by Callie Rose
“Damn, that’s rough. Where was your dad in all this?”
“Gone. Wasted somewhere or locked up. He floated in and out of our lives for a while, and for some reason my mom always let him come back. Once she took a turn for the worst, though, he disappeared entirely.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”
I attempted a shrug and swallowed hard. “I don’t tell anybody this stuff,” I said, choking on a laugh. “The point is, I’m reliant on you guys now, and I don’t like to rely on people.”
“Maybe it’s time you did,” he said softly. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. What happened then? After your dad disappeared?”
“Oh, God, um… well, my mom passed away when I was seventeen. I had an aunt who handled all of the funeral arrangements and everything, but she had no interest in me. I was close enough to being grown up that nobody really thought about rescuing me.”
“At seventeen?” He gave a low whistle. “Hell, I couldn’t even do my own laundry when I was seventeen.” When I shot him a look of disbelief, he grinned. “Okay, maybe I could, but I didn’t want to. My mom spoiled me a little bit.”
“Is your mom still alive?”
A cloud passed quickly over his face. “Yeah, she was when I left her. When I got turned. My dad too. They own a little self-sustaining ranch half an hour from the beach. Doing their part for the environment and all that. Total hippies.”
“That explains a lot.” I laughed. “You’ve got that granola vibe.”
He grinned. “I liked where their heads were, you know? Save the planet, save humanity. They weren’t all that effective, but I was going to change that.”
“How?”
“Acting.”
I cocked my head at him. “Acting, huh? Okay, so I’ve been dying to ask you this since school started, but I didn’t want to sound like a creep. Have I seen you somewhere before?”
Jayce smiled and gave a small shrug. “I mean, maybe. Where are you from?”
“Seattle.”
He thought for a second. “Hmm. I’m pretty sure it was broadcast in Seattle. Even if it wasn’t, I’m sure it was on the internet for a minute. Oh, and the other one definitely was.”
“The other one what?”
“Commercials,” he answered with that slow grin. “One for SPF tanning spray and another one for edibles.”
I raised a brow. “Edibles?”
His eyes sparkled. “Hey, everybody’s got to start somewhere. I wasn’t planning on doing commercials forever. That second one caught the attention of a TV network exec, and I was on my way to my callback audition when all this happened.”
“Oh, shit.” My brows scrunched together. “That’s terrible. But it doesn’t explain how you were going to save the world.”
“Yeah.” His grin widened. “See, what I figure is, if a twenty-thousand dollar nest egg could get my folks off the grid, then a twenty-million dollar nest egg could get a whole lot of people off of it. I was going to make it big and spend every penny helping people get independent.”
“Wow. You’re kind of incredible.”
He shrugged. “Not really. I think a lot of people would do what I wanted to do if they had the chance to.”
I didn’t want to burst his bubble, but I couldn’t have disagreed more. People in general were terrible and cold-hearted, at least in my experience.
“What did you want to do before all this happened?” he asked.
“I was going to school to be a social worker.”
“See?” His eyes lit up like I had just proved to him that Santa was real. “Everybody wants to save the world.”
I chuckled. “I don’t know about the world. All I wanted to do was make sure other kids like me didn’t have to go through what I went through. Guess I won’t have the chance to do that now.” I hadn’t realized before how much that thought distressed me.
“We all have our parts to play,” he said warmly. “I guess our parts have changed now, but isn’t this so much cooler?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. We were both struggling through all the hoops on the off chance that we would be able to do some good for somebody somewhere eventually. Now we have the chance to be honest-to-god super heroes. We’re already saving the world a little bit by being here, and once we’re trained, can you imagine how much good we’ll do?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it that way.” I narrowed my eyes at him, cocking my head. “You seem way too comfortable with all this. Don’t you miss your old life? Your parents and aspirations and all that?”
“Sure.” His beaming grin slipped for a second, and his sky-blue eyes clouded over. “I miss my mom every day. But it’s worth it, you know? At least, I hope it is. There are so many possibilities. The world I knew just cracked open and revealed that it was something else all along. I don’t know what all the possibilities are, but I’m excited to find out.”
He wasn’t lying; I was sure of that. But the excitement couldn’t quite wash the sadness out of his eyes. It tugged sharply at my heart, and I scowled in response.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” I murmured. “Everybody I know had more to lose than I did. When I was attacked, I had just finished beating the hell out of my cheating-ass boyfriend, and he was the only person I even remotely cared about.”
“Really? No friends?”
I shrugged. “Being a self-sufficient kid comes at a price. I never really learned how to make deep connections.”
“That’s strange. I figured you’d be great at it. I mean, that healer chick said you’d have to be pretty strong to bond with four guys at once. Plus, you got Hannah and that dopey guy following you around everywhere.”
I chuckled. “Owen. Yeah, this is all new for me. I’ve always been good at blending in and socializing on a surface level. I guess those skills hold more weight in a situation like this.” I didn’t particularly want to go down the list of my personal failings. I groped around for a new topic and landed on the worst possible one. “So, um… what attacked you? What’d you turn into?”
He grimaced. “Hellhound. Not my first choice, honestly.”
“Ouch. I bet. What would you have chosen?”
“A water demon, maybe,” he said dreamily. “Or something that flies. I used to surf every day back home. The perfect combination of two worlds, just flying over the waves. You ever surf?”
I shook my head. “Never. Always kind of wanted to learn, but something always came up.”
“If they ever let us out of this joint, I’ll teach you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
Something about that one word made a switch flip inside me. It was a little thing, but it was just the cherry on top of everything else. He was just so damn good. I couldn’t take it anymore. We walked past a little alcove in the hallway and I tugged him into it and pressed him against the wall.
“Woah!” He glanced down at me. “You good?”
“Kiss me.”
His eyebrows flew up, but the surprise on his face only lasted a second. Then he slid his tongue across his lower lip and grinned as his eyes darkened. He pulled me close, and I gasped as our bodies pressed together, then moaned as his mouth found mine. His kiss was hot and calming all at once, a sauna of pleasure around my consciousness. God, I wanted more.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my suddenly heavy breasts against his hard chest, rising on my toes to grind my hips against his. He groaned and ran his hands over my body, kissing me wildly. Every inch of my skin ached to be closer to him.
I almost went for it. My brain was so hopped up on the feel of Jayce this close to me, of his lips devouring mine, that I almost lost all sense of where we were. I was a heartbeat away from tearing my clothes off and going at it right in a tiny alcove in the hallway. But class let out before I got that chance, and I forced myself to put a sliver of daylight between our bodies. I gazed breathlessly up at him. He grinned slowly, and the sight of it was
like gasoline on the fire that already blazed steadily within me.
Yeah, this is fucking happening.
“Come with me.”
I took his hand and led him into the stream of students. I knew exactly where to take him. A little wooden door, smaller and more understated than any other door in the entire castle, was tucked away in an alcove under a flight of stairs. I’d seen it resting open a few times and knew it hid a closet just big enough for my needs.
“You’re a little crazy,” he said with a grin as I dragged him into the closet. “I love it.”
Instead of responding with words, I just shoved the door shut with my foot and then shoved Jayce against the door, throwing myself at him and attacking his lips again like I hadn’t just been kissing them ten seconds earlier.
The craving rampaging through my body was so strong, it had me ninety-nine percent convinced I’d die if I stopped kissing the beautiful, broad-shouldered blond man.
Not that he seemed to have any objections. As my body collided with his, he wrapped his arms around me, kissing me back like maybe he was feeling the same sort of desperate, unquenchable need I was. Our hands were everywhere as our mouths moved together, short gasps escaping our lips as we changed the angle of our kiss, tongues dancing, teeth knocking together.
It felt like getting sucked up into a hurricane of pleasure, making me dizzy and disoriented and so fucking wet.
He grabbed my hips and changed our positions, putting my back against the heavy wooden door and using that leverage to press his body even closer to mine. I could feel his cock against my stomach, hard and thick and hot as a fucking brand, and it made another gush of wetness flood my panties.
“I’ve never—done this before,” he panted between searing kisses to my neck, shoulder, and jawline. “Fucked in a closet.”
I hadn’t either. My sex life with Colin had started off pretty vanilla and slowly devolved to downright boring. But with the way I was feeling right now, someone could’ve yanked the door open behind us to reveal the whole school standing out in the hallway, and I still wouldn’t have stopped. I’d rather fuck Jayce in front of the entire damn school than not fuck him at all.
Spurred on by a growing desperation, I grabbed his tunic and yanked on the fabric, and he obliged by raising his arms long enough for me to tug the garment off.
Holy shit.
It was really the entire world’s loss that Jayce had been turned by a hellhound before his acting career took off, because the man deserved to be a damn movie star. Those perfectly tanned, muscled shoulders and that smooth six-pack deserved to be blown up to larger-than-life-size on the silver screen. Women would line up around the block to drool at the easy, effortless, rugged good looks of Jayce… Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was.
Shit.
I should probably know that.
The thought was driven from my mind as he moved closer again and my hands rose up to touch his smooth, muscled chest. I swore drool really did pool in the corner of my mouth as my hands roamed his warm skin with possessive lust. It was like crack. Touching him was my new drug, my new obsession, my new dirty religion.
My mouth joined my hands, licking and sucking and biting a path across his chest and over his shoulders, and he groaned low in his throat, making the skin beneath my lips vibrate.
The sound traveled through my body on a wave and went straight to my clit, making the hard bud throb as if he’d physically touched it.
His groping hands shoved my tunic up above my breasts, and he pressed me back against the door before he dipped his head to flick my nipple with his tongue. I let out a loud moan, grabbing his head with both hands and clenching fistfuls of his golden blond hair.
One of his hands slipped down the front of my leggings, moving unerringly toward the spot I needed him most. And as soon as two thick fingers found my clit, I exploded. I came harder than I ever had in my life, my back bowing away from the door as my knees shook, my eyes flaring wide with shock and ecstasy.
Jayce stared down at me with lust blazing in his blue eyes, his bare chest rising and falling with his deep breaths, as the movements of his fingers on my clit slowed.
“Goddamn, Piper. You’re gorgeous when you come. Show me again.”
His fingers resumed their motion, and for a second, the pleasure was so intense it was almost painful. Then it was all pleasure again, deep and consuming, driving me toward another orgasm.
The second one was no less intense than the first, and this time, Jayce didn’t even give me a chance to come down before pushing me toward another. His fingers were a blur on my clit, and my muscles couldn’t decide whether to melt or lock up as I came for a third time.
Holy fucking Jesus.
I groped blindly for the waistband of his pants, and when my fingers finally found what I was looking for, I shoved the fabric down just enough to free his cock, wrapping my hand around the velvet-coated steel. Precum was already oozing from the tip, and I used that to slick his length, sliding my hand up and down his shaft.
He groaned again but didn’t stop what he was doing. In fact, my attention to his cock only made him work my pussy harder. The two fingers that’d been circling my clit slipped inside me, and he used the heel of his hand to keep working the sensitive bundle of nerves as his fingers drove in and out in rough motions.
And I came.
Again.
“Fuck yes, baby,” Jayce whispered, and his voice sounded almost tortured.
We weren’t even kissing anymore by now, just staring at each other from a few inches apart, completely absorbed in each other’s pleasure.
I had to be giving the world’s worst handjob, because I could barely get my body to function as another orgasm built like a pool of lava inside me. But Jayce didn’t seem to have any complaints. His hips were thrusting against the motions of my hand, and his nostrils flared as his muscles tensed.
When I came again, a stuttered breath fell from my lips, and he finally withdrew his fingers from my soaked pussy. He stuck them in his mouth, his blue eyes darkening as he licked them clean, and as I watched him, my orgasm rolled into another one, turning into one continuous wave of pleasure.
He tugged my leggings down, and I scrambled to kick them off, along with my shoes. The second the fabric hit the floor, Jayce hoisted me up into his arms, gripping the bottom of my ass and thighs with his large hands. He pressed my back against the door, shaking his head in delirious wonder as he stared at me.
“I’ve never wanted anybody as much as I want you right now, Piper. Goddammit, I have to feel your pussy wrapped around my cock.”
His words were like a lit match thrown into a barn full of dry hay. My body burned for him, and I reached down between us, gripping his dick and teasing us both by rubbing the head over my clit. I had just orgasmed more times than I could count, but my succubus side didn’t care about numbers. She just cared about more.
I slid Jayce’s cock a little lower, and as soon as it breached my entrance, he plunged inside, impaling me against the door.
It was exactly what I needed. What I’d been needing for weeks.
My walls clenched tight around him, welcoming the intrusion, the feeling of perfect fullness.
“Oh, God. You’re so damn tight.”
His ocean-blue irises gleamed with approval as he began thrusting fast and deep, holding my ass as he braced me against the door. I couldn’t thrust back from this position, couldn’t really move my hips at all, so instead, I just let him take control, opening my body to him and letting him drive us both toward oblivion.
He reached up with one hand to shove my tunic out of the way again before palming my heavy, swollen breast, tweaking and rolling the nipple. I threw my head back so hard it smacked with a resounding thud against the door, and Jayce’s eyes widened, his pace slowing a little.
“No! Don’t fucking stop!”
I clawed at his shoulders, urging him on. It had hurt, but my demon magic was roaring through my body, powered up by the contact
between the two of us—and already, the pain was hardly more than a memory. It would heal so fast I wouldn’t even have a bruise.
Jayce shot me a feral grin and picked up the pace, driving into me so hard it probably sounded like someone was doing construction work in the closet.
I wrapped my legs around him, hooking my ankles together, and when I came for a final time, it blew all my previous orgasms out of the water. Because this time when my pussy clenched, it had something to convulse around—a thick, hard dick that was still thrusting in and out of me in a jerky rhythm.
Jayce let out a deep, wild grunt and then slammed into me so hard I worried for a second that we’d break the door down. His cock pulsed as ropes of cum flooded me, and the sensation made a burst of power and pleasure surge through me, as if my body was literally charging up from his essence.
He ground his hips against mine, spilling every last drop with a few more pulses, and then the frantic movement of our bodies finally stopped.
The closet was quiet, except for the heavy sounds of our breathing, and I wondered belatedly how loud it had been a few seconds ago. I honestly couldn’t remember whether I’d managed to keep my voice down or not, but I was sort of guessing the answer was… not.
Good thing class was still in session and all the castle walls were made of super thick stone.
I was still wearing the oversized tunic Cassandra had given me, although it’d been shoved up over my boobs. My bottom half was bare, and so was Jayce’s top half, but he still had his pants and shoes on. And we’d both worked up a little bit of a sweat.
But I had never felt better in my life.
Contentment, strength, and a giddy feeling of power flooded through me, and I clung to Jayce for a second longer, nowhere near done touching him yet.
After a while, our breathing calmed a bit. Still buried deep inside me, Jayce drew his head back a few inches to look at me, his blue eyes still hazy in the afterglow. He shook his head and let out a low whistle.
