Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Briony
I follow Fox up the ladder until we reach a wooden trapdoor blocking our way. Fox presses against it but it’s obviously locked, and he has to use his magic to break through whatever’s holding the trapdoor in place. Then carefully he pushes it back, telling me to wait as he disappears through.
I hold my breath, my hand hovering in the air, ready to strike at danger if needed, prepared to save him if necessary. But after a few moments he calls my name and tells me it’s safe to come up.
I emerge into another dark, dank, and empty room.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask him.
“Yes,” the Professor says. “Put out the light, Briony.”
I do as he says, and immediately we’re plunged into a darkness so black I can’t see anything beyond the end of my nose. Then I feel Fox take my hand in his and lead me. His eyesight is much better than mine, especially in the darkness.
I hear the creak of a door and we emerge into a corridor. This time there is a little light, and immediately I recognize where we are. The Professor’s room is only a few yards further on. We hurry there quickly, finding the door once again locked.
I expect him to snap it open with his magic almost immediately, but he has his shadows tentatively crawling across the doorway instead.
“Whoever secured the door,” Fox says, “may have placed an alarm spell.”
“What does that do?”
“It will alert whoever is the owner of the spell that it is being tampered with. They’ll know I’ve entered my classroom.”
His shadows continue to crawl over the door.
“So we can’t go in?” I say.
The Professor smirks at me. “It’s pretty crude magic,” he says, “and easily,” he pauses, “undone.”
The door snaps open and swings back on its hinges.
“Who placed the alarming spell on your door?” I ask.
“Sterling,” he says. “Has the marks of his magic all over it.”
“So he’s expecting you to come back.”
“Perhaps,” the Professor says. “But then again Sterling is a paranoid, cynical man. Who knows?”
We step inside his classroom and he uses his own magic to light the space.
It hasn’t changed from the last time I was here desperate to find Fox after he’d gone missing during the trial.
The Empress’s elite guard had ransacked his room looking for clues, and the contents of the classroom – the books, the benches, even the duster and chalk – lay scattered across the room.
“They were searching for clues,” I say, “trying to work out where you’d gone.”
Fox slams the door shut with irritation and locks it.
“I see they took a lot of care in the process,” he scoffs.
But he doesn’t stop to tidy the classroom. With my hand still in his, he drags me to his apartment at the back of the room.
This has fared no better: the contents of his drawers, his wardrobe, his bookshelf, even the covers on his bed, are strewn everywhere.
He shakes his head with even more irritation, and then he has his shadows swimming across the room, quickly reordering and repairing all the mess and damage until, in a matter of minutes, the room looks as if it hasn’t been touched at all.
The orderly neatness of Fox is restored to his room.
He shrugs off the tight-fitting jacket and lights a fire in the hearth, warmth immediately swimming through the cold dungeon room. I go stand in front of it, heating my numb hands and stiff toes in front of the dancing flames.
When feeling starts to creep back into my limbs, I turn back to the Professor, who’s still straightening things on his desk and examining the books on his bookcase.
“Did they take anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing I can tell. There wasn’t really anything to find. I have nothing to hide, Briony.”
“I know that.” I nod. “I have to go and find Fly and Clare,” I tell him, already striding towards the door.
He steps in front of me, blocking my path, and points to the small clock that sits above the fireplace.
“Briony, it’s the middle of the damn night.”
I glance towards the clock face. He’s right.
I had no idea. I’d completely lost track of all time with everything that’s happened.
It seems like only yesterday I was facing Madame in the trial, fighting demons in the grotto.
So much has happened since that point. My visit to the palace, the state banquet, our flight out to the border, our battle through the demon realm, finding Fox at Crow’s Fort and having to smash our way back into our own realm. Everything has happened so quickly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, shaking my head. “I still need to find them.”
“Briony. You go waking them up in the middle of the night, you’re going to give them a heart attack. Besides which, it’ll be easier to move among the other students when school is in progress.”
“You think there are soldiers out there now, watching the pathways?”
He nods solemnly. “It’s what I would do,” he says, “if I was in charge.”
“So we wait until morning.” I nod. I’m slowly learning to be patient, as hard as it is.
The Professor steps towards me and rests his hands on my shoulders. His touch, once again, no longer icy cold.
“Get some rest now,” he says. “When was the last time you slept in a bed?”
I peer towards the Professor’s bed. It’s not as narrow or as uncomfortable as the bed I had in my room in the Academy Tower, but it’s no prince’s bed, certainly nothing like the bed in the palace.
It’s a single, and the nights I’ve spent with the Professor – the rare chances I had to spend the night – it was a squash to fit the both of us in, particularly considering the Professor’s impressive size.
Still, it was infinitely more comfortable than anything I ever slept on back in Slate Quarter, and the comfortableness of the bed is definitely increased by the man I’ve shared it with.
Our eyes are fixed on each other as we strip off our clothes, and soon my heart is beating more rapidly in my chest and my skin is flushed with desire.
Fox no longer has the hollow, sunken cheeks of a starving man or the withered frame.
He looks just like he’d always done. Strong. Handsome. Beautiful.
We race towards the bed, the stone cold on the soles of my feet, and snuggle under the covers together.
“You still cold, sweetheart?” he asks, attempting to wriggle away from me, knowing his body is usually like sleeping with a block of ice.
I scamper after him, snuggling up to him and resting my cheek against his chest, maneuvering his arm to tuck around me.
“I’m not cold,” I say. “And Professor—”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Neither are you.”
He peers down at me with a quizzical look on his face.
“Don’t you feel it?” I ask him. “There’s some warmth to your skin, to your blood. It’s nothing like a normal person’s – like mine or Beaufort’s, or even Dray’s – but you aren’t stony cold like you used to be.”
“Really?” he says.
“You don’t feel it?”
“Maybe. Perhaps. I thought I was imagining it.”
“What can it mean?”
“You, Briony. Your blood in my veins.”
I shake my head. “Every creature you’ve fed from, Professor, has been warm-blooded – unless you’ve been feeding off lizards and snakes.”
His lip curls. “No,” he says. “I haven’t.”
“I’m no different from the deer,” I say.
“No different?” he says, laughing, his whole face brightening in a smile that has my heart skipping. “You’re completely different, Briony. You’re one of a kind. A lumomancer.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
He smooths the hair away from my face and kisses the crown of my head gently.
“Try to sleep now, sweetheart.”
But asking me to sleep when I’m lying naked in bed with him is like asking me to stop breathing or remove my own arm from my body. It’s utterly impossible and completely counterintuitive. I’m lying in my fated mate’s arms and my body wants more of him. All of him.
I missed him while he was gone. I missed this closeness between us.
I place a warm kiss on the smooth skin of his chest, basking in the strange warmth of it against the tender skin of my lips.
“Sleep, Briony,” he tells me in that booming voice of his – which is a mistake because that voice has always sent shivers down my spine.
“I don’t want to sleep,” I say.
I push against his shoulder, rolling him until he’s flat on his back. Then I’m crawling over his body until I’m sitting, straddling his lap.
He gazes up at me. “This isn’t sleeping, Miss Storm.”
“I can close my eyes and pretend I’m asleep if you prefer, Professor.”
He reaches up, brushes my hair over my shoulder, then traces his fingertips over my shoulder, down my breastbone to my breasts. He inhales an unneeded breath of air and then traces the curve of my breasts to the peaks of my hardening nipples.
“Such a brat,” he mutters.
Then his fingers sweep back up to my neck, and his eyes flash a hungry red.
“You can take some if you want,” I say.
He growls and wraps his fingers around my throat.
“Don’t tempt me, Briony. I’ve taken enough for today. I need no more.”
“But it feels so good,” I whine, swiveling my hips and grinding myself against his stiffening cock. “When your fangs are in my neck. It feels so good.”
He groans. His hand tightens around my throat, and for a moment I think I’ve tempted him far enough. Then his grip slackens, and so does his body, and that flash of crimson red vanishes from his eyes, the swirl of ocean blue returning instead to his amber gaze.
“Not tonight, my little brat,” he says. “Tonight you’ll have to be content with my cock deep inside your pussy.”
Before I know what he’s doing, he’s spun me around 180 degrees, taking a grip of my hips, lifting me up and then slamming me down on his waiting cock.
I’ve never done it this way before – straddling his lap but facing away from him – and I’m about to complain.
I want to see his face, his beautiful, jaw-droppingly handsome face.
A face that probably has every girl and boy in this academy fantasizing.
But then he’s lifting me up and slamming me down again, and I understand exactly why he’s positioned me this way. It hits every sensitive part inside me and I cry out from the ecstasy of it.
“Do you like that, Miss Storm?” he asks me, his fingers sinking into my flesh, his thumb sweeping over the globes of my ass.
I can’t respond. Not when he does it again, and stars shoot across my vision.
“I said, Miss Storm,” he repeats, “do you like that? You should know by now to respond when your teacher asks you a question.”
“It feels so good, Fox. Too good,” I moan.
“You know what’ll make it even better, my little mate?”
I shake my head frantically from side to side, already feeling the tears welling in my eyes because it’s too much, too good. I’m not sure I can bear it.
“Touch yourself,” he says.
“W-w-w-what?” I stammer.
“Touch yourself. Touch that sensitive little nub of yours while you bounce on my cock. Make yourself come.”
I don’t think I need to do that to come. The position he has me in, the way he’s moving me, the things he’s saying to me – they already have me dancing dangerously close to the edge. But I’m too lost in feeling to argue with him.
So I press my fingers between my pussy lips and rub at my clit as he continues to bounce me up and down on his cock.
“Are you touching yourself, Miss Storm?” he grunts.
“Yes… yes,” I moan.
“Yes, what?” he asks.
“Yes, Professor.”
“Good girl,” he says, and then his thumb is nudging between my ass cheeks.
He finds my hole and rings it, strokes it, as I continue to bounce on him, as I continue to touch myself.
And as I come, he sinks his thumb deep inside my ass.
I squeeze around his digit and his cock and soon he’s grunting and coming himself.
He’s still stroking at my asshole as I lie back down beside him, and snuggle up into his arms; sweaty, sated, contented. He kisses my forehead, the tip of my nose, my chin, my cheek, and last of all, my neck, inhaling my scent as he does.
“Has anyone ever touched you here before, Miss Storm?” he asks me.
“What – my throat?” I ask sleepily.
“No.” He chuckles softly. “Here.” He rings my hole.
“Beaufort,” I say. “With his fingers.”
“Has he had you here?”
“No.” He growls, rolling up and peering down at me. “I want you to have me there.”
“You can’t just do it like that, Briony. It could hurt you. You need to be prepared. You need to be trained to take a cock in the ass.”
I walk my fingers up his chest, take ahold of his chin between my finger and thumb, and squeeze.
“Then train me, Professor,” I tell him, “because you may have noticed I have more than one mate. And once I have them back, I’m going to want to do this with all of you.”
“Together?” he asks.
I nod. “I think that’s the way it’s meant to be, don’t you?”
He nods too. “Maybe once upon a time, that idea would have seemed ridiculous. I’d never considered sharing a girl before.
I’d never wanted to. But with you, everything is different, Briony.
You don’t just belong to me; you belong to them too.
Fate has bound and wound us together in a web of destiny.
And if you want to be shared, then I will share you. ”
“I do, I do want to be shared, Professor.” I purr. His eyes darken.
“On your hands and knees, Miss Storm.”
I raise an eyebrow, but then I’m moving to position myself that way on the bed, my heart thumping with anticipation.
“Is this going to hurt?” I ask, not really feeling afraid.
He chuckles, positioning himself behind me, spreading my ass cheeks open with his hands.
“Anything but, sweetheart. I think you’re gonna like it. I think you’re gonna like it a lot.”
And then the Professor eats out my ass.