Chapter 33 Bastian
Bastian
I park in the shadow cast by my Land Rover, glancing up at GAZ’s first-floor windows. All but the last is shut, and I stare at it through my windshield like I stand a snowball’s chance of not exiting this fucking car.
My phone pings with a new notification.
@parker.melissa
In class
But I’m Haven’s first class on a Tuesday, so that clears up exactly fuck-all. I read the message I sent Melissa, in case I wasn’t fucking clear.
@rooke.bastian
Is Haven Lee with you? She’s not answering her phone.
If only Haven would answer her damn phone.
I’ve been ringing her for over half an hour since receiving her cryptic message.
Pills?
Could be anything from MDMA to Adderall.
It’s Tuesday fucking morning, but popping molly during the week isn’t exactly uncommon, even for sorority girls. Haven has already proved that she can’t withstand peer pressure.
I tongue my bottom lip as I wait. Kai’s bite mark is healing, but I can still feel a faint ridge.
Parker eventually starts typing another message. For her sake, she’d better be elaborating on her non-explanation, because the last dregs of my patience are on the verge of evaporating.
I was holed up in my office on campus when I began messaging Haven this morning. My class starts in a little over an hour, and instead of prepping, I’m parked on Greek Row trying to dissuade myself from breaking into Gamma Alpha Zeta.
But I have no choice.
@parker.melissa
She’s at GAZ, prob sleeping
@rooke.bastian
Someone there who can get her to answer my call? It’s important.
@parker.melissa
Nope
Muscles in my neck that haven’t relaxed since Saturday morning finally loosen.
My eyes flick back up to the window, my jaw clenching as I will myself to put the Tesla in reverse and get the fuck out of here.
Haven’s not on drugs, she probably just took a sleeping tablet to catch up on some rest because she partied too hard.
I left Saturday night’s party early, before either her or Kai could spot me, but who knows what time those two staggered home? And I know there was an afterparty at Kai’s frat house, so what’s saying there wasn’t one at Haven’s?
@rooke.bastian
Pls ask her to call me when you get back.
Melissa starts typing a reply, but then stops. I wait for a few seconds, gaze darting from the window to my phone.
Haven’s fine. I should leave.
But I have no choice.
I get out of the car, scanning the street to check if anyone’s around. Greek Row is deserted, everyone on campus, or still recovering from the weekend’s bender.
The Rain Dance has that effect.
Either way, no one’s around to spot me trying to open GAZ’s front door.
It’s locked.
Good for them. Bad for me.
Another quick scan to make sure no one’s appeared in the street, then I’m sidling through the narrow, wrap-around lawn on the side of the house.
I duck under a bougainvillea, wrench open the side gate, and let myself into the backyard.
I brush leaves from my jeans, chin out and shoulders back as I head for the back door.
Do anything with confidence, and people rarely question your authority.
Bad for them. Good for me.
Surprisingly, the back door is also locked. But it only takes me a minute or two to find a spare key hidden under a fake rock in the nearby flower bed. I unlock the door, return the key to its hiding place, and close and lock the door behind me.
The hush that surrounds me as I pause in the kitchen is strangely comforting. No chatting, no giggling, just a rare calm.
I take my phone out of my pocket and switch it to silent as I stride over the tiles and into the sorority house’s foyer. Melissa’s last message never came through, but perhaps she had nothing to add to the conversation.
It’s the first time I’ve messaged her since she sent me a photo of her tits, so maybe she still feels awkward.
If anyone was around, they’d hear me coming up the creaky stairs. But no one pokes their head out to demand what I’m doing inside.
It seems Haven is truly alone.
Only two doors in the hallway are unlocked besides the bathroom. One is empty, the other isn’t.
Haven is sprawled over the floor on her back like a homicide victim, face slack, sleep shirt hiked up one side all the way to her ribs. I’m on my knees beside her in an instant, heart hammering inside my chest as I press my fingers to her throat.
She’s cold, but there’s a faint thrum under my fingertips, and her eyelids flicker at my touch.
Not dead, just lost in a medicated fog.
I scan the room, spotting a bottle of pills on Haven’s nightstand. I grab them, rattling the bottle. Still pretty full. Doubtful that she took enough to overdose.
Which means she’s fine, and I should leave.
I should fucking leave.
But I don’t have a choice, do I?
I lift her from the floor, frowning at the weight. She’s heavier than she looks and ungainly in sleep, her head lolling against my shoulder, her legs tangling with mine as I stand.
A professor finding his student like this in her sorority room has only one reasonable course of action.
I should tuck her into bed and walk away.
But the hunger her limp body has summoned inside me disagrees.
As does my cock.
It stiffens against my zipper like it always does when she’s close. Even wrecked and barely conscious, she sets me burning.
Especially now, like this.
No arguing, no sneering. No attempts to turn my games back on me. She just sinks into me with the slow, helpless surrender I’ve been chasing from her since she walked into my class.
I lower her to the mattress. My hands should let go, but they don’t. One lingers at her waist, another flat against her belly until I feel the soft rise and fall of her breathing.
There’s no version of this that ends well for anyone.
But every time her belly rises under my palm, I get harder.
I picture myself leaving. Rising from her bed without waking her, closing the door behind me, pretending this never happened, that I was never here. Like I’m a respectable man, doing the respectable fucking thing.
But Haven Lee will never be respectable, and neither will I.
The dark in me craves the dark in her.
When I rise and go to the door, it’s not to close it behind me.
It’s to lock us inside.
Prey caged with predator.
Her…with me.
I stalk back to the bed like my namesake, sliding my knees onto the mattress beside her still form.
“What is it about you, Miss Lee, that renders me incapable of doing the right thing?” I growl as I brush hair out of her face.
A chill slithers up my spine when I feel hidden eyes on me.
I don’t bother checking if I’m alone, because this always happens when I’m about to go over the edge. I presume it’s what’s left of my conscience, the tiny sliver of humanity that watches with morbid fascination as I take what I want without giving a fuck about the consequences.
Like the world already knows what kind of man I am…and it’s waiting to catch me at it.
I’ve learned to lean into the sensation. To embrace it. These days it only makes the ache better.
It won’t make me stop.
I can’t stop.
Haven’s thighs are warm, pliant, unresisting when I ease them open.
I pause at the sight of a dark stain on her panties.
Another man might have hesitated, tempted to respect biology’s red light. But I’m already sinking down, breath hot against the inside of her thigh, mouth salivating.
I nose into her wet, coppery heat, tongue pressing against sodden cotton, then nudging it aside, finding the slick blood-salt tang beneath.
Blood.
A taste that stays with a man forever.
Haven stirs, and I glance up from between her thighs.
Her lashes flutter, eyes hazy and unfocused as she peers down her body at me.
“You…” she breathes.
I wait for a scream, a fist to my face, a hand twisted in my hair to jerk me aside.
Her thighs twitch, her eyes slowly blinking. When her mind eventually registers what’s happening, her lips tremble as she fights the drugs she took.
“What…” she breathes, her voice thick with sedatives and fear.
Christ. That flicker of panic sends a surge of lust through me.
This muddle of half-conscious resistance, this is the point where a sane man withdraws.
But the only move I make is to tip over the edge, free falling into sin.
My mouth hovers just shy of her pussy, so close I can still scent her blood. Close enough that she knows what’s coming, even in her incapacitated state.
“Shh, sweet girl.” My lips brush the inside of her thigh. “I’m going to eat this sweet, bloody pussy whether you’re sobbing my name or screaming for someone to save you.”
“B-but you can’t…” she stammers through slack lips.
I tug her panties to the side, exposing the entirety of her stained pussy, and drag the pad of my thumb against her clit.
Her protest dies with a small, mortified whimper.
“Good girl.”
I let the edge of my teeth graze bare skin until I’m right by her entrance. My tongue darts out, twisting, my teeth clamping down.
The sound she makes when I slowly tug out her tampon is the stuff of lurid fantasies. I drop it inside one of the empty glasses on her nightstand, barely taking my eyes off her, savoring every ounce of horror and inevitability in her dilated eyes.
Then I take a slow, luxuriant lick over her pussy.
“Christ, you taste so good I could eat you alive,” I murmur, eyes locked on her cunt.
I can’t tell if her whimper is protest or encouragement. I take it as both.
“That’s it, sweet girl. Feed me every sweet drop.”
There’s the faintest flutter as her thighs try to tense against my shoulders when I force them wider.
I’m too busy violating her limp body to indulge her efforts in fighting me. I tongue the seam of her pussy, taking another long drag of salt and copper, the taste heavy on my tongue when I spear inside her.
I catch sight of the bedspread near the foot of the bed—its feminine pastel colors, the too-cute bedskirt where monsters lurk.
Too young for this.
Too young for me.
Adorable. Fragile. Mine.