Page 9

Chapter Eight

B eaufort

I lean back against the seat and adjust the sun visor, shading my eyes from the glaring sun as I weave the vehicle through the academy campus.

I don’t want to be heading home today. I want to remain here. Something happened to her in that maze. People have been hurting her. I want to stay here and keep her safe.

But I’ve procrastinated for as long as I can, turning over Dray’s words from last night, working out if I could see Briony before I go, put things right between us, or whether I’d only make matters worse. Concluding she’d probably refuse to see me anyway.

Now duty calls and as much as I’d like to resist that duty, I can’t.

Nope, even I, Beaufort fucking Lincoln – one of the most powerful shadow weavers in the realm – can’t refuse a summons home.

I am also no closer to working out who manipulated the trial. I can’t keep Briony safe. Haven’t I proved that again and again?

So much for my fucking powers.

I thump my fist against the steering wheel and swear under my breath.

The paths are full of students today, crowding around to watch the shadow weavers in their vehicles, staring at us like they’ve never seen a set of wheels before.

I scoff, letting my gaze sweep over them, not paying them any notice. Until there’s one face I am noticing, sweeping past my window. I snap around in my seat.

“Shit!” I yell, hitting the brakes immediately. The vehicle slams to a halt and I’m out and striding her way before the door shuts behind me.

She’s so busy chatting to her friend she doesn’t sense or hear me, and I’m forced to land my hand on her shoulder to gain her fucking attention.

“What the fuck?!” I growl, as she turns to face me, because that face doesn’t look like it did yesterday. No cuts, no scrapes, no bruises. No nothing. Smooth and flawless. “What the fuck ?!” I repeat.

My shock descends into annoyance. An emotion that mirrors the one on her face. A face that has been healed by magic.

Someone has healed her face with magic and it wasn’t us.

“Who did that?” I spit, shunting my chin in her direction, not giving a shit about the crowd that’s now turned away from my vehicle and towards us instead.

“Did what?” she says. Her hair’s different too, braided around her head, framing her face, making her eyes even more vivid and bright.

“Healed your face,” I say through gritted teeth.

Here I was worried about someone hurting her again. About Dray and I heading home and leaving only Thorne to guard her.

Seems what I should have been worried about was some fucking scumbag groping his hands all over our thrall.

“Was it you?” I snap at her friend.

“Woah,” he says, lifting both his hands up in defense. “I’m not a shadow weaver.”

I glare back at her. “Then who was it?”

“None of your business.”

My blood boils under my skin.

Every time.

She has to make this difficult every time.

Clutching her arm, I pull her along with me, her friend trotting behind us anxiously.

At my vehicle, I open the passenger door and throw her inside, slamming the door shut so she can’t shuffle out.

Then I walk around the car, open the other door.

Before she can escape through the driver’s side, I sidle into my seat next to her.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelps. Her friend knocks his knuckles against the glass.

“We’re going for a little drive,” I say, slamming my foot down on the accelerator and letting the car shoot away, her friend left standing gobsmacked.

Briony spins in her seat, looking back through the rear windscreen.

“You’re such an asshole! You could have hurt him!!”

“Always more concerned about that dude than your own protectors. ”

“Because he is my friend and you are not.” She rattles the door handle. “Let me out.”

“Not until we’ve finished this little conversation.”

She tugs on the door but finding it hopeless, flops back into the seat and crosses her arms angrily across her chest.

I zoom us through the campus, leaving students to jump out of our path, and then we’re crossing the moorland on the single-tracked lane.

I don’t know where the hell I’m taking her. I can’t take her home. There would be too many questions. Doing this is going to make me late as it is. I should care. I find I don’t.

“You can’t stay angry at me forever,” I tell her, glancing away from the windscreen to peer at her face.

“When you pull stupid stunts like this, I can.”

“It’s the only way I can get you to talk to me.”

“Maybe that’s because I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Maybe you don’t have a choice,” I say, then regret it almost immediately. She’s right. Dray’s right. I am an asshole and I don’t know how to do this. I sigh. “I want to make things right between us.”

She shakes her head. “You said all that stuff. You showed me who you really are, Beaufort Lincoln, and I didn’t like what I saw.”

We reach the forest, the road cutting under the leafless branches. I swing between two tree trunks and slam on the brakes.

“And what did you see?” I shift around in my seat and stare at her, right into her eyes so she’s forced to stare right into mine.

“A man who’s only out for himself.”

I keep staring right back at her. “Then you don’t know me at all.

” I twist my head back around and look out into the forest. It’s dark under the trees, but a few stray rays of sunlight filter through the branches, dust particles spinning trapped in their glare.

“Because I want to look after you, Briony. I want to help you.” I frown, remembering what brought us under these trees in the first place.

“Of course, if you’ve found some other shadow weaver to lend you–”

“That’s not what this was.”

“Wasn’t it? Then why can’t you tell me who it was? Why the secret?”

“You have secrets too, Beaufort. Things you aren’t telling me.” I nod. I can’t deny it. “So why don’t we call it quits? I won’t tell you and you won’t tell me.”

“I can’t help you, if you don’t tell me.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Really?” I snort. “And how’s it going with that little investigation into your sister’s death? Found your answers yet?”

She opens her mouth, closes it and then turns her head away from me.

I sigh once more and lean my head back against the headrest. I don’t want to fight. I want to be lifting her into my lap, sucking on her throat and making her moan with my fingers. I don’t want her hating on me.

People don’t hate Beaufort Lincoln. They admire him. They are afraid of him. They don’t hate him.

Yet, every wave of energy rolling off her right now says hate.

Could I tell her? I said I would. But would she understand? She comes from Slate, the backend of nowhere. Bland, miserable, pathetic. Not a world of magic. She doesn’t know what it’s like to bend reality, warp perception, or manipulate the very building blocks of the universe.

Would she look at me and think I was lying? Worse, would she look at me and think I was a freak ?

“It was Professor Tudor,” she says, “who healed me.”

“The teacher?”

She nods. “There’s nothing going on. I’m not interested in getting tangled up in relationships. What happened between you and me was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t,” I growl. “It was damn good.” Her gaze flicks back to me and the heat in my eyes makes her swallow. “And it’s too late. We’re already tangled up together.” She opens her mouth to argue. I beat her to it. “You’re right.”

Her brows leap up her forehead in surprise, then plummet back down into a suspicious frown. “About what exactly?”

“Me being an asshole. What I said about your sister – it was–”

“Wrong.”

“Cruel. And, despite what you may think about me, I am not cruel. Not to the people I care about anyway.”

I scratch my nail along the leather seam on the steering wheel.

“Are you apologizing to me, Beaufort Lincoln?” she asks, puzzled.

“I guess I am.”

“Then you know if you mean it you should probably say the words.”

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”

“And …” she says, a slight smile playing on her lips.

“And?” I say, shrugging.

“You’re sorry for being an asshole?”

“Yes, that too.” She tilts her head to one side. “Okay, I’m also sorry for being an asshole.”

I give her a smoldering look I know has most girls creaming their panties. She lifts an eyebrow expectantly.

“Anything else?” she prompts .

“Erm …” I rack my brain. What else have I fucked up? “The stuff about your sister, there may be some merit in your theory given someone manipulated the trial and you were trapped inside for much longer than you should have been.”

“So you don’t think that was an accident too?” she says, her voice full of sarcasm.

“No, I don’t.”.

“Hmmm,” she says, her eyes flicking away from me as she stares down at the hands in her lap. “Have you seen the scores?”

“I haven’t.” No point. I know I did well. I know where I’m going to end up. It’s my destiny.

“I …” she swallows, “I scored zero points.”

“What?” I say, even though I heard her perfectly well the first time.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, the anger rising in her voice again. “I knew I wasn’t going to score well. I know they’re going to send me back to Slate.”

“No, they’re not.”

She laughs. “Zero points, Beaufort. Zero! Even if I score really well in the next few trials, there is no way I’m making that up.”

“There must be some kind of mistake.”

“No. This is what happens to people like me. It doesn’t matter how good we are, we all end up back in Slate.”

“I’ll look into it,” I tell her. “I’m already looking into who manipulated the trial.”

She looks back up at me. “You are?” I nod. “Thank you,” she says. “I appreciate that.”

Which was not what I was expecting her to say at all. Maybe Dray was right for once after all .

“Thank you?” I venture. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”

“I’m not sure.”

“While you’re thinking it over, will you at least come sit on my lap and make out with me?”

She spins her gaze around the interior of the car.

“Have you made out with a lot of girls in this car?”

“A few,” I lie. I reach over and take a hold of her hips in my hands, dragging her across to my seat so she’s straddling my lap. “None turned me on as much as you do.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “I find that very hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it,” I growl, scraping my teeth down her throat. Then kissing where I’ve made the skin red, my fingers sinking into the flesh of her waist, holding her in place, making it clear I won’t be letting her go.

She whimpers a little, rubbing herself against my stiffening cock. “I don’t know if I forgive you. I don’t know if I should.”

“You should,” I murmur against her skin, sucking on her pulse point. “You should really really forgive me and you should let me make it up to you.”

From the corner of my eye I catch the time blinking on the dashboard. I’m already late. Staying behind to mess around with her in my car is going to make me really fucking late.

I’m finding it exceedingly hard to give a shit.

I lift her skirt and slide my hands into her panties, squeezing her ass cheeks before I slide my fingers between her thighs. She’s wet and I groan.

Yeah, I’m going to be late – really fucking late.

Her hands bunch into fists in my shirt as I stroke along the seam of her pussy lips, teasing her. Then I part her folds and thrum my thumb against her stiff little nub, kissing up and down her neck. Her legs start to shake and her skin flush. I can feel the heat of it against my lips.

“Ohhh,” she moans, her nails digging deep into my chest. “Ohhh.”

“See what you were missing, little thrall? See how good I make you feel?”

I nip at her throat and then I capture her mouth with mine, kissing her hard as she comes against my thumb, sliding my fingers inside her pussy, loving how wet and warm and soft she feels, how tightly she squeezes around my fingers as she rides her orgasm.

I pump my fingers in and out of her, the sound sloppy and obscene, forcing a second orgasm from her body, watching transfixed as she bucks and jolts on my lap.

When she’s ridden it completely, she collapses against me panting and sated. I brush the stray wisps of hair that have come loose from her braid away from her ear and whisper, “That was just a taster, little thrall, when I come back tomorrow, I’m going to fuck you properly.”

She rocks back to look me in the face, another one of those frowns on her face.

“You’re not going to fuck me now?” She grinds my fingers on her pussy and my cock twitches in my pants.

There’s nothing more that I want to do. Especially as I’ll be riding home with a stiff cock and aching balls.

I groan, eyes flicking back to the clock. I should have left an hour ago. I can’t delay any longer.

“Tomorrow,” I promise. “We’re going to be escorting you to the ball.”

“Of course,” she says, my fingers still inside her because I don’t want to remove them, “you do have to ask me first. You never know, someone might already have asked me.”

I grin. “And if they have, I will kill them.”

The humor doesn’t go down well, she frowns even harder and despite my best attempts to keep her where she is, wriggles off my lap.

“It was a joke,” I tell her.

“Was it?” she says.

But I don’t feel like descending into another argument. I bring my fingers to my mouth and suck at my fingers. The musky sweet flavor dissolves across my tongue.

“Thorne is staying at the academy. If you need anything …” I tell her, and then I rev the engine up and drive her back to the academy. “We’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow,” I call as she climbs out of my car, her cheeks still rosy from those orgasms. “Be ready.”