by Callie Rose
“More?”
Jayce’s voice was husky and teasing.
His hips were still rocking up into mine, and even though I could barely lift my head, I nodded.
Yes, more. Always more.
He chuckled, another sound that always seemed to land straight on my clit, and wrapped both arms around me, keeping me pinned to his body as he flipped us again. As soon as I was on my back, he rose onto his knees, grabbing one of my legs and bringing it up to rest on his shoulder. My ass practically left the mattress, and his strokes became even harder and deeper as he slowed the pace. He was so deep I could feel him everywhere with each powerful thrust, and even though my body should’ve been entirely wrung out, it sparked back to life.
“You’re gonna come again, aren’t you?” he panted, a sound that was half chuckle and half grunt falling from his lips.
He was teasing me. That fucker.
I groped over my head for the pillow to whack him with it, but before I could reach the thing, the orgasm that he’d seen creeping up on me pounced. The hand I’d raised over my head scrabbled for a hold on the sheets as my back arched and a naked, breathless cry fell from my lips.
“Fuck yes, Piper. I could watch you come all damn day.”
Jayce’s voice was rougher, the smile slipping from his face as a look of desire and determination took over. Before I knew what was happening, he’d pulled out completely and flipped me over again. My body followed his urging, relaxed and pliable—completely trusting.
When he had me on all fours, he drove into me again, and this time, I could tell he was about to lose it. The sound of our flesh slapping together filled the small room, and it was one of the hottest things I’d ever heard. Finally, with a low, inarticulate grunt, Jayce buried himself deep inside me, grabbing my hips and slamming me onto his cock as he came hard. His body shuddered, and I felt him jerk inside me as his cum flooded me, making power and euphoria fill my veins.
“Holy fuck,” he muttered, breathing heavily as his hands stroked warm trails over my back and ass. “Yup. I think that almost did it. That time almost killed me.”
I laughed, and he chuckled before swatting my ass with his palm.
Then he pulled out, wrapping his arms around me as we both collapsed to the bed in a sticky, sweaty mess. I felt a trickle of wetness escape from my core and trail down my leg, but I didn’t push him away or rush to get up.
These moments, lying in his embrace afterward, completely sated and relaxed, were almost as good as the sex itself, and I wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with my succubus powers at all.
I had a feeling it was just… Jayce.
Over the next few weeks, Jayce became a permanent fixture by my side.
Thank fuck for easygoing, hot surfers. Especially ones with huge hearts and… er… other things.
Xero was with me almost as often, though we hadn’t even kissed since that first incident. But his energy alone was enough to keep me at an acceptable baseline of okay-ness, and I was terrified of driving him away. If he pulled away like Kingston and Kai had done, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it. So I welcomed his presence and let him decide when and if to make a move.
The three of us were sitting together on a couch in the library, and Hannah was curled up on a comfortable armchair to our left. The coffee table between us was strewn with papers and books and abandoned mugs of coffee. I glared down at the mess.
“Okay, remind me again of the timeline?” I said, brushing my hair back in frustration.
It was the third time I’d asked, and Hannah was getting exasperated. I couldn’t blame her, but there was nothing I could do about it. The absence of my two other men was gnawing at me, an insatiable hunger building inside me that had gone unsatisfied for what felt like forever. How could I possibly focus on timelines and epic battles when I was in pieces?
“410 AD,” Hannah said, pointing at an illustration of a dragon. “To 1099 AD.” She pointed to an illustration that looked an awful lot like Robin Hood.
“Okay. 410, dragons. 1099, Robin Hood. And all the battles happened in between.”
“Only the classic battles,” Xero said softly.
“Right. Am I supposed to know about the non-classic battles yet?” I was getting a headache, and I blamed Kai and Kingston, specifically and personally.
“He went over them in class briefly, but we weren’t supposed to study them yet, I don’t think. Were we?” Hannah directed her question at Jayce.
He shook his head. “The test is just on the classics this week. Piper, are you okay?”
“I used to be better at this school crap,” I grumbled. “Solid 3.2 GPA from kindergarten to my senior year. 3.0 first year of college. Now I’m flunking magic school.” I hissed a breath through my teeth.
A student I didn’t know walked by with a cup of sweetened ginger tea and I snapped. The spicy smell of the ginger was too much to bear. Its scent was almost right, like a cappuccino-flavored vape pen when you were in dire need of actual coffee. I launched myself off of the couch and stalked out of the library.
Fuck this. Fuck patience. I’m done.
“Piper?” Hannah called after me.
All I could do was wave as I kept walking. I’d explain it later. I sensed Jayce getting up to come after me, but I waved him back too. I needed to do this, and I needed to do it alone. I trusted him to understand, just as I trusted Xero not to care too much. I headed upstairs toward the dorms.
The problem, I realized when I got to the second floor, was that I had no idea where Kai’s room was, or even if he was in it. That wasn’t going to stop me, though. I breathed deeply through my nose, reaching out with my senses—the same ones that always clawed desperately toward the men, dragging me toward them.
If he was up here, I would find him.
You’d think that walking one long hallway after another would be enough to burn off my temper, but it wasn’t. I caught his scent after ten minutes of deliberate, systematic searching, and then I ran that scent into the ground. I found myself in the very center of the big building, a place where the rooms couldn’t possibly have any windows, staring down an intricately carved door.
I knocked on it. Well, banged on it with the fleshy side of my closed fist, really. He didn’t answer. I banged again, hard enough to make the door shake.
“I know you’re in there, Kai! Open up!”
Still no answer. Motherfucker.
Outraged, I slammed my shoulder into the heavy wood, using the extra strength demons were known for. The door burst inward, and I stumbled inside. Kai sat in his desk chair, facing the door with one arm draped over the back of it and one knee crossed over the other. His expression was cold and disdainful.
I exploded. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Problem? Singular?” He chuckled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Let’s see. I’m living in a place I never wanted to come to. I’m bound to a woman I never wanted to be involved with. I lost everything to a stupid mistake. Shall I go on?”
I paced the room, clasping my hands behind me so they wouldn’t shake with fury. “Okay. I get it, Kai. You never wanted any of this.”
“Correct.”
“See, thing is,” I breathed a desperate little laugh. “The thing is, Kai, I don’t think you understand me. I don’t think you understand what it’s like to have your power, your life, your very existence depend on the presence of another person. Do you have any idea how helpless that makes me feel?” I whirled on him, fighting the tears that had sprung into my eyes.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
That surprised me into silence. Kai stood up and walked toward me slowly. “Do you know what I am, Piper? Do your senses give you any hint at all?”
I inhaled, but all I could smell was sweet, spicy sex. Sex I’d been craving since our first kiss. He took another step toward me, and the room spun. I was starving. His lips glistened in the soft, unnatural light. I wanted to drink them in.
“Look closer,” he said in
a whisper that was almost a growl. He let his jaw drop open as he ran his tongue over his teeth. As he did, they began to change. His canines grew and sharpened. His eyes changed, the pupils lengthening into the eyes of a night hunter. Infused in his erotic essence was a bloodlust so intense it made my own stomach clench.
“Vampire,” I gasped.
“Precisely. So you see, I do understand your predicament quite well. To be so wholly reliant on the charity of others, if only so as not to turn into the monster you are destined to become.”
“I don’t want your charity,” I hissed.
“Bullshit. That’s exactly what you want. You want to feed on me, don’t you, succubus? Well, I wanted to feed too. I was so hungry… she’d been gone for so long…”
“She?”
He was millimeters away now. His animal eyes burned into mine, and his hot breath dusted my mouth. My body screamed at me to take him, whether he liked it or not, and I trembled with the strength of the conflict.
“Don’t ask questions,” he growled. “Just listen. I don’t want you. I don’t want this school. I don’t want to be a goddamn Custodian, and I certainly don’t want to work for Gavriel. I had a good life, Piper. I had food. A career. Everything a person could ask for. I went unnoticed for years. Years!”
“And you fucked it up,” I murmured. That must be the mistake he was talking about. He’d stayed under the radar on earth for years, avoiding the notice of the Custodians as he’d built a life for himself in secret. But eventually, he’d gotten himself caught. Revealed himself.
I wanted to shove him away, but my body wouldn’t let me. It ached to press against him, to rub all over his skin like a cat. My lips were nearly touching his. Another second, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
His eyes softened back into a human’s. “Yeah, I fucked it up. Now fuck off.”
It was his room. I was the intruder. But that didn’t stop him from turning on his heel and storming out.
“Shit.” I flattened one hand to my chest where my heart crashed against my ribs as the other slid down to press against the ache between my legs. “God-fucking-dammit.”
Chapter Thirteen
“It’s driving me absolutely fucking nuts,” I told Hannah a few weeks later.
We were sparring together in Combat as Beedle walked around the massive training room, adjusting students’ form and technique and presumably making sure no one took a piece of rebar through the torso.
I’d been getting better at sparring, but Hannah, despite being a sweet, generally non-violent person, had taken to combat like a fish to water. She was keeping me on my toes.
“What is?” she grunted, slipping out of the headlock I’d tried to put her in and darting away.
Instead of answering her, I found my gaze inexorably drawn to the four men who were sparring in matches on their own on the other side of the room.
That’s what’s driving me nuts.
Them.
“Isn’t that what love is supposed to do?” She shot me a teasing grin then blasted an energy ball at me, probably aiming wide since she could see I was distracted. Still, my outer thigh tingled as the ball passed by too close for comfort. I snapped my attention back to our fight, trying hard to focus. She was gearing up to do it again. I shrank into a child-sized version of myself with too-big eyes.
“You don’t want to hurt me, do you, Hannah?” I asked, looking up at her pleadingly.
She hesitated, her eyes hazy as my persuasion clouded her mind. In a flash, I was my usual size and shape again—I darted forward and caught her lightly in the gut with my fist.
“Damn it!” She snapped out of her daze as soon as the blow landed. “That’s so not even fair.”
“Neither are those energy balls.” I backed up to reset, wiping a drop of sweat off my brow.
She grinned and waved a hand. Next thing I knew I was hanging upside-down in the air. It felt like an invisible giant had grabbed me by the ankles and picked me up.
“How ‘bout that?” she asked with a smirk.
“What?” I twisted and writhed in the air, trying to do an upside down crunch so I could reach my ankles—not that it would do me much good. There was no invisible giant to fight, just Hannah’s magic. “When did you learn how to do this?”
“Remember the feathers? I’ve been working on this move for-freaking-ever. See, from here I could just let my enemy plummet and break their neck.”
“I’m not your enemy,” I said, giving up on the crunch—my abs were screaming at me already—and pushing out toward her with my power. “You want to set me down gently.”
“Of… course I do.” Her eyes went unfocused again, and her head bobbed up and down in a continuous nod. She brought me gently down until I was about six inches off the floor. Then she shook her head hard, grimacing as she fought off my persuasion. She bared her teeth and finally ripped free of my charm, letting me drop the final few inches. “Damn it, Piper!”
I collapsed in an undignified heap on the floor, but at least my neck was intact—not that she would’ve actually dropped me from a dangerous height. Rubbing at a bruise on my elbow, I rolled over onto my back, shooting her an impressed look. “You’re getting good.”
“So are you.” She helped me up. “Want to call it?”
“With you in the lead?” I poked her in the ribs. “I think not!”
We sparred a few more rounds and pretty much remained tied. Her magic was more about brute force and mine was more subtle—like kickboxing versus Judo, maybe—but both had pros and cons. I always had fun fighting Hannah; I knew she wouldn’t take it easy on me just because we were best friends. But despite the distraction of keeping up with her kicks, punches, and energy balls, I kept having to drag my focus away from the tantalizing scents across the room.
“It isn’t love,” I said after a while.
“What?” she panted.
“You said ‘isn’t love supposed to drive you crazy’. This isn’t love though. It’s magic or something. It’s crazy, is what it is.” I scrubbed a hand down my face, momentarily letting my guard down. “And I’m crazy, and they’re crazy, and the whole thing is stupid.”
“Is this about Kai?”
“And Kingston, and Xero. I know I can’t force them to be with me in any kind of way that matters.”
She chewed her lip for a second and lobbed a lazy energy ball at me. I dodged it easily and tossed an equally lackluster punch in her direction.
“I mean… you could,” she said hesitantly.
“You mean persuade them?” I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought about it. I think about it all the time, actually. Mostly at night when I’m trying to sleep but I’ve got this hunger just gnawing at my soul, and I know food won’t help and water won’t help and even Jayce won’t help. They aren’t my partners. Some of them aren’t even my friends, but they’re all parts of me anyway, and it’s pissing me off.”
I got distracted by my thoughts, and she used the opening to blast me flat on my back.
“Never lose focus,” she said as she helped me up again.
“Thanks for the advice,” I gasped. “But seriously, how am I supposed to concentrate on literally anything with all of this shit junking up my brain?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced across the room, her gaze tracking mine. “I wish I did. All I can think is to go to one of the healers or master mages and see if they have any way to break the bonds. Either that or persuade the guys that you’re their one true love and what you say goes.”
“There is a third option,” I said with a tight smile. “I could just keep suffering. I’ve got stamina for suffering.”
She gave me a disapproving look and I caught her on the jaw with a light jab.
“Ow!”
“Don’t lose focus,” I teased. “Still tied.”
“Tied for what? Last place?” Sonja’s voice made me bristle even before her words registered.
I held up a hand to Hannah in a silent tim
e-out and turned around. Sonja and her minions—two of them, anyway, the morose girl was missing—stood behind me. They were all smirking as if Sonja’s comment was the funniest thing they’d heard all day.
“Get bent, Sonja.”
“Oh, stunning comeback, Piper. My feelings are so hurt I think I’m going to faint.”
The three of them all made swooning noises simultaneously. I rolled my eyes.
“You want to get out of our circle? Wouldn’t want one of you to get hit with a stray energy ball.”
“You can’t even use energy balls,” Sonja sniffed. “You’re a filthy succubus. You know what I’ve never seen? A succubus Custodian. Wonder why that is?”
“Probably because they’re liabilities,” the tall girl said. Olivia was her name. “Driven to fuck and manipulate and nothing else. Can’t control a succubus.”
“Well… maybe the current Custodians can’t, but I can. Heel, bitch.” Sonja pointed at the floor by her side and the other two tittered behind their hands.
I coughed a little laugh. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, bitch. Heel.”
I looked over at Hannah, stunned. “Are you hearing this?”
Energy crackled between her fingers, and I swore her blonde hair floated around her head a little with the static charge. “Oh, I’m hearing it.”
I turned back to Sonja. “Do not ever tell me what to do.”
She took a step toward me, flanked by her friends. “You better get used to taking orders from me, cupcake. Let’s be honest here, shall we? You’re never going to graduate. You’re never going to make it to your second year.”
“Oh? And why’s that?” I rolled my shoulders back. She was in dangerous territory. I was still amped from my rounds with Hannah, and Sonja would be way more fun to tear apart.
Sonja smirked. “You do know you have to actually… pass Combat in order to graduate, right? I could destroy you. With one finger. Right now.”
