by Alex Lidell
“If I were in that castle, I’d be feeling pretty safe just now,” Tye murmurs to Katita, his voice loud enough to ensure that I hear it.
Heat fills my cheeks, spreading through me as the rest of the class chuckles along with Tye’s words, and River lets it happen.
“Lady Leralynn?” Briar prompts. “There is a small slate and chalk you may use for preliminary calculations, if you wish.”
I pull down on my tunic, gathering whatever dignity I have left into my voice. “That won’t be necessary, sir, as I don’t know the answer. I will, however, be sure to study harder over the coming days.”
8
River
Having ordered Leralynn to wait for him in his study, River knew the rest of the mock exam would be difficult to stand through. But the breath-stealing tightness in his chest still caught him off guard. He wanted—needed—to go after her. To explain that he wasn’t being a bastard just for the enjoyment of it, but to make her understand the danger of the fire she toyed with.
His nails dug into his skin where he held his own wrist behind his back, his shoulders so stiff that they were starting to ache. The mock exams were still running, and it was taking every ounce of his willpower to appear to listen to the other students when, in truth, their words buzzed together in his mind. Stars, if one of them danced a jig in the middle of his answer, River probably wouldn’t even mark it just now—though, fortunately, his reputation was enough to keep the cadets in line.
At least the cadets who were not Lera.
When the class ended, three more cadets having decided to repeat the year rather than risk expulsion, River gave Briar an ominously ambivalent bow and excused himself to his study. He’d given away nothing about whether he was pleased with the class’s performance, for the simple fact that he couldn’t very well have an opinion after having paid zero attention.
Outside the windows that River passed with every twist of the circular stairs, the Academy was unrecognizable. In addition to the monstrous arena keeping dominion over the courtyard and flags of every color strung up posts and trees and rigged ropes, the grounds seethed with the unfamiliar faces of staff hired to support both the competition and the soon-to-arrive royals. Maids and scullery boys, guards and cooks, carpenters and seamstresses—it was an invasion. One that made the Academy a target for whatever darkness was at work in Great Falls. And one that River wanted Leralynn to have no part of.
The girl was so much like Diana that it dried his mouth. Not just the large chocolate eyes that saw everything, the hips made to fit his body, the luscious heavy breasts that peaked impertinently at a slight chill—but the fierce passion and bravery and the silk thread of concealed vulnerability that roused his every protective instinct. Their study sessions had slowly turned into a gauntlet for him, an hour each day that toed a knife’s edge between pleasure and pain—and left River aching all over for hours afterward. He’d controlled his body around her for two months now. Just barely. But his soul wasn’t nearly as cooperative, and the imminent danger of the Trials was only making it worse.
River’s heart stuttered, the irrational sensation of history repeating itself washing through him.
The morning Diana took the fall that ended her life, he had marked her horse’s unusual friskiness and known that Diana’s passion for riding was exceeding her skill. But he’d not stopped his wife from getting into that saddle. She’d have hated him for it. But she would still have been alive.
River would not allow himself to be the same coward when it came to Leralynn.
Taking the final flight of stairs, he found the girl sitting on the bench outside his office as wayward pupils were instructed to do. A bad sign that she hadn’t simply let herself in like she usually did. The sunlight flowing through the window caught on her auburn hair, making it sparkle with the same brazen life that radiated from her creamy skin. Blood rushed to River’s cock, spurring thoughts that very much did not belong in the upcoming conversation.
“Leralynn.”
“Sir.” Rising, Lera put her hands behind her back, her voice carrying nothing but cool stinging distance.
All right. They could play it any way she wished so long as she was packing her bags at the end.
Opening the door to his study, River stood aside to let Lera through, the girl taking all of five steps before stopping. Awaiting instructions. No emotion. No contact. Nothing. At least she wasn’t afraid that he’d beat her, River thought. They’d come far enough that she trusted him not to.
But then he looked into her eyes and realized it wasn’t trust he was seeing but a wall. A cold brutal wall. And no matter how much he wanted to protect her, he didn’t think he could stand this.
“Leralynn.” Coming to stand before her, River reached to brush his thumb along her cheek before his better instincts could stop him. It was smooth as silk, sending a frisson of heat up his arm. He longed to reestablish a connection, to chip away at the wall of hurt so they could speak.
“Don’t touch me.”
The words hit River in the chest, and he dropped his hand at once, though it made his throat tighten. Putting his hands behind his back to avoid further temptation, he gave Lera a small nod of acknowledgment.
“Yes, I set you up,” he said, his voice steady as he gripped her eyes. “But it was the only way of getting the message to register, Lera. This time, you walked off the testing stage draped only in humiliation. Had these exams been real, you would see the end of the Academy. No recourse. Nothing. Not even I could bring you back.”
No response. Just a silent chocolate stare.
“Do you understand me?” River demanded.
“Perfectly.” Lera raised a brow. “May I go?”
After striding to his desk, River pulled out the withdrawal agreement and ink and laid them out for Lera.
“I am not withdrawing.”
“You will return in the fall.” He reached for the pen.
“I said no. I am not withdrawing. Sir.”
River stared at the pen in his hand, trying and failing to make sense of Lera’s words. When the pen snapped beneath the pressure he didn’t know he was exerting, he felt something inside himself give way too.
“What exactly do you expect to happen at the exams?” he demanded, his voice rising in spite of himself. He longed to take Lera into his arms and shake reason into the girl. He couldn’t do this again, watch a coming disaster and do nothing to stop it. Couldn’t lose Leralynn without a fight. “That was a real exam question, Lera. And you failed. What the bloody hell do you imagine will change in the coming days?”
A muscle tightened in Lera’s jaw, and for a moment, something other than cold iron flashed in that beautiful gaze. Regret. Hurt. Longing tempered with determination.
Crouching down, she picked up the broken halves of the pen and laid them on River’s desk. “I imagine that days from now, I will take the exam and fail, after which time, I will be expelled from the Academy forever,” she said with an evenness that sent a shiver down River’s spine. Lera wasn’t lying. She was…she was up to something.
Something that River had missed completely. His eyes narrowed. He was barking up the wrong tree altogether, wasn’t he? His heart quickened, his mind racing to discard the reality he’d imagined in favor of the one in Lera’s too-brave mind. And it scared the stars out of him.
“Is there anything else you need from me just now, sir?” Lera asked, pausing for a heartbeat that wasn’t long enough for River to find his words. When she started walking to the open door, however, River beat her to it, shamelessly using his longer stride and reach to shut the wooden panel before the girl walked out of his life forever.
“An explanation,” he said quietly. Not a demand, not this time. A request. “Please.”
A muscle ticked along Lera’s jaw, the hurt and anger she’d kept leashed flashing over her face. “If you’d bothered listening to anything I’ve told you since I arrived here, you wouldn’t be asking that.” She shook her head, her brea
th quickening. “You humiliated me today, River. I trusted you, and you twisted my trust into a bloody lash. So I’m done. We’ll play by your rules. For another three days or so, at least.”
River kept his hand on the door, his heart pounding against his chest.
“So if you’ve no reason to hold me here, sir, let me go.”
The cadet was right. He had no reason to hold her. Not as the Academy’s deputy headmaster. Not as anything. Except, somehow, these particulars had stopped mattering. Deep in his heart, an aching, raging fear that had started to roar minutes earlier was now slipping into his blood. If Lera crossed that threshold now, she wouldn’t be coming back. And a primal, untamed part of River wouldn’t let that happen, not without one hell of a war.
“No.” The rush of blood was deafening in his ears. “You are going to give me a chance to fix this.”
Lera yanked the door handle, the heavy wooden panel staying shut beneath River’s weight.
“Let me go.” Twisting around, she shoved his chest, her small palm thudding against him with a futility that would be humorous any other time. “I want—”
A growl that had nothing human in it rumbled from River’s lungs. Grabbing Lera’s wrists in the middle of her next swing, he twisted her around and pulled her back against his chest, her trapped arms now crossed over her chest. “I don’t care what you want. What you are going to do is talk. However long it takes to get there.”
9
Lera
Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.
I yank against River’s unyielding hold, his warm, rock-hard body pressing into my back. His chest heaves, his breath fast and hot against my hair, his bounding pulse hammering through my skin. Raw and unrestrained and so unlike the controlled River I know that my own primal senses spiral from my grasp.
I was going to walk out. And now I can hardly move, my muscles coil with tension and pain and a sudden flush of arousal that I hate as much as I hate the male himself right now. I want to run. To hit River with all my might. I want to bed him. Kill him.
“You set me up as a laughingstock.” I twist my hand, trying futilely to claw the skin on his wrist.
“I needed you to understand.” The escaped anger in his voice clips the words.
“That I’m an ungrateful charity case who doesn’t know a good thing when it smacks her in the nose?”
“That I’m not letting you walk out of my life without a bloody fight!” As suddenly as River grabbed me, he pushes me away to brace his trembling hands on his thighs. His nostrils flare, the quick gasps of air so unlike him that I stumble.
Not walk out of the Academy. Out of his life.
My eyes widen. River’s raw glare confirms what I heard. His face has gone pale, lips tight. He said more than he meant to, and he knows he can’t take it back.
I shake myself, my mind screaming at me not to believe a word. He’s an immortal king and I’m a peasant. A stray who wandered into the palace. Without the bond’s magic, River can’t want me—can’t feel anything but a mix of pity and indulgence. Strip our souls to the truth, and I’m not meant to be River’s mate—I’m his project.
My eyes sting.
With a soft grunt, River snaps from his crouch, centuries of training giving his great body a predator’s honed power. Before I can move, he grips my hips with hard hands, lifting me clear off the ground. My legs dangle above the floor for one confused heartbeat before he sits me on the edge of his tall desk. Staking out a place so close to me that my thighs open to accommodate his body, the male brazenly puts his palms on either side of my face, locking our eyes in a vise-hard grip.
“You aren’t a charity case.” He spits the words, which seem to steam in the tension-filled air. Outside the window, a cloud shifts, a new tiny ray of sunlight now reflecting off the male’s storm-gray irises. A muscle twitches in his square jaw, every line of his hauntingly beautiful face filled with feral intensity. “You never were. Ever.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’ve fallen in love with you, damn it.” River swallows, his gaze rushing to the ceiling as he breathes deeply. Desperately. “No matter how much I’ve tried not to. And now I can’t bloody undo it. Can’t let you walk out that door and never come back.”
My mind stills.
“Leralynn?” River swallows again, the sound loud in the silent room. Leaning his head down, he lets his mouth hover inches away from mine, his woodsy scent filling me. Sharp and dangerous, like a cliff’s edge. “Say something,” he whispers.
My mouth is dry, the blood racing so quickly through my veins that the world dims at the edges. And yet, despite all the warning of my screaming mind, my body is drawn toward him. A mouse walking willingly toward a yawning trap that might still snap shut.
River closes his mouth over mine with a groan. After all these weeks without his skin on mine, the heat is intoxicating, the pressure of his velvet lips so perfect, I can’t help but respond with a hunger of my own. His tongue sweeps across my bottom lip before slipping inside with immortal confidence.
A cascade of heat and power slides from my mouth to my bunching nipples and open thighs. My senses revel in River’s leisurely exploration, his tongue sweeping slowly through my mouth once, twice, before the sensual kiss morphs into something different. Wrapping his hand in my hair, he plunges himself deeper into me, the assault primal and possessive and unyielding enough to lay his soul bare.
My breath hitches, my hands digging into River’s shoulders, then sliding down over his bulging chest. I want more than a kiss. Need more than a kiss.
River’s muscles flutter and coil beneath my touch, his chest and abdomen tightening more and more as I wrap my fingers around the hard bulge pulsating beneath his tight britches.
Gasping for breath, he pulls his mouth away from mine, his large pupils fevered with pulsating need. “We… I can’t.” His voice is breathless, as if he’s calling from the midst of battle. We’re crossing a line that, in River’s veiled world, we’ve never before touched—the last line in the sand that the deputy headmaster inside River knows is there. “You are a student.”
“I’m Leralynn.” A pressure I didn’t realize was building inside my chest strains and breaks apart, spilling into my simmering blood. The lies and half-truths and pretenses and assumptions. Emotions wash over me in an unforgiving wave, pounding against my heart until it all forms into a single clear thought. “I’m Leralynn,” I say again, my voice filling with a power that’s of my soul, not of magic. “I’m not a student. I’m not a lady. I’m not anyone you think me to be or want me to be. I’m not anyone but me. Know that as you make your move, River, and own it. Because I am.”
River’s jaw tightens once.
And then he rips open my uniform jacket so hard that the buttons ping as they bounce off the stone walls.
10
River
The ping ping ping of Lera’s buttons against the stone walls of his office sent little shocks all the way to River’s cock. Good stars, he wanted her, his heart pounding from the toxic mix of desire and bewilderment—it was a cadet writhing with expectation beneath his hands. And yet, Leralynn was so much more than that.
Her destroyed jacket fell to the floor with a satisfying plop, the wide cloth belt dropping next, then shirt and chest wrap. With their bindings gone, the girl’s gorgeous breasts fell loose at once, the bunching pink nipples begging to be touched. Breath in his throat, River traced his thumb once around each tantalizing bud in wonder, savoring the feel of the delicate skin perking beneath his touch. He’d dreamt of this moment countless times, mentally traced these curves that he knew were not his to touch, but the dream paled in comparison to reality. Now that he was here, he knew no ready-dealt plan could do Leralynn justice.
Lera inhaled lightly, her pleasure at his touch making his cock throb so hard that his vision darkened for a moment. He drew a slow breath to calm himself, but the scent of lilac and arousal that filled his lungs had quite the opposite effect.
&n
bsp; Hooking her legs around his hips, Leralynn pulled him in closer, gazing at the pulsating crotch of his britches with the same rapt attention he’d just paid her breasts. When her face rose, the sight of her full, slightly parted lips and penetrating chocolate eyes tightened River’s heart into a fist.
Diana. This was Diana and yet not.
The girl’s hands were on his shoulders now, yanking his jacket down his arms and tearing at his shirt with about as much respect as he’d shown hers. When his chest was finally bare, she spread her palms against it possessively, then slid them down his stomach to his belt with what he could have sworn was a purr, her eyes hot enough to melt steel.
River’s heart stopped.
Sweeping his arm roughly over the top of his desk, he threw the documents and pens and everything that had seemed important just this morning right to the floor. To irrelevance. Grasping Lera around her waist, he flipped her belly down on the wooden surface, her legs dangling over the edge even before the last of the rolling ink bottles stopped clattering against each other. One hand beneath her hips, River pulled open her fly with a single tug, feeling his pulse echo off his cock as he slid her pants and undershorts off her round bottom all the way to her knees.
Beads of moisture already hung like ornaments on Lera’s wiry auburn curls, more glistening arousal slathering the insides of her thighs. River rubbed over the wetness greedily, inhaling her need as it melded with his own. Her small mews of desire almost made him climax on the spot. Stars, the girl smelled right. Fresh and perky and a perfect fit for a jagged void inside his soul. A missing piece.
Deep inside River, something strange rumbled to life. His senses woke to every sound and sight, down to the slight crackle of Lera’s coarse curls rubbing against each other as she clenched her backside in instinctual protection. The wet sounds of her pulsing sex practically moaned for touch.
