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I took a slow, deep breath, resisting the urge to panic. Fear was a trigger for predators. I already knew that it was important not to run or panic in front of the monsters that roamed the surface of the school; the same had to hold true for the ones beneath its surface.

Even if I was draped on top of a living creature that felt much larger than me, it hadn’t hurt me yet. Either it didn’t feel like it or it was asleep.

If it was asleep, the worst thing I could do was thrash about and wake it up.

I lifted my hand and put it next to my face. I could feel the steady thrum of a heartbeat through my palm, and I slid it up, feeling the ridges of muscle that felt… familiar. I hadn’t come to this school as a blushing innocent. When I was twelve I’d gotten suspended for giving blowjobs out under the bleachers. The high school boy whom I was caught giving them to wasn’t punished. When I told them what else I’d done with him, my parents had sent me to a school for troubled youth which ended up being a place for me to meet more boys who told me that was the best way to show my love for them. When I turned eighteen and finally got to go home, I’d been told to pack my things and get out.

I had no skills, no idea of where to go, no good idea of how to support myself.

The only thing I had was the pamphlet for this school and a willingness to try anything. I’d performed the ceremony and summoned my familiar. I made the Bond and got into this school.

Only to find out it was just as bad as the mundane I’d left behind.

I wasn’t an innocent, so when my sliding hand found the curve of strong pectorals, I knew exactly what I was touching.

I was lying on top of a man, not a monster.

There was a deep groan in the darkness, the rumbling echo of masculinity I could hear deep in his chest from where my ear was pressed against bare flesh.

I pushed up, both my hands on his abdomen. As I did, my lower body slid up as well, my clit dragging along the soft, rough flesh that lay between my legs. Flesh that was textured with leathery scales. I gasped as heat bloomed between my legs, a sudden wetness of desire that turned my slide into a glide.

More facts trickled from my subconscious mind to my conscious mind.

The upper body of a man, but what lay between my legs wasn’t the hips and legs of a man. I was sitting on top of something thick and strong, like a huge muscle that pulsed with a strength made to crush and devour.

Excitement and terror slammed into me, conflicting emotions that pummeled each other to see which would rise to the top, all the while my heart pounded in my ears and I wondered if maybe… just maybe… I was touching the monster from my book.

I should climb off of him and sneak away.

Instead, I shifted my hips again, my eyes fluttering as they rolled upwards and I let out a soft gasp to accent the pleasure I shouldn’t be taking.

Large hands settled around my waist, stopping my movement, holding me where I was, straddling the body of a monster.

“Human,” a deep voice growled from the darkness.

“Fuck me,” I cursed under my breath.

ChapterFour

TYPHON

Iawoke from my mating hibernation early.

The soft thud of something falling on me was the first sensation that dragged me from the depths of my slumber. My hibernation wasn’t done, and I fought the intrusion even as the soft scent trickled over me, tickling me back into the shallow levels of awareness. The scent was intoxicating, clawing at the edges of my mating rut.

Female.

Desire woke me, its harsh edges bringing me closer to a waking state. I’d sealed myself in my den to avoid this, to avoid the females of my kind. I’d planned to hibernate through this rut, avoiding the torture that the males of my kind were subjected to by our raging needs. I wasn’t ready to pursue a mate of my kind and commit myself to the type of life that would follow afterwards.

So I sealed myself away so I would have more time.

Someone had broken in.

I groaned as a soft hand slid up over my abdomen and pecs, feeling out the strength of my upper body. The intoxicating smell of her arousal filled the air, coiling around my mind, dragging me from the last vestiges of my slumber as her body shifted on top of me, rubbing against my swelling sack as the female attempted to tease my length free in my slumber.

I reached up to still her movements, my fingers wrapping around a waist that squished slightly under my fingers, soft like a pillow. There was something strange about it, and as I felt the warmth of her thighs wrapping around me, gripping me with a sensation I’d never felt before. This wasn’t the wrap of a female naga coming to violate me in my sleep.

This was someone far more delicate, more vulnerable.