Page 40 of Academy of the Wicked, Year Three (The Paranormal Elites of Wicked Academy #3)

For a moment I just stand there, cock still twitching, staring at her like I’ve never seen a woman before.

“Stars above,” I manage, finally, “you’re…dangerous.”

She laughs again, a sound so bright and sharp I want to drink it straight from her throat.

Then she stands, closing the gap between us, and kisses me—hard, messy, her mouth hot and tasting of dragon and defiance and victory. I kiss her back, hungry and grateful and desperate for more.

If this is what she can do with her mouth, what will she be like when I take her for real?

The thought alone is enough to stir me back to full hardness, and she feels it, pressing her body against mine, hand sliding down my chest to wrap around my cock once more.

“Are you ready for the finale?” she whispers, eyes glowing, fangs glinting just behind her lips.

I nod, because there’s nothing else to do.

I want her. I need her bad…especially now that I know what she can do.

We won’t have another chance for this,

So I am determined to be the one who comes out on top.

I close the distance, cupping her jaw in both hands, and kiss her.

Not the savage, blood-soaked kiss from before, but something slow and—gods help me—almost tender.

My tongue strokes hers, careful and soothing, letting the chill of my magic cool the burn I know she’s feeling in her throat after taking me so deep.

She softens into me, just for a heartbeat. It’s a different kind of vulnerability, and I savor it, savor her, even as I feel the heat of her body trying to undo my careful restraint.

We break apart, breathless, foreheads pressed together, and I ask the question that matters.

“Are you sure you want this?”

There are a million reasons for her to say no. The trauma of the last day. The blood. The magic. The looming shadow of what waits for us when we leave this little pocket of sanctuary.

But she just laughs, low and rough and real, and climbs into my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck.

“Mortimer Kaine,” she says, rolling the words in her mouth like she’s savoring them, “I want this so bad it hurts. I know its maybe odd if you think it logically, but we’re shifters aren’t we? Do we spend all this time thinking logically?”

No. We don’t.

It makes me smirk.

She reaches down, finds my cock, and strokes it with deliberate slowness, like she wants to see how long it’ll take for me to crack. I can feel her slickness as she lines me up, hovering over the head, teasing both of us with the promise of what’s about to happen.

But she hesitates, just for a second, and looks me dead in the eye.

“Why did you wait so long?” she asks, voice softer now, edged with curiosity.

I’m caught off guard. It’s not a question I expected, not in this moment.

Aside from us not really getting a break with ascending through these trials, maybe it was because I felt like we’d have eons to finally dive into this.

Until she just dropped on those stairs and her heart temporarily stilled.

That made me realize how precious every single moment is, and here I am, wasting it because I’m scared…of rejection because of…

Well…

I sigh, because lying to her seems impossible.

“Most can’t keep up,” I admit. “Dragon stamina is…well. Not just a myth. And I got tired of breaking people.” I mean it, every word. It’s why I spent decades hiding in the persona of the fusty old professor, why I taught and observed instead of participating.

Why I waited for something—someone—who could match me, bite for bite, burn for burn.

She considers that, then grins, and—gods—her confidence is a thing of beauty.

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right partners yet,” she says. “If we weren’t trapped in a survival maze, I’d test that theory every single day. With every single mate I could claim.”

The image she conjures—herself, and Cassius, and Atticus, and Nikolai, all of them together, all of them with me—is enough to make my vision white out for a moment.

Sharing her, mating, filling her up again and again and knowing we can never have enough…

I groan, deep and primal, and grip her hips, guiding her down.

She doesn’t rush.

She takes me in, inch by slow inch, gasping at the stretch, the fullness. I’m big—there’s no point in false modesty—but she’s greedy, and stubborn, and determined to take all of me.

When she finally bottoms out, seated flush in my lap, we both go still, just breathing together, shuddering with the force of it.

“You did it,” I whisper, awed.

She smirks.

“Of course I did. I always pass my finals.”

We laugh, the sound shared, private, a little wild at the edges.

For one perfect, impossible moment, there is no library, no Academy, no world outside the press of her body and mine.

Just us.

She’s tight. It’s not just the physical, though that alone is enough to make my eyes roll back, but the way she clamps down on me, muscles fluttering as if her body is determined to test the limits of both of us. For a second, neither of us moves.

We just sit there—me seated on the edge of the desk, Gwen straddling my lap, her forehead pressed to mine, sweat and breath and magic bleeding from every point of contact.

I run my hands up her back, fingers tracing the line of her spine, digging into her shoulders as if I could anchor myself to the world by holding her in place. She shudders, nails raking down my chest, and grinds her hips experimentally, just a small circle, but it makes both of us gasp.

“Fuck,” she mutters, voice raw.

I want to say something clever, something worthy of my centuries of education, but all I can manage is, “Stars, you’re perfect.”

She barks a laugh, delighted, and then starts to move in earnest.

Slow at first—up an inch, down a half, just enough for the head of my cock to rub inside her, for her walls to clutch and pulse and make me see visions behind my eyes. Then faster, as she finds her rhythm, as her confidence burns away the last of her doubt.

She’s a quick study, my little witch. In seconds, she’s riding me with intent, using her thighs and abs and every bit of leverage she can find. The desk rocks beneath us, the floating furniture creaking with the force of it, but neither of us cares if the entire room shatters to splinters.

I grab her hips, holding her steady, guiding her with the inexorable power of my own strength. She fights me—trying to set her own pace, but I match her, thrust for thrust, meeting her halfway and then taking over when her muscles start to fail.

She likes it rough.

She likes it when I lose control.

I can see it in the way her eyes glaze, in the way she starts to babble nonsense, in the way she clings to me, desperate to be ruined.

I give her what she wants.

I bounce her up and down on my cock, using the full length, making sure she feels every inch, every vein, every pulse of magic. The sounds she makes are obscene—moans and gasps and the occasional sob, my name punctuating every syllable.

“Mortimer—please—harder?—”

She doesn’t have to beg.

I’m on the brink already, fighting to keep from coming before she does, but the way she’s squeezing me, the way she’s looking at me, it’s almost impossible to hold out.

“Almost there,” I grit, voice more animal than human.

She wraps her arms around my neck, pulls herself up, and kisses me, hard, biting my lip until it bleeds.

The taste of blood pushes her over the edge—her eyes snap open, pupils blown wide, and she comes, body locking down on me, a wild, electric clench that tears the orgasm out of me whether I want to surrender or not.

I roar.

There’s no other word for it.

The dragon in me breaks free, the sound echoing through the library, bouncing off the floating shelves, making the entire maze tremble with its force.

I come, and come, and come, filling her so completely I half expect to see it spill out around my cock. The sensation is endless, bottomless, like I’ve been storing it up for a hundred years just for this moment.

She collapses against me, boneless, shuddering with aftershocks, and I hold her, arms wrapped tight, afraid that if I let go I’ll float off into the void.

For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of our breathing, the slow, heavy drag of air through lungs that are fighting to remember how to function.

Eventually, she lifts her head, eyes glazed but triumphant.

“Best. Fucking. Finale. Ever,” she manages.

I laugh, not because it’s funny, but because it’s true. In all my long years, I’ve never felt anything like this—not just the sex, but the sense of…completion. Of finding the right adversary.

The right partner.

“Careful,” I warn, voice soft now, the old professor leaking back in. “You may have just set the curve for the entire Academy.”

She laughs, then winces, shifting on my lap.

We’re still joined, still impossibly full, but neither of us is eager to separate just yet.

“Is this going to…change things?” she asks, suddenly shy.

I brush her hair back from her face, then lean in to kiss her cheek, her jaw, the hollow of her throat.

“Yes,” I admit. “But only for the better.”

We sit there, entwined, for a long time.

Eventually, Gwen shifts off my lap, groaning as she does, and collapses on her back on the desk. I join her, lying side by side, hands touching, eyes on the impossible ceiling.

“We should probably go find the others,” she says, but makes no move to get up.

I nod.

“Eventually.”

We stay that way, naked and sated and unashamed, for what feels like hours.

Maybe it is hours.

In this place, time bends and folds. I wish it were a moment that lasts forever.

Duty calls, though, and reality is about to set in.

The next trial awaits, but we won’t be at a disadvantage now that I can use my powers to our own advantage, in a way that will play in our favor in a floating world of broken chaos that wishes for our failure.

I know that despite the challenges, we’ll face them together.

Equal. Matched. Marked.

And I can’t wait to see what she teaches me next.