Root Rot Academy: Term 3

by Rhea Watson

  Like I was made to one day take a vampire mate.

  “Bjorn,” I whispered, and my attempt to steer him back by the chin failed. He stood tall and rigid, pointedly twisted away from me—but only his head. His body angled toward mine, and his fingers gritted into my skin even through the collar of my peacoat. My lips kicked up, absolutely smitten with the sight of him losing control—becoming who he was, shirking what society molded him into over the last century. Clearing my throat, I went for his jacket instead, tugging insistently. “I need you to.”

  Four words—the incantation that undid his self-control. His head snapped back to me, and I hastily pushed my hair away, exposing myself to him again, offering him the most delicate, fragile part of me.

  I mean, besides my heart.

  But he already had that.

  His upper lip peeled back, revealing fangs that were always in the way when we kissed, now proud and ferocious in their own right. Even with the invitation, he hesitated, riveted by my neck, eyes wild, savage—

  “Bjorn, just—”

  My vampire pounced with a snarl that rippled across my bones—tattooed its claim into the marrow, something I would feel forever and beyond. As soon as his fangs pierced my flesh, I gasped, but not from the pain…

  From the sudden explosion of pleasure.

  Better than any climax.

  The best orgasm of my life—all from his bite, from the toxin vampires were said to carry that lulled their prey.

  This didn’t feel like I was being lulled…

  This was like being worshipped.

  Primal and beautiful and pulse-poundingly divine, made better by the way he held me, caged me against his body, his animalistic snarls music to my ears. Head tipped back, all I had were the stars, now accented with pops of color and light, my body powerless against the ecstasy. Heat swelled in my belly, between my thighs. It crept up my spine and plumed in my cheeks.

  The only fire I would ever crave.

  The only fire I would never fear.

  Mind blank, I moved on instinct—barely. Racked with the sensation of total relaxation, the sort you feel just before you drift off to sleep, twined with a pleasure that had me moaning and making noises I didn’t recognize, I tried to go for his pants. Only I lacked dexterity, fingers clumsy as they scrambled along his belt and tugged at the buckle, trailing over a straight-as-an-arrow cock, hard and thick and wanting against me.

  Logically, I knew Bjorn wanted me.

  But I’d never felt it so obviously before.

  And that… was fucking hot.

  When he finally tore himself from my neck, pain twinged where his lips had once kissed me, where his fangs once claimed me, followed by a wave of heat.

  Blood—I was vaguely aware of the blood spurting from the wound, those puncture marks seconds from healing courtesy of the same toxin that made me come hard and furious enough that I felt it in my panties. The heat. The wet. The desire.

  When he kissed me now, slammed his hungry mouth to mine and absolutely devoured me, it was like kissing him for the first time. Him. Bjorn the Vampire, greedy and fierce, a warrior from an age gone by who was all man, not an ounce of softness in him. Just muscle and hard, bold ridges that I clung to—that I felt safe and small tucked against. His fangs cut me with wild abandon, my tongue slashed, my lips swollen and bruised.

  And I loved every second of it.

  So much so that I let him march me into the tall grasses, then cut me off at the knees so we plummeted down. I fell with a cry, trapped in his arms, cushioned by the steel at my back. Even with spring on the horizon, the ground remained hard, the dry grasses tickling my neck and cheeks as Bjorn rolled me into them. We both attacked each other’s jeans with a fury, his fingers steadier than mine, easily snapping the button open and tearing down the zipper while I fumbled with his belt.

  As he wrenched my jeans and panties down my thighs, he spared one hand to help both of mine, yanking open his buckle, wrenching down the zipper. By the time I tried to slip a wanting hand into his briefs, he had moved on to greater and grander things—namely dragging all that unnecessary fabric down to my ankles.

  The March air exhaled over my exposed skin, almost too cold, but suddenly his lips found my shins, the rounded backs of my calves, then up to my quivering thighs, and Bjorn showed me what true frost felt like. He was self-conscious about it, the difference between our body temperatures, but I adored his cool caresses. His ice dulled every kind of pain. It was a blessing, not a curse.

  Ankles trapped in the rigid confines of my jeans, I whined the farther up my legs he climbed, dragging an openmouthed kiss across my flesh, teasing me—tormenting me—with the sharp threat of fang here and there. Unfazed that his stormy gaze peered into the most private part of me, I tried to spread my legs wider to accommodate for him, for this vampire who was both predator and protector, but I just… couldn’t.

  It didn’t matter.

  Bjorn buried his fangs into the tenderness along my inner right thigh with a snarl that would send an alpha wolf shifter scampering.

  And I was gone again.

  Instantly lost to the pleasure, to the bliss swirling through my veins. My hips bucked, and I tugged at my curls, embarrassingly out of control, but as swift as the assault started, it ended, his bite short and sweet and ugh—more.

  The best I could manage was another whine, glaring down at him as he smirked between my thighs. Bjorn sat up to wrench his jacket off, tossing it into the grasses so I could enjoy the muscular details, the veins snaking down his forearms. He then crawled up my body like a wildcat, pausing only to sweep his tongue along my desire-drenched pussy. Fear pulsed through me when he hesitated, his fangs dangerously close to my clit, but he carried on after a longing look, prowling over me, all broad shoulders and strong arms and a rugged jaw that danced through a clench before he claimed my lips.

  My fingers had barely twined into his hair when I felt him nudge at my slick entrance, and I gasped into his mouth as he sunk into me, hard and brutal, driving me into the grasses in a single glorious thrust. Our moans twined, his rough, mine high and delirious, the duet echoing across the landscape.

  Whenever I had thought about my first time with Bjorn, I imagined something sweet and tender. Probably in one of our beds, maybe on the couch, definitely missionary with a lot of eye contact. I pictured connection and passion.

  I never saw rough rutting in the highlands, but as my eyes fluttered open, I found the connection I had always envisioned in his icy blues, in the storm blazing back at me. The passion shone in spades, and even as he fucked furiously, grinding and pounding and bruising me with exquisitely sharp hip bones, I couldn’t look away.

  Couldn’t close my eyes.

  Needed—every second of it. Of him.

  One arm flopped back, fingers groping for grasses to twist and pull. The other wrapped around his shoulders, hand in his hair. Both of Bjorn’s settled under my hips, cupping my ass—cushioning me even as the monster took over. Even with my blood smeared down his chin, into his scruff, stained across my coat collar and in my hair—he was careful. Cautious with a witch he could snap like a twig.

  Gods, I—

  Gods, I think I really, really love him.

  Tears stung the backs of my eyes again, made my throat rough and thick, and I wrenched him into another kiss. Bjorn obliged, falling to me all gruff and growly, kissing harder, deeper, when I finally started rocking my hips up to meet his punishing pace.

  When I came this time, the explosion rocked through me out of nowhere. Suddenly, it was all light and pleasure and fire—and I embraced it wholeheartedly. For the first time tonight, I bit him, snapping first at his tongue, then his lower lip, body spasming and teeth eager to make their mark. He hissed softly, then growled the harder I bit, hips pumping faster, rougher, dragging out the climax long enough that I finally just broke, overwhelmed by the sensation, by my first true taste of fire in all these years. My bite turned into a frantic, needy kiss, and I sobbed in
to his mouth, desperate for the closeness, for all of him to take all of me.

  Here. Now. Forever.

  While his hands might have protected me from the ground’s frostbitten firmness, they turned punishing when he came, and I already pictured ten beautiful bruises marring my flesh, lovely and dark, a reminder that I was his and he was mine. I intended to look at them in the mirror later, just as I had admired the marks left by Jack from our scenes, and remember this moment in startling clarity.

  Just as I’d always remember the sounds of Bjorn’s pleasure, the monster right there, his groans deep and his snarls wild. That alone coaxed one last teeny, tiny burst of pleasure from me, and I held him tight as he shuddered and I shivered, both of us riding it out together.

  In the aftermath, we lay beneath the stars literally steaming, my breath falling in hard, uneven pants, Bjorn’s skin endearingly flushed. Eventually, he eased out of me and rolled onto his back, dragging me with him as I squeal-giggled and flailed, totally dependent on him to manipulate my spent body on top of his because I lacked both the energy and willpower to do it myself.

  Sometime later, he murmured my name, purred it so sweetly that my heart skipped a beat.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. Sprawled across him, head to the side, cheek over his faintly beating heart, it took me a few seconds to process he had actually said anything at all.

  “What?” Nice. Really eloquent.

  Bjorn smoothed his hand down my back and over the curve of my bare ass. “For the gift you’ve given me tonight.”

  Grinning, I mustered the last bit of strength in my reserves to crawl up and cup his face, smoosh his cheeks, and look him dead in the eye as I said, “Bjorn, you’ve been a gift to me from the first day… You know that, right? Everything about you…” I motioned up and down with my eyes, then lifted an eyebrow. “Head to toe, inside and out—a gift.”

  He blinked, cheeks suddenly a dull pink, and as the predator retreated and the man returned, emotional and vulnerable, I hugged him. Gave him the space to process however that made him feel without someone watching him. Even though I was sore and bloody and exhausted, I stayed there through his bone-crushing embrace, struggling to breathe, loving every second of it. Eventually he eased up, but we stayed put, unwilling to move, unwilling to be the first to shatter the moment—until my teeth started to chatter.

  Hands planted on his chest, I pushed up with a groan and squinted at the moon-bathed terrain around us, the soaring hills and the winding paths and the thorns ready to claw at my jeans on the walk back. Ugh.

  “So…” I pointed to my neck, blood dry yet somehow a little sticky, the puncture marks closed but aching. “One for the road?”

  “And where do you think you’re going?” Bjorn growled, cuffing my throat and hauling me back down so fast that the world spun and my belly looped. As soon as things leveled out, our mouths a breath apart, my core clenched with interest.

  “Curfew,” I insisted with a giggle, and Bjorn rolled his eyes.

  “Fuck curfew.”

  “Yeah, no.” I peeled his fingers from my neck, one by one, loving that he let me, that the lion gave the kitten her victory. “I’m not sleeping outside in March, bruh.”

  Another eye roll followed, something he had clearly picked up from Gavriel, and despite his reluctance, we helped each other up, our little highland sex bubble burst. Pants done up, coats on, blood cleaned with a simple cleansing spell, it might have looked like nothing happened—but I still felt him everywhere. Every bite. Every brutal thrust of his hips. His kiss. I’d never be rid of him—and that was just fine with me.

  Bjorn, meanwhile, continued to drag his feet, determined to yank me into another forever kind of kiss. I intercepted by shoving my hand between our mouths, clamping it over his with another giggle.

  “Besides,” I mused innocently, “if we go now, we’ll have time to prove my theory.”

  Tugging my hand away, the vampire flashed a hint of fang as he said, “What theory?”

  “You know, my theory… that our shower is just big enough to fit two people—”

  Without another word, Bjorn hurled me over his shoulder and rushed us back to the warded castle, my squeals and laughter ringing out through the highlands, life and all its problems forgotten just a little while longer.

  9

  Gavriel

  “I’m sorry!”

  Wait a second. I stilled, one hand on the return cart, the other clutching a tome about to be shelved. That frantic, squeaky plea didn’t sound like one of my new library drones.

  While I didn’t quite have all their names memorized yet despite personally seeing to their grueling interviews, I had a good grasp on their voices. At long last, my kingdom was fully staffed again, February’s walkout a thing of the not-so-distant past, but even though I had the manpower, there was a learning curve to this position.

  Apparently.

  Because here I was, after hours, curfew in effect, returning books that should have been put away already. Meanwhile, my new idiots had fucked off to the Caladh pub tonight—blissfully unaware of their lurking former headmaster just one floor above—to drink and bond and whatever.

  Which left me here—doing shit they should have done. Simple shit. Shit that was so below my paygrade it was laughable. I didn’t restock shelves. I only deigned to carry books into the stacks if they were new arrivals of a rare and valuable vintage, the type that came with heavy-duty packaging and a certificate of authenticity.

  Destined to be manhandled by brats who had no idea of their worth, but, you know, another issue for another day.

  Frowning, I set this blasé spellwork textbook on the cart and cocked an ear, listening, tracking the outburst through the dark library. The place was huge; in theory, that girl could be anywhere.

  Girl. Not a woman. Definitely someone far younger than the women on staff, barely over the puberty hill—a student.

  A student out of bed at—I flicked my wrist to twist the Cartier band around to the diamond-encrusted face—half past eleven. Outrageous, that, given how invasive Iris’s new regime was in their lives. While I had only worked at Root Rot a few years before Jack’s sweeping reforms, even I knew this was ridiculous. It had been intense back then, but this new order blew its predecessors out of the water.

  Almost like Iris was hell-bent on outshining the boys who came before—as if that would encourage the high council of academies to make her the permanent headmistress, not just the interim.

  And you know what? Fine. Women could do anything men could do, usually better, but garnering a reputation for the cruelest headmistress in an academy’s history wasn’t exactly something I personally would strive toward.

  Nearly three weeks into the new order and the staff were restless, even some of the new hires uncomfortable with the rules and requirements shoved down their throats. Students had started rebelling and were aggressively punished for it. There seemed to be some civil war brewing amongst the den mothers. The security warlocks were just power-tripping pricks who got off on an ounce of control.

  And fucking Iris Prewett thought this weekend’s upcoming Ostara gala—a ball for academy staff, faculty, and high council members only, no students—would be a balm for this festering sore.

  Fucking ludicrous.

  Root Rot Academy was a powder keg stacked with kindling. One spark and we’d all go up in flames.

  Abandoning the return cart and all its homeless tomes, I stalked the shadowy aisles, on high alert and zeroed in on the frantic whispers in the western stacks. With only a third of the night lighting on, I had no issues seeing in the dark, but it certainly gave less night-sensitive security a run for their money whenever they swept through on patrol.

  Hilarious, actually, to hear them crash into a chair or table.

  Tonight’s plan shot straight to hell at the sound of a girl’s yelp. With only about twenty minutes left of book returns, I intended to wrap things up, then join Bjorn and Alecto for another pathetic—enjoyab
le—evening in front of the television.

  “Well, well, little wolf, you know the penalty for breaking curfew.”

  This took priority now.

  I slowed, estimating they were about four aisles ahead, and edged forward, my steps slow, meticulous, and silent. That voice—a guard, certainly. Too deep to be a student, and not one of my new idiots. No, this had to be one of those beefy, protein-shake-slurping buffoons who strutted about like they were untouchable, swaddled in Iris’s protection and free to do whatever they wanted…

  Which of those buffoons, exactly, the voice belonged to, I’d no idea. Even if I had heard him before, that Yorkshire drawl slightly nasally, and even if we had looked each other in the eye and forced a conversation, I didn’t bother with their names. Like I would waste valuable shelf space in my mental vault on that.

  “I-I just like reading,” the girl squeaked out. “The dorms are so loud and I—”

  “There, there.” Ugh. I crinkled my nose at the overtly sexual rumble, the creaking floorboards to my right suggesting I’d finally found the aisle he had her cornered in. “I can make it go away… Sneak you back and no one will ever know.”

  “Really?”

  I rolled my eyes. The gasp was a little much. Maybe the whole crying innocence thing was an act—still, I couldn’t risk it.

  “But you’ll have to do something for me first.” The telltale hiss of a zipper going down made my blood boil. “A favor for a favor, after all.”

  Fuming, I peeked around the bookshelf and found the pair halfway down the aisle, that giant Yorkshire gorilla looming over a pale-faced girl with frizzy blonde ringlets and a uniform skirt that looked like it had extra inches added to the hem.

  “On your knees, shifter,” the warlock ordered, clapping a hand on her frail shoulder when she sobbed and shook her head. A little pressure had her sinking to the floor at his feet. New, this little gosling, a fresh face that arrived with yesterday’s delinquent herd. Her name, her creed, her story—all a mystery, but he called her a wolf shifter. Her accent suggested Australian origins.