Dark Days: Semester 1

by Liz Meldon

  I fought because I knew I should. Because he had me on a leash. Because he was a vampire proving he could have me, use me—that he could play me all over again.

  But my god, if he stopped, I might die.

  “Tell me again,” he murmured in my ear. “Tell me it’s just the bite.”

  “Fuck you—” My eyes widened, then clenched shut as he nudged back into me, filling my slick channel inch by agonizing inch. The fullness nearly sent me over the edge, but no more than his dark little chuckle, the way he licked and nibbled the shell of my ear.

  The way his fingers never stopped, never faltered, playing me like I was his instrument—tuning me, drawing the strings tighter, tighter, tighter…

  Until I snapped.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from crying out, because fuck him if he thought he deserved that kind of praise. The wildfire went rogue, scorching a path through every limb, my body trembling, my mind blissfully empty. No more thoughts, no more worries—just relentless pleasure that threatened to drown me, that consumed every fiber of my being.

  My knees gave out, and Calder pressed me up against the desk, the fingers drenched in my arousal now working their way under my bra to toy with my nipple. He offered no reprieve around my neck, tie taut as ever, his mouth on my throat as he started to rock again. Every pump of his hips prolonged my climax, dragged it out as I moaned behind tightly sealed lips, as my eyes prickled with unshed tears. My body clung to him, to the way he hit that little sweet spot inside the harder his thrusts became, bucking up against me, our collision jolting, making my teeth chatter if I let it.

  And I couldn’t let it.

  I couldn’t let any of it—but I already had. We were a runaway freight train, and the only way to finally stop was to crash.

  “Now remember, Miss Kingsley,” Calder growled. His hand snapped around my chin, wrenching my head sharper to the right, my neck twisting in protest as his thrusts quickened. “No howling.”

  I blinked. No howling?

  Wait.

  I sucked in a few ragged gasps, the realization striking with startling ferocity. “Wait, no, don’t do it again—”

  The rest of the world fell away when he sunk those canines in, diving home with a snarl, his arm locking around my waist like a vise. Distantly, I was aware that we’d toppled forward, that my hands had caught us, braced on the desk—but it wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, not when pleasure so fucking intense flooded my system. It drowned out my racing heart, silenced my inner wolf. Calder’s savage thrusts faded to the background; I barely felt his hand clamp over my mouth, muffling what sounded like me, but couldn’t possibly be me. I didn’t make those noises. I didn’t whine and cry and moan with wild abandon.

  And I certainly would never, ever, ever whimper his name.

  Eyes shut, open, I couldn’t tell anymore. My first true climax of the night had created a blissful black behind my lids, and now the darkness had lifted to screaming color. Flashes of everything, so long as he kept those fangs buried in my neck.

  Nirvana. Pure bliss.

  A high I never wanted to come down from, one long orgasm that struck every molecule in my body. I felt it in my individual strands of hair. My eyelashes. Reality faltered, splintered, peeled away the longer it went on, to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was alive or dead.

  And I didn’t care.

  Until he stopped. Until the vampire ripped his mouth away, blood splattering across my desk, pouring down my chest. Then, it all came crashing back, slamming into me as vicious as Calder’s final thrust. He doubled over with a groan, forcing me down with him, trembling. His cock pulsed once, twice, and he hissed as he raked his teeth across my shoulder.

  I shoved at his wrist, and he peeled his hand from my mouth. My first true breath in who knows how long was glorious—the pleasant ache in my body, too, the soreness between my thighs. Pulse still racing, I pillowed my forehead on both arms and just breathed.

  Wondering when the fuck he’d ripped my bra strap.

  And why he was still buried deep inside of me, one hand planted on the desk, the other loosely grasping the back of my neck.

  Slowly, the gravity of the situation struck. As I lay there, chasing my breath, I wanted to hate myself. I wanted to say that I’d fallen for his bullshit again.

  But I had done this, let it all happen, when Calder was just being himself—so what did that say about me?

  “Get out,” I muttered, pushing back at him weakly. For the first time since he had walked into my office, Calder did as he was told, easing out of me, his footfalls heavy as he stepped back. I melted over my desk, every muscle relaxing, and waited for the guilt—for the anger, for the regret, for the self-loathing.

  Not one made an appearance.

  Mostly, I just wanted to shower, then crawl into bed and sleep until sunrise tomorrow.

  Behind me, Calder righted himself, zipper hissing and buckle clinking. I didn’t bother to look back, eyes closed, breath deep and even, not until he opened the door and left without a word. It was then the outside world trickled in, a rush of muffled music sounding from down the hallway. I shot up, panicked, and launched myself at the door just as it started to drift shut on its own. It slammed in place, and I bolted it with shaky fingers, then slid down to the floor.

  The Halloween dance. Nearly the entire school, all its faculty and students, was a mere thirty feet away.

  And I’d just had sex in my office.

  I brushed at my neck, nose wrinkled at the still-warm blood. The puncture marks had healed over, but I looked like a gunshot victim. Red droplets peppered my desk, atop which sat Calder’s jacket. After all that fuss, he had left it behind.

  “Oh my god.” I closed my eyes tight, then thumped my head back against the door. Distantly, students screamed at the song change, something peppy and upbeat. I could imagine them jumping, hands in the air, smiling and laughing. Would Calder stay, chaperone extraordinaire, and pretend nothing had happened? Would he slip out the side door and into the night? Take to the tunnels?

  With a weary sigh, I looked at my discarded clothing, my shredded dress shirt and crumpled slacks. Fortunately, I kept a change of clothes in my office at all times. While nothing more than my usual SIA polo and track pants, it would have to do. I couldn’t go out there looking like this—bloody, ravaged.

  High from a vampire’s bite.

  “Fuck.”

  Never in my entire career, in my entire life, had I behaved so unprofessionally.

  Sex in my office. With a vampire. Thirty feet away from my friends, colleagues, boss, and pupils.

  I clenched my eyes shut again, groaning. What the hell had I just done?

  November

  11

  Emma

  At the heavy thunk of the tunnel door falling shut, followed by the click, click, click of a slow, familiar stride, I huffed and finished tying off the last of the badminton nets, longing for the days when Calder Holloway only waltzed into my gymnasium because he had to.

  I should have expected this. After spending the week avoiding eye contact and leaving conversations whenever he joined them, it shouldn’t surprise me that he had finally sought me out on my own turf, if only to give me another lecture about making our professional existence on the SIA campus difficult.

  Or something equally annoying.

  What had happened at the Halloween dance… It couldn’t happen again, and I couldn’t face the vampire without experiencing the unpleasant burn of shame, embarrassment, and self-loathing, so my tactic had been to avoid him. Hard. I stopped eating my meals in the dining hall, taking them in my office or my suite instead. I spent more time in the dog kennel, visiting the dogs after hours, working more intensely with the seniors involved in the program, even if, two months in, they no longer needed my guidance. I’d already knitted two sweaters, finished my lesson plans from now until March, and had read four paperbacks.

  In a week. Five measly days. Calder had now come to find me on
the sixth, and as he crossed from the tile to the vinyl, entering the gym unannounced, I knew I couldn’t avoid him any longer.

  Well. I could. I could beeline to my office. Lock myself in one of the storage rooms. Go outside and lose him in the blizzard. You know—things totally sane shifters do when approached by a vampire they’d fucked.

  Instead, I finished securing the badminton net. I had a class of freshmen first period of the day, and we were starting our badminton unit in about—I checked my watch, back still to Calder as he continued his leisurely approach—nine and a half minutes. Because even if I ran, Calder could find me; the academy’s campus was a finite space, and all its dark, shadowy corners did nothing to hide me from a vampire.

  Besides, I couldn’t help but feel a little curious about what he wanted. The hairs on the back of my neck stood; he couldn’t have been more than five feet out, silent save for his shoes, which I knew he did on purpose. What could he possibly want to say to me now, when we hadn’t had more than two seconds of eye contact in five days?

  Had he come to threaten me? Order me to keep quiet about our romp in my office?

  I rolled my eyes and stepped back from the post, excess white cord trailing down its side, the knot holding. Like I would ever tell a soul that I had slept with a vampire. Seriously.

  When the footsteps finally stopped, I glanced over my shoulder nonchalantly, features schooled as I took in the three-piece suit—navy tie, jacket and slacks; white dress shirt with a crisp collar; a grey vest with little darker grey buttons. Impeccably tailored, as always. I faced forward again, hoping that some sense of common decency stopped him from tuning in to my racing heart.

  “What?”

  “A very good morning to you too, Miss Kingsley,” he crooned. “Less than six hours of sunlight today—or, there would be without the, uh, blizzard.”

  I crossed my arms and half turned back, figuring it would seem petty if I didn’t at least glance at his gorgeous, smug face. “Cool. What do you want?”

  Calder slipped his hands in his pockets. “I have a free block right now. Thought we could chat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve been avoiding me—quite adeptly, I might add.”

  “So?”

  His cheeks dimpled, even though he seemed to be fighting back a smile. “So?”

  “So, you know, awkward silence and outright avoidance.” I shrugged, forcing my gaze up—because if I didn’t, I would look down, down to where his hands were, and I’d remember what was resting between them, how it had stretched me, filled me, pleasured me. “Isn’t that better?”

  Calder’s dark brows lifted. “I’m sorry… Are we thirteen years old?”

  My cheeks flushed. “Look, just—”

  “I want to do it again.”

  I gawked at him, mouth hanging open, heat flashing in my belly. The vampire remained annoyingly unreadable, and I hastily closed my gaping mouth, then cleared my throat.

  “You want to…” I cleared my throat a second time when my voice snagged, heart going a mile a minute and brain totally blank. “Again. You want to—again. What? Why?”

  “Because,” Calder smirked, his eyes practically glittering, “I think we have exceptional hate sex.”

  Hate sex. I wrinkled my nose at the term, even if it was, well, accurate. At no point since the encounter had I been harboring any sense of desperate longing for the vampire; the sex hadn’t changed much between us, though I was inexplicably less angry with him.

  And just a hint more physically attracted to him.

  Those fingers, that mouth, that body—

  I shook my head and made my way over to the row of sixteen rackets I’d already set out. “You clearly don’t like me.”

  But you want to have sex with me.

  “We don’t have to like each other to—enjoy ourselves.” His whisper warmed my ear, breath tickling my skin, and I lifted a shoulder to push him back. Having materialized out of nowhere by my side, Calder fiddled with the end of my braid, towering over me, smelling of sandalwood and risk. He exhaled softly, then gave my plait a sharp tug. “Everything’s on the table now, isn’t it? I’m an ass, and you’re a waking nightmare I can’t escape—”

  I whirled around, snapping my hair out of reach, and held up a hand. “Okay, easy.”

  Calder grinned, and I found myself itching to do the same. I pressed my lips together instead, arms crossed.

  “We both know the truth,” he murmured. “You said it yourself. You see me—whatever. Isn’t this preferable to how it was before?”

  We barely knew each other. The truth—right now, it was all surface level, and what little I could glean from his files. Still, I knew he was playing everyone else. Maybe that was enough.

  As we faced off, I kept waiting for my inner wolf to growl. While usually very responsive to people who drove me crazy, she went strangely mute around Calder.

  Unless we were hate sexing. Then she wouldn’t shut up.

  My heart leapt into my throat when he reached for me, and I batted his hand away as the heat started to rise under my collar. “Calder, I have a class in like five minutes.”

  “Plenty of time…” His grin sharpened just before he slammed his mouth to mine, catching me off guard again with another one of those breathtaking, toe-curling, hard-as-nails kisses. One cold hand cupping my face, the other smoothing around my hip, Calder marched us backward, over a pair of rackets that clattered noisily underfoot, and into the wall. My stomach looped, and what I could only assume now was hellfire flickered to life as I kissed him back, lips parted, teeth bared.

  At first, I shoved at his shoulders, moaning in protest, but then his scent, his mouth, his firm body and rough hands—well, they were more persuasive than I cared to admit. More thrilling. More intoxicating. Slowly, I molded to him, conforming to the hard lines, arching up, hands buried in his hair.

  Calder was right. I didn’t have to like him as a person to do this. I could use him for pleasure, for a little bit of fun during the long dark days of winter—or until it wasn’t fun anymore.

  With a soft growl that reverberated in his broad chest, Calder hoisted me up and settled between my thighs, grinding his hips. I opened wider, moaning when his hand slipped between us to rub me through my track pants. As the base of his palm did its good work, stoking the hellfire, Calder tore his mouth from mine, nostrils flared as he seemed to fight his own private battle for self-control.

  “This really is the most godawful outfit,” he rasped, porcelain cheeks speckled pink, his bright blues stormy as they flicked down to my polo. “Do they make you wear it, or…?”

  Panting, I glared. “You know, you’re a thousand percent more tolerable when you don’t speak.”

  “You sure?” He eased his hand under my track pants. “I seem to recall you like being spoken to when—”

  I dragged his mouth back to mine, kissing him with just enough bite that he snarled and snapped my underwear’s waistband. Good. Be annoyed. The vampire was definitely more fun when irritated.

  Actually, he was the most fun when he was doing—that. My eyes fluttered closed as he smoothed his hand between my thighs, cupping my sex, massaging the sudden slickness, then nudged one long finger inside me. My fingers twisted in his hair at the slight twinge of pain, one that bloomed into something hot and heady as he stroked my inner walls. Ankles locked on the small of his back, I dug my heels in and moaned, clenching around him. Keeping me pinned in place with his solid frame, like a rugged marble statue, Calder brought his free hand up to my face, cupping my cheek, the tip of his thumb edging around the corner of my mouth—

  He froze suddenly, hands stilling, mouth retreating.

  “W-what?” My hands settled on his shoulders, heart hammering, breath racing. “What’s wrong?”

  With an ear toward the closed doors across the gym, the ones that opened into the corridor with the tunnel entryway, the weights studio, and the change rooms, Calder fell silent for a few moments before disengagi
ng completely. He set me back on the ground, none too gently, and retreated a good ten feet, jaw set, hands clasped behind his back.

  Students. I heard them a moment later, the very faint clamor of echoey chatter in the concrete tunnels leading up to the building. My first-period freshmen. Sure, I had to strain to hear them, but even if they’d been closer, I would have missed the warning completely.

  Kissing Calder made me reckless, made me forget all the boundaries I put up around myself in a school, an institution with underaged kids, minors. If we were going to do this, whatever the hell this even was, then we couldn’t do it out in the open. I pressed my palms to my flushed cheeks, trying to rub out the color.

  A near impossible task when Calder adjusted his tented pants with a scowl.

  “Why?” I asked, my voice catching. He looked up sharply, and I expected a smirk, a sneer, a suggestive comment that would make my blushes worse. Instead, he slid his hands into his pockets and shook his head, expression grim.

  “Because pretending is exhausting,” he remarked tightly, “even for me. When I’m fucking you, I don’t have to pretend.”

  Well then. That was refreshingly honest. I stared at him for a moment, swallowing hard, and nodded. “Okay.”

  Calder offered a barely discernible nod of his own. “Okay.”

  And then, in the blink of an eye, he vanished. I flinched, then inhaled sharply at the sudden gust of frozen air screaming in through the emergency exit door. When it wouldn’t swing closed, I started toward it, only to pause when the vampire forced it shut from the other side.

  “Oh my god.” I smoothed both hands over my hair, down my fat, frizzy braid. Just outside the main gymnasium, noisy freshmen moved from the tunnel to the small entry corridor, the crowd splitting between the two change rooms like always. Their presence was thunderous now, even with metal and concrete separating us, their conversations and laughter a chilling reminder of how close we had come to getting caught.