by Alex Lidell
It takes me a few moments to realize that his cock is still in me. Hard. Throbbing. And starting to move all over again, slowly now, languidly. “You didn’t…what…” I can’t make my tongue move.
Tye brings his velvety lips to my ear, his voice warm against my neck. “I wanted to see your face.”
Pulling away, the male steps in front of me, and I almost come again just at the sight of him. Every ridge of muscle in his body is tight, his incredibly broad shoulders narrowing to taut hip flexors and a cock so hard, I can see it pulsing. His damp skin is burnished gold in the dimness of the cell, his red hair highlighting emerald eyes that rake over me with so much raw hunger that I almost want to shrink back.
Those eyes grip mine as he slides his hands under my bottom and lifts me, urging my legs around his waist. The pressure eases from my shoulders and I sigh—which turns into a low groan when, in the same motion, Tye guides his cock deep into my channel. He gives me no quarter, pulling back and burying his cock even deeper. With his size and strength, Tye moves me easily along his shaft, our faces close enough to share breath the entire time. My ankles cross in the small of his muscled back while my arms grip the binds, my breasts pushed up and bouncing with each thrust. With each powerful stroke, all control fades from Tye’s gaze, replaced by a fierce need that pierces straight to my soul.
As shackled magic inside me wakens, I mark the shudder running along Tye’s powerful body and fear that our plan of light distraction from this cell’s horrors has just failed spectacularly. He pounds into me now, our heavy breaths and the slap slap of our pelvises echoing off the walls, every tendon standing out in his neck. His biceps bulge as he holds me in place. His pulse hammers so hard that I hear the lub-dub of his thumping heart. Feel the throbbing of his cock. Everything inside me coils tighter and tighter, the gaping hole of the abyss spreading once more beneath me.
Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.
“Lera!” Tye shouts my name as his hips press into me the final time, the warmth of his release sending me over the cliff.
Searing waves of pleasure explode from my apex, shooting outward along every nerve and fiber inside me. Again. Again. Shock after shock, until I feel the binds at my wrists loosen and fall away, until I’m draped like a rag doll in Tye’s arms. Shaking. Satisfied. And in oh, so much trouble.
7
Lera
This… This is exactly what was not supposed to happen. I rub my hands over my eyes as Tye helps me back into my dress and pulls on his pants, his own gaze sliding everywhere but my face.
“Lera…” Tye says finally, forcing his eyes to meet mine. “This, you… It was genuine. Everything I felt. We felt. But the reality of my life is that—”
“You want to twist around a wooden bar that I couldn’t care less about,” I say flatly. Because there is no point in coating it with honey. I’ve things to do, magic to fight. None of it supports simpering around a male who is following a fiction. Despite the intensity of our coupling, the way it wakes my magic, there can be no us unless Tye wants to join my team.
And he doesn’t. Tye has other priorities. The best thing to do—the one thing I just failed at miserably—is to keep the intensity between us from interfering with our lives.
Tye hops up to swing himself on the dangling chains again, as if looking for familiar territory. The sculpted muscles of his chest, arms, and shoulders tighten with perfect control as he holds himself in the impossible cross position again. Then, he brings his legs up at a right angle to his body, his toes together and pointing. Belatedly, I realize he has no shoes on. He trained without them and didn’t stop to dress before the fight.
I sigh. Even with three lung-shattering releases behind me, watching Tye move threatens to arouse me again, and I quickly find somewhere else to be looking.
Instead of sanctuary, my gaze trips over the rack of whips, my stomach clenching reflexively. At least Tye didn’t try to include those in his distraction.
“I didn’t think you’d enjoy those no matter what I did,” Tye said, following my gaze without permission. Damn him.
My jaw tightens. “Would you?”
Tye turns himself upside down, his red hair flying in the low light, but continues talking as if both his position and the topic of discourse were normal. “Not for pain, no.” He frowns at himself, then shakes his head like a dog trying to dislodge water. “It’s the second time today I’ve felt certain about something I don’t recall ever trying,” he mutters. “Odd as it sounds, you make me feel as though something grand prowls just at the edge of my world.”
My breath catches, and I feel my gaze sharpening on Tye. In Lunos, even when I was mortal, coupling with my males tightened my control over magic. I wonder if as much might be happening in reverse, with the males’ essence strengthening when we join. Heart quickening, I lean forward, bracing my forearm on my knees. “Tell me more. How—”
I cut off as the door of our isolated corridor croaks open, inopportune footsteps tapping the stone at a swift, confident pace. Tye’s head snaps toward the sound, and he settles himself back to the floor with casual grace. By the time the visitor makes his appearance a few heartbeats later, Tye is lounging beside me, his body surreptitiously angled to cut off the path between me and the door.
For the second time today, a pair of cold gray-blue eyes sweeps over me with dismissal, a strange discomfort following in their wake, like ants crawling just under my skin. Han’s attention is riveted on Tye. Though of a similar height and build, the instructor’s short, combed-back hair and harsh gaze is at utter contrast to Tye’s mischievous red mane and feline grace.
“Have you met your new Prowess trainer yet?” I ask Tye under my breath.
“He has not,” Han answers, surveying the male with a disgust typically reserved for lame roaches. “If he had, I guarantee you he would not be here now.” Han unlocks the door, swinging it open. “Come with me, Tyelor. Now.”
Tye’s hand touches the small of my back. “You mean both of us, sir.”
Instead of replying, Han strides into the cell and grabs my wrist in a viselike grip. With a rough yank, he pulls me over to the stone wall, clamping my wrist in a bolted manacle. “Have I answered your question clearly enough?” Han demands, turning back to the male as if I no longer exist in his world. Han points to the door. “Whore on your own time, boy. Until the Prowess Trials, you are on mine. Move.”
Tye doesn’t move, his muscles bunching. I can practically see the thoughts sprinting across his face. Don’t do it, Tye.
Han sighs. “If I need to make the wench less attractive to you, I will,” he says, lifting the back of his hand. The intended trajectory of the blow is clear enough to make me press back into the stone. Han snorts. “Personally, Tyelor, I believe my expertise would be best used on the training pitch, directing your actions. But we can approach this any way you want.”
“Leave her alone.” Tye’s words come out in a snarl that he checks with visible effort. “I am at your full command, sir. There is no need for further clarification.”
“Good.” Turning his back to me, Han waits for Tye to exit the chamber before following him out, the grated door left swinging open in their wake.
I wait until the pair’s footsteps fade before letting out the breath I didn’t know I held. Then I use my free hand to open the manacle.
It stays closed. I frown at the latch, realizing the damn thing was constructed to click locked without a key. Wonderful. With a frustrated growl—and too little thought—I yank at the metal with all my strength.
Click.
The sound comes from inside the mechanism, like a metal tooth snagging a new hold. The band around my wrist tightens, digging into my skin. The manacle may need a key to open, but apparently, it needs nothing to tighten down on itself.
Uncertainty slithers down my spine. “Guards,” I shout, despite knowing the chamber is designed to contain sound.
No answer. No steps. Only the slight creaking of the open door, still swaying
on its hinges.
Right. Forcing my breath to slow, I lean back against the cold wall. River knows I’m here. However mad he is, however little he may want to lay eyes on me right now, he won’t leave me inside forever. In truth, it’s only been a couple of hours since the riot and someone has already come to get Tye. If River intends to come for me himself, it might be a couple of hours more until he has time for it.
My chest tightens at the thought, but this time, I’m smart enough not to pull on the metal again. I’ll deal with River when he comes, and when that happens, he won’t find me whimpering and cowering.
Minutes tick by with agonizing slowness.
An hour.
More.
I memorize the entire stone wall in front of me, every crumbling crack and patch of moss. I close my eyes and tune my hearing, waiting for a single sound of life beyond these walls—another prisoner, a bird. Hell, I’d even take a mouse.
Nothing.
My stomach lets out a disgruntled rumble, my muscles starting to cramp. Ripping the hem of my dress, I stuff the soft fabric into the little space left between my skin and the manacle’s cold metal. The satin cushion helps protect my skin, but nothing can be done for the height of the restraint, which keeps me from sitting unless I want to badly strain my shoulder. A shoulder that’s already strained from long minutes of being bound overhead—though, then, I didn’t feel it through my haze of arousal.
Dong. Dong. Dong. More hours tick by, the sound of the Academy’s bell barely seeping through the dense stone.
Dong. Dong. Dong. My shoulder screams. Despite the padding, the metal eats into my flesh, especially where it presses the bone. The slits near the top of the cell darken with the setting sun, the temperature plummeting—and my last reserve of calm with it.
“Hello?” I can’t help calling, hating the tremble in my voice—the weakness I can feel creeping in with the dark. “Hello? How long am I to stay here?”
The words echo off the stone but there is no answer. Nothing. Not even a shout to keep down my voice. It isn’t fair. It was a fight, River. It was just a damn stupid fight.
For Coal’s sake, I hope he is far, far away from here by now. That he isn’t having to watch the last rays of sun arc across the wall, the dungeon’s damp cold crawling under his skin.
Maybe River has simply forgotten about me, relegating the little lying cadet to the back of his mind. That thought sends dread spiraling through me in new waves, the ceiling pressing lower, the walls closing in. Crushing me. The dark chamber suddenly feeling less like a cell than a crypt.
I wait another long hour, counting off the seconds with barely moving lips, then bellow for the guards again, this time with all my might. My lungs fill and empty until I’m too hoarse to keep going. The last one ends in a harsh sob. My chained wrist has gone numb. My head pounds now with hunger and thirst. I hear a steady drip in some corner of the cell, and even that taunts me.
No one comes. No one is going to. Despite the growing night, neither food nor water have appeared, only a darkness so complete that I see nothing but the vague outlines of chains and shackles. Finally, I close my eyes, the need to sleep so profound that it transcends the pain.
That’s when the images start.
A clank of metal tools; a crack of a whip slicing through the stench of pain, my grunt echoing off stone walls; a melodic voice of a woman who holds my soul before abandoning me without a word; a swirling darkness waiting to choke me each time I dare try to sleep.
I shove myself free of the nightmare, panting against my arm. Coal. Coal must still be locked up as well. Somewhere close. Stars. It’s an effort of will to force my lungs to accept a full breath of stale air. I knew the male’s nightmares were spiraling—I felt it during those few intense moments when we touched in the past month. But I didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten.
After being shut for a day in a dungeon, Coal’s horrors are spilling with enough force to breach the gap between us. I jerk against the chains, not caring how the manacle tightens and cuts into my skin. My vision swims once more, though this time, it’s different.
My face presses into a stable wall, Zake’s rank breath tickling my neck. There is no sound but the horses’ soft nickering, the hammering of my racing heart, and the tap-tap-tap of a wide leather strap against Zake’s thigh. There is no escaping the coming whipping. Not now. Not ever.
My back will soon be a map of angry bleeding welts, fresh wounds over old bruises. The leather strap traces my bare back almost gently as Zake seeks his first target. No matter how often it’s happened, how prepared I am, the agony is always fresh. The paralyzing helplessness of it. I bite my knuckle to suppress a moan. The terror of how much worse it will be if I fight him.
“Everything you are, you have, you’ll ever become is because of my good graces,” Zake snarls into my ear. And then it starts.
8
Coal
Coal little blamed the guards who threw him into the cell for ensuring he fell face-first against the rough stone floor. He had, after all, cracked the bones of five of their comrades. Or maybe six. He’d stopped counting sometime after the grunts and screaming began to bleed together into nothing but white noise.
“Maybe I’ll just forget to take these off.” The larger of the guards yanked the ropes binding Coal’s hands behind his back, making his shoulders stretch painfully.
Getting his knees under him, Coal rose to his feet. He could already see how a spin kick to the man’s temple could lay the guard out. Maybe for an hour. Maybe forever. The man’s partner was so young and nervous that he’d more likely piss himself than interfere.
Coal’s gaze found the large guard’s dark eyes. “Maybe.” It was all the self-control he could manage, with all his being still screaming for violence. By the time Coal had finished destroying Kreger’s lewd art collection and room and—very likely—wrist, enough of the guards’ friends had arrived at the barracks to risk rushing Coal.
They’d had no idea how much he welcomed the assault. That they’d been doing Coal a favor.
“You’re insane.” The man shook his head, slicing through Coal’s binds before backing out of the cell. “Like a rabid dog.”
The sound of the closing lock ricocheted through Coal’s body. Yes, the guard was right. Coal was rabid. But the image of Lera’s naked body turned into fodder for a bastard’s cock still made murder spill into his blood. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that some deep-down part of him screamed not yours and planned to make sure the bastards knew it.
Coal rubbed his wrists, pacing the small cell. Had he had his wits about him this morning, he’d still have ensured Kreger never drew another cadet—much less Leralynn—for as long as the man lived. However on the edge of darkness as Coal had already been, the whole mess had happened without his control. Which would make for an unpleasant conversation with River later.
Leaning back against the cold stone wall, Coal felt the adrenaline begin to drain out of him by necessity. The body could only hold on to battle’s sharpness for so long. He knew what would come if he let go of his mind in this dark, foul place. Knew what it would trigger—and was too exhausted to fight it.
Time passed. He had no idea how much. He’d spent enough time in cells to know not to count the seconds.
His lungs tightened as the sun sank below the Academy’s walls, as the air cooled. His breath, harsh now, came out in puffs of condensation.
His hands were shackled, his shoulders screaming from the strain. The taste of blood and fear choked him, blood from his last beating crusting along his skin. The islanders who’d held him for the past year never intended to let him leave. Never let him take his life either, no matter how he tried.
A noise scraped against Coal’s hearing. He shifted, the sores beneath his shackles sending lightning bolts of agony down his skin.
“You aren’t alone.” A feminine voice sounded behind him, soft steps circling until a young woman with intelligen
t brown eyes came to stand before him. She was small, barely reaching Coal’s shoulder, yet she filled his world with a lilac scent that drowned out all else. One of the islanders he’d not seen before.
With a gasp, Coal roused himself, scrambling against the damp floor for a link to reality. The woman, whose name Coal never learned, had kept the shards of his sanity together—only to destroy them all in a single blow when she disappeared without a word. Coal knew the wound was his own fault for having entrusted himself to her, but that made it hurt no less.
It was the woman’s scent that Coal remembered most. A lilac so clean and crisp, it could drown out the stench of fear. Coal never expected to breathe in such a lilac scent again—until a cadet named Leralynn of Osprey walked into his world, grabbed a blade, and ripped every abscessed memory wide open.
A cadet. And yet when Coal took her in the cave that month ago, his soul had woken. For the first time since escaping the islanders, he had felt alive, the scents of the forest’s pine and rain-wetted earth so potent, he tasted them with each breath.
Coal strode to the bars, his hands wrapped around the iron. Staying away from so much as touching her for a month had stressed Coal’s self-control to the limit. He was too honest with himself to pretend that the growing nightmares had nothing to do with the strain. He had slipped once. Just once, when he chose Lera for a choke-hold demonstration because he could not bear the thought of another’s arm at the girl’s throat.
Spinning, Coal struck his fist against the metal, the pain singing through his bones and flesh. Physical pain was easier to endure than the one gripping his chest. Even now, days later, he remembered every second of that exercise. How anxious Leralynn had been, how little she trusted him. Standing so close to Lera, her small, tight body pressed against him, Coal had breathed in the lilac with the hunger of a starved man.