Page 13

13

CAM

Aside from one text, I’d not talked to Penn since he’d left my dorm. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Really wrong. The fact that he didn’t show up for Newspaper only made the feeling worse. I thought about calling him or showing up at his dorm, but in the end, I chose to trust him.

He said we’d talk about whatever was bothering him the next day.

I tossed and turned all night. I couldn’t focus in my classes. I had another group study session during lunch. I considered skipping it to see if he showed up to lunch, but I didn’t think I could handle him being a no-show two days in a row. I thought I’d see him in Newspaper, but Ever sent out an email canceling it. He didn’t give a reason, so I just had to assume it was the universe conspiring against me. Why else would the one time I’d be guaranteed to see Penn be canceled?

I just had to be patient. Unfortunately, patience was not my strong suit. It never had been.

After class, I went to my dorm and waited for him to come over. I paced my bedroom. I went out into the living room and attempted small talk with my suite mates, but it turned into more pacing and a little bit of nervous ranting. One of my suite mates asked if everything was okay because I was looking a little pointy. Clearly, I was losing control over my emotions, because I was sprouting horns.

That would be great to help whatever was bugging Penn.

I excused myself and went back to my room. I put on music and tried to force myself to calm down. It worked. Kind of. My horns retracted, and when I looked in the mirror on my closet door, my eyes weren’t glowing. My nails looked completely human. I did think my skin had a faint blue tint, but that could have been paranoia over the fact that I’d already stressed myself out enough to grow horns.

I sighed and tried something else to relax. Homework. Not my best idea, but at least I wasn’t catastrophizing about Penn. It took me twice as long as normal to read one of my assigned chapters, but I felt calmer when I finished.

I pulled out my phone to check my texts and the time. Penn should have been out of class by now. I thought about changing, but I didn’t get time. By the time I stood up, determined to at least look good when Penn and I had our much needed conversation, he was knocking on the door. I let him in and waited for his move. He sat on my bed and patted the comforter beside him.

Maybe the world wasn’t ending.

I sat down beside him, facing him.

“One of my roommates got under my skin,” he said, before I even had a chance to ask. “Actually all of my roommates got in my head.”

His roommates were human, right? I was pretty sure he’d said that. I needed clarification. “What do you mean?”

“I told them what we talked about. The last time you came over,” he explained. He began to fidget with the comforter, balling the fabric in his hand and releasing it. “When you said you liked me.”

I smiled fondly at the memory. I remembered the soft way he’d kissed me that night in his room after I confessed my feelings. Right before he pulled away. Right before his roommates got in his head about whatever it was that had caused this rift. I drew in a deep breath. “What did they say?”

“They…” He stopped playing with the comforter and rubbed the back of his neck. I watched as he shifted nervously on my bed. “They questioned if it was real. The fact that I had feelings for you. They know I’m feeding you, and they thought it might be affecting how I felt about you.” I had never heard of that happening. “Then I started doubting how I felt about you, and kind of spiraled about it.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” I asked him softly. I hated the idea that he was going through this alone for the past few days. It wasn’t like I had the answers. Just because I hadn’t experienced it didn’t mean that it had never happened to anyone. I was one person, and as far as incubi went, I was pretty inexperienced. The only feeder I’d ever had was Ryder, and while nothing had shifted when we’d started our arrangement, it didn’t mean that was a universal experience. “I mean, I’ve never heard about that happening, but I could have helped you research. Talked to my parents and my sister.”

Penn looked up at me. The smile on his face was breathtaking. It wasn’t the kind of smile that brought out the slight dimple in his right cheek or made his eyes glow almost as bright as mine did when I fed. Instead, it softened his eyes into something I wanted to get lost in. It was warm, and I wanted to crack the code to unlocking that smile every day of my life. All of the feelings I had for Penn magnified by a thousand percent when he looked at me like that.

Fond.

That was the word I was looking for. It was such a fond smile that I felt like I was the one melting.

“You’d really help me find those answers?” he asked, his voice as soft as the look on his face.

In that moment, I didn’t think there was anything I wouldn’t do for him. People talked about the incubi magnetism, but they’d never seen that smile on Penn Leroy’s face. “I’ll talk to my parents and Christa. See if they know anything.” I was willing to go right then, find him every answer to every question he could even think of asking. Instead, I decided to be practical and find out what questions he actually had. “So, what did you discover?”

He pulled his laptop out of the bag he’d placed on the bed beside him and opened up a document. I moved closer to him and looked over his shoulder as he ran through his research. It was color coded and so detailed that I felt another rush of admiration. He was amazing. He’d found all of this information in a few days, and while he looked like maybe he hadn’t slept all that well, he hadn’t let the questions linger.

I loved when a man knew what he wanted.

I listened to him, absolutely enamored as he went over his research and the questions he had left. I wanted to dive deeper into what he’d gathered, but I also couldn’t stop staring at his lips. “Can you send me a copy of that?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’m really curious about some of those articles.” I wanted to be on the same page as he was, understand what he’d found. I wanted to see what was written about my kind online too, in a weird kind of way. It was like watching badly done incubus porn. It wasn’t entirely accurate, but it was always intriguing to see what humans thought about my kind.

I watched as Penn sent me the document. The moment he put the laptop down, I leaned forward and did what I’d been wanting to do since he first looked at me with that tender expression on his face.

I kissed him.

Like the kiss in his dorm, it wasn’t about feeding. I was still sated from the last one, but I still craved him. I craved the taste of him, the press of his lips against mine. I craved the feel of his body pressed against mine.

Unlike the kiss in his dorm, it didn’t stay slow and soft. His hands moved to cradle my face, and mine wrapped around his body, pulling him closer. My tongue slipped into his mouth, deepening the kiss. For a few minutes, all that existed in the world was the points of contact between our bodies. I could feel the sexual energy crackling around us, but I wasn’t tempted to pull in any of the tendrils.

When the kiss broke, he was practically panting. “Hungry?” he questioned, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

“No,” I told him before kissing him again. “Just.” I pulled away just enough to get the words out. “Just want you.”

The words seemed to light a fire into the kiss. He pulled me closer. I straddled him, draping my arms around his neck. He moaned into the kiss, and my thickening cock grew harder. I could feel him underneath me too, getting harder by the moment. I ground my hips down, pulling another moan out of him. I could feel his lust spiked in the air around us, crackling and sparking and a vibrant red.

It felt different than it did when I fed off of him. One day, I would figure out what that energy tasted like too, but not yet.

Now, the only thing I wanted to consume was him. I wanted to swallow down every moan. I wanted to feel him inside of me. It was a bridge we hadn’t crossed in our feedings. We’d only talked about penetrative sex a few times, enough to know that neither of us were ready to take our feedings to that level. I wondered if that lack of readiness applied to this. This real thing between us that had nothing to do with an exchange of energy and everything to do with an exchange of emotion.

I reached down between us and tugged at the hem of his shirt. The kiss broke long enough for me to pull the shirt off of him and for him to do the same to me. Both were tossed to the side before he laid back. A moment later, he was sitting back up, laughing. “My computer.”

I laughed with him and leaned back so he could grab his laptop. I watched as he put it in his bag and put it on the floor. The meticulous way he kept his stuff organized made me wonder if he’d take me apart just as meticulously.

He glanced at me hungrily. I’d never seen that hunger in his eyes before, in all the times we’d hooked up. Usually, he looked a little dazed, the consequence of our feedings. He smiled before nudging my legs open and slotting himself between them, draping his body back over mine, and kissing me with a hunger I’d never experienced before.

The weight of his body on mine, the warmth of his bare chest against mine—it lit something inside of me that I’d never felt with Ryder. I’d never even felt it with Penn before, and until this moment, I thought I’d hit the very peak of arousal with the man on top of me. Now, I didn’t think that anything would be able to satisfy the growing hunger inside of me. Every shift of his body sent shock waves of want coursing through me.

I began to explore his body with my hands. I felt the soft skin of his back all the way down to his ass, still covered in jeans. I grabbed at his ass, pulling him closer and swallowing the ensuing moan at the change in friction. He rolled his hips, pulling a lusty sound from my lips. Fuck, he felt so good against me. I wanted to feel more of him.

I slipped my hands under the fabric of his jeans and his underwear, nails digging into the bare skin of his perfect ass. “Fuck,” he groaned.

“You like that?” I asked him softly, my lips brushing against his with every word.

“Yeah. Like that.”

Interesting. There was so much I still didn’t know about this man and what he liked, even after weeks of feeding. I wanted to know everything that he liked in bed. I wanted to know everything he liked period. Every kiss and touch just made me that much more certain of my feelings for him.

He might have doubts about it being some kind of incubus mojo, but I didn’t. I knew my heart, and I knew that he was flitting around the edges of it. Tiptoeing into the waters of love or whatever cliche we wanted to use.

He raised himself up onto his elbows and started to kiss down my neck. He bit at my collarbone, and I hissed at the sensation. It appeared I had a lot to learn about what I liked in bed too, because I didn’t realize I liked biting. I rolled my hips, seeking friction and finding none. He kissed down my body until he reached my nipples. He kissed and bit at one while he rolled the other between his thumb and index finger before switching sides. I wanted more. Fuck. He kissed down my stomach, dipping his tongue into my belly button. He supported himself on one arm while his other arm slid down my side.

He undid the button of my jeans, and finally, I got some of that satisfaction I craved as he slid his hand under my briefs and wrapped his slender fingers around my aching cock. I felt his thumb swipe over my tip, gathering the precum pooling there. I watched hungrily as he brought it up to his lips and tasted me. “Is how good you taste an incubus thing?” he asked before he spat in his hand and wrapped his hand back around me.

I couldn’t answer. I was too overtaken by the sensation of his spit wet hand gliding over my dick. My hips rolled up, fucking into his hand. I lost myself in the sensation, aware of every shift in his energy. I could feel every single time something spiked his arousal more. He liked the way I fucked into his hand, the way I let him control the pace but didn’t just lay there. Like I could even if I wanted to. I wanted to chase my pleasure, to lose myself in him.

I wanted Penn to lose himself in me too. I leaned forward on one elbow to get better access to him. I used my other hand to unbutton his jeans. Before I could slip my fingers underneath the fabric, he swatted my hand away. “If you do that, I might lose it before I get to do everything I want,” he cautioned.

I grinned at him and laid back, letting him him have his way with me. He brought me to the edge with his hand before he pulled away. I groaned at the lack of contact, but eyed him hungrily as he removed my pants, leaving me naked on the bed. I could feel his eyes move over me like a caress.

“God, you are gorgeous,” he exhaled before bringing his lips down to my pelvis. He kissed along the bone, nipping and tonguing his way down and repeating the process on the other side. His hot breath teased my cock as he moved from one side to the other, never once putting focus where I wanted it. Instead, he straightened and pulled down his pants. His bulge in his black briefs was obscene, the angry red tip of his dick peeking over the band.

“Fuck.” The word slipped from my lips as I drank in the sight of him over me.

I wanted him.

I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. It wasn’t just about the exchange of energy. It wasn’t about nourishment. It was just about Penn.

The hunger for him doubled as he freed his cock from his underwear. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. Not by a long shot, but it felt different now. It felt different knowing that there were emotions there, knowing that this was about pleasure. When he positioned himself between my legs and swallowed down my cock, I saw stars. He was so fucking good with his mouth. Incoherent babbling escaped my lips as he worked me over with his tongue, taking me all the way down to the base.

I didn’t know how long he spent practically worshiping my cock, just that once again, he had me to the edge of that cliff and he pulled away, leaving me panting and desperate. “Please,” I groaned at him, hands tangling into his hair as I tried to push him back down.

“Not yet,” he whispered with a shake of his head.

I groaned in frustration. I was not used to someone edging me within an inch of my life. Every sexual experience I’d had in the past had been with a purpose. Edging had never been a part of it. I’d never been left desperately wanting more, but now? I guess this was one of those things that I was learning about Penn.

“Didn’t know you were into edging.”

“I’m not usually,” he admitted as he readjusted himself, draping his body over mine. Precum from his dick leaked onto my bare stomach. “I just want to savor every second of this.” He punctuated his sentence with a hungry kiss. I lost myself in the feeling of his lips against mine, the glide of his dick against mine, still slick from his spit. “Want you,” he whispered against my lips.

“Want you too.” I thought about our previous conversation. He had so many questions, ones I hadn’t been able to give him an answer to. I wanted him, but I wanted this to be something that was real for both of us. What if it wasn’t? “Don’t think we should though.”

“Why?” he asked, looking down at me with concern.

“When we finally cross that line, I want it to be real.” It was as simple as that. I didn’t want our first time to be marred with the idea that the only reason we crossed that line was because some kind of incubus mojo had messed with his feelings. I didn’t want any doubt to color the memory. I wanted the first time with him to be something special, to be about us and nothing else.

Because what I had with Penn was different than anything I’d had with anyone else before.

That soft look returned to Penn’s eyes. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Penn smiled and kissed me tenderly. “We’ll find our answers first.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t still do other things,” I pointed out, before I reached between us and wrapped my hand around our dicks.

He groaned and wrapped his hand against mine. Our lips collided again and we got off in the way that was familiar to us already, the way we’d gotten each other off many times before. Except this time, I didn’t pull in any of the tendrils of energy, didn’t use it to nourish my body.

When his release spilled over my dick and our combined hands triggering mine, I felt nourished in another way.

When we collapsed against each other, bodies sticky in sweat and cum, I felt happier and more whole than I ever had in my life.

For the first time in my life, it felt real.