21. Echo
Chapter 21
Echo
WEDNESDAY
I sla froze for a few seconds before she slowly spun around to face me. Those swollen lips and the heat in her eyes made my heart pound in my chest.
It should have been me.
What a fucking idiot I was.
“We were worried when you didn’t come back in?—”
“I’m sorry?—”
“But I can see that we shouldn’t have been,” I said stiffly. My voice was so cold I was surprised I didn’t see my breath in the air between us. “I’ll see you at the dorm.”
I turned my back on her, starting to head back to the library. Right now, I needed space. My hunger was too sharp, too desperate, to be around Isla when she smelled so strongly of lust. I had fed this past weekend, but it did nothing to dull the ragged edges of my hunger when faced with the only woman I wanted.
“Echo, wait!” she called out. The quick patter of her steps told me she was running after me, and it took what remained of my self-control to keep from speeding up.
The moment she put her hand on my arm, that control started to slip. A second later, I had her back slammed against a tree trunk so hard she cried out. Tears filled her eyes.
“I warned you before, witch, to be careful with me. You have no fucking idea who you’re toying with.”
She gasped. “I didn’t— I’m not toying with you.” Her voice shook with more than a hint of fear as I growled in her face. Her skin was paler than it ever was, and her gaze darted around. Was she searching for help? There was no one here to save her. Her focus should be on me. I ground into her harder, and she cried out, fanning the flames of what burned inside of me. “Echo, I swear. That was the first time he kissed me, and I… It just happened! I got lost in the moment.”
I took a deep breath, and my growl turned into a purr, the deep vibrations heaving in my chest as I leaned in so close that her hair brushed my face. Her scent surrounded me. Every instinct screamed that I needed to claim her. Fuck her. Cover her with my body and use her until the only scent on her was mine.
My stomach dropped the moment my head began to pound.
The rut.
Usually, I didn’t feel it coming. Most incubi couldn’t tell when a rut was going to hit them since it hit us at random times throughout our life. Ruts were dangerous. The massacre left behind could be catastrophic, and if the focus of the incubi’s rut tried to deny him, they’d wind up dead too.
I’d only been in a rut once before, and what I could recall was crystal clear in my mind.
Screams. Blood. Fear.
Gods, even the memories were fucking heady. The men and women I’d fucked during my week-long rut had wished for mercy that I wasn’t capable of. They’d begged for me to finish, to slow down, to stop. How pretty they’d looked when their empty corpses rolled away like discarded rag dolls. I’d been so hungry, I’d fucked them to death.
No amount of sex was capable of filling me up during a rut, and I didn’t know if there was something broken within me, but rut or not, I felt that edge most days, gnawing in the pit of my stomach.
Now, with Isla so close to me, her lust buried beneath the onslaught of fear, I felt it taking over.
I was salivating for more—her lust, her body, her very soul itself. My sanity was slowly taking a backseat to the basest part of myself. Was I Echo any longer? It felt as though I was losing that name, that identity, on the road to becoming a slave to my deadly hunger. I was no longer a friend, or a roommate, or a brother. The incubus inside was consuming me as voraciously as it wanted to consume her. After this was done, when there was nothing left of her to feed on, would there be anything left of me?
It had been so fucking long.
“I’ve wanted you since the moment I met you,” I ground out, the softness in my voice gone. I pressed my body against hers hard enough that I knew the bark of the tree would dig into her. “But I held myself back, trying to protect you, knowing that I wasn’t worth enough to even lick your fucking boots, but then I see you with him …”
Isla flinched as I spat that final word in her face, and I laughed, rubbing my nose along her neck and savoring the goosebumps and her trembles.
“I’m tired of holding myself back. Fucking exhausted of being found lacking and left behind. After this, if you survive, you’ll never be free of me, Isla Hallowes. I’ll fucking haunt your every breathing moment.”
“Echo, please,” Isla gasped as I laid a deceptively gentle kiss on the side of her throat.
I let go.
Of my control.
Of my sanity.
“Please won’t save you now.”
ISLA
A scream clawed its way out of my throat as the Echo I knew transformed into something sinister. Outwardly, he appeared the same, but his eyes glowed with menace.
I arched my back, trying to angle myself away from the painful press of the tree bark. I was going to have more than bruises when this was done.
Echo grabbed one of my hands, bringing it between us and dragging it down until I felt how hard he was. At another time, I might have enjoyed it, savored it really, but the man watching me wasn’t anything like the guy I’d dreamed of a week ago.
‘Isla, I need you to listen to me.’ Cassius’ words were full of urgency, and my heart rate sped up. He’d only ever sounded this way once before, when Bones had come to get me.
‘Cas,’ I whimpered, hating how weak I sounded.
‘Do whatever he says, beastie. Fighting him will not end well.’
‘What’s happening?!’
“Isla! Oh, shit!” a familiar voice called out. The words were followed by another string of curses, and with each word, Echo’s body coiled tighter, ready to strike.
I looked over Echo’s shoulder to find Aizel, Zhara, and Wells standing there. Wells looked concerned, his gaze bouncing from me, to Echo, then to Aizel, whose color had drained from his face. Echo growled, the rumbling tone different than he’d sounded before. This growl was a threat, something almost territorial.
“Brother,” Aizel said. He simultaneously stepped forward and pushed Zhara and Wells behind him. “You need to feed.”
“I know what I need ,” Echo hissed, shooting a look at his twin that had my three friends stumbling back a few steps. “If you’re going to get in my way, you’ll become a part of it.”
Zhara tried to interject, but Aizel grabbed her arm hard and shook his head sharply. “Don’t. This is beyond reasoning, Z,” he replied softly. Ignoring Echo’s warning glare, he slowly walked toward us, his hands up in the air as if to prove he wasn’t a threat.
“Isla doesn’t know what’s going on, Echo. Let me tell her. Let me help her. You’ll regret it if I don’t.” His voice was soothing in the face of Echo’s trembles.
“He’s in a rut, Isla,” Aizel started, his gaze never straying from his twin’s. “And you are now the focus of it.”
“Rut?” I whispered. My hand contracted around Echo’s cock since I was afraid to draw his anger by any other movement.
“It’s when all of our instincts come to the surface and strip away our humanity,” Aizel answered gently. His concern and love for his brother shined through, though his brother’s focus was still on me, his forehead resting against mine. “Right now, I don’t have time to give you all the details. What I can tell you is that you’ll have to ride it out with him. Don’t fight. Don’t argue.”
“Ride it out?” I asked numbly. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. There was no way.
“He needs to feed, and the only one he wants is you. Echo’s hunger is uncommonly… big. You’ll be gone for days. I’ll let the professors know what happened.”
“You need to leave,” Echo warned him. He squeezed my hand, his jaw clenched in a way that looked painful. “I can’t hold myself back for much longer.”
“Try to control yourself, brother. I don’t know how I’ll console you afterward if it goes like it did the last time.”
“What happened?” I whispered. I didn’t want to set Echo off, but I needed to know what was going on.
“Just… Be careful,” Aizel told me before he backed up. Not moving too fast, he grabbed Zhara and Wells and forced them to leave.
Echo’s body shook, and I could tell he was trying to hold it together. Moving my hand from his dick, I slowly slid it up. I stilled when he pressed his body against mine, digging the tree into my back again, warning me with his body to be careful. But then carefully, deliberately, I moved my hand to rest lightly on his waist.
“Echo?” I murmured.
The snap of twigs caught my attention before a few students stumbled into the clearing. They started laughing when they caught sight of us.
One sneered. “Fucking between classes?”
“Incubi are known for thinking with their cocks. It’s all they’re good for,” the second person spat.
A shock of power tore through the clearing, and I shielded my face. My instincts told me to protect myself even though there was probably nothing I could do against the force of this magick.
Choking and gurgling got my attention, and I lowered my hand enough to see one student dead. With blood on his lips, he stared up at the sky with empty eyes. The second student was hovering in the air, struggling to breathe. Something invisible had clamped around his throat.
‘Beastie,’ Cassius murmured, his voice thick. It was hard to tell what he was feeling, but I thought I detected hints of both lust and anxiety.
‘Cas. Put up a shield between us until this is over.’
‘He’s about to ? —’
‘I know,’ I said softly, swallowing hard.
Feeling the weight of my gaze, Echo lifted his head, meeting my stare. Gold and green eyes, with just a touch of blue in his right eye, drew me in. A cocky grin curved his lips before he leaned closer until only a breath of space was between our mouths.
“I’m going to cover you in their blood then fuck you until you break.”
I lifted my chin in defiance. “Stop playing with your toys. Break him.”
I wasn’t going to fight him, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to cower in fear of him anymore. Get a grip, Isla. “Show me what kind of man you are, Echo. Let’s see if you measure up.”
Echo snarled a second before his power slammed the remaining student into a nearby tree. A sickening crack sounded, then he crumpled to the ground, part of his spine sticking out of his neck. Echo ordered me to stay put, then he prowled over to the bodies.
What followed was one of the most gruesome things I’d ever seen. He tore apart the bodies with his hands, ripping skin and muscle from bone. Sometimes, he used his teeth. When he finally stopped, chest heaving, he was covered in blood. He was just… brutal yet so beautiful. I shouldn’t have found it hot as hell, but I did.
Crooking a finger, he silently told me to come to him.
‘Be safe, beastie. If he tries to kill you, I’m coming out.’
Cassius threw up the mental shield as I took my first step toward Echo. When I reached him, he was more gentle than I thought he would be. His fingertips skimmed my flesh as he undressed me. Anytime I tried to help, he’d growl until I stopped and let him take his time.
From how Aizel had tried to describe a rut, I was expecting something harsher, more violent, but Echo seemed to be savoring this moment until I stood naked before him.
Then he started to paint me in blood.
He didn’t leave a single part of me untouched. His skilled fingers traveled my body, teasing me. When Echo touched my pussy, a satisfied male laugh rumbled through him at my obvious arousal before he sank two fingers inside of me, making us both groan.
He stared at me, his cheeks flushed with arousal, and in that moment, I realized I was in trouble. The rut was one thing, but this incubus… He was something else altogether. Not wanting to overthink, I rocked up on my tiptoes and kissed him.
It was simply a soft kiss, a way to connect with him, but then he took over. Threading his hand in my hair, Echo seized control with ease. His tongue teased my lower lip until I opened up and let him in. We groaned together, and I pressed my body against his, hating the feel of his clothes between us.
I broke the kiss a few minutes later, gasping for air. “I need more.”
“You take what I give you, Isla. Nothing more and nothing less. I know just where we can go for some uninterrupted time together.”
He scooped me up and walked up to the greenhouse, bringing us in before kicking the door closed. I jolted with surprise, having forgotten it was nearby. Carefully walking along the path, he made his way to the inner sanctum. The small circular room was still clean, not a speck of dust to be seen.
Echo tossed me onto the bed, chuckling roughly when I squeaked. I wasn’t used to being thrown around as if I weighed nothing.
“Let’s see how fun you are, Isla,” he rasped, slowly pulling off his own clothes. “I’ve been starving for days , and I’m not leaving until I’m satisfied.”
“What about me?” I asked, licking my lips.
“This isn’t about you, and honestly, I don’t give a shit. My other partners never complained… though I suppose they never got a chance to.”
“Why not?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Because they died.”
Died?!