Chapter 12
Twelve
Avalon
I watched some girl give Vox Vylan a blowjob and tried not to examine my feelings on the matter. I didn’t look too long at the burning in my gut that felt a little like lust. I hated that prick; if some little sycophant wanted to take his microdick in her mouth, so be it.
I sighed, not prone to lying to myself, especially when his cock was so obviously not a microdick. The girl was gagging as it hit the back of her throat, and it wasn’t even halfway past her lips.
Turning away, I looked back at Hayle, who was watching me with dark eyes. “You okay?”
I shrugged. I was okay. Honestly, I could have stood up and demanded he stop teasing me with his air a lot earlier, but the feel of the breeze gently caressing my leg had been… erotic. Even if the manipulator of the element was a psycho.
“I’m fine. He was just being an asshole.”
Hayle laughed. “That’s his default.” The silence settled back between us, and the mirth slowly left his face. “He’s powerful, though. Stay out of his way if you can.”
Shaking my head, I gave him a sad smile. “You’re all dangerous to me, Hayle. I shouldn’t even be here.” I was breaking my own rules, and this was my karmic justice. I looked around for Viana and her guys, but they seemed to be joining an orgy in the corner of the dorm.
Ah, sex. The only time Lines didn’t matter.
I wouldn’t drag them away, but I still stood. “Tell Viana I’ve gone home?”
Hayle reached up and grabbed my hand. “Don’t let him chase you out,” he said softly, and I stared down at our connected hands. His skin was so hot, almost like he was running a fever, and his eyes were imploring. He wanted me to stay, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to be the plaything for a powerful man. If I wanted that, I could have stayed in the wilds of the Ninth Line lands and married some rugged mountain lord.
The warmth of Hayle’s skin on mine seemed to be running through my veins, heating my body, or maybe it was the desire in his gaze. It was muddling my thoughts, flaying my willpower so that I was helpless to resist his next words.
“Stay, Avalon. For me?”
This was dangerous; nothing good could come from forming an attachment to the man in front of me. “Why?”
The tilt of Hayle’s head at my question was undeniably animalistic. The Master of Beasts. “I thought that was obvious?” he rumbled, his deep voice like a caress.
I laughed, a crazed, almost demented sound. “Nothing about this place, or you and these people, is obvious, Hayle.” I waved a hand around the room as I leaned closer. “I have no idea why Vox keeps seeking me out to torment me. No idea why this place even exists if we aren’t at war.” Closer I went, until we were almost nose to nose. “I definitely have no idea why you gave me a hound bodyguard, or why you invited me to this party, or what your interest in me even is. None of it is obvious.” I went to move away, but Hayle captured my face between his palms.
“I want you to stay because you’ve captivated me since the day you stared down Lucio’s war cat in the atrium to save a stolt. Something inside my chest knows you, wants you, and while I don’t fully understand it either, I trust my instincts above all else. My hounds might actually like you more than me.”
Braxus gave a short yip from somewhere, but I couldn’t turn to look. Because Hayle was holding me tightly, not with his hands, but with the heat of his gaze.
“So sit back down and get to know me. I’ll help you make sense of all this.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Hayle Taeme, so if this is an elaborate ruse to get the poor little Ninth Line country mouse into bed, you’re out of luck.” I gave him a hard look. “And if you’re thinking of pressing your obvious advantage over me, you should know I’ve castrated a lot of barn cats in my life, and I’m pretty sure the concept is the same with people.”
Hayle threw back his head and laughed, dropping one hand to cover his dick. “Duly noted, Avalon Halhed. I won’t even suggest taking you to bed until you climb onto my lap and ask me so prettily for what you want.”
It didn’t escape me that both powerful Heirs had suggested I would beg for their attention eventually, but with Hayle, the temptation was too real.
Someone was making pornographic noises, and I couldn’t help but look. The girl kneeling in front of Vox was making a show of it, either for the crowd at the party or for Vox himself. But the Heir had his eyes screwed tightly shut, his head tipped back, and his lips parted in pleasure. His fingers flexed in the girl’s hair as his body tensed. I’d learned enough about sex from books and stable boys that I knew he was about to blow, and I couldn’t look away.
When his eyes snapped open and met mine, there was something burning hot in them. I didn’t have time to look away and pretend I wasn’t staring at him.
No, he held my gaze as he came in someone else’s mouth, and I should’ve felt disgusted, but instead I felt… hot. Aroused. Disgusted with myself. My pussy clenched—that traitor—and when he looked down at the girl slipping off his cock, I dragged my eyes back to the man beside me.
Hayle was also watching Vox get off, his face unreadable. However, when he turned back to me, he gave me a lopsided grin. “I knew the Heir to the Throne was a one-touch fuck,” he murmured against my ear, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
I purposefully didn’t look at Vox Vylan the rest of the night, or at the girl on his lap. Instead, I concentrated on Hayle, and he made it so easy. He was like a sun the entire party revolved around. He was warm and engaging, and funny. He got me drinks, asked me questions, told me stories until I was sure I was going to wet myself with laughter. People came and went from his stratosphere like moths to a flame.
As the night went on, I forgot more and more why it was a bad idea to fall for Hayle Taeme. He loved his hounds, his home, and most of all, he loved his family. It was right there in every anecdote, every dream, every funny story he shared.
Right now, he was telling me about the time that Lucio had wanted them to prove themselves against their older brothers by doing some ancient ritual that involved a bonfire and being shirtless with mud smeared on their chests. But when they couldn’t get the fire started, Lucio had tried pouring his father’s home-distilled alcohol on the flames and got third-degree burns to his nipples.
“To this day, he can’t grow chest hair,” Hayle said conspiratorially, pointing over at Lucio, who’d lost his shirt at some point during the night. He was indeed hairless. I couldn’t draw breath through my laughter.
Braxus and Alucius looked relaxed, but both were clearly keeping an eye on the people in the dorm, and it felt nice to just let go. To be happy.
I was pressing closer and closer to Hayle, and the drinks were definitely helping me feel warm and free and a little light-headed. I needed to get out of here before I made stupid decisions and begged him to kiss me already.
As I stood, Hayle stood with me. He was so warm and alive, and for a moment, nothing mattered. Not my past, not my future. It was a heady feeling. “I should go,” I murmured, and he nodded.
“Dance with me, just once, then I’ll walk you home?”
Logically, I knew I should tell him that I didn’t want to dance, that I could find my own way down a couple of flights of stairs, but I didn’t. Instead, I took his outstretched hand and allowed him to lead me to the living room, which was currently doubling as a dancefloor.
The song playing was slow and undulating, a song made for sex and hedonistic pleasures. Hayle’s hands landed on my hips, and he pulled me closer. This wasn’t like the polite waltzes I’d been taught by etiquette tutors. This was something else entirely, something that would make Madam Proctor, my dance instructor, have a stroke.
His leg went between mine, and he hooked my hands around his neck. “I’m so out of my depth,” I muttered beneath my breath, but Hayle just chuckled, moving me to the music.
“Don’t you dance up there in the Ninth?”
I could feel the hard press of his body, including his dick, and I was desperately trying not to think about it. Had I mentioned his cock was hard too? “Not like this.”
His hands wandered up my spine, and he smiled down at me. That smile should be illegal. Maybe that was his magic really; getting girls to lift their skirts with just a smile. I knew I was helpless to resist.
“Relax, Avalon,” he whispered against my ear. “Feel the music. Let it flow through you into me.” I was so close to him now that if my father could see me, he would have had me thrown in a temple to devote myself to the Goddess quicker than you could say whore. But Father wasn’t here. He would never know that Hayle was almost fucking me with our clothes on, and that I wanted more. So, so much more.
I wanted to feel. I wanted someone to look at me like Hayle was right now, every day and forever.
Shaking away the dangerous thoughts, I stepped back slowly, and Hayle let me go. His eyes were burning with desire. He could have had any person here, and he was undressing me with his eyes. He let me put space between us, but his fingertips remained on my body, like he was finding it difficult. Wishful thinking on my behalf.
He let out a shuddering breath, before a self-deprecating smile crossed his face. “Give me a minute, then I’ll walk you back to your dorm,” he said softly, and I made the mistake of looking down between us. At the hard line of his cock.
Holy shit, Viana was right. Definitely a horse shifter.
“Avalon, if you don’t stop looking at my cock like that…” The gentle threat was there, but the threat was sounding more like a promise of pleasure. With willpower I didn’t know I possessed, I lifted my focus back to his forehead, then down to his laughing eyes. My face felt like it was on fire, and he chuckled deep in his chest; I could almost feel the sound against my skin. “I’m not sure the doe-eyed look is much better. Come, let’s go.”
He led me off the dancefloor, and I couldn’t help but look over at Vox Vylan one more time. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I gave him a rude gesture in return. My etiquette tutor would have been horrified that I’d given the two-fingered salute to the Heir of the Goddess-damned First Line.
More surprising was the fact that Vox threw back his head and laughed, making everyone in the room turn toward him. Hayle looked between us, but shuffled me out of the Third Line dorms and into the stairwell.
Shaking his head at me, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, his fingers brushing over my bare skin, making goosebumps of pleasure rise in their wake. “I bet you were the kind of kid who stuck their head in a beehive just to see how it worked, weren’t you, Avalon Halhed? Just beware that it doesn’t come back to bite you.”
“Lucky I’m friends with the Prince of Beasts then, isn’t it? A predator with even bigger teeth,” I said haughtily, though it was hard to hold back my grin.
“A Prince, am I? Or was it a predator?” he growled, picking me up and walking down the stairs as sure-footed as one of the wild mountain goats near my home. Still, I squealed and wiggled to get down.
“Hayle, if you drop me down these stairs, I’ll kick your ass,” I warned, making him laugh again. He shifted me in his arms and looked down at me. I realized we were already at the atrium—the halfway point between us and them.
“I’d really like to kiss you,” he whispered, and my heart stopped beating.
It was so foolish, but my tongue darted out, wetting my lips. “I’d like that too,” I whispered, like the silly little idiot I was.
He lowered me slightly, until my feet barely touched the ground, and then he kissed me softly. Just a brush of his lips against mine. He sighed, or maybe it was me, and brushed another kiss across my lower lip once more.
“I knew it would be perfect,” he whispered. Then he scooped me back up in his arms and all but ran down the rest of the stairs. I hung on tight, and when we stopped outside my floor, I looked up at him.
He backed me up against the door to my dorm and kissed me again, but there was nothing soft about this kiss. Nothing delicate. He plundered my mouth with his own, his tongue stroking along mine, tempting me to throw caution to the wind and invite him in. To have a night of something I would remember forever, even if I left it all behind in two years.
Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than that. Nothing more than to see a gloriously naked Hayle. To feel every inch of his skin. To taste him intimately. Fuck the consequences and my goals and Boellium and the Lines.
But Hayle dragged his lips from mine and took a small step away. His lips curled at the edges in a grin that set my soul on fire. “You’re going to ruin me, Avalon Halhed, and I can’t wait.” One more brush of his lips, and then he was climbing the stairs.
I watched him go, forever changed.