Page 35 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

N ix’s mind raced with thoughts of: my room is on fire, and someone might have set it to kill me, and Professor Thierry saved my life, and he is looking at me like he wants to fuck me hard enough to break the roof .

“Um, professor?” Nix asked, sounding more breathless than she meant to.

“ Mine ,” he growled in a much more animalistic manner than Nix expected from the studious, glasses-wearing professor. His ragged and sharp stone wings scratched against the roof’s floor as they retracted behind him.

His hooded eyes were dark and primal as he pinned her with his smoldering gaze. He gnashed his teeth and repeated, “MINE.” His fingers skimmed her cheeks and moved to tangle into her hair.

He didn’t appear to be turning into stone anymore, but there was something altered about him. The stuffy, snobby gentleman was possessed.

He guided her down to the floor, cupping the back of her head to protect her from the stiff, stone building roof underneath of them. When he stretched on top of her, she felt it.

It . The massive, hot bulge between his legs grazed her stomach through the thin nightgown.

If she thought the fire in her room was stifling, this was scorching. “Professor?”

“My mate,” he growled before crashing his lips to hers.

Mate? But Nix was Persius’s mate. She couldn’t—

The kiss stopped time.

She swore the earth stopped rotating so as to prevent any movement from hindering such an impactful moment.

étienne Thierry tasted like dark chocolate-covered cherries and hope.

“It’s you,” he kept muttering between long, deep kisses that stole her breath. “Finally. You.”

One of his hands sank to cup her hip and hold her firmly against him. The action also pressed his feverish erection to her abdomen.

She gasped and sighed and sank deeper into the kiss.

To be held with such adoration was exhilarating and new and all-consuming. A single tear fell down her cheek as she embraced him.

MATE. I have a mate who will love and protect me in this new life . It was everything she could have asked for, but…

I still need my revenge .

When his lips trailed down from her mouth to plant ravishing kisses over her chin and neck, Nix opened her eyes. Remembering back to how someone had set her room on fire and tried to kill her, she palmed his shoulder and squeezed.

“We, uh, we need to stop the f-fire,” she stammered through the mind-numbing sensation of his lips on her throat.

“Mate,” he grunted. “ Mine .”

The man of many big, fancy words had been reduced to only a few.

He was very hard.

She swallowed and tried to maintain her composure as she said, “Professor Thierry—er, étienne, we need to get the fire out before it burns anyone else’s room.”

“Fire…” he repeated in a low, gravelly voice as he rocked his hard dick over her.

“étienne, focus. We can, uh, do this later. After the fire is put out.”

“Later?”

Nix reached down and palmed the rigid bulge in his pants. “Later,” she promised.

Thierry leaned his forehead to hers and panted onto her, trying to gain back control over his sensual impulses. “A fire?”

“Yes, in my dorm. It needs to be put out—”

“I will strangle it with my bare hands and return to you as quickly as possible.”

“I think a bucket of water might help put it out faster than your bare hands, but, uh—”

He kissed her nose, and she shut up at how sweet the gesture was. He rose to his feet. “You do not move from this spot,” he warned her before his gray, stone wings extended.

The wings and the still incredibly hard and distended erection stunned Nix from where she held herself up on her elbows, back against the rooftop.

His wings appeared to have etched feathers made up of a mosaic of shiny silver and speckled gray. Marble, granite, limestone. The rugged, irregularly shaped feathers created a rustic pattern and artistic texture.

He is a masterpiece . And she could stare at him for hours. Could learn his body for days.

I used to collect rocks to help with my anxiety, but he will be my new favorite thing to hold tight .

She was his mate. She nearly snickered at how horrible he had been when she first met him. Did saving her from death change so much? Or was it…

The reversal potion , Nix realized. What if the cygnus illusion potion had also interfered with her scent or essence of whatever it was that triggered the recognition of matehood?

What if Persius would recognize her now?

“Understood?” Thierry rasped, staring at her with wild silver eyes.

“I…I will stay right here,” she promised.

He nodded, stole one last look at her, and stepped off the roof to swoop down and destroy the fire. As a creature capable of shifting to stone, étienne was impervious to harm by fire.

He will be safe , she told herself.

Staring up at the night sky, the stars blurred around her.

In the distance, she swore she saw something falling from the sky.

“She’s on the roof,” Bael shouted to Ryker as the two of them flew to the dormitory building.

Bael and Ryker lived off campus in a small house after the dean of the academy decided that a dragon shifter capable of such destruction and a creature of Hell did not belong in its cushy, bougie dorm rooms.

Bael would never forget the chilling fear he felt when Nix asked, “ Do you smell smoke? ” as the shared dream between them fizzled out.

“Bleeding,” Ryker snarled as the scent of her blood caught in the air.

They swooped down, retracting their wings as they settled onto the roof, where she laid back in a torn, ice blue nightgown.

The smell of blood and smoke veiled her normal tart and sweet scent. In fact, she was nearly unrecognizable because…

Just like in the dream, her hair was a rusty blood orange hue. Her bold, brazen eyes were golden bronze. Even her face appeared different. It didn’t…blur anymore.

Her nose was not long or crooked. Her chin was not as pronounced or jutting. Her cheeks were rounder, giving her an innocent look, yet her eyes were haunted.

“Swan Lake?” Bael asked, but he knew it was her even though she looked so different. “What the hell? Why do you look like that?”

Meanwhile, Ryker took the more gentlemanly approach and kneeled beside where she laid. He hovered a hand above her bloodied wound over her stomach. “Bleeding?”

“The adrenaline may be wearing off now,” Nix commented stiffly as she peeked down at her bloodied nightgown. “Yup, that’s starting to sting pretty bad now.”

Bael tossed Ryker a small bottle of clear alcohol to cleanse the wound.

“Will hurt,” Ryker grunted to her before dousing her bloody skin under the shreds of the nightgown to kill off any germs. Prey shifters were basically as immortal as humans after all; they could die from an infection.

“What the hell happened?” Bael asked. Why was she bleeding? And who do I have to kill? “And, I repeat, why do you look like that?”

“Disappointed?” she asked.

Bael’s brows shot up to his forehead. “Fuck no, do you know how much sexier you look as a redhead?” Even now, despite the scenario, Bael’s cock twitched and lengthened for her. He would get more details on her suddenly changed exterior later.

Nix rolled her pretty, golden-speckled bronze eyes. “My dorm room, uh, caught fire.”

Bael quirked an eyebrow. “You leave sex candles burning or something?”

“All twenty-two of my sex candles, yup,” Nix replied sarcastically.

Bael grinned at her sassy tone and commented, “Fuck, you are really sexy as a redhead.”

Not as used to speaking aloud as Bael and Nix, Ryker took his time asking her, “How did you get on the roof?”

“Oh, uh, Professor Thierry found me. Saved me.”

Thierry? “Damn, gargoyle got to play the hero before us? That’s fucking unfair.” Bael crossed his arms and scowled.

He had grabbed Ryker and flown to Nix’s dormitory building immediately after the shared dream ended. The gargoyle moves fast . That damn stone man. Didn’t even make sense how something so heavy could fly.

Bael questioned, feeling very judgy, “Then, he abandoned you up here? Bleeding ? And in nothing but a ripped-up nightgown?”

His judgment of the professor appeared to grate her nerves because Nix glared at Bael and snapped, “Someone needed to put out the fire, to protect everyone else in the dorm.”

“Fuck them, I’d never leave you on a roof like this,” Bael remarked at her torn nightgown and bleeding leg.

“You’d let people burn to death?”

Bael shot her a crazy, evil grin. “To keep you company? Baby, I’d let the whole academy burn.”

She gawked at him. Then…she hid a twisted smile.

“Your room…” Ryker began.

“Burned. Thoroughly.” Nix frowned and laid back down flat, staring up at the sky. “There is no way I can stay there tonight.” All of her possessions, her textbooks, her class notes…burned to ash. If I’d had anything left of my birth parents, I would be mourning it now .

“Stay with us,” Bael suggested.

“Stay…with you?” Nix echoed in disbelief.

“We have a small house off campus. Plenty of room in my bed for a feisty redhead.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he felt the gaze pierce right through him. “I am not sleeping in your bed with you.”

“You’d rather sleep on ashes?” Bael shot back, offended.

“Are those my only two options?”

Bael shrugged dramatically. “I guess you could sleep on our couch.” He playfully added, “Prude,” and grinned at her. The excitement of having her close banged around inside his ribcage.

“You can take my bed,” Ryker offered to take the couch.

Fuck you, dragon, she is mine , Bael thought bitterly to himself.

A gust of wind from flapping wings flung locks of Nix’s red hair around her blushing face.

Professor Thierry’s voice sounded as he dropped down onto the roof. “Step back from her, before I sever your throat with my wings.”