by A. K. Koonce
A half smile pulls at my lips and I peer at the vampire out of the corner of my eye.
And he’s looking right at me.
I feel his burning blue stare and it’s a demanding thing that has me slowly turning toward him, tilting my head low and taking his mouth with mine as soon as he’s close enough. There’s a gentleness of his tongue that surprises me. His hands, his hands aren’t gentle at all though as he pulls me against his hard chest and I brace myself above him as he falls back on the soft mattress.
My palm skims along his sharp jawline and his tongue flicks against mine in a hungry way. I kiss him slowly, trying to slow us down but his fingers push down every one of my abs before a heavy palm presses smoothly down my hardness from over my thin boxers.
Fuck.
“Saint,” I whisper against his lips, a shaking sound that easily gets lost in the darkness.
He groans into me but he doesn’t seem to understand. A cool touch slips into the waistband of my briefs and when his palm slides down my shaft, I grip his wrist and slide his fingers back up my naked chest, planting his palm there against my racing heart as I kiss him harder.
He pauses for only a second before biting my lip and trailing his mouth along my jaw, my ear, my throat. Sharp teeth drag there as his hand pushes right back down my body and palms my cock with stroking intent. Energy trembles through me but I blink the building desire away.
And then I pull back from him.
Because if his teeth sink in, if he draws me in with that intoxicating allure of his, I’ll never get what I want. And he knows it. This is a shield; the sex, the barbed words, they all serve to keep us at bay.
“Saint.” A foot of space separates us as I hold myself above him, both of us panting and looking at one another with too much confusion.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, a small smile touching the corner of his lips.
He thinks he knows. He thinks he’s so fucking smart.
But he doesn’t understand a real relationship. Not at all. He probably understands less than Phoenix ever did.
“I want to know you, Saint.”
“Baby, I want to know you too.” He lifts, leaning in to me and brushing his taunting lips against mine.
When I pull back from him, I’m still smirking at the ridiculous way his mind works.
“You know I actually want to know more about you than how your vampire cock gets hard, right?”
“Well, that is a fascinating tidbit about me. You didn’t even bother to share how yours gets hard. Please elaborate. I’ll wait.”
“While you stroke my cock?” I glance down at his hand still working me between us. And damn it, it feels good. But I can’t, not right now.
“Oh, is that my hand?” Genuine shock falls across his features like he has absolutely no idea how my dick crawled into his palm to begin with.
Shit. This is harder than I thought it was going to be.
His devilish smile stays tilted against his perfect lips and I’ll admit it’s hard for me to fully pull away from him and roll to my side. He just... he pulls me in. Sucks me into his chaos and I drown in the beauty of it with eyes wide open. So I have to keep these two inches of safe space between us. He turns toward me, both of us staring at each other on the small pillow. One inch. Make that one inch of safety.
“So,” he says conversationally.
It’s clear he has absolutely no idea how to make normal conversation that doesn’t include sarcasm or dick jokes.
My tongue slides across my lower lip and I can still taste his tongue against mine. My cock’s still hard and I’m still thinking about how good he felt.
But I have to stay focused.
“So, tell me something real,” I rasp out, a sound of gravelly lust.
“I don’t hide anything. What you see is what you get.”
“No, you don’t hide anything. Except your emotions. You hide it all behind sarcasm.”
“I do not,” he says with a scoffing laugh. But still, I see all of that denial in the depths of his eyes, even in the darkness.
Yes. Yes he does.
“Your best friend is someone who barely knows what emotions are so maybe he doesn’t question it, but I want to know more than what’s on your dramatised surface.”
“Did you just call me dramatic?”
My eyebrows lift incredibly high but I don’t immediately reply.
“How did you and Phoenix meet?” I ask instead.
Gentle fingers skim along the lines of my stomach and he stares at the shadowed details of my body instead of looking into my eyes. A shiver tingles across my skin but I don’t move an inch. I don’t want to scare him away from whatever it is he’s considering telling me.
“My mom really is a nun,” he finally whispers. “She’s a mortal woman who always tries to make the best of people. Even those who hurt her. Like my father. Like Prods in general. She opened a supernatural shelter. The only supernatural shelter in New York City.”
Wow. Lady’s got some balls, I guess. That confession just has more questions swirling through my mind. Like how does a nun give birth to vampire offspring? I’m almost tempted to ask him but I know it’ll be met with some bullshit reply about when ‘A vampire and a nun love each other very much…’
I can’t with that.
“When Heaven and I were little, she’d force us to volunteer there on the weekends. I hated it. Supernaturals are too proud to ask for help. Too strong. So it wasn’t a very busy place. Hardly anyone was ever there. Except for Phoenix.”
A deep sadness shadows his face even as he refuses to meet my eyes. My stomach tangles and I don’t immediately realize when I slide my fingers through his and he lets me.
“He was something like a shell when I met him. This little boy without family, without friends, without love or even basic emotion.”
Shit, he loves him.
I swallow that thought down, but it hurts to know he has so much more history with Phoenix. I wonder if this is how Izara feels too.
The five of us are a tangled fucking mess.
“I wanted to care for him immediately but my father would never take in someone outside of our Citadel.” A sneering, hateful smile replaces his normal carefree happiness but it passes slowly. “My mother did. She loved Phoenix. Even if he never realized it.”
Shit, why do I want to meet his mom now? That can’t be good. Reign that shit back in for now.
“You love him too,” I whisper and he lifts his daunting gaze at me, piercing me with that look that slices into me slowly.
“Yeah. I do.” It’s a testing sound of defense.
“Does it hurt that he never gave that emotion back to you?”
His hand slips from mine and he rolls to his back, chin tipped up and revealing the dark lines of the cross tattoo that slice like a knife against his throat.
“I think you’re confusing actions and emotions.” It’s a cutting, defensive statement that I don’t know how to respond to. “Phoenix has always shown me he loves me. When we were a bit older,, and he had his own place, he took me in when my father would go on one of his rants. He offered me a home when my own family was forced not to acknowledge me. He might not understand love, but he gives it freely.”
He’s pissed.
Shit.
I wanted something real and I guess I just got it. But I can’t regret this small bit of himself he’s given me, maybe only me.
“I didn’t know that,” I say so quietly the words barely crawl out of my mouth.
“No.” He breathes that word out and it’s like a switch in him. He turns to me and his lips are soothing along my jaw and neck, dragging sentimental kisses against my skin as he whispers there. “I keep a lot to myself, because there’s a lot of ugliness inside me, Syko. If you knew all of it, you wouldn’t be in my bed right now.”
My lashes flutter at the same time as my pounding heart sinks from the sound of his words. There’s a tenseness seizing his body, even with those gentle lips grazing
along my skin. As if he fears he’s said too much and is waiting for me to shove him away.
My palm pushes up every hard line of his chest and slowly settles against his shoulder. With quick striking strength, I push him right back down to the mattress. His brows lift and his hips shift against me as he looks at me with surprise and lust shining in his crystal blue eyes. There’s another emotion there as well, burning in the darkness. A burning need to be accepted, to be loved. It’s something I understand almost too well.
“You’re not ugly,” I say sternly.
“I’m fucking beautiful,” he bites back. “I never said I wasn’t. But my personality, my history, my fucking lineage, it’s disgusting.” His jaw clenches as his breath comes out in a long heaping exhale.
Jesus, who screwed him up like this? Who made him think like this?
I wanted the real Saint. Now I’m not so sure Saint even wants the real Saint.
My lips hover over his and my tongue slides out and flicks against his lower lip before he finally kisses me back with a punishing press of his mouth. It’s a back and forth of our bodies as he tries to deepen it but I won’t let him.
“You’re not like that, Saint.” His mouth opens but I kiss away whatever angry reply must be slamming through his head. “We’re all shitty people. All of us. But in between all that bad, there’s good. There’s good in you.” I rock my hips into his and it eases the tension from his taut body as I flick my tongue against his. “Never say that shit again. Not because you’re hiding it but because it’s not fucking true.” I kiss him harder and then my hand slides down his chest, veering across each perfect part of him before slipping quietly beneath his boxers.
The smooth head of his cock grinds along my palm and I roll my wrist as I take my time sliding down every hard inch of him.
His groan is a quiet, feral growl that shivers through me, my hips thrusting against him in time as I stroke him, drawing out the feel of his hardness weighting my palm.
“Fuck,” he whispers, slamming his lips against mine and threading his fingers tightly through my hair.
With one arm above his head, holding myself up, I work him until he forgets all that shit he just said to me, until I forget it. I’m lost in the sounds he makes, in the way his tongue claims mine, the way my body responds to his.
I want him.
I want him so fucking bad it’s hard for me to keep slowing myself down.
Especially when I know he never will. He’ll dive right into every bad idea that ever steps in front of him.
But with me, my heart’s too important.
It’s been broken too many times by my own family.
That honesty rips through me as I stroke him faster and faster and he fucks my hand harder and harder until we’re both gasping against one another. Then every part of his body stiffens beneath me. His sharp jaw tips up, bright eyes open in the moonlight like glinting silver off a calming ocean.
He really is beautiful.
But he’s not a calming ocean at all.
He’s the storm.
Thick, warmth slides slowly across the back of my hand and he kisses the stunned expression on my face away until I’m kissing him back.
And still, all I can think about is how totally and monumentally fucked my heart is right now.
Fifteen
Izara
Warmth and safety surround me like a nirvana nest that I never want to leave.
A loud banging shakes through the room and before my eyes fling open, Malek is leaping from his bunk and prowling across the small room. Phoenix hovers over me, his big body shadowing mine like he might hide me beneath him. Saint and Syko are both standing between our beds, waiting for the wolf in front of them. Another three knocks rattle the wooden frame. Malek’s knuckles are white as he grips the knob and flings open the door to glare down on the demanding pounding coming from the other side.
“Morning,” Sasha chirps with a brown bag in one hand and a wide smile on her face. She looks as perky as ever, her long blonde hair twisted in coils around her perfectly sharp face.
The vampire at her side by contrast looks gloomy in her goth chic, but completely fabulous and of course, rich. She doesn’t smile. Her soft red lips are in a straight line as her blue eyes glare from head to toe at the man looming in front of her.
“You smell like dog. It’s assaulting. Sainky Wanky, I think your pooch wants to go for a walk, he keeps staring out the door.” She pushes past Malek and Sasha sways inside right behind her.
“Don’t you have your own room?” Malek asks as he closes the door and folds his big arms across his bronze bare chest.
Heaven slices her gaze to the wolf but slowly pans her attention down to me as I try to wrap Phoenix’s soft blanket around my chest. I can see the burning questions, demanding and violent in her eyes, but she doesn’t ask a single one of them. I’m grateful for it.
“We do have our own room. And we have our own roommate. So enjoy the ones you have and stop stealing ours.” Heaven bends and takes a seat right next to me on the small bed that’s feeling smaller by the second.
Sasha bounces down and Phoenix has to fling his legs back swiftly so as not to be crushed by our sudden new bedmates.
Syko shifts in front of her but honestly there’s not much space left in the room now. His black eyes look from the fae in front of him to me and I can tell he wants to say something but there’s too many people here now.
A long breath carries on for so long I start to wonder if Sasha is trying to steal the air away from everyone else before she flicks her attention up to Syko. “You smell nice,” she says with a big smile. “Like... cotton candy and... innocence.”
Syko’s thick brows pinch together and he just stares blankly at the strange girl.
Okay. Maybe I should lead the conversations from now on…
My lips part but Heaven beats me to it, “If you don’t get dressed you’ll be late for Sky Soaring and you’ve already missed so much. I hear the professor’s a real jackass.”
“He’s a centaur not a jackass, Love,” Sasha corrects. Then she looks back to me. “Your schedule was tacked onto our closet, just waiting for you. Sky Soaring, Illusions 101, Supernatural Law and Order, Travels through History, Hybrid Biology…” She ticks off the list of my classes from her fingers.
Oh no!
I leap from the bed and cool air sweeps over my bare skin. Too many eyes are pressing against me before I tear the sheet off of Phoenix and throw it around myself like a crazed old witch looking to poison a princess.
“Sorry,” I whisper to Sasha and Heaven.
“Nothing to apologize for,” Sasha hums, her eyes leisurely taking my body in like she’s pressing the image of me into her memory.
“You have a great body, don’t apologize darling,” Heaven adds, flicking her dark hair off her shoulder. Coming from her, it doesn’t really sound like a compliment at all. More like cold, hard fact.
I glance around and Malek is actually smirking. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him smirk. “Finally. Something we agree on,” he whispers.
“I’m going to go find my room.” I look from Saint to Syko and then Malek and Phoenix. I’m reminded of that first day I saw them all in our old room of Dormitory J. They all stared at me just like they are now.
But so, so much has changed.
Malek’s fingers skim down my wrist and he nods but there are just too many people hovering for any of us to say anything.
And honestly, after everything that’s happened, I don’t want to talk.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Syko nods to me and I’m relieved my first class will be with him. He doesn’t press. He’s great. They all are. I just don’t know how to tell them I’m the direct daughter of the Messenger of Chaos and…
I like it.
“If you are not courteous in the skies, you will fail. Kindness is not optional in my class,” Professor Ravenstorm says with a booming voice.
His wide shoulders are covered in
a white button down that hangs loosely at his hips where his body meets dark inky hair and strong horse like legs. The feathers of his wings glisten in the sunlight and he walks a line in front of us like he’s every bit a proud, beautiful creature.
“Mr. Sovern...” He faces the small class of winged Prod’s but his bright blue eyes are focused intently on the nephilim at my side, “I’d assume you’re as kind as we’re going to get. I’d also like to think you’re a confident flier.”
Syko arches a pale eyebrow at the professor but says nothing.
I wonder if he ever gets sick of people calling him nice. I mean, he is. Syko is a nice guy. He’s also a smart mouth asshole if you say the wrong thing to him. He’s also a fiercely protective brother and boyfriend if you treat the people he cares about the wrong way. And he’s also... a filthy sexual lover.
So maybe nice just barely scratches the surface as far as Syko Sovern is concerned.
“Hit the clouds and try to keep a clear mind and a generous attitude as you fly.” Professor Ravenstorm’s big arms fold across his chest and his long dark hair blows in the wind as he waits for Syko to take off.
“That’s it? Just... fly?” Syko’s wings slices out through his white button-down shirt with so much slowness I can see every drop of blood that stains through the cloth.
Academy of Six must have magically phenomenal dry cleaners somewhere on this endless campus.
“I’ll time you, son. You got thirty seconds to complete the short flight from here to our classroom doors.”
My gaze glances to the arched wooden door that’s just a few yards away. I could walk there in thirty seconds. Syko will be lounging on the front steps with the sun against his perfect face in three seconds flat.
I smirk and notice that Syko too has a small tilt to his full lips.
This class is going to be a breeze. Even for me.
“Go,” Ravenstorm bellows.
Syko’s jaw clenches hard just before his knees bend with determined force and like a shooting star he soars so fast he’s a blur of pure white and bloody red. Wind twirls my hair around my face but I never look away from his image that’s becoming smaller and smaller.