Page 38 of Academy of the Wicked, Year Three (The Paranormal Elites of Wicked Academy #3)
Spontaneous Possessiveness
~MORTIMER~
T he pain is exquisite.
Not the usual dull, unfocused ache of a vein pierced or a wrist opened, but a twin-lanced, clarion agony that flares and fades and returns again, each pulse a call to something ancient in my blood.
She is hungry— far hungrier than I anticipated —and the strength of it floods my system, making my pulse stutter, my breath hitch, every muscle tighten as though I were the one drinking, not being drained.
I should stop her…But I do not.
Instead, I tip my head back against the floating library shelf behind me, bare my neck to the hungry little predator, and allow her to feed some more; our question as to whether this should continue only ignited a heated kiss and another bite that draws blood for my needy hybrid Heiress.
The labyrinthine chaos of this place vanishes, reduced to nothing but the circle of her arms around my shoulders, the searing cut of her fangs, the way her body presses and moves with every swallow, so eager to take.
The scent of her is everywhere—sun-warmed skin and old magic and the faint, sharp sweetness of her blood mixing with mine in the air.
My blood. My magic. Shared freely.
Gwen makes a sound— somewhere between a moan and a growl —deep in her throat, reverberating against my skin.
The sound makes my whole body vibrate with need, with the urge to take her and ruin her and make her mine in every way left to me.
The old instincts, bred into dragons over centuries, rise fast and hot: possess, mark, burn, destroy.
She is not the first who has tried to taste the fire in me, but none have ever drunk so deep, or with such abandon. None have ever looked at me like I was the prey.
I will not let that stand.
With my hands on her waist, I hoist her higher, forcing her to straddle me where I sit, so her mouth is perfectly aligned with my throat and her body is pressed tight against every inch of me.
She shudders at the contact, fangs digging deeper, and her thighs clamp around my hips, trying to wring every last drop from me.
I have to remind her not to drain me dry, not like a little magic can’t replenish my needs.
She doesn’t know the extent of my magical essence.
No one does, really. Centuries of knowledge untapped for all these years to make it seem like I’m an old, knowledgeable scholar who isn’t as wise as he should be.
That knowledge will become useful, though, especially in this labyrinth.
When she releases me, she needs a moment to breathe; the tension leaves her body as if she’s been keeping all of it in her limbs all this time.
Reasonable with what we’ve gone through thus far.
I kiss her temple. Then her jaw.
I drag my lips along the sharp angle of her cheekbone and down to the hinge of her jaw, tasting the salt of her sweat, the faint tang of blood. My tongue flicks out, gathering what is mine, and I feel her shudder again, this time in anticipation rather than hunger.
“Dragons are territorial creatures,” I murmur against her skin. “We love to leave marks.”
She laughs, or tries to, but it comes out as a gasp, the sound high and thin.
I bite her—not enough to break skin, but enough to send a spike of pain that she clearly enjoys, because she grinds herself against me with even more desperation, fangs scraping, tongue lapping at the blood that wells up.
“Mine,” I say with intention, unable to tame this nagging need to ensure she knows what my intentions are. Not fake or implied for simply entertainment . Communication is important to me, and its something I don’t play with. “And now you know what that means.”
Every kiss I leave behind ignites, dragonfire-style, a quick flare of pain that gives way to tingling, nerve-deep pleasure.
Her skin heals almost instantly, damn her vampire resilience, but the red imprint of my mouth lingers, small and round and perfect—like a constellation of stars scattered across her throat and collarbone and shoulders.
She rips open my shirt with a violence that surprises even me, sending buttons scattering across the book-strewn floor.
Her hands are everywhere at once—shoulders, chest, back, nails scoring my skin with the same hunger as her teeth.
I return the favor, dragging her shirt off her shoulders, leaving her in a lacy black bra that barely contains her, the swell of her breasts straining at the edge, beads of sweat—or is it blood? —glistening at the hollow between.
I bite her again, just above her pulse.
She moans so loud I half expect the walls of this impossible place to come crashing in, but the maze holds, suspended in its own logic. She is nothing but sensation now, liquid and gasping and clawing, as if feeding from me has set her on fire rather than satisfied her hunger.
My hands slip down, fingers hooking under the waistband of her pants—tight, slick, painted-on like the rest of her uniform—and I yank. She lifts her hips, obliging, and I strip them off, leaving her in nothing but black lace and the red handprints I’ve left all over her thighs.
She is trembling, but she’s not afraid.
If anything, she looks like a woman at the edge of transformation, on the verge of changing her own nature. She looks at me— really looks, eyes wide and glowing in the low, hellish light —and bares her fangs with a wicked, delighted grin.
“You’re supposed to be the teacher,” she says, voice thick and hoarse, and how dangerous it is to fall into the realms of her foreplay, making me hard just by the thought of us really being professor and student. Scholar and apprentice. “But all you’ve done is let me take.”
I lean in, so close our noses touch, and say, “That was just the lesson plan. The extra credit, darling, is mine.”
I lift her, spin her, and lay her out on the floating desk behind us. I’m beginning to realize the environment seems to be aiding in whatever this underlying fantasy is unraveling to be.
The force of her landing makes the whole construct shudder, but it does not give, suspended as it is by whatever warped physics this dimension obeys. Her hair spills around her head, silver and wild, her skin marked and glistening in the firelight.
I admire her for a long moment— naked except for bra and underwear, body mapped by my own mouth, her hands gripping the edges of the desk so hard her knuckles pale.
“You like to be bitten,” I say, letting my voice roughen, letting the dragon bleed through the scholar. “But you’ll like this more.”
I bend and press my lips to her hip, just above the edge of lace. I bite—not gentle now, but hard, claiming, leaving another mark among a thousand. She arches off the desk, the motion so violent it nearly buckles my arms.
She’s fighting for dominance, but also begging for surrender.
My favorite kind of student.
I climb over her, trapping her wrists above her head with one hand, using the other to rake down her body, nails leaving faint pink trails in their wake.
She gasps, and when I reach her ribs, I drag my tongue up between her breasts, over the sharp ridge of her collarbone, and into the hollow of her throat.
“I want to see you,” I tell her. “All of this blissful beauty that you like to hide with that fierce exterior.”
She growls—a sound so reminiscent of a dragon, I realize, delight and defiance and arousal all wound together. She tries to twist free, but my grip is iron, forcing her to lock eyes with me. I watch her pupils blow wide, then flick golden for a split second, like a sun flare behind a storm cloud.
This, right here, is what I have waited centuries for.
To be met and matched and defied and devoured.
To make my mark and be marked in turn.
I release her wrists, trusting her not to try for my throat again, and she uses the moment not to flee but to pull my face back to hers. We kiss, rough and messy, blood and spit and power blending until I can’t tell where I end and she begins.
I strip the bra from her with a single, savage tug, and her breasts fall free, nipples already hard, dark and beautiful and perfectly proportioned for my hand. I take one in my mouth, suck hard, then scrape my fangs over it, the pain-pleasure blend making her sob my name.
“More,” she says. “Please. Mortimer, I need?—”
But I know what she needs.
I have known since the first time I saw her, raw and half-wild in the trial pits, eyes daring the world to consume her.
She needs to be taken. She needs to be shown she can’t break everything.
I’m not sure how her intimacy is with the others, but she enjoys being dominant, but I can see she likes the powerplay here.
The difference between our dominance and how I allow her to have moments of control over being like me that she knows can overwhelm her in a blink.
But more than that, she needs to feel what it’s like to be so thoroughly, absolutely claimed that she has no choice but to give in.
I will oblige.
I move down, kissing and biting my way over her stomach, her hipbones, her inner thighs.
I bite just above the line of her panties, hard enough that I draw a single perfect drop of blood.
It beads, dark and sweet, and I lap it up with the tip of my tongue, making her moan and squirm so violently I have to pin her hips with both hands.
“Settle,” I command, and she does, trembling under me, hair wild, mouth open, eyes locked on mine.
I strip the remaining lace from her, leaving her entirely bare, and admire the sight. There are marks everywhere now, some already fading to pale pink, others fresh and red and angry. She’s slick and open and trembling, thighs already wet from her own arousal.
I bite her inner thigh once, then twice, leaving twin imprints of my fangs—then move up, and taste her.