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Chapter Nineteen

F ox

I’m meant to be supervising events in the Great Hall, ensuring things don’t get out of control and the precious building and its ancient artifacts smashed or graffitied. But expecting me to stand around and watch as that mutt mauls my girl – no fucking way.

My life – if you can call this a life – is shitty enough. I don’t need to make it any worse.

I storm out of the hall, crashing into students, pushing my way through bystanders, growling and yelling at anyone who so much as blinks my way.

The Titan twins are patrolling the campus this evening. I should go swap with one of them. Send them into the hall and roam the pathways instead.

But I’m in no mood to answer their questions, no mood for conversation at all .

Instead, I need to find a way to calm this passion crashing through my body. Because all I want to do – all I can focus on stopping myself from doing – is to swoop back into the hall, steal her right from Dray Eros’s grubby little paws and whisk her away somewhere dark and alone.

The image of it plays out in my mind as I hurtle down the stone steps to the dungeon and slam open my door.

How she’d wilt in my arms, how she’d beg for mercy, how she’d succumb, melting into pleasure.

How good she would smell and how good she would taste as I forced her to come again and again.

I crumple to the floor, my hands as fists against the cold ground.

This is not who I am. I am not a monster.

“I will not succumb to it!” I yell out into the silence. “I will not succumb to her.”

But even as the words leave my lips I doubt their sincerity.

If she were here now, standing alone in this empty room, where no one could hear her, would I be able to stop myself?

Because these urges, these needs, the incessant hunger-pangs in my empty stomach, only grow stronger each and every day.

I thump the ground, disgusted by my own weakness, and watch as the stone fissures and cracks. I hit it again and again until I’m breathless and the stone is a mess of shattered pieces.

Then I rock back, panting, leaning back against the door. I shrug off my jacket, then loosen my tie and unbutton the top fastening of my dress shirt.

I peer straight ahead, through the gloom of my classroom. My night vision is so much more astute than it once was. I see the carved detail of the benches, Thursday’s lesson still marked out on the board, chalk dust on the floor.

And I see her. Of course I do.

Perched on the bench. The two qualities that define her best, fighting to gain dominance – curiosity and cynicism. I see the shape of her and I smell her scent.

I groan like a man starving to death imagining a feast laid out in front of him, knowing it isn’t real, that if he reaches for it, his hand will swim through nothing but air.

But the ghost I see, the ghost my mind creates, is so vivid.

She turns to look at me, a flirtatious smile playing out across her lips. She crooks a finger, beckons me closer, parting her thighs, tipping back her head, offering up her neck.

I groan again.

I’m stiff, so fucking stiff.

I stare down at my crotch.

My own fucking erection was something that used to greet me every morning without fail. A cock that hardened at the merest hint of invitation. A reliable cock. A greedy one. A sated cock too.

It’s been a long time since my cock has stirred. Even longer since it was sated.

I’m no fool, it’s more that I feel for her than just a hunger.

I want her in all the ways it’s possible to have a woman.

I unbutton the fly of my pants with a hurried eagerness and a bitter shame.

I wrap my hand around my neglected cock and stroke down the shaft, then up.

I groan, slumping back against the door .

The ghost watches me just as eagerly, tongue sliding over her bottom lip.

“I want to fuck you,” I tell the ghost. “I want to fuck you long and hard and slow until you’re screaming my name. Mine!”

“Yes,” she purrs and the sound of her voice makes my cock twitch in my fist.

It’s been a long, long time and the temptation before my eyes – imaginary as it is – is too great. Half a dozen fucking strokes of my cock and I’m groaning out her name, stomach moaning, the blood pounding in my ear. With the ghost of her watching on, I come.

But even that is different. Different than it was before.