Chapter 27 Nyx #3
“I don’t know what Ramsey’s talking about, you’re hilarious.
” He straightens to his full height and extends his wings out from behind his back, blocking out the sun.
When he drops back down to his forelegs, his head snakes around me until I’m surrounded by the thick muscle of his neck, watching as the webbed spines flex up and down.
“Can... can I touch you?” I ask hesitantly, facing him.
I don’t know how much he—either the dragon or the man—can understand me right now, but I’m assuming it’s generally frowned upon to touch a dragon without permission.
He rests his head and slowly blinks again, reminding me of a cat who’s decided you’re worthy of being its pet.
Cautiously, I extend my arm to the tip of his nose as he exhales from the two scaly nostrils on either side.
The moment I touch him, a jolt of static shock makes my arm go numb, and then a twelve-ton dragon sneezes on me.
Which I’m sure is a sentence that has never been uttered before in the history of mankind. I freeze, eyes closed, as the dragon unwinds from where he’s wrapped around me and moments later I hear Ramsey’s footsteps crunch through the snow.
“Oh fuck, okay hold still.”
“Hold still? Are you fucking kidding me?” except it sounds more like “Hmmph hmm? Mmr oo hukkin hiddng me?” because I can’t open my mouth, or eyes, or breathe.
Oh God, I think I’m going to vomit.
“Here, let me—” he gently takes my chin and tilts my head back so he can wipe my face with his discarded shirt. “I am so sorry.”
Never have I wanted to shoot laser beams from my eyes like Cyclops more than now.
“That’s never happened before, I swear,” he tries not to laugh.
When my eyes and mouth are finally clear, I glare at him. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
With that, he doubles over, putting his hands on his knees and laughing until tears stream down his face. Despite dripping dragon snot, I can’t stop the hysterical laugh that escapes.
“Okay but,” he gasps between breaths, “it could have been so much worse.”
I flick a glob of slime off my arm and crook my eyebrow. “How. How could it possibly be any worse than this?”
“He could have set you on fire,” he says, wiping his eyes. His skin is smoking as he stands there in only his underwear, having sacrificed his shirt for the cause. Wonderful. Hot half-naked guy versus me, covered in dragon snot.
“Honestly, I think I’d prefer being burnt to a crisp next time.” He chuckles, as we work together to peel his sweatshirt over my head and turn it inside out to continue wiping me down.
“Noted.” He smirks, getting my back while I work on de-snotting my legs. And if he accidentally brushes my ass once or twice, I pretend not to notice. Because even if by some miracle I manage to get dragon snot out of every crevice, I’ll never live this down.
“You can’t tell anyone about this. Ever. Not even Milo. Especially not Milo.”
“Sure thing, boss.” He mock salutes, and I narrow my eyes.
“You owe me. I don’t know what yet, but you owe me.”
He chuckles and helps me step through the snow until we reach the cobblestone path once more. “Name it.”
“Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash,” I mutter. We walk back to the dorms and I ask him to grab some clean clothes for me in my room while I head straight for the showers.
“Hey Nyx?” He calls out a few minutes later. I peek out of the stall and see his arm reaching through the door with a handful of clean clothes. “Where can I put these?”
“You can come in, just put it on the counter by the sinks.” He opens the door fully, covering his eyes with his other hand.
It’s kind of cute. What’s not is the way he’s still shirtless, with his hastily put on jeans hanging unbuttoned around his waist. Unlike earlier, I don’t bother resisting the urge to drink in every muscle.
I’m naked. He’s half-naked. Fair’s fair, or something like that.
“Dude, your dragon just slimed me, I don’t have much modesty left.” I laugh, as he turns his gorgeously muscled back on me and watches the door.
He shrugs. “It’s the least I can do.”
When the water begins to run clear after three rounds of scrubbing every inch of my body, he passes me my clothes and I get dressed in the stall, thankful my underwear and bra survived snot-pocalypse so he didn’t have to go through my drawers.
After pulling on the yoga pants and oversized t-shirt he picked out, I open the door to see him standing next to the stall, arms crossed and head tilted back against the tiled wall.
“You can open your eyes now,” I tease, and notice his eyes flash when he looks me over. “Wait, what did he just say to you?”
He coughs and clears his throat, before answering, “Oh he just—wanted to apologize. For earlier.”
Liar, liar, unbuttoned, ass-hugging pants on fire.
“Riiight.” I scoff, leading the way back to my dorm. “Alright well, since we didn’t get to train this morning, raincheck for tomorrow?”
He nods. “You still want to meet up for lunch? And the library after?”
I grin up at him, something in my stomach fluttering with the anticipation of seeing him again.
Of maybe… seeing what might have happened, if Samhain hadn’t gone the way it did.
Even if I’m just imagining things could be more between us, the last three months of getting to know him, spending time with him—and even his dragon, today not withstanding—have made this place, this world, bearable. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
“Sounds good. Text me later?” I ask as we reach my door, but I don’t move to open it and he doesn’t move to leave.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. He’s close enough I can feel the heat radiating off his bare skin, and the scent of ozone and ash grows thick in the air. When he looks down at me, I don’t see his scars, I don’t see his sightless white eye. I just see him—the first person who was actually kind to me here.
“Bye, Ramsey.” I whisper, and see his eyes flash briefly.
“Seen you soon, Nyx.”
The next two weeks pass like a dream that I don’t want to wake up from.
We spend every day together in the same routine: breakfast, training, lunch, library, dinner.
He teaches me everything he knows about winning a fight, and my body hums with heat whenever his fingers linger on my skin, as do mine on his.
I stop looking away when he takes off his shirt as we spar.
He keeps looking when I stretch afterwards.
At the Saturnalia celebration the school hosts for the handful of faculty, staff, and students who’ve remained on campus, we sit close enough to touch.
On the Winter Solstice, we join Esmé in the Temple as she leads a ritual to celebrate the longest night of the year.
The burning tree erected in the center of the rotunda keeps the Temple lit during her vigil from the time twilight darkens the sky until the dawn rises the next day.
She shows us how to weave crowns from the fallen branches of the Yule tree with vines, sprigs of holly, and berries. And we do it, because why the fuck not?
By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, I’m damn near out of my mind. As much as I regret it now, sex with Killian a few weeks ago reminded my body of what I’d spent years repressing in Lynden.
And I’m not the only one on edge.
There’s something in the air, and we’ve been dancing around each other all day.
In training, I managed to catch us both by surprise when I landed straddling his hips, perfectly positioned to feel the thickness of his cock nestled against my entrance through the thin layers of our exercise clothing.
I barely stopped myself from grinding on top of him before we broke apart.
At the library earlier, he gave me his sweatshirt when the temperature dropped and hasn’t asked for it back.
Even now as we sit in the empty common room, watching Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper get blasted on live TV, it’s like we’re waiting for something.
Anything.
“You have any New Year’s resolutions?” I ask in a pathetic attempt to fill the burning silence between us.
He shrugs. “Maybe eat a couple people, hoard some gold, you know the usual. Do you?”
I’m pretty sure he’s joking. “Get magic, I guess? Not die or get eaten or whatever else people want to do to me,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I don’t know, even with all that shit,” I gesture vaguely, “I think this might just be the best New Years I’ve ever had.”
“Really? You don’t wish you were still in Lynden?”
I shake my head. “Fuck, no. Other than a few people like my old boss and some coworkers, can’t say there’s anything to miss about Lynden.” A pang of guilt squeezes my chest when I think of Cora begging for me to pierce her ears for her birthday.
“What, no boyfriend to kiss at midnight?” he teases.
I scoff. “Colt was hardly a boyfriend. We just kind of hate-fucked when there was nothing better to do.”
He hums, and looks at me from where my legs are over his as we relax on the couch.
“I got something better we can do,” he hedges, stroking my ankle with his thumb.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, more certain, before quickly pulling me to straddle him, just like at the gym earlier. But this time, he grips my waist, and I rest my hands on his shoulders, slowly lowering my full weight over his rapidly-thickening length,
“Is this okay?” he whispers breathlessly, and I nod, running my fingers through the dark hair at the base of his neck until he shivers, closing his eyes and tilting his head back.
He’s made the first move. If I want this, I need to make the next one.
And I do.
I lower my face to his, gently brushing his nose with mine, giving him a chance to stop.
He doesn’t.
Hesitantly, I press my lips to his, and his hand drifts up my back, fingers threading through my hair.
Then he’s pulling me into him, granting me permission to tease and tempt and taste.
Our tongues slide together, and my hips begin to move back and forth over his.
With his other hand still on my waist, he pushes my hips down to meet his, and the hard bar of his cock rubs perfectly against my clit.
At my whimper of pleasure at the shock of pressure, he groans, and then he’s consuming me.
I let myself fall into his embrace, the strength of his body beneath me and his arms around me, until he’s all there is.
Our hips move faster, frantic and desperate, and then he’s guiding my ass with both hands and I’m tugging his hair to deepen our kiss.
Our breath mingles as we pant from the tidal wave of arousal and heat from crossing the line we’ve been tip-toeing around for months.
His groan deepens, fading into something inhuman as we rut against one another.
I barely recognize the countdown to midnight coming from the TV in the background until he breaks our kiss.
“Cum for me,” he whispers, his voice deepening.
“Cum for me.” As if anything in this universe or the next could stop me.
His hot palms grip my ass like his life depends on it, and I moan from the added pressure, hypnotized by the promise of oblivion as our bodies move together.
His throbbing cock slots perfectly between my pussy lips, like it’s the missing puzzle piece I’ve been searching for.
His pleasure spurs my own until I’m moaning with every breath, every jolt of our hips colliding, until heat and rapture radiate from my clit through my body and I’m shuddering in his lap.
My aching pussy clenches around his pulsing length through our clothes.
As the ball drops on the first stroke of midnight, we orgasm together to raucous cheers and applause that’s slowly drowned out by the high-pitched ringing in my ears.
When I open my heavy-lidded eyes, Ramsey’s looking at me with an equally stunned expression.
Fear lances through me that he’s about to leave me like Killian did, that this was just a dream to be forgotten in the quiet dark.
But then he gives me a lazy grin and kisses me.
He doesn’t stop, not when he picks me up and carries me to my room, not when he lays us on my bed facing each other, and not when he caresses my cheek gently until I fall asleep in his arms.