Chapter 36
Reid’s lips brush mine more gently than I expect.
A trial more than a kiss. At first I think he’s testing me—do I really want this?
Can I handle it? But as his hands slide up my back and pull me closer, I realize that’s not it.
He’s testing himself. Seeing if he can handle tasting me.
If he can hold himself back from drinking my soul.
That small realization—the agony he’s putting himself through to kiss me—is more sexually gratifying than most actual sex I’ve had.
I’m overridden with longing to push him to the brink.
To toe that line between danger and desire.
I slide my hands up his powerful chest and around his neck.
My fingers twine in the silky curls at his nape, and his breath rushes out against my lips.
Molten, merciless. Decadent, deep. I sink into him like a spoon in honey.
His lips part mine, and his tongue sweeps into my mouth.
It’s almost more than I can take. In fact, I’m leaning so far into him, if he were to move aside, I’d topple face-first onto the countertop behind him.
He’s anchoring us completely as his hand slides around my neck and into my hair and his mouth moves like the tides against my own.
I can’t remember the last time kissing felt like this.
I’ve lost myself in him and have no desire to return.
Let me stay here, where Reid’s sole focus is drawing pleasure from me.
Here, where his tongue is brushing mine and his hands are grasping at my hair and the curve of my waist. Where I have to fight to stay upright and not moan obscenely. Both are beginning to prove difficult.
When I feel his hardness against my stomach, I fail to suppress a noise of eager need. His fingers scrape roughly along the length of my sides. Then he’s gripping my hips and I’m licking at his tongue. Feeling his erection throb. I push my hands beneath his shirt. His skin is fire. I want to burn.
“Huntress,” he warns. “I can’t—”
“Shh,” I murmur against his mouth. Do not let this end.
He captures my bottom lip between his teeth and bites until I whimper.
His hands have found the curve of my ass.
The closer we press, the more I can feel his heart racing.
His pulse thrumming in all those masculine veins on his forearms. I want them caged over me while he pounds me into oblivion.
I want to be choked by that demonic strength until every breath of mine is up to him.
My depraved thoughts must be manifesting in our kiss, because Reid releases a groan and drives us back, around his desk, and against the wall, his hand catching the back of my head before I’m knocked senseless.
Like a switch has been flipped, he shoves the thin fabric of my top up until his hands span my ribs and his fingertips brush the underside of my bra.
I arch toward him. More, I want to scream. More. I haven’t been kissed like this in…No, I’ve never been kissed like this. I’ve never been kissed by something as powerful as myself. I hope my stiches split.
He grasps me tightly as I release his mouth to lick the column of his neck.
The involuntary choked noise he makes will play in my head every night for the next calendar year.
I’ll make myself come to the memory of that sound.
I think of that as I suck and bite his skin.
As he murmurs my name and presses his hand over my head to catch his breath.
I can hear his soft groan as I push my body against that massive length.
Feel it twitch as I kiss as close to his collarbone as his damn shirt will allow.
As I search for the waistband of his pants to yank them down.
“Viv,” he groans. “You’re destroying me.”
With his free hand, he pulls the cup of my bra down, and his calloused fingers graze the skin of my breast. Need pools in my core—I am slick and aching.
I’m whimpering with every gentle brush of his thumb over my nipple, every scrape of his teeth on my neck, every grind of whatever part of my body I can fuse against him.
And then he pulls back with a low growl. When I tug at his shirt, he steps away, fists clenched, breaths hard and ragged. I survey him and my heart thuds like a war drum. His hair is waving in all the wrong directions. Shirt stretched out at the neck, face flushed.
“Why’d you stop?” I breathe.
He looks like he’s barely survived a hurricane. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
He’d better be a dirty liar. “Ever?”
Reid shakes his head, still catching his breath. His eyes are too dangerous, those twin sapphires shining. “That was our first kiss, huntress. Not our last.”
When I wake up, I’m still coiled tight as a wire. I know I slept, because it was night when I walked back to my dorm in a daze, and now it’s morning, but I don’t feel like any time has passed. All I can think about is seeing Reid again. In a very carnal, naked way.
I can tell from the morning light that it’s going to be a gorgeous November day.
Clear and the kind of icy cold that chills your lungs and wakes you up.
Just what I need to shake off whatever caged-animal level of ferocity has overtaken me.
I make all kinds of promises to myself to let this doomed attraction go, and then I check my phone.
I have a text from an unknown number that reads Get back safe?
Butterflies take flight inside my chest, and I fight the urge to curl up into a vibrating little ball.
It’s a new experience, crushing this hard.
I try to remember the last time I got anything resembling butterflies over someone and come up empty.
Who is this? I send back after adding Reid’s name in my phone.
Ouch, my ego.
I stare at the phone until he adds, I palmed your ass last night? And gave you stitches?
Doesn’t ring any bells!
Come back to my place. I’ll ring some bells for you.
I snort and roll my face into my pillow.
“What’s got you all moony?” Sophia rasps before unleashing a yawn. She always gets throaty the morning after she’s been partying, but today is bullfrog level. Light trickles through the curtains and gilds her bed head like a golden goose’s nest.
“Nobody,” I say, before I realize my mistake. “Nothing.”
Sophia abandons her bed and crawls into mine. I don’t even try to hide the phone from her.
“Holy shit,” she croaks.
We stare at the text exchange. “Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” I repeat. “We only kissed.”
“ONLY KISSED?”
“Soph,” I whine, clutching my ringing head. “My ear.”
“I can’t believe you kissed a demon. Something even I have never done. That’s an accomplishment few achieve.”
I laugh despite myself. “What are you, some kind of sexual black belt?”
She sits up on one elbow, eyes crinkled with sleep. “That’s right. And the student is not yet ready to become the master.”
“I don’t know what’s worse—that he’s a demon or that he’s our instructor.”
“That’s half the fun.” When I roll my eyes, she groans. “Come on, you’ve never heard of ‘Hot for Teacher’? Plus, he’s only like…six years older than you in human years.”
“Where are you coming up with that conversion rate?”
Sophia shrugs. “One of the many things they teach you to become a sexual black belt.”
With a begrudging laugh I roll right over her out of bed and search the closet for my black silk miniskirt and Harker crew. I have to catch Lisette before her office hours are over if I have any hope of not failing her class.
“What was it like?” Sophia asks from my bed. “Kissing a demon? Did he try to steal your soul?”
The first word that pops into my head is intoxicating, but that sounds like something a wino housewife dating the pool boy might say, so I go with “It was a normal kiss.”
Sophia makes a tsking sound. “You lying slut.”
“Jesus, Soph.”
“I tell you all the dirty details of my sexual escapades.”
I yank on my loafers. “And I’ll be sending you my therapy bill for that.”
“You love it. Where are you going?”
“I’m biting the bullet and asking Lisette for help on this essay. Lunch after?”
Sophia rolls over, closing her eyes. “You’re a braver woman than I. I’ll have noodles waiting for you in the commons.”
I grin and step into the bathroom, where I examine my reflection in the mirror.
I’m hunting for traces of last night, though I have no idea what I’m hoping to find.
I want to look changed somehow. Find evidence on myself of being his.
My lips are a little bruised, my slate eyes ringed in red from lack of sleep.
My hair knotted where he held it. A shiver of pleasure runs through me at the memory. I brush the strands in a daze.
“Okay, all jokes aside, it was unlike any—” But when I come back out, Sophia’s already snoring in my bed.
I find Lisette in her classroom, sweet coffee steaming on her desk, shoes kicked off as she grades a paper.
“Hi, Professor,” I chime in my best teacher’s pet voice.
“Miss Abbot,” she replies, eyes still on her desk.
“I had a few questions about this essay…” The essay I accidentally gave us all by passing notes about harpies on the first day of class. I could knee myself in the teeth.
Lisette still doesn’t bother to look up. She only rubs absently at her temples as she reads through her notes. “You won’t be permitted to turn it in late.”
There’s something pointed in her phrasing. As if she knows I have a habit of that, though she doesn’t know me at all. I try not to scowl—I do not like this woman.
“I was going to ask if harpy discrimination among deviants might be related to their connection to the astral plane.” This essay is proving impossible—deviant speciesism is as complicated as it is pointless.
“They have wings like many lymantrian creatures, and a few of my texts describe harpies getting power from lymantrian flora and fauna, which I can only imagine deviants would look down upon—”
“They do have a penchant for collecting lymantrian florals. Lotuses, asphodels—”
The word makes my muscles tense. “Asphodels?”
With an exaggerated sigh she looks up, lowering her glasses. “Yes, Miss Abbot.”
“And…” I will my voice to stay neutral. “Where do those usually grow?”
“As far from the underworld as they can get.”
Something inflates inside me. The highest point in the school is the planetarium. Peter has only told me that fifty thousand times. I might have stumbled onto a new lead.
“Of course. My bad,” I say, turning for the door. “See you tomorrow.”
“Miss Abbot.”
I spin, girding myself for the worst.
“What did I tell you about looking for trouble?”
“What? I’m not—”
“I’ve known many hunters like you. Rash, impatient, selfish—”
My blood heats. “Why do you have a problem with me?”
“The better question might be why do you have a problem doing what you are told?”
“I don’t—”
“Hear me when I say this, Miss Abbot. Focus on your schoolwork and your training. I’d hate to see you harmed before you grow to your full potential as a hunter.”
I bite my tongue until I taste iron. “Is that a threat?”
Lisette rolls her eyes, but there’s something in her expression. A knowing. “Don’t be absurd.” She motions for the door behind me. “Please. I have papers to grade.”
On my way out of Lisette’s classroom, cheeks still hot with irritation, I text in the group chat: Noodles are off. Heading to the planetarium. Lisette let it slip the asphodels might be there.
Godspeed Nancy Drew, Sophia writes back.
I reply with She really doesn’t give you guys a weird feeling?
You mean between my legs? Elliot writes. Because, yes.
I scowl at my phone. Nauseating, thanks.
Something’s always nagged at me about her, but if she was a deviant of any kind, I would know, right? Peter, has it ever been possible for a deviant to disguise themselves around aeons? So they couldn’t be sensed?
Sophia chimes in. No way Lisette is a deviant. Someone would have figured that out by now.
With very dark magic, it’s possible, Peter writes. A powerful turned witch could mask themselves or others.
Ice runs through my veins. Is it possible Reid isn’t the only deviant employed at this school?
I briefly debate inviting him to scope out the planetarium with me.
Nothing safer than a little demon backup.
But after last night, a new layer has been draped across our already-complicated relationship.
I’m not sure I want our first postkiss interaction to be steeped in Harker business.
Being inside the iconic dome at the top of Mortimer Tower is slightly anticlimactic.
I click on the lights to reveal a circular theater only big enough to seat a class of forty, and judging by the smell of mothballs, one hasn’t been taught here in some time.
The walls are blanketed in soundproof insulation, and a rounded glass roof curves over the entire room.
A sky view for every seat. I slide my finger along the back of one and come up with enough dust to fill a vacuum.
A garden is a strange thing to find in a planetarium, so without much to go on, I try a few locked cabinets, a control panel by the nosebleeds, a dead bolt on a glass case with moon rocks inside, but no dice.
Then, even though I’m in a miniskirt, I crawl under the musty fold-down chairs until I know the silk is ruined and search for hidden keyholes or little doors beneath the seats.
I’m halfway beneath row G when I hear a rumble of a laugh. “So that’s the view I’ve heard so much about.”