by Ember Hollis
Christian’s exactly the kind of guy I’ve always known I should stay the hell away from, and yet something dark within me revels whenever I taunt him. Whenever he touches me even though I tell myself I don’t want him to.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I finally say through gritted teeth. “What I did with them has nothing to do with you.”
“Good,” Christian growls. He lowers himself so that our bodies are touching from head to toe. I suck in a deep breath. He’s hard. So hard, his cock feels like a rock where its pressing against my belly. “Because I’m not going to retreat and make your life easy, even if you’re fucking the others.”
“I never expected you to,” I whisper, looking up into his eyes. They’re more black than blue now, and I feel as if I’m falling into them as he stares down at me. Every breath I take makes my breasts swell against his chest. I’m sure he can feel my stiffened nipples, that he can tell, just from my heated skin, my shallow breathing and flushed cheeks, exactly how much I want him. Even if he can’t, I’m still bare from the waist down. All he has to do is touch me, and he’ll see how wet I already am.
From the look in his eyes, he’s considering it, I know.
My cheeks flush even hotter at the thought that Christian and I might finally have sex. He’s harassed me for so long, it feels almost wrong to still want him. If I want to stand by my principles, I should never give in to him. And yet… I’m not sure I have enough will power to refuse him, not now I know how wonderful sex can be.
Plus, since I’m no longer a virgin, it shouldn’t matter if I sleep with him, should it? It wouldn’t be like I’m giving in. He can’t win this game because he’s already lost. And this is Christian… even if we slept together, it would mean nothing. And perhaps… this is the only way to get rid of him, once and for all.
Christian’s eyes narrow at me, as if he’s somehow figured out what I’m thinking. I open my mouth to tell him to get off, or to hurry up and kiss me, I’m not sure which.
Before I can say anything, he lowers his lips to mine. Christian’s kiss is hard and passionate. His lips press against mine almost painfully, his teeth scraping against my teeth and his tongue invading my mouth to capture mine. His hunger for me stokes my desire, flooding it through my body like a rain soaking into a desert. I don’t know how or when, but I find myself with my arms entwined about his neck and my legs around his waist, my whole body straining for him as I kiss him back just as hard, until we finally have to part to draw breath.
We stare at each other, panting. The intensity of the need I feel is almost unbearable, and it makes my decision for me. I reach for the buttons on his shirt, intending to undo them for him.
But Christian catches my hands, squeezing both of them in one palm. The desire in his smoldering eyes turns into vicious amusement with a hint of sadistic satisfaction. “Didn’t you say you know me well, little lamb?”
He lifts himself easily off of me and saunters across my room.
“Like you said, there’s a whole half a dorm left,” he drawls, pausing at the door. His eyes are luminous and cat-like in the dim light, and his face is taut with what I can only guess is a perverse desire for vengeance. “And you’re not a virgin any more, there’s no need to deprive the other girls of my presence. Since you’re brave enough to walk into hell on a whim, I’m sure plenty of them are more in need of my comforting.”
With that, he closes the door behind him, leaving me taken aback and completely frustrated. The ache I feel is unbearable now, and I curse him quietly as I lower a hand between my legs, desperate for satisfaction.
Chapter 5: Christian
Just when I think I’ve got her, the lamb escapes my grasp. I never thought when the Hunt began, that she’d actually go through with the promises she made with her ritual dances.
Because if there’s one thing I know about girls, it’s that they love the thrill of being chased. The feeling of being wanted and pursued. Of being irresistibly desirable above all else. And that angel is the devil’s temptation if any of them can claim to be. Not that it ever mattered to me. All fall to me eventually, as they rightly should.
Except for her.
I grit my teeth as I rap on the door in front of me.
The other thing I have absolute certainty of is that Bane would never have succumbed to the Hunt. Not him, the stiff Horseman who’s ignored the advances of every girl in the school who’s ever set eyes on him. The Horseman who’s spent his life curbing all his desires, pretending they don’t exist, so that he might as well be dead like the little minions he summons.
And yet, somehow, that little lamb, that Heaven, managed not only to sleep with him, but to entice Knox into colluding with it. All three of them! Rolling around in an orgy that I wasn’t even invited too!
I grin darkly as my knock is answered and the door swings open. The girl who opens it is a freshman like the lamb is, pretty as they almost always are. She’s groggy with sleep, but once her eyes settle on me, she’s immediately stunned awake. I can see the disbelief in her eyes. I haven’t yet deigned to visit her. She isn’t anything special after all. Just a fox shifter, who lost her virginity eons ago.
As I knew she would, she invites me in, awed that I’m gracing her with my presence
Without a word, I pin her to the wall and strip her. Her breasts are luscious and round, and she groans as I lean down and bury my face in them, nipping her nipples sharply.
Normally, I’d take my time with a new girl. I’d play her like a violin, until she dances to my tune, turning to jelly in my hands. I enjoy making them feel good. I love it when they surrender to me, giving me full reign to do anything and everything I want with their bodies. It pleases me to please them, to take them beyond the realm of what they thought was possible and give them the sort of ecstasy that they can only reach with me.
But that isn’t what I want this time. Or at least, it’s not all I want.
The fox’s tail is out, red and fluffy and soft, and I run my hands through it once, luxuriating in the silky fur. Then I grab it and use it to pull her around so her back is to me.
She gasps, surprised, but doesn’t resist. And when I touch her, she pushes back against me, so wet, she’s already dripping down her thighs.
This is the way it should be, I think, as I sheath myself in her, pushing all of me in to the hilt. Her gasping cry echoes about the room, definitely loud enough to penetrate the walls. Exactly the pitch I need.
I pound into her, again and again until she screams her passion at the top of her voice.
Beyond the wall, I can sense the lamb, aroused and filled with frustration as she touches herself. I wonder how she looks when she pleasures herself. Whether her ear is pressed against the wall. Whether she wishes she were here with me instead of this girl, with my girth stretching her instead of her tiny, inadequate fingers.
Most of all, I wonder if she regrets what she did with Bane. And Knox.
Neither of them would have cared if she were a virgin, I know that. Not the way I do. Or did. Because I don’t care about the lamb now. About that naive, obstinate, foolish, proud little angel who has no idea what she’s up against, or who she truly wants.
That’s why I keep fucking the fox shifter until she’s crying tears of desire. The kind of tears that lets me know I should ease up a little before I send her dangerously close to the edge of sanity, with the sensual energy coursing through us.
It’s why I only stop when the lamb comes from the bleed through of my powers across the wall, once, twice, and three times. Because that’s the only way I’m willing to pleasure her now. Thoroughly and unconditionally on my own terms.
That is, until she begs for me.
Because she will.
Eventually.
Chapter 6: Heaven
“Man whore,” I hiss as I wrap my blanket around myself. The flesh between my legs is still throbbing with desire, but I can’t stay in my room any longer.
The racket that Christian and the fox sh
ifter next door have been making for the better part of an hour would have made a convent of nuns start making out with each other, and I definitely can’t stand it.
Even after coming several times, the sights, sounds and sensations their activities inspire make me unable to get Christian out of my system. I know that if I keep listening, I’ll lost all control over myself and end up next door, begging to be allowed to join them.
There’s no way I can give him the satisfaction of seeing me do that.
So before my will breaks, I bundle myself up and scurry to the bathroom for a cold shower.
When I come back, instead of being done, the sounds from next door tell me that Christian is on round two with the fox shifter’s roommate, and I know with absolute certainty that I’m not going to get anymore sleep if I keep listening to them.
So, without further ado, I flee my room and make my way through the castle to the hospital wing to check on Sybil and Noah.
The hospital wing is a lot larger than I remember it being. The main room has been magically lengthened, and there are many more beds in it than I remember from the last time I'd been there.
I walked past the bodies in the bed. Many of them are still in their cocoons, frozen in the exact same positions and expressions that they were in when they were injured.
After several long minutes of searching, I finally spot Sybil at the far end of the room.
She is exactly as I remembered, with her tail covered in blood and the head of a spear still embedded deep between her scales. I stare at her in dismay, guilt over what she’d endured on my behalf bringing stinging tears to my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Sybil,” I whisper, running my hand over her cocoon, just over where her cheek lies beneath it. I hadn’t even once thought that she’d be targeted because of me. I hadn’t even thought of her the whole night, until I came across her, fighting for her life amid the hellspawn. Sybil was special even for a lamia, and could use her eyes to petrify anyone she attacked. But she’d held back and refused to use the full extent of her powers against the students who’d outnumbered her, allowing herself to suffer wounds she wouldn’t have had to otherwise.
I’m sure that if it hadn’t been for her standing up for me, she wouldn’t have been injured so badly when the hellspawn attacked and been forced to retreat into a cocoon of magic to survive. It should be me in the cocoon instead of her, but it wasn’t. And now, she’d lost all chance at participating in the ritual of Sacrifice, which Pandora had promised would grant each participant a gift of magic.
Sybil had been ready to do anything to achieve that wish so she could help heal her brother’s tail. Now she’ll be lucky if she doesn’t lose her own. And it’s all happened this way because of me.
“I promise I’ll make up for it,” I tell her, determinedly. “I’ll make your wish for you, and make sure your tail gets healed too.”
I linger for a while longer, talking to her quietly even though I’m not sure she can hear me, until I spot Madam Kahili nearby. Eagerly, I hurry over to ask her about Sybil.
“Madam Kahili,” I call out softly, “May I have a word.”
She turns from the bedside of another student to face me. “Yes, Miss Ramsey?”
“I just came to visit Sybil,” I ask, gesturing to my roommate. “Her wound looks very serious, and I was just wondering if you were going to attend to it soon?”
I wouldn't normally have dared tell her how to do her job or even asked about it in such a roundabout way, except that it seems to me that Madam Kahili has only been looking at the students who have very minor injuries. For instance, the student that she is attending to now only has a deep cut on her arm, and what looks like a concussion. Which is nothing compared to what Sybil is suffering from.
Madam Kahili nods in understanding when she sees my eyes flick to the girl’s arm and then to Sybil’s tail.
“Miss Ramsey,” she says, “There are hundreds of injuries that I need to attend to. All of them require energy for me to heal, which we are in short supply of at the moment. If I were to start treating the students who have more serious injuries, I might run out of energy at a critical point where they need it the most. I can’t afford that if there’s any complications. But I still need to get as many students on their feet as possible, which means that I have to treat those who have the lightest wounds.”
“I don’t understand,” I frown. “When will you heal the more seriously injured students then?”
“Miss Ramsey, the energy that maintains the cocoons doesn’t come from me—it’s a tremendous amount, and no one person can supply it by themselves. The energy actually comes from the heart of Pandorax, which also powers the Dome. The cocoons will hold for now, and I can still afford to keep Sybil and the other students who need serious medical attention in stasis. But each cocoon that I maintain takes much needed power away from the Dome, which is why I need to free as many students as I can from them as soon as possible. That means, attending to those with the lightest injuries first. Now, I believe that the idea was for all of you to perform Bacchadelia to help Pandora generate enough energy to keep our Dome up so our school will be safe from the sort of attack we just suffered from. As you can see, it hasn’t quite turned out, so for now, all I can do is use what resources we have as wisely as I can. That, along with saving our students is where my priorities lie.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, feeling embarrassed at my questioning her decisions and abilities. “Then… is there anything I can do to help?”
“Do you have any healing abilities?”
I shake my head, feeling bad when Madam Kahili actually looks disappointed. Was healing really supposed to be one of the skills I should have as an angel blood?
“Well then, if you can help power the Dome to its full capacity, that would be magnificent,” Madam Kahili says drily. “Barring that, just stay out of trouble and don’t get hurt. I have my hands full as it is. In fact, we might even have to close the school down and start sending students home if things don’t improve.”
Madam Kahili bustles away and I stand, feeling dread well up like a heavy weight in my chest. If they closed the school, I’d have nowhere to go.
After a few more moments of staring at Sybil's face and feeling helpless and vaguely guilty about what happened to her, I move on to find Noah.
He's not too far away, lying in bed with a pale face and an expression of pain mixed with pleasure on his face. I blush when I think about what we'd been doing when he got hurt, and wish I could cover his naked torso and fasten his loose pants. Then again, it had been a festival of debauchery, and Noah isn't the only student who’s half-dressed.
I sit by his side for several long minutes, wondering whether he can feel that I'm beside him. I don't know how he’ll react when he wakes up and finds that I ended up spending Bacchadelia with two of the Horsemen who’d persecuted me. Staring at his face doesn’t really give me any hints, so after a while, I give up and leave.
I'm on my way out of the hospital wing when I see Christian coming in. I glare at him, noting the spring in his step and how his skin seems to glow.
Someone obviously had a great time.
I hide in a disused room along the corridor before he catches sight of me, not eager for another encounter after what had happened in my room. Christian passes me by and heads straight into the hospital wing, where after a short discussion with Madam Kahili, he immediately starts to heal some of the students. I watch as he places his hand on a boy with a stab wound. I catch a glimpse of sparkling blue-green light seeping into the wound, which ripples and immediately closes up.
There truly is something wrong when an angel blood is of less use in a situation like this than a Horseman, I muse, recalling how first Malek and then Madam Kahili expected me to be able to heal.
Then again, I can’t force myself to develop new powers on demand, can I?
Since it's already long past midday and my stomach has started growling non-stop, I make my way through the hallways of th
e castle to the cafeteria.
Chapter 7: Heaven
Even though it’s late in the afternoon by now, the castle is deserted. I don’t pass anyone in the hallways and all the classrooms are eerily empty. When I reach the cafeteria, I find scattered groups of students sobbing to themselves or huddled in groups comforting each other. Neither Amelie nor Meg are in sight, so I grab some food and settle in Sybil’s and my usual place behind the potted palm. It’s hard to eat in that atmosphere, but I’m too hungry not to.
I don't make a move to leave the cafeteria when I'm done. There's just nowhere to go. For lack of anything to do, I stare at the schedule for Bacchadelia that's still hung up on a nearby wall, wondering what’s going to happen next.
Today was supposed to be the day of Sanctuary. The day when all the students who had successfully fulfilled their promises as Fighters or Dancers were supposed to spend in silent contemplation in order to build up their spell power for the Sacrifice tomorrow. I suppose that since I actually did fulfill the magic promise from my ritual dances with Bain and Knox, that I’ll be among those who are eligible to use their energy for the Dome.
But no one seems to be doing anything, and I don’t even know how to begin building up my energy. If there’s still any left, after I channeled lightning and helped to close the portal.
Still, Madam Kahili needs all the help she can get. And Sybil and Noah are counting on it. They’re counting on me.