“For a year, I endured monthly exorcisms, Eve. Monthly. Padre Joan almost killed me, and I knew he’d keep on trying until he managed to flush the demons out of me. One day, when the Hell Hound was in control, I realized he’d only stop when I was dead because that was the only way those demons were going to relinquish their hold on me.” I gulped, partly terrified about her learning something I’d done so young, and equally needing to share this with her. Something that had formed me into the man who had survived, who had made it to this point where he could be claimed by her.
“What did you do?” she asked softly, her eyes gentle as they looked at me. I saw no judgment, no hatred, no fear. Just acceptance.
She knew what I’d done.
“Ended him before he ended me.” I pulled a face. “People say they want peace, but they don’t realize you have to go to war to experience it.” I shrugged. “I’ve gone to war, Eve, I know what peace is, and this? When I’m with you, and my heart feels full, and my body feels heavy with contentment? This is peace.”
She grew tense in my arms before she released a shaky sigh. “I thought I was the only one who felt that.”
Inside, I felt like roaring with my delight. My gouille was so close to the surface I had to hold him back. A part of me wondered if she’d done that to Dre, if he’d felt like this seconds before his first shift, because only the knowledge that she could draw our souls to the fore before our twenty-first birthday prepared me for that to potentially happen.
At that moment, I could have imagined my gouille’s wings bursting forth, springing free in delight at what she’d admitted, and if there was one way to kill the mood, it was turning into a fugly monster with gray skin and bony wings—gouilles were many things, but pretty wasn’t one of them.
Grinning into her hair, I told her, “We all feel that, Eve. All of us.”
“Dre doesn’t,” she argued. “Samuel doesn’t either.”
“Well, they’re the misery guts of our Pack. We have to have them. If everyone was happy all the time, it would get boring.”
She snorted. “I doubt that.”
We fell silent for a second, and I knew I wasn’t the only one relishing our proximity. I knew for a fact she’d never lain with anyone like this, had never cuddled so deeply into one of the other’s arms.
“Why me, Eve?”
“Huh?” she asked, and I heard the sleepy overtone to the mumble.
It made me feel stupid, made me wonder if I was overthinking this intimacy…
“Why you? In what sense?” she inquired, breaking into my thoughts.
“Why are you lying here like this with me?”
“Because I needed to.”
I blinked. “Why?”
“Because I’m eighteen, and until two months ago, I was supposed to be marrying a man in his dotage. Instead, I’m somehow joined to five guys—or seven, depending on how you look at it. It just feels surreal. I was trying not to freak out on the sofa but I was failing, and I knew you’d make me feel better. You and Eren always do.”
Her matter-of-fact words had me smiling faintly. “We always do?”
“Yes. You’re both very patient with me. I know you’ll help reason things out with me. If I want to be mad at someone, be it the world or a book, then I talk to Dre. He puts things into perspective because he irritates me more than anything or anyone else can.”
I bit back a snicker. “And Stefan?”
She chuckled, and the faint tinkle of her amusement made my heart warm. “He makes me laugh. Oh, and he has good snacks.”
I snickered. “That he does. He tell you about them?”
“That he has them?” she queried.
“No. Why he has them.”
“Not yet.”
I hummed in response and didn’t even contemplate for a second whether it was wise to tell her or not. Some stories we couldn’t share. I was surprised I’d managed to tell her about Joan, to be honest.
“You know he grew up in an orphanage, don’t you? He ran away when the souls revealed themselves after they beat him for acting out. He lived on the streets for a while. If any of us knows true hunger, it’s Stefan.” The hoarding was a direct result of that.
Snacks, money, clothes. Stefan kept it all.
If his housemistress, Jennifer, hadn’t doled out weekly inspections on the rooms in her dorms, then I had no doubt his place would be full of shit he didn’t need but, deep down, his soul did.
“I hate that you’ve all suffered,” she whispered.
“And you haven’t? Fearing for your life? Living with that kind of pressure? You were raised in a cult, meu amor, that’s heavy shit.”
A snicker escaped her. “Heavy shit,” she repeated, making my eyes widen at the fact she’d cursed. Before I could call her on it, she asked, “Was he hurt on the streets, Nestor?” I tensed before I relaxed, and then she patted my arm. “It’s okay. He can tell me.”
I licked my lips, uncertain if that was for the best or not. I was sure Stefan wouldn’t appreciate my telling Eve he’d been raped as a boy, that he’d sold himself just to appease the nagging ache in his belly, but also, would he ever tell her?
It didn’t seem to affect him as much as the other stuff did. But who was I to say? We all had our demons, and Eve would come to know each of them quite intimately before we were through with one another and were knocking at death’s door.
Hopefully, that would be a long way away.
Soft lips pressed against my throat, making me freeze as they brushed over the tenderness of newly scarred flesh. The Ghoul had left her mark on me, but I’d wear it as a badge of honor because I’d survived the attack and lived to walk another day whereas my brothers had slaughtered my attacker. “Eve?” I questioned, unsure if she knew what she was doing, and whether she knew how much power she had over me at that moment.
❖
Eve
I wasn’t sure why I did it, but the need to press my lips to his throat, to kiss him and taste him at the point where he’d been hurt, was a burning ache in my belly.
Fluttering my tongue along the sinews, I felt the slightly risen flesh of the scar and sighed as his taste blossomed inside my mouth. It filled me up as though I’d taken a deep sip of juice, but it was more than that. It went deeper.
Inside my body, I felt warm, and it was exactly like what had happened with Stefan the night they’d returned from Aboh.
I was overheated and yet, somehow, the perfect temperature too.
“Eve?” he asked, and I heard the hesitance in his voice.
When he said my name again, I lifted away from him and whispered, “What is it?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “No. I definitely don’t,” I told him, and was relieved when his tension died off and he began laughing too.
When I caught his eyes with mine, we both smiled at each other, and it felt so right, so good that inside, I just felt happy.
Weird considering how unhappy I’d been until moments before.
Lying on the sofa, I had contemplated how my life had gone in a full circle somehow, except it had been derailed and I’d gone off track onto a whole other circle, which had only made me feel worse.
The connection I had with the guys was only deepening, and the longer I spent with them, the deeper I wanted it to go.
I barely knew some of them, even though they were trying, and the need I had to know them more was a burning ache inside me, and I recognized it was sexual.
I wasn’t a child anymore. These feelings, the way my souls responded and reacted to these men? It had stimulated me in ways that I knew they could ease.
A part of me felt sure that if I touched on this side of myself, it would help things simmer down, and I wouldn’t deny that thought had me seeking comfort in Nestor’s arms.
But that was a giant leapfrog to this moment.
I felt more than comfort. I felt at ease. He’d opened up to me, told me something
about his past he was ashamed about. Had told me something about Stefan too.
My men all had labyrinthine depths and, truth was, I considered myself fortunate that I’d be the one getting lost in them for a lifetime.
I still felt guilty, sure. And yes, I’d been thinking of ways to get off Caelum without them to spare them, but there was no point.
They were my Chosen.
Mine.
It was time I stopped running away from that and began embracing it.
They had been gifted to me for a reason. Evading them was doing us all a disservice, and it would, in the long run, make me miserable as heck.
“Nestor?” I rasped.
“Yes, Eve,” he replied, his tone husky.
“Will you kiss me?” I licked my lips. “Properly?”
His eyes flared with an emotion it took me a few seconds to analyze. When he did, I registered the heat, and it burned into me, branding me with his response.
I could no more stop the rocking of my hips into his belly than I could withhold the soft curving of my lips. I felt the hardness there, and after far too many jokes at my expense from Dre, I knew what that hardness was. Even knew where it went, and what would happen.
I had something called Cosmo to thank for that particular education.
“Are you sure?” Nestor asked, his voice shaking with something I knew was need.
“No,” I answered honestly. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and you may regret kissing me—”
“Never,” he bit off.
I wriggled inwardly at that. He sounded so vehement! “Well, if you can handle that, then—”
Again, before I could finish the sentence, he interrupted me. This time, it wasn’t with words but with his mouth. His lips pressed into mine, soft at first, then harder as he tilted his head, his nose burrowing into the softness of my cheek as he began to peck at my lips. Soft kisses were pressed along the lines of my mouth, then he traced his tongue over them, and I shivered in response because it sent rays of delight dancing down my spine.
Hips rocking upward again in a startled reaction, I parted my lips and moaned again as his tongue delved between the soft pads of flesh. Fluttering here, flickering there.
When he grunted, I felt it in his kiss. The soft vibrations made me feel as though someone had set off fireworks inside me, and I felt myself open up to him as a direct response.
My arms curved upward, coming up to hook behind his neck. Hauling him closer to me, I hugged him tighter, and he took advantage of that to push us over so that suddenly I was on my back and he was on top of me.
Eyes flaring wide, I pulled back and scolded, “Nestor! You’re injured!”
“Fuck my injuries,” he growled, his head dropping down so he could kiss me once more.
“No!” I retorted, aware of just how much pain he was in, I wasn’t about to let him hurt himself again.
Before he could argue, I forced us to roll once more, and this time, I was on top. I knew he’d let me do that, knew he wouldn’t have budged if he hadn’t wanted to let me have some freedom of movement. Even as I relished that, I marveled at being on top of him.
I spread my legs, settling myself astride him so that his hips were between my thighs. The heat of him, the solidness of him, stunned me, even as I reveled in him, in what I felt in this position above him.
When I looked into his face, his smile unnerved me until he stated softly, “Someone likes being on top.”
Blinking, I asked, “Does that mean something?”
He snickered. “Yes. It does. Have you ever ridden a horse?”
I shook my head, then blushed when I realized what he meant. I didn’t pull away, though. Didn’t even bother trying to hide my reaction to his words.
I was eighteen now. A woman. Today, Father Bryan would have proposed to me, and only God knew when I would have been tied to him for life.
The very notion made me feel sick. The idea of being married to him had made me nauseated when I’d lived on the compound. Now? Having experienced freedom? Having my guys around me, and one of them currently beneath me? I was so gloriously happy to be here, to be with Nestor, that I was willing to act on these emotions.
Willing to act my age for the first time in my life.
Biting down on my bottom lip, I reached for the hem of my shirt and dragged it overhead. I was nervous about revealing myself to someone else—especially a boy—but I knew nudity wasn’t that much of a big deal here.
The girls’ shower room in the gym didn’t have any stalls, and the first time I’d used it, I’d been so mortified, I’d covered myself in a towel throughout the shower, which hadn’t exactly helped me get clean. Now, I just returned to my own room, but the way they’d all strolled around had told me they were well at ease with their bodies, whereas I’d been taught the opposite—to be ashamed of mine and the lust it could and would inspire in men.
If that wasn’t a big enough deal, I knew the guys were used to sleeping with those girls from the shower room. The student body here wasn’t like me. I was all curves, all softness, ripe and round. They were hard and firm, muscled and strong. I didn’t envy them, but I thought they were beautiful, and I had to wonder if my softness was dumpy to Nestor.
“Are you stuck in there?”
The question had my cheeks flushing, and I finally threw the shirt overhead. I had definitely been hiding in the act of taking the top off, but I slapped him on the side where I knew he had no injuries. “Don’t be mean.”
He laughed, and because it was such a happy sound, I found myself laughing back.
“I didn’t expect this,” I whispered, my tone growing serious as I stared down at him.
“I certainly didn’t expect this,” he retorted, his eyes darkening as he looked at me. I watched his tongue pop out and when he licked his lips, nostrils flaring as he studied me, I knew, without him even having to say a word, that he liked what he saw.
Relief sank into my bones, and I relaxed until he asked, “Can I touch them?”
I wanted him to, but my lungs still burned as breathing became impossible for a handful of seconds.
“Yes,” I whispered, after a good thirty seconds of my cheeks flaming. I was really grateful for the darkness, and even though his sight was undoubtedly strong in the night, just as mine was on certain soul-dependent days, the shadows still offered some protection.
Both of his hands came up and cupped my breasts. The second his skin touched mine, I shuddered, utterly enthralled with the sensation. I wasn’t sure whether to buck my hips, to freeze, or if I should just quiver inwardly until the sensations died out.
It was like being tickled, yet also, being scratched. It felt good, yet bad too. The contrasts were infinite and pleasing nonetheless.
The calluses on his fingers, his palms, rubbed against my tender skin, making the hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge. My head dropped down to stare at his olive skin against my pale, alabaster flesh. His hands led to forearms which led to biceps that were strong, while I seemed to be the exact opposite. For a second, it was a reminder of how weak I was, how frail and vulnerable, how badly I needed his and the others’ protection, but then, I remembered something.
I was on top of him.
Because he wanted me to be there.
He wanted to protect me.
Yes, I was frail and vulnerable in many ways, but hadn’t I attacked Samuel when he’d tried to hurt me? When that idiot had tripped me and tried to humiliate me, hadn’t I punished him?
I had strength too, but it came in different ways, and wasn’t that how a man and woman worked?
We weren’t supposed to be the same. We were meant to be different.
Before I could let the revelation filter through me, Nestor arched up so he was sitting. He made no move to push me off him though. Instead, I watched as pain had his features tightening for a second, and then his mouth was on my breast and his lips were around the soft peak of my nipple.
My belly pulsed with need,
and I could feel the area between my legs grow slick in reaction to what he was making me feel.
It was confusing but enlightening too.
With a grunt, I began rocking my hips to try and acquiesce that peculiar pain I felt in my core. Except moving made it feel worse. It was like I was running toward a piece of chocolate cake, but no matter how near it was to me, it seemed to be farther away. Like someone was pushing it ahead of me so I’d never reach it.
Nestor’s hands came up to cup my waist, but he didn’t stop me from rocking against him, if anything, one of his hands moved between my thighs.
At that first touch, I froze, then when he rubbed me through my sleep shorts, I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair. I needed to connect with him, needed him to know what he was making me feel, that I was loving it even if I didn’t understand it.
How could that feel so good?
Just his fingers against the seam of my shorts?
It was so confusing, so bewildering, and yet so intoxicating too.
I aided his touch by rubbing harder into him, and as I did, he began nibbling at my nipples, biting and kissing them, before he moved up, and began sucking on my throat like Stefan had, making me tense in response.
Stefan had touched me like this, but it was so different when I was half-naked, and Nestor was too—he only wore a pair of briefs to bed. Something he did for me, because I’d overheard Stefan warning him to cover up when I was around.
That he might wander about his rooms naked had my cheeks flushing with heat. I wasn’t sure where it came from, wasn’t sure where the surge in confidence surged from, but I whispered, “Touch me, Nestor. Please?”
He seemed to understand what I was saying, reading between the lines to what I truly meant.
I didn’t just want him to touch me like this. I wanted skin on skin.
Nerves in my eyelids began twitching as he reached beneath my sleep shorts and underneath my panties too. When we finally connected, with no barriers, I released a groan so deep, it seemed to resonate through my entire being.
“Fuck, you’re so wet, Eve,” he rasped against my throat. He’d stopped licking me there and had instead pressed his face into me like he was hiding. From what, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t particularly care so long as he didn’t stop.
Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO Page 15