Chapter 8
ACHILLES
When I was little, I was obsessed with dinosaurs and trucks, which is hardly peculiar for a seven-year-old boy.
That particular Dino. That particular truck. They were my world. My parents called them my “fascinations”.
As I got older, my “fascinations” changed.
At twelve, I knew every stat of every player ever to have swung a bat for the Yankees.
Then it was every football player who’d played for the Giants.
Then the Islanders. For a while, my parents thought I was just really getting into sports.
But it was my mom who eventually figured out that these “fascinations” would drop, usually very suddenly, and be immediately replaced with something else.
Velociraptors were replaced by the Yankees in a matter of days. The Yankees and the Islanders were replaced at fourteen by an obsession with Napoleon. Distance running and weightlifting at seventeen. An intense fascination with all things Mozart and Chopin at nineteen.
At first, when they finally clued in to my pattern, my parents thought it was a sign of ADHD. Intensely latching on to a certain interest which becomes your entire raison d’être only to drop it in a heartbeat for a new one is pretty textbook.
We saw plenty of specialists. My parents didn't want to “fix me” or anything. They saw nothing “wrong” with me. They just wanted to be able to provide me with all the tools and assistance I might need, given that I was the “The Drakos Heir”. Son of the King and Queen. Future monarch of the empire.
But none of the doctors and specialists thought it was ADHD, or OCD, or any other acronym ending in D for “Disorder”.
I was just…curious. Hyper, hyper curious, to the point of needing to dissect things that caught my interest down to a cellular level before I could tell myself “yes, I now understand this thing and can officially move on to the next one”.
It would appear I have a new interest.
This time, it’s not apex predators of the late Cretaceous period, or 1969 pickup trucks, or sports teams, or Chopin.
This time, my fascination stands a petite five-foot-three, with long dark hair and big, curious green eyes.
She reads downright filthy dark romance books, lusts over shirtless fuckfaces in dollar-store Halloween masks, and occasionally watches short snippets of delightfully unhinged porn.
At the same time, she appears to live her life like a nun with anxiety issues.
My fascination likes to run, which is, you know, hugely convenient. She’s smart. She leaves underwear that isn’t hers for a man I’d love nothing more than to punch in the mouth. Her greedy, tight pussy has managed to completely invade my every waking and sleeping thought.
But most curious of all, my new obsession is a woman.
That’s not to say I’ve been playing for the other team. I have zero interest in fucking men.
But people, living, breathing ones that don’t have history books written about them, haven’t ever become “fascinations” to me.
Napoleon, Chopin and Mozart aside…okay, and my sixth-grade obsession with Kurt Cobain…
no living person has ever caught my attention like that.
Even when I was into sports, it was the stats that interested me, not the players.
And that means that no girl, be it crush, girlfriend, or hookup, has ever gotten into my head at a level approaching that of raptors, trucks and Chopin.
She, it would seem, has. Or at least is rapidly getting there.
Someone should warn her to quit while she’s ahead. But it might be too late.
By that I mean it’s three in the afternoon and Yelena hasn’t been out of my direct line of sight for more than eleven minutes since she woke up this morning.
Hello, little raptor. Talk Napoleon to me and play Nocturne in E Flat Major.
I see her coming from about fifty yards away, a tight, determined expression on her face, like she’s rehearsed what she’s about to say in the mirror. I mean, she has: eighteen minutes ago, for three minutes and twenty-one seconds, in the mirror of the second-floor women’s room at Blackwood Hall.
“What are you doing?”
I eye Yelena curiously as she comes to tense stop right in front of the stone bench I’m sitting on at the edge of the campus green, made unexpectedly comfortable from two centuries' worth of students' asses rounding it to perfection.
Some of Knightsblood's famous white roses surround me as I calmly look her up and down.
I’ve never had a schoolgirl fantasy, but Yelena looks delicious in her midnight-blue pleated skirt, light gray knee socks, white blouse, and smart, thinner version of the tie that I’m wearing.
It’s atypical for college, but Knightsblood requires students to wear the school uniform to class.
Some people bitch about it, but I quite like the commitment to the place's history and pedigree. Besides, the whole reason for coming here is to prepare to lead empires. And nobody’s going to be negotiating alliances or declaring war in jeans and a hoodie.
We’re not normal college students, so why pretend to be?
“Well?”
Her indignation at my slow response is…amusing. Cute, in a way.
“Watching you,” I say easily.
Yelena’s throat bobs, her full, pink lips pressing together in a line. She shifts on her feet, hiking the strap of her backpack higher on her shoulder as she clutches a few books to her chest.
“No, I mean, why are you meddling with my life?”
The corners of my mouth curl up. “Meddling?”
Her green eyes glint, and I decide right then and there that they’re the color of a serene forest.
“I’ve been trying to fight Halbertson on a paper grade I felt was unfair—”
“Because he has a problem with your father.”
Her eyes snap to mine, her manicured brows lifting sharply.
“That’s not stalking, little prey,” I say, grinning. “Nero De Luca and Nico Barone’s…aggressive prank war waged against the entire Knightsblood faculty is the stuff of campus legend.”
Her bottom lip slips between her teeth for a moment, and my cock twitches.
“Halbertson changed my grade after a careful re-read,” she says tersely.
“Congratulations.”
Her fingers tighten on the books she’s got held to her chest like armor.
“He refused to give it a second look when I asked him before.”
I shrug. “Well, I’m glad he’s seen the error in his lapse of judgment.”
Yelena’s mouth thins again, her eyes flitting over me as she swallows.
“I didn’t ask you to—”
“Not directly, no,” I murmur.
Her brows pinch. “Not in any way.”
“You did.” My eyes lock with hers. “When you caught my attention.”
Her face flushes, heat creeping up her neck and staining her cheeks as she quickly looks at her feet.
“I—I wasn’t trying to,” she murmurs to the ground.
“Well, happy accidents, and all that.” I pat the stone next to me. “Sit.”
Her eyes snap to mine and narrow dangerously.
It’s this mix of meek and wild that I think gets me the most. She can be this slightly anxious, demure, shy girl, and then turn on a dime and glare at you like she’s about to stab you in the dick.
I’m…fascinated by it, if you will.
She sits next to me, and that obedience following the flash of fury makes my dick swell a little harder.
A shiver tenses her shoulders as she sets her books on the bench next to her.
“I…I’m not who you think I am,” Yelena mutters.
“Really? Has anyone ever told you that you bear a striking resemblance to Yelena De Luca?”
She hears my amused tone and shoots me a look. “Okay, I’m not what you think I am.”
“And what do I think you are?”
Her fingers twist in her lap. “Someone who’s…you know…”
“No, I don’t.”
Yelena exhales heavily. “Into those things,” she says, her face getting redder.
I smile hungrily. “What things, specifically?”
That delightful scarlet stain creeps higher up her face.
“The sort of things you’re into,” she murmurs quietly.
“You’re not?”
Her throat works. “No.”
“Well, your pussy might have a slightly dissenting opinion.”
Yelena’s eyes, unsurprisingly, bulge so much you’d think I’d just presented her with concrete evidence of life on Neptune.
“My…?!” She turns to stare at me in shock and indignation. “My vagina is none of your—”
“It very much is,” I sigh. “And please use the appropriate word.”
Her lips purse as the fiery blush on her face intensifies, to the point where it looks like it's igniting the golden flecks in the green swirls of her eyes.
“Say it, baby,” I murmur.
She blinks rapidly. “I’m not your baby,” she mutters.
I keep my eyes pinned to hers. “Say it.”
She drops her gaze to the fingers twisting in her lap.
“My…my pussy,” she almost whispers.
A gasp jolts through her as I lean in, my lips ghosting over the shell of her ear. “Good girl.”
I probably should have guessed it already, but the way she stiffens and sucks in a breath…the way her back snaps rigid and the muscles of her quads above her exposed knees tense…
Someone’s got a touch of a praise kink sprinkled into that dark, violent place inside her head.
Not into the same things I am?
Bull.
Fucking.
Shit.
But not only does she not want to admit that to me, the denial extends to herself.
“Life’s too short to be untrue to yourself, baby.”
She glances nervously at me.
“And the thing is, you are,” I growl. “Into those things.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not—”
“You want to say you’re not, because it fits your view of yourself.”
The glance turns into a glare. “And what exactly is that?”
“The good girl. Daddy’s girl. Who studies hard, follows the rules…” She’s not able to stop the shiver that ripples through her shoulders when I lean close to her ear again. “Doesn’t hop into bed with anyone, much less get chased.”
Her eyes go wide.
“You’ve never been fucked properly, have you?”
Her eyes fly to mine so fast that I know I’m even righter than I thought.
“Or fucked at all,” I muse softly.
Yelena’s face throbs. “That's none of your bus—”
“That is entirely my business now, Yelena.”
She glares at me. “Says who? You?”
I lift my shoulders and settle back against the bench. “Like it or not, you’re mine, little prey.”
“Don’t call me that,” she huffs, her face darkening.
“Why not?”
Yelena’s brow pinches. “Because you’re…mocking me.”
I slowly shake my head side to side. “Believe me, I’m truly not.”
“Because you’re the hunter in this scenario?”
“I’m your hunter,” I growl. “In every scenario.”
She starts to open her mouth, but I barrel on.
“The prey is just as important to a hunt as the hunter, if not more. Without prey, the hunter is just…wandering without a purpose.” I smile at her. “Anyway, you’re avoiding the subject.”
“Which is what?” she scoffs. “Me being yours?”
“Exactly.”
Yelena gasps quietly, that lovely red stain spreading across her cheeks and neck as I cup her jaw and force her to look at me.
“All of you is mine, little prey,” I growl. “Your fears, your fantasies, your pussy…” She shivers when my fingers drift over her throat. “Your virginity.”
Yelena barks out a nervous laugh. “Y—you’re insane.”
“That's a matter of perspective.”
She pulls back from my hand. I allow it…this time.
“Well, from my perspective,” she snaps, “it’s the truth.”
My brows lift. “What makes me insane?”
“How about the way you’re talking to me, for a start?” she hisses.
“Nobody’s ever talked to you like this before?”
“No!” she exclaims. “Of course not!”
“Good,” I growl. “That saves me from having to hunt them down and cut their tongues out.”
The heated stain creeps over her face again, even darker than before.
She likes when I talk like this, even though I’m sure she’s trying to tell herself that she doesn’t.
“Well, yours or not,” Yelena says dryly, “I need to get to class.”
My hand shoots out and wraps like iron around her wrist.
“Not yet.”
“Achilles—”
“Leave something with me,” I murmur. “Some part of what’s mine.”
She gives me a nervous look. “Like…what?”
I stroke my jaw and sit back against the bench. “Take off your panties.”
Her jaw just about breaks when it falls to the ground. “Excuse me?!”
“Take them off,” I say, not raising my voice one decibel. “And hand them to me.”
She stares at me. “You’re—”
“Crazy? Possibly. Joking? No.”
“Why the hell would I do that?!”
“Because you’re mine,” I say calmly. “And because I’m telling you to.”
Her breath catches when I lean close.
“Or would you prefer I wrap your hair in my fist, bend you over, and do it myself in front of everyone.”
Half-surrounded by rosebushes as it is, the bench we're on is not hugely visible, but it’s not a private space, either. Yelena shivers, and I see the spark flicker in her eyes when I mention grabbing her hair in my fist.
“Fine,” she mumbles, blushing madly as she keeps her gaze averted, looking instead at her fingers in her lap, twisting and picking at each other.
She glances around, scanning the immediate vicinity for anyone who might be looking in our direction. I’m about to be helpful and offer to do it for her when she suddenly half-stands and demurely slips her hands under her skirt.
A moment later, plain black cotton panties are being thrust into my palm.
They’re warm.
As if I wasn’t already rock-hard…
“I need to get to class,” Yelena mumbles, still not looking me in the eye as she pinches her knees together and nervously smooths down her skirt.
When I don’t say anything, she finally looks at me expectantly.
“Achilles?”
“Yes?”
Her face heats. “I…need them back?”
I smile and slowly shake my head. “These are mine now.” I stand as she looks up at me in wide-eyed shock. Then she gasps quietly when I lean down, putting a hand on either side of her and caging her against the bench with my body.
“Just like the rest of you.”