Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Lena
This is okay. I have this all under control.
I kick off my heels and toss my dress on the bathroom floor.
I yank the bobby pins from my hair—they ting as they hit the wooden floor.
This is fine, no cause for concern. I jump into a cold shower to wash the scent of my professor off me and calm my libido.
You’re okay, Lena. You’re good. As the frigid water runs down my body, I try to talk myself down.
One, Michi and Katri fucking set me up. I actually liked him, I think.
Maybe. Regardless, what they did was vicious.
The angry snake-like vines coil tight inside me.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. Everyone in this realm is exactly the same: ruthless, compassionless, vainglorious, egomaniacal.
I want to cut myself out of this world. And I want it to hurt.
I want them to feel like I’ve felt every day for the last two months: alone, lost, worthless.
Two, I kissed Teariki and it was a hell of a kiss.
However, he may or may not be involved with Katri’s bullshit.
God, I hope not. But, what if he is? Did he just want to prop me up to watch me fall, like Michi?
Please don’t be that cruel, Ariki. My hot tears vie for attention with the frigid water running down my cheeks.
You’re okay. I inhale deeply, trying to stave off my hyperventilated breaths.
Three, I kissed Komarov. Teariki’s best friend. Slow breaths. He had a taste of my blood, and then we both freaked out and tried to jump each other’s bones. Fuck. I remember the feeling of running my hand over one very specific bone. Lena, stop it!
Four, something happened tonight. I can sense my magic.
It’s a different sensation than when I took Boden down in class.
Breathe. I think I noticed it when I kissed Ariki.
I know I felt it with Komarov’s hands on me.
Breathe in through your nose, in and out.
My insignis is dancing on the tip of my tongue.
With my lack of ability to access light magic, I figured it was unlikely that my mother was seraphim.
I looked for similarities between myself and other Convalescere Insignia.
I studied the description of the fallen in Komarov’s book, wondering if my magic was more stygian than light.
But now that I can sense something stronger, writhing in my diaphragm, I don’t think I’m even fully Convalescere.
My magic is like a mass of coiled snakes poised to strike, ready to dance, and slither, and move on my command.
It’s reveling in my anger, flourishing in my pleasure.
It’s binging on pain and craving euphoria.
It feels—or I feel maybe—unsatisfied, starving, insatiable.
The floor is cold as I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around my shaking body.
I run up the stairs and reach the top, smashing face-first into a very hard something.
In my haste to sprint up the few steps, I didn’t notice the large figure blocking my open doorway until I slammed into it.
Gasping, I lose my footing. I try to catch my balance against the stone wall to keep from falling down the steps—which would surely require a hospital visit. The figure grabs a hold of me.
“You’re alright, I’ve got you,” the figure says, as he steadies me. I look up at Kian, gripping my arm and hip tightly. “What are you doing? You’re freezing!”
I right myself by clutching onto his shirt.
“I was showering, obviously.” With a glance down at my body, I realize my towel is on the floor and I’m naked.
“Oh my god!” I freeze. Part of me knows I should reach for my towel, but his arms are still around me, my body pushed into his, and I.
just. can’t. move. “What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“We need to talk.” His silky voice sends a chill down my spine.
“I don’t want to fucking talk.” I plant my feet, staring into his silver eyes. His head rears back as if my abrasiveness surprised him. I want to be difficult just because I can. I want to yell, scream, and rage.
“It doesn’t matter what you want right now. From what I hear from the princes, we need to anyway.” He chuckles darkly. “You have been misbehaving, Miss Solis,” he taunts, his hands still holding me.
I narrow my eyes in indignation.
Kian matches my stare. His face sharpens with suspicion and something heavier, more dangerous. The air between us, what little there is, crackles with oncoming conflict. “Have you been lying to me, Miss Solis?”
I square my shoulders and clench my jaw, refusing to back down. I don’t want to talk to any magicae right now but especially not these fucking prince pals.
“See, I always knew you were clever, secretive. You’ve been playing us, and now, you’re going to come clean. It’s time to lay it all on the table.”
The powerful beastly cords coil and tighten beneath my ribs, begging to lash out, encouraging me to be reckless. “A woman never reveals her secrets,” I say with a smirk.
“Oh, I think you will.” His grin is devious. “Because I have my own to trade.”
My curiosity tries to break through the haze in my mind, but my body has other ideas.
“So now we talk.”
“I. Don’t. Want. To.” I puff out my bare chest, my damp skin soaking his silk dress shirt. “Fuck. Off.”
“Not until you’re ready to share,” he says, unfazed by my sneer.
The beast in me refuses to relinquish its hold and slithers against its bone cage, rattling my skeleton.
“You want me to share? You share! How about you fucking open up to me, huh? You dragged me here, remember, Mr. Silk Tie? And you didn’t prepare me for anything.
You flew into my life on your private jet and dropped me in the middle of this lion’s den, making all these assumptions about my family and who I am and what I deserve to be treated like.
And you told me nothing!” I seeth. It feels good to take my anger out on him.
In many ways, he’s the center of so much of my confusion and frustration. This all started with him strutting into my bar with his osprey-like grace and esoteric taste in liquor. It’s his rules, his contract, his kingdom, his realm, his face. It’s him who stokes my creature’s fury.
“I don’t need to talk.” My magic wants to push and devour. “I need…I need…” I search for the right words to describe the salivating creature that is my magic.
“What do you need?” Kian raises a brow in challenge, like he already has every answer I seek, like he can see the ravenous beast underneath my skin.
“I can feel my magic. It wants more.” I gasp when a cramp grips my core as if in acknowledgement of its hunger. “I need more.”
He trails his fingers up my arm to cup the back of my neck. Tilting my head, he leans his lips to my ear. “You need to fully feed.”
That feels right. “Yes.” I wet my lips and swallow the lump of awareness growing in my throat.
His stubble brushes my cheek as he pulls back to face me. “I can give you what you need.”
Pleasure-pain bites at my scalp as he tugs firmly on my wet hair, forcing my eyes to his face. I zero in on his bottom lip as his teeth sink into its plump flesh. I’m starving and he can nourish me.
I clutch at Kian’s shirt, pulling myself up to meet his lips. We clash together, lips and teeth and tongues and hands. It’s deliciously violent. Kian’s arms wrap around my waist, and I moan into his mouth. Yes. This is what I need, him.
“What are you?” Kian asks into my mouth. The firmness of his chest greets the softness of mine as he backs me deep into my room until my legs hit my desk.
I push off his jacket, feeling the sturdy muscles in his biceps. His arms reach around the back of my thighs as he lifts me onto my desk. My spine arches as I wrap my hands around his neck, bringing him closer. There is only one kingdom whose magicae must feed from others. Devorare.
He breaks our kiss with a growl. “Lena, answer me.”
I reach for him, but he holds me at arm’s length, his strong capable hands wrapped firmly around the base of my skull.
“What are you?” he pushes, and I bite back my response and down on my tongue, refusing to give in to his questions.
He trails one hand slowly down my naked frame, sliding it between my breasts and over my stomach to the apex of my thighs.
I shiver at his caress. A low groan escapes his lips when he finds my wetness there.
He continues to hold me away from his body as his fingers draw slow circles over my clit.
There is only one insignis that is satiated by what I’m craving.
“Give me an answer. I know, and I want to hear you say it,” he commands, while he continues his maddeningly languid pace.
I need more to quench this desire building in me. I struggle to reach for him and try to move my hips faster, but he holds me in place, tightening his grip on my neck. I might die if he doesn’t give me what I want—there is only one insignis I can be.
He picks up the pace of his fingers, driving firmer pressure into me. “Answer me!”
“Succubus!” I scream, the unwitting answer ripped from my throat with the force of my need. His body crashes into mine. The pieces of my fractured soul knitting together as I wrap my legs around him, finally conceding to what I crave and what I am.
I grab at his shirt, ripping the buttons from their seams. Tingles erupt over my flesh as he runs his lips down my jaw and over my neck, sucking and biting, in a dizzying path.
The coiled golden strings in my chest reach for him, searching out his pleasure.
Instinct guides me, and I grip one of the incorporeal cords and tug lightly.
He moans into my neck, biting harder in response.
“Have you fed from another magica before?” His voice is heavy with desire. “To completion?”