Chapter 4 #2
Emmy’s assigned security showed up as Emmy finished her omelet along with a biscuit drenched in honey.
Delaney wasn’t dressed as security, but wore low-cut jeans, a hoodie, and a pair of lime-green Docs.
“Okay, sexy chick, you ready to dazzle the mortals?” she asked, tugging her own hair into a ponytail.
“I’m fully covered. No tits showing. Not even cleavage.”
“Right. It’s like Jessica Rabbit in painted-on clothes. Let’s go, genius.”
They took a coterie SUV, and it wasn’t lost on Emmy that the others attending the summer session were all taken together with a shared guard, while she was assigned one of her own.
And she knew damned well Delaney was more babysitter than security guard, but she figured she couldn’t bitch about it too much.
The goal was to get her out of here with a postgraduate degree that would let her do actual genome work.
She figured a decade working on human stuff, and then she could start working on shifters.
How much of her mother’s ability to be human, swan, or dragon was magical, and how much was biological?
And could Emmy find the biological pieces and replicate them in others?
If she could, what would happen without the magic?
Or would having the biological pieces in there actually call the magic?
She’d pre-registered for five undergrad classes to prove she could show up, behave, and pass before Zander pulled strings to get her back into a post-grad program.
Also, because you need two professors to vouch for you and mentor you through it.
She’d have to convince two of them to write letters nominating her into the program and accepting responsibility for seeing her through it.
She had three classes today. First up was Molecular Biology, with only around a dozen students in the classroom when she walked in. The professor was brisk and succinct, and she appreciated his approach. He treated everyone like adults and assumed they could keep up.
Next up was her least favorite class of the semester, but Spence had told her this professor was more likely than the others to help her into the post-graduate program. Still, she detested statistics. It was another of those classes she’d taken several times though, so she’d be okay.
And then lunch with two people she met in statistics class, who told her about a Korean BBQ food truck parked a few blocks over. She checked the coterie’s app and was pleased to see a selection of foods on the truck she could order.
Lunch was enjoyable — glorious spicy meat while the three discussed DNA errors in the whole Jurassic Park franchise. Also, all the stupid mistakes they made in how they thought they’d keep fucking dinosaurs in what amounted to zoo enclosures.
She also spent the last of her cash. She’d have to pack food or bring protein bars from the coterie house for lunch the following day. Apparently, she’d awaken Wednesday to an auto deposit in her checking account, meaning she could use her debit card to eat lunch.
Next up was History of Scientific Thought, this one in a lecture hall with about sixty students.
The professor wore elbow patches unironically and had a speaking cadence like a bedtime story, but Emmy found herself genuinely interested.
The course textbook was in ebook form on her tablet, and she jotted on it with her stylus, highlighting sections she figured would be on the test.
Delaney was close all day without being a pain in the ass, and when they got into the SUV to go home, she told her, “Thanks for not being annoying.”
“Thanks for not trying to ditch me. You try to get along with me; I’ll try to get along with you. You become a pain in my ass? I’ll repay it in triplicate. You’re an okay bitch. I like you.”
“Same. For all of it. We have to meet Spence at the Atrium, and then I have a shitload of homework. Bitchy assed professors assigning it right off the bat. Damn.”
The blood draw was anticlimactic. A needle in a vein, Spence filled three bags with blood, and then he removed the needle, she undressed, changed to her dragon, took a dozen breaths, changed back, collected her belly button ring from the floor, and then returned to the coterie house in the back of a different SUV with Spence, where he made her a half-dozen steaks, plus she ate some of the beef stew in the crock pot.
And before she went to bed, she pierced her belly button again, unscrewed the needle from the jewelry, washed it, and put it back in the hard plastic container. Dragons aren’t worried about germs, so she could reuse the needle until it went dull.
Later that night, she and Felix had sex. She’d intended it to be simple, a way to blow off some steam, but when she’d bitten his shoulder hard enough to draw blood, expecting him to pull back, he’d moaned and pressed closer, begging for more without words.
She’d obliged, testing his limits with nails and teeth, and he’d only begged for permission to come, which she denied for quite some time.
When she finally let him come, he’d looked at her with something close to worship, and she’d felt a spark of genuine interest. Not love, because Emmy didn’t fall in love, but curiosity. Felix was intelligent, funny, and was turning into an interesting submissive.
The following night, they had their first full scene.
Emmy tied him spread-eagle to her reinforced-steel bedframe, gagged him, and spent three hours testing every pain point on his body with her flogger, cane, paddle, and tawse.
Over and over, she took him to the edge of what he could handle, watched him break apart and put himself back together, and then did it again.
The hare wasn’t just a masochist. Oh no, he enjoyed playing on the edge of sanity — the moment where pain and pleasure blurred into something transcendent, where his mind fractured and reformed. And that worked for Emmy, who’d always needed her partners to match her intensity.
After, when she’d untied him and pulled him into her arms, he’d curled against her chest and cried. Not from pain, but from release. From being seen and given exactly what he needed.
They’d agreed to a casual relationship in the negotiation before the scene, but Emmy needed to be certain he wasn’t getting mixed messages from the aftercare.
“No strings,” she told him, stroking his sweat-damp hair.
He nodded. “Right. No commitment, no demands,” he agreed, voice rough. And yet, she could see him easily becoming a good friend. Someone who understood the darker parts of her, who didn’t flinch from what she needed to give.
Ten days later, Emmy unlocked Felix’s wrist from her reinforced-steel bedframe, ordered him to go down on her, had three amazing orgasms — and then sent him on his way with his cock rock hard and needy, watching his bruised, striped ass walk out of her room and through their shared bathroom to his own room.
Once there, he could beat off if he wanted, but she didn’t allow him to touch himself without permission in her room.
He’d turned into a fun playtoy. Bonus, she actually enjoyed spending time with him, and having a handy masochist to hurt made life as food-for-vampires not as terrible.
Okay, if she was honest, most days she actually enjoyed feeding them. Even Matthias, the fucking asshole, had given her an orgasm she’d needed hours to recover from. One of the ten best orgasms of her life, and that was saying something.
The following day was much the same, though she had to cook her own breakfast, and she packed herself three fried baloney, cheese, and scrambled egg sandwiches to eat for lunch.
The coterie had insulated lunch bags, complete with little packs you could put in the microwave to keep her food warm until lunch. Handy.
She had some money now, but she wanted to save as much as she could, and the coterie food was free.
Today she wore black faux-leather leggings, a crop top that showed her belly, a black denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up to show her forearms, with an enamel pin of a tiny ouroboros on one of the lapels. Also, ass-kicking, chunky stacked-heel boots, and a messy bun with dragonfly stickpins.
And she’d gone a little softer on her makeup: smokey eyes, lipstick that matched her nipples, and just enough contour to make her cheekbones look knife-sharp in the sunlight.
It was a Tuesday, and that meant she had Advanced Genetics.
Someone had actually recognized her on the first day of this class, about fifteen seconds after she walked in.
“Holy Shit. You’re Emerald Drake! I read your mitochondrial lineage paper last year after watching you talk about it on a YouTube thing. You cracked the hybrid code, right?”
Emmy froze for half a second, then smiled. “Yeah, but only for how the cytonuclear incompatibilities work in mallard-Muscovy hybrids, and how to avoid them to get viable offspring. Others are going broader in search of a reliable pattern across different species combos.”
Research she’d still be involved in if she hadn’t fucked three frat guys on a balcony with an audience below and gotten herself kicked out of … it didn’t matter. She’d pick it up again later, and in better facilities. Or maybe she’d choose an entirely different species. Something easier to house.
She wasn’t terribly impressed by the professor, but that was fine. She figured she could dazzle him enough to get the letter she needed. She wasn’t taking his class to learn, but to impress.
Next up was Principles of Genetics, another class she’d taken at other universities, and it was proving to be a piece of cake.
By the time she got back to the SUV, Delaney was waiting with hot cider in a to-go mug.
“Nearly two weeks without public sex. Go you.”
Emmy took a swig of the cider. “Thanks for this. Hits the spot. It occurs to me that I may not be spending enough time on campus to get in a whole lot of trouble this summer.”
“With lots of opportunities to fuck and be fucked at the coterie house, yes, it might actually work for you.”
Emmy sat back and closed her eyes. “I have a vampire I haven’t fed yet on my schedule. What do you know about Chase?” She would ask Rhea and Felix, too, but she’d figured out her guard had a nice handle on everyone living in the house.
“Recruits flock on campus. Can look like a nineteen-year-old surfer dude when he wants. Blond hair and blue eyes, compact with killer muscles, but…” She sighed.
“He has ancient eyes when he wants to show them. Creepy as fuck. He isn’t actually that old.
Eight hundred or so, maybe even younger, but he has the power of twice that sometimes.
Not always. I think he can power up another way, besides just blood. Can’t prove it, though.”
“Sadist?”
“Rough. Often feeds from masochists, but not exclusively. I don’t have a lot of details on that aspect of him.” She shrugged. “You already know the sadists want to taste you even if they can’t hurt you. Not many vampires have tasted dragon blood.”