by Meg Xuemei X
I moaned. He let out a low, guttural sound, his rhythm growing blindingly fast.
For a long moment, we didn’t speak as he pounded into me relentlessly and I plunged from the tip to the hilt of him with equally bruising force.
“My woman, my lamb,” he murmured, lust changing him, making him an erotic god. “You were made for me to find and pleasure in this pure ecstasy of my dreams.”
“This is actually my dream,” I said between breathless moans.
He ignored my correction and commanded. “Come to me in my dreams every night, lamb, and let me fuck you until dawn.”
I squeezed him. My inner walls clenched every inch of his shaft.
He hissed in pleasure.
His velvet black wings came forward and wrapped around me in protectiveness and possessiveness as our rhythm became erratic with his accelerated thrusts.
Pleasure tossed me to the heavens, and something inside me completely loosened or snapped.
The glowing runes—all twelve of them, symbolizing the powers of the twelve major gods—swirled on my torso like a star chart of the galaxies.
I felt everything inside me—ice, wind, firestorms, lightning, harvest, death, birth, and darkness—racing to the surface.
It was chaos, then order, then chaos again.
I threw my head back as I pounded against him mercilessly.
Claim me. Take all I have.
I felt new. I felt like a whole new universe.
He stared at me in utter shock with his remarkable, sapphire eyes.
His sensual lips parted. “Marigold, what—”
A magical wind swept by, tearing me off him right before I climaxed in waves of wild passion.
“Marigold, wake up,” someone called urgently.
CHAPTER 10
_____________
“What the fuck?” I flashed open my eyes and pushed down my flying fist before it rammed into Yelena’s worried, kind face.
I groaned. “Damn, girl.”
She’d just dragged me away from the sexiest man and hottest action with her terribly timed wakeup, and I’d been one breath away from having the first and best orgasm of my life.
Yelena’s gray eyes stared down at me. “Class starts in twenty minutes, Marigold! You need to get up.”
I sighed. She cared. She was a good friend.
“You go, pip,” I told her. “I’ll sleep just a little longer.”
“Are you crazy?” she squirmed and flashed the class schedule in front of my one squinted eye.
8:00 AM: Cardio and weight training
9:30 AM: Olympian glory and history
10:30 AM: Combat techniques
12:00 PM: Lunch
1:30 PM: Weapons training
3:00 PM: Magic training
I was so not looking forward to any of those classes, especially after the dream I’d had. And for crying out loud, why should I give a damn about the Olympian gods’ glory? Weren’t they full of themselves?
“Our first class starts at eight,” Yelena repeated. “It’s seven-forty now. You don’t want to leave a bad impression and start off on the wrong foot in a military academy, believe me.”
What if I just missed a few classes? What was the big deal?
What could they do to me?
Kick me out of the Academy?
Peachy! That would be like a dream come true.
Thinking of dreams, I wanted more than anything to return to the one I’d been torn away from.
“Don’t worry, pip.” I lied. “You go, and I’ll catch up with you. I’ll get up in ten minutes, and I’ll run all the way to class.”
“Do you even know where the class is?”
“Like a map on the back of my hand.”
She gave me one last uncertain, worried look. “Your face is all flushed. Are you okay?”
I pulled the blanket over my cheeks.
Yelena’s footsteps retreated, and I glanced around to find that all the other girls had left before her.
Please, let me go back to that dream, I prayed to an imaginary higher force. Let my dream lover wrap his black, silky wings around me one more time, and I’ll promise to be on my best behavior for a week.
I snuggled my nose deeper into the pillow.
Dream now, I commanded and hoped for the best.
I’d try anything to go back to him, to finish what we’d started, even though we’d have to say goodbye eventually.
I didn’t find him.
I don’t know how much time had passed when an icy dampness sank into my bones. Chunks of ice floated above my face, and the air was cut off from my water-filled lungs.
This wasn’t the dream I sought.
I fought to breathe, to wake up, only to have more cold water pour into my mouth and down my throat.
Shit! Shit!
I snapped open my eyes, and to my horror, water flooded my bunk, encasing me like an ice coffin. This wasn’t merely a bad dream.
Ice cubes floated above my face.
How could this happen in reality?
Was this an aftereffect of the ritual? I’d experienced the burn of the fire. Now must I freeze to death to finish the cycle? That ritual was a bitch!
I yelped for strength, threw the drenched covers off me, and leapt out of the soaked bed.
Then I realized I was completely naked, standing on my bare feet on the wet, cold ground.
I usually slept naked. Clothes irritated my skin.
“Now you’re swift,” Paxton said lazily, savoring the moment.
It all clicked.
Only the Demigod of Sea could pull this amount of water out of nowhere and force the currents to fly through the air like that.
I swept my furious gaze around the room and spotted him leaning against the column of a bunk. He wasn’t wearing armor but dressed in a gray button-up shirt with black pants.
The Demigod of Sea might be sexy as fuck in the early morning, but I saw red, even though lust still lingered in my veins from the erotic dream. My anger spiraled higher when I registered that he enjoyed watching me shudder with cold.
He gave my nudity an intentionally slow once-over, meant to insult and irk me, yet he couldn’t hide the heat in his violet eyes.
The weight of his intense gaze sent goosebumps all over my skin.
Instantly, I changed my strategy. Throwing a soggy pillow at him wouldn’t do him any harm.
“Like the view?” I asked sweetly.
“You asked the same boring question at the ritual,” he said. His gaze returned to my face after lingering on my breasts a bit too long. “What do you have that can possibly interest a demigod, mortal?”
“If you’ll recall, your priest corrected you after the ritual. I’m not a mortal,” I said, keeping my smile plastered on my face. “Should I expect a demigod to have short-term memory?”
If I wasn’t a human, then what was I?
I hadn’t had time or mental effort to attempt to sort it out. I only hoped that I wasn’t some freak.
Spotting that fleeting hesitation and insecurity in my eyes, the demigod pounced.
“Then what are you?” he asked, arching an eyebrow casually.
I lifted my chin. It became an effort to keep the smile on my lips.
“Why should I tell you?” I asked as I staggered toward him, swaying my hips, instead of grabbing a sheet from my neighbor’s bed to cover my nudity.
He tensed, straightened, and unfolded his arms from his muscled chest, which stretched his shirt deliciously.
“What are you doing, Marigold?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” I purred, letting a saccharine, sultry smile deepen the curve of my lips. “You should have known the answer when you charged into my personal space unannounced.” I slowed down my tempo, still swaying my hips.
“Well, you can ask me to stop,” I said in an easy challenge.
If he asked me to stop advancing on him or ducked away from my moves, then he was doomed to lose the first round.
/> He narrowed his violet eyes to cover the smoldering desire in them. He hated me, yet I had an effect on him, which made him hate me even more.
“You dare to challenge me again?” he asked.
I would do more than that, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
My smile grew sweeter. I was two feet from him now. I needed to get this over quickly. The syrupy smile on my face was getting old and cold and turning to yesterday’s unpleasant leftovers.
A few inches from him, I raised my knee and rammed it toward his crotch, as fast and forcefully as I could.
Man, that would hurt! That would teach him a lesson about barging into a girl’s dormitory while she was sleeping, working hard to find her dream lover.
For a nanosecond, an urgent, dreadful thought flitted through my head. What if his demigod cock was made of steel? Then it’d hurt me instead.
Before my knee found its mark, Paxton caught me, spun me, and pinned my back against him. His one hand grabbed both my wrists and held them against my belly, making my fingers dig into my skin. His other arm wrapped around my breasts, and his powerful legs had mine between them, so I couldn’t kick him either.
He had me there, defenseless and furious.
I was faster than any human, but he was a demigod.
“That’s the best you can do, Marigold?” he asked in mockery.
While I’d failed in my assault and was humiliated, I felt his huge erection against my back through his pants.
I could still get some reaction out of him. Maybe I should use that.
Then he twisted my wrists, and they hurt.
I blinked back sudden tears, and he loosened his grip a little.
“What are you doing here, barging into a girl’s room?” I demanded angrily.
“This isn’t a girl’s room. It’s a common dormitory. And as a student in my Academy, you don’t have the luxury of privacy. I’ve received word that you missed physical training and also half of history class.”
“Who ratted me out? Snitches get stitches!”
“You won’t get revenge on anyone. The Academy has rules. For example, no one skips a class—among many others. You don’t want to be late for class either.”
“So what if I was late for a few classes?” I said. “I’m not a morning person. I like to sleep in. It’s been my lifestyle for twenty years, and I’m not going to change it overnight.”
“You will change your bad habits and attitude overnight. In fact, you’ll change them now. You’ll follow the rules like everyone else, and you’ll learn discipline. If I have to beat it into you, I will. Try me and see who wins this game in the end. I look forward to our second round.”
He shoved me away. I stumbled and nearly slammed my face into the façade of a cabinet between the bunk beds. I threw a hand out, grabbed an open drawer, and thus avoided a broken nose.
I wheeled toward him and hissed. “You fucker!”
“You have no fear, no respect, and no sense of self-preservation,” he said, his face hard. “But I’ll pound all those things into your skull in no time.”
A sudden alarm buzzed in me. Axel had threatened that if I kept giving him headaches, he’d dole my punishments out to Jasper and Circe, knowing they were my weakness. What if Paxton had learned about my vulnerability? He wouldn’t hesitate at all to exploit it.
I didn’t wait for him to go there, just grabbed the sheet from Yelena’s bed and wrapped it around my chest.
“Get yourself cleaned up and attend class,” he said, steel in his voice. “You have three minutes.”
“Where’s Axel?”
“Miss him?”
“I’d take him over you any minute of the day,” I said.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. I’d hit a nerve. It seemed there was a rivalry among the demigods.
“He isn’t available, Princesa. You’re stuck with me today.”
“How tragic,” I sneered. “Axel likes me. He’d have been more pleasant.”
“He may be smitten with you for now. Even so, his father, the god, is more important than a simple girl like you. Ares summoned him to the city.”
“Which city?”
“Paris, of course. Ares stays in Paris most of the time.”
The unexpected response distracted me from my irritation. “I don’t blame him,” I said with longing. “I always wanted to go to Paris. I heard their crème brulee is top notch.” I licked my lips. “I really want to try it someday.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” he snorted, but he was looking at my lips.
I wouldn’t put it past him to do his worst to take all the good fun out of my life.
“I heard Axel calling his father when the ritual went wrong with me,” I pried.
“He did,” Paxton said dismissively. “They have a mental link. But Ares was in the middle of a negotiation with Lucifer.”
I’d once speculated that the God of War might have a dirty deal with the devil, or else how could Earth have been split so evenly into two evenly realms, one belonging to Ares and the other to Lucifer?
Politics were all dirty anyway. There were never good guys, only the lesser evil. And I still wasn’t exactly sure which one was the lesser evil since I hadn’t met either the god or the devil.
I arched an eyebrow. “Negotiation for what?”
The Demigod of Sea sent me a harsh look. “That’s none of your business.”
Probably not.
I shrugged just to irritate him. His gaze landed on my bare shoulders as if he wanted to remove the sheet from me and run his hands over my bare skin.
A shiver passed over me as heat rose between my thighs.
For a second, I must have looked confused. How could I still feel attracted to this demigod? He was an utter ass.
“Did Ares ever get back to Axel about the reason the ritual went awry with me?”
“Am I your messenger boy?” he hissed.
I sighed. As I’d said, an utter ass. But I didn’t need this hostility so early in the day.
“What about Zak?” I asked hopefully. “He can’t be away, too, right? He should have come to get me instead of you.”
A dark light flashed through Paxton’s eyes, turning the violet color to deep purple as the sea demigod grew angrier.
“Why am I even answering your questions?” he grated. “No one dares to question a demigod. No more stalling, Marigold. You’re going to class, and you have two minutes left now. If you aren’t ready by then, I’ll drag you across the campus whether you have clothes on or not.”
He wasn’t kidding. He was ruthless.
I rolled my eyes, but I started searching for my name tag among the rows of drawers in the cabinet. My clothes should be inside one of these.
My mood was foul by the time I’d found the name Marigold, pulled open the drawer, and yanked out a uniform along with a pair of new boots.
I hoped that they got my size right, especially the shoes.
I didn’t spare the demigod a glance as I took my uniform to the public bath chamber half a block away from my dormitory.
He didn’t follow. I hoped that he’d leave while I changed.
For a second, I thought about running, but I gave up the idea before a plan formed.
I cleaned myself in record time, put on my uniform of blue and gray, and stood in front of a mirror before the sink.
I hadn’t really looked at myself in a long time.
And now, a woman who hadn’t completely lost the roundness in her cheeks stared back at me. She had elegant, long eyebrows that didn’t need to be plucked into shape. Her lips were pink and full. Under her dark, thick eyelashes, her green eyes had the color of an untamed forest and the energy of a firestorm. There was so much life I stepped a pace back in shock.
“Marigold, look at you,” I murmured to myself as I threaded my hand through my lavender hair.
I was still here. I lived. I hummed a tune, almost happy again.
“I’ve never seen a soldier that narcissistic,
” Paxton’s voice commented as he suddenly appeared in the mirror behind me.
I hadn’t noticed when he’d zoomed in.
“Are you spying on me in the women’s bath chamber?” I asked, frowning at him deeply. “Do you even have a concept of boundaries, demigod?”
“I am above all rules and boundaries,” he said arrogantly. “But you, the rest of you, are bound to all of them.”
I wanted to toss something at the asshole, but I had nothing in hand. It wouldn’t work anyway. He’d just give me a harder time. The Demigod of Sea sought to crush me.
As if he could hear my thought, his taunting gaze met my glare in the mirror, daring me to assault him.
“And what did I say about two minutes?” he asked.
“Sorry, mister,” I said. “But I can’t keep track of everything you said. You said a lot of things. Maybe you talk too much.”
“Get going. Now.”
I looked down. “I need to get my feet into my boots first.”
Then I noticed that I was wearing a pair of mismatched knee-high socks.
“Wait,” I said. “I need to change my socks.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, stalking toward me.
He grabbed my ankle and roughly inserted my foot into the ankle-high boot, not even bothering to check first if the boot fit. But he got the job done. Then he snatched my other foot.
“Hey,” I protested, laying a hand on his shoulder to keep my balance while he worked on getting my foot into the other boot. “My socks are different colors. Everyone will notice and laugh at me.”
“I don’t give a fuck if anyone laughs.”
“Of course you don’t give a fuck. I’m the one wearing them.”
“If you embarrass yourself,” he said, “you have only yourself to blame. And that will teach you a lesson about being timely and disciplined.”
He stood up, grabbed my elbow, and dragged me out of the public bath chamber, not even giving me time to make my feet more comfortable in the new boots.
I stumbled alongside him.
“Hurry up!” he scolded.
“But I haven’t had breakfast yet. Shouldn’t I at least grab a cup of coffee somewhere or get a donut or two? I hope the Academy serves donuts.”
“That reminds me,” he said. “For your tardiness, you’ll be punished by going without lunch. If you keep defying me, your dinner will be crossed out from today’s activities as well. Whoever gives you food without my permission will be punished alongside you.”