feet never make a sound as he sneaks to our closet and starts tossing a uniform at me. “I want to meet your beast. In a controlled setting.”
The small smile on his lips dissolves with my next serious question.
“One where you won't lose your arms, head, or cock?”
His lips part and suddenly, the big bad wolf doesn’t seem so sure of himself.
Eleven
Malek
The woods surrounding the academy provide enough cover for the two of us. The skeletal black trees press together in maze-like rows here. We’re far enough into their density that we can’t be seen.
I prowled these woods all night last night, alone with the madness inside. Bringing her here seems intimate in a way I shouldn’t even allow. I should stay far away from Izara, but the wolf in me wants to claim her. The primitive beast has no qualms about hurting, claiming. I try not to give into it. I don’t want to give into it. My Prod and my mind war against each other and neither come to a fucking solution. So I stay away enough to not harm her. But get close enough to torture myself with my own desires.
Like right now.
Every tree is bare of leaves. Moonlight shines in silver beams through arms and branches, slicing shadows across her features and sinuous movements.
She’s seductive, and she doesn't even know it. Some of her beauty is hidden behind pinched brows like she’s always carefully picking apart actions, playing the safe side.
And now I know why.
She looks at me with hope in her dark eyes. It’s those hopelessly romantic brown eyes that change depending on the lighting. They could be black or brown or as golden as honey in the sunlight.
Right now, they’re as dark as night, and I try not to lose myself in the depths of them. In the depths of her.
I’ve been controlling the beast inside me for five years, since I turned fifteen. I’m familiar with the force of will it takes to push down rage and violence. But my heart has no fucking idea it shouldn’t fall completely.
My heart, it’s weak. I grew up in a small pack on the quiet countryside in upper New York and not one girl has ever stolen, owned, or broken my heart.
Which is all more the reason to keep that distance between myself and the reckless girl I’m walking side by side with.
“So now what?” She kicks at a stray rock, her gaze flicking over our surroundings. If she’s afraid of the darkness, she doesn’t show it, but her lips purse tightly.
My arms cross against the span of my chest, an assertive unconscious gesture of dominance that my brothers always hated. She takes in my stance with dilated pupils, her tongue slashing across her lower lip.
Fuck, that’s not the reaction I want. Or is it? Isn’t that why I brought her out here in the first place? Because I want her to want me?
Yes. But I also want to be her friend. And she looks like she could use a fucking friend. A girl like her shouldn’t have to rely on an asshole incubus to protect her.
“Now we bring out your Prod.”
A Prod that could tear my head and my cock off if it appears…
My palm shifts protectively over my dick and then, as an afterthought, I wonder why I’m not more concerned about my skull and brains rather than my manhood.
My priorities might be off just slightly.
Her eyebrows raise and a mocking expression presses her beautiful features. “It’s not like I haven’t been trying to reach my Prod or anything,” she finally says.
I push away the sarcasm as I prowl towards her, my boots stomping into the dead earth until we are face to face.
“Picture it,” I demand, pressing a finger to the center of her chest, feeling the sudden frantic beating of her heart between her breasts.
Shit.
Don’t think about her nipples. Don’t you fucking dare.
Too late.
“Don’t think of your Prod as a separate entity inside you. As we all know that’s not what a Prod is. Think of it as it should be: the darker part of yourself. Your fears and your desires. Every savage thing you’ve ever wanted. Embrace that, and you’ll feel that part of you come to life.”
She licks her lips slowly and the sight of it makes my cock go hard as I picture her mouth around me, sliding up and down…
“Is that how you learned to keep your wolf in line?” Her voice is a raspy, heady sound with—dare I think it?—desire.
I pull my hand away from her and force myself to take a step back. Distance, I remind myself. Otherwise it’ll get too dangerous for the both of us.
“I’m stil
l learning,” I confess. “However shitty this place is, there are some teachers willing to help. There’s good advice here buried beneath all the bad.”
She cocks her head to the side as she contemplates what I’ve said and then her lip catches between her bottom teeth.
“I—” she breaks off, swallows. “I don’t know what my deepest desires are.”
More like she doesn’t want to admit them to me.
Fine. We all have secrets.
“Close your eyes.”
Izzy is too fucking trusting. Her thick, dark lashes flutter closed.
For a second I just stare at her and the delicate curve of her jawline, the slight parting of her full lips.
My throat clears in the silence.
“Think back to the moment your Prod lost control. Who are you with?”
She replies tentatively. “Adam.”
Just hearing another man’s name on her perfect lips makes that irrational beast inside me want to fucking murder someone. I take a breath to calm the wolf down and remind him we barely know this girl.
Within me he snorts pretentiously in response, like it’s my fault two whole days have passed and we’re not already trying to have a litter of Prod pups with his mate.
Mate?
I clear my throat once more and try to focus on helping her. “Where are you with Adam?”
“At—at his house…”
“What does the room look like?”
Her breath comes out shakier, but she tries. She struggles to answer this for a moment as her brain tries to remember. “He has a twin bed with Star Wars sheets…”
A soft snort that I can’t help, pushes out of me. Was she dating a man or a boy?
“There’s a picture of us on his dresser, from when we went fishing with his family, and an oil galaxy painting I made him is in a little blue frame on his desk.”
“What are the two of you doing?”
“M-making out… Malek, I don’t think…”
My voice cuts through her protest. “Is he touching you?”
Fuck. I’m not entirely sure I’m asking for her benefit anymore, rather my own. If she hadn’t already killed the bastard, I’d rip him to pieces.
Calm the fire, I remind myself. Control the beast.
I shake my head at the chaos that’s spinning around in my body.
“He’s grabbing my chest and his hand is in my pants, if you really must know.”
“Are you enjoying it?” The words nearly come out a snarl, one I try to bite back only to realize I can’t. I’m pissed, and the Prod is taking it as an invitation to rip through me.
This is getting out of hand.
I breathe in, out, willing the lengthening of my claws to turn back to fingernails.
It’s not fucking working.
Fuck, this is a bad idea.
I shouldn’t have brought Izzy out here.
The woods, the rage, it’s all clashing together now to set me into a state of mind that I try so damn hard to contain.
This out-of-control feeling, this is what got me into this academy in the first place.
“Surprisingly, no. I am not enjoying it,” she whispers, interrupting my memories and my rising aggression.
This stops me cold. The beast, everything in me pauses at her carefully placed words.
“Why not?”
“I was going to break up with him.”
Everything stills and the savage part of me spirals right back into the darkness where it came from.
“Why?”
Izzy shrugs and her eyes slowly open. “Because he was awful in bed. Seriously, I had a better time jerking off than I did with him. Awful in bed, awful in conversation, just... awful.”
The breath I am about to inhale catches painfully in my chest. Strangled noises come out of me that aren’t words but they’re not beast either. It’s incoherent, and I’m suddenly imagining Izzy lying in her bed. Izzy naked. Izzy with her fingers sliding down the dip between her thighs to touch herself.
Would she like it slow or fast? Gentle or rough? Did she want to be worshipped? I’d worship her. I’d worship every fucking inch with my tongue and teeth. I’d whisper secrets across her flesh of all the naughty things I want to do to her, like take her from behind.
Maybe I’m more beastly than I want to admit.
Maybe my Prod is on to something and we should claim Izara Castillo right here under the moonlight.
“Are you done with the interrogation on my sex life, pervertido?”
Pervert. Great.
At the moment, she’s not wrong, and she hasn’t even seen the things my beast wants to do to her.
We are getting fucking nowhere and it’s all my fault.
“Close your damn eyes.” I ask the next question when she does. “Describe what happens next. You can leave out the dirty details.”
I just might murder someone if she doesn’t.
She sighs and launches into her story. Her voice is full of wariness at first as she picks through bits and pieces, describing what she remembers. She tells me how she wanted to give him one last chance but it didn’t feel right. Then the timbre of her tone changes, her voice rises and I smell the fear, the hopelessness before it hits.
“And then—I—I—I don't know. There’s too much, and I’m suffocating. I can’t breathe. He’s—I’m—” Her eyes shoot open in panic and she whispers one word that sends me hurtling towards her right before she drops to the ground. “Malek.”
I reach her before she hits the dirt and cradle her body to my chest. Every inch of her is trembling like she’s having a fucking seizure. And I’m helpless to stop it.
I push her hair from her face and turn her sideways. That’s what you’re supposed to do when someone has a seizure right? But this isn’t normal. None of this is fucking normal.
We’re not normal.
“Izzy.” I hope my voice doesn’t betray the fear burning in my gut. “Izzy wake up.” She doesn’t, and I curse. I try everything. I speak to her softly and because I don’t know what else to do, I sing softly to her in Spanish like my mother used to do with me and my brothers.
It’s the only thing I can think of.
She’s okay. She’s fine. She’s going to be okay.
Fuck.
After a while, her trembling subsides, and when she slowly opens her eyes, I see they’re bloodshot in the darkness. She gifts me a tentative smile that slices through the tangle of dread inside me.
“I love that song,” she whispers.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
She pushes up in my hold, remaining close so her cheek rests near my shoulder.
I inhale the scent of her, the dark traces of fear that still cling to her like sweat. I want to wash the stench away. I want to pull her close, but the beast in me is already too out of control with how fast my heart’s pounding and refusing to come down.
I extricate her from my body slowly and help her stand. When she doesn’t sway, I put distance between us. As if those three feet would make me less aware of her presence, of the way she felt in my arms. Like she belonged.
“I don’t remember, Malek,” she says finally with a little embarrassment. “I’m starting to think I never will.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m breathless because I want to hold her in my arms and never let her go. Because I want her to feel safe and protected.
But I’m a criminal with an out-of-control Prod. I can’t fucking protect her. I can’t even help her protect herself. I was a fool for thinking I could try.
“Let’s go back.” I walk away, leaving her to follow. I’m aware of her every labored breath, every footstep, and the scent of confusion swirling around her.
This is a mess and now both of us are confused.
At least one good thing came out of tonight.
Either what had happened has left Izara so traumatized that she’s forcing away the memories, or her Prod is making her forget.
And I intend to find out which.
/>
Twelve
Izara
Attempting to lure out whatever beast is inside me last night was a cakewalk compared to the torture this morning. Having to look Phoenix in the eye after having multiple orgasmic wet dreams about him... that’s just a new awkwardness that I didn’t even know I was capable of.
But he and I both know what he did.
Now lets see if he confesses, grovels, pleads for me to forgive him for crossing a line within my dreams.
Even if I did jump his dream dick the moment he stepped foot over that little line.
“Morning,” he says in a clipped, careless tone as his body slips from his bed and he walks over to the closet.
... Doesn’t sound very grovel-ish.
I wait, but he doesn’t add any crying words onto that single phrase...
His hair is plastered to his head on one side, while the other stands out in all sorts of odd directions. He yawns and stretches with a prowling ferocity that makes his muscles ripple with every sexy move. It isn’t fucking fair that he can look as attractive as a Greek sex god this early wearing absolutely nothing at all.
He busies himself by slipping on his tight white shirt, long fingers buttoning it up while never meeting my eyes and thankfully never seeing the deep flush of my cheeks or my glaring eyes.
I just can’t help but have so many dirty memories of my dreams flash through my mind when I look at him.
I feel like my body is on fire and my cheeks are the only surviving part of me that’s trying to warn everyone of the death by embarrassment that I’m experiencing.
“Mornnnggg,” I mumble out a string of syllables that almost sound like a greeting, almost sound like a disease.
That gets his steady attention. He arches an eyebrow at me for less than half a second before going back to getting dressed.
I stand from my bunk and linger at the end of the bed near the closet.
He ignores me mostly, shakes his head and turns for the door.
“Don’t forget to walk your girlfriend to class,” Saint chirps, lording over all of us from his top bunk and watching the show with big, excited eyes.
