Chapter 11
Maeve
“ASTOUNDING . . .”
I know that voice.
And sure enough, when I whip around, I find Professor D’Arques standing behind me, holding his sheathed blade in one hand, his midnight eyes narrowed against the bright light sparking off my energy sphere.
The moment I see him, I lose my focus—and my control.
My sphere slips out of my grasp, zipping up into the night sky like a cannonball. With a gasp, I tip my head back to watch it blaze across the darkness, and when it explodes, it’s like watching fireworks.
The energy spiderwebs across the blanket of starlight overhead, and a moment later, the sky begins to change, clouds condensing from the moisture in the air. A gust of wind tosses my hair into my eyes, and I shove it away to watch as the clouds grow thicker.
Without meaning to, I’ve created a storm.
Shit. Not again.
Thunder rumbles, and a bright bolt of lightning illuminates the Skyreach Spire and the academy’s courtyard below. There’s another rumble of thunder, accompanied by a stronger gust of wind, and then rain begins to fall.
It’s not a light, playful rain. It’s a deluge, and it’s focused right over the spire, leaving the rest of the academy untouched. The rain is frigid where it hits my face, and I draw breath as it slips down my neck and runs along my spine, chilling me immediately.
Another bolt of lightning flashes, and I wince away from the scalding brightness. The wind continues to blow, sending my hair whirling around my face in a blinding vortex.
“Maeve!” Professor D’Arques calls.
And that one word sends a different type of lightning zipping down my spine. Because I’ve wondered what it would feel like to hear him say my name. And the sound of it is even better than I’ve fantasized about.
“Hurry!” he calls again.
I reach up and push my long wild hair out of my eyes to find him holding the door open, gesturing me into the stairwell. As the rain intensifies, I run for the safety of the building, and I slip into the darkness just as thunder crashes overhead, causing the stone beneath my boots to tremble.
Severin steps inside behind me, and after fighting the wind for possession of the door, he’s finally able to yank it closed.
As soon as the latch clicks, the sounds of the storm are muted, leaving us in a tense quiet broken only by our heavy breathing and the delicate drip of rainwater falling from my hair and clothes.
It only takes me a moment to understand the situation I’m in.
I’m standing in a dark stairwell with Professor D’Arques, with my hair and clothes soaked from the rain, and he’s close enough to me that I can smell a hint of his musky cologne—cedarwood, I think—and something sharper, like alcohol.
My eyes adjust slowly, and when they do, I can better see Severin’s figure in the darkness. His body is angled away from me, shoulders hunched slightly, tension evident in his frame despite the low light.
His breathing sounds strained, and a burst of concern goes through me. Did my energy sphere hurt him in some way? Did a rogue bolt of static strike him when I wasn’t looking?
“Are you all right?” I ask, reaching to place a hand on his arm.
When my fingers find him, everything changes. I don’t even see him move.
Between one second and the next, Severin has dropped his sheathed sword and has me backed against the wall, his body looming over me in the dark.
His breathing is still strained, and now, with him this close, I note the tension in his jaw and tightness of his narrowed eyes.
He looks like he’s trying to hold back a beast as it claws him from the inside.
Immediately, I know I didn’t hurt him with my magic. This is something else entirely.
“You . . . need to go,” he grates out through clenched teeth. Despite the dark, I see his pearly-white fangs peeking out from beneath his lips, long and sharp and perfectly made for piercing skin—skin like mine. Just like in my dream.
He’s probably right. In fact, I know he is.
But I also know that neither of us wants that.
For one, he’s blocking my path down the stairs. And two, given his labored breaths and my heart galloping in my chest, I think we’re both too far gone to step back now.
Tension crackles between us. No one’s here; no one would see. And I’m already standing on the edge of this cliff, a cliff I’ve been tiptoeing toward since the first time I met his eyes in class all those weeks ago.
And I’ve never been afraid to jump.
So I wrap my hand around Severin’s neck and tug his face to mine.
The moment our lips crash together, the tension explodes.
His body is on mine in an instant, one hand gripping my waist, the other tangling in my wet hair. I clutch his soaked tunic in my free hand, the other still wrapped around his neck, preventing him from pulling away.
His mouth devours mine, and I was right about the scent of alcohol. He tastes like whiskey—the good stuff—and he groans when I break our kiss to drag my tongue across his lips.
“What,” he grits out, chest heaving, “was that magic?”
I press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, feeling the scratchy beginning of a beard against my lips.
“Energy magic,” I whisper, trailing kisses along his sharp jaw now. “I learned how to harness my lightning and compress it into a contained sphere of raw energy.”
“Contained?” His tone holds an edge of humor, and I realize this is the first time I’ve heard it. He’s always so cold and stoic. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
My lips drift to his throat, and when I brush my lips across the soft spot just below his jaw, I feel his rapid pulse. “It’s a work in progress,” I whisper. Then I kiss his neck, and his body stiffens against me.
Both his hands are around my hips now, and he hoists me up with ease, as if I weigh no more than a piece of parchment.
He pins me to the wall with a barely contained growl.
My legs wrap around his waist, and now it’s his turn to explore me with his mouth.
His kisses are rough, demanding, and when he makes it to my neck, I freeze.
Severin draws a long breath, his nose tickling my skin.
Between my legs, heat builds, and I know that if he asked, I’d let him feed on me and fuck me right in this stairwell.
Instead, he says, “You smell like a storm.” He draws another breath, his grip tightening around my hips until I gasp. “It’s maddening, Maeve Vandermere.”
His use of my full name makes a tremble go through me, and my magic flares, hot and bright. Without meaning to, I cause a warm current of air to wrap around us, rustling our hair and clothes.
If he keeps whispering to me like that, I might bring the storm from outside in.
Slowly, Severin leans in to press a single kiss to the pulse point pounding in my throat. The danger it presents is deliciously intoxicating.
Then, with what feels like much restraint, he lowers me to my feet.
But I don’t let go of him. Not yet. My hands are still wrapped around his neck, and I tug him close.
He presses his forehead to mine as our rapid breathing starts to slow.
I close my eyes, trying to memorize this moment: the heat being generated from our bodies, the taste of his whiskey on my lips, the scent of rain and cedarwood clinging to our skin.
“Severin,” I whisper.
He groans.
My fingers trail from his neck down across his collarbone. I press my palm firmly into his chest, finding his heartbeat thrumming beneath his rib cage. It matches the speed of mine.
“Maeve,” he says in response.
I rise up onto my toes, finding his lips again, kissing him one last time before slumping back against the cool stone wall. Hand still on his chest, I push him back, putting space between us, or else I’m not going to be able to stop kissing him.
“Now what?” I ask, arching a brow at him.
He takes another step back from me, as if he just realized what we were doing.
With some strain, he says, “Nothing. This never happened.”
A flare of anger goes through me. “You can’t kiss me like that and then say nothing happened.”
“I’m your professor. You’re my student. This is in no way appropriate.”
“I don’t care.” My words come out sharp, harsh.
But that’s exactly how I meant them. And I really don’t care.
As long as we don’t get caught, it doesn’t matter to me that this is against the rules.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I met you.
” I push off the wall, drawing myself up to my full height.
“I’ve dreamt of you. I’ve imagined what kissing you would feel like. ”
He lets out a labored breath. “Maeve—”
Now I’m crossing the narrow stairwell landing, pushing him up against the wall. My fingers clutch his tunic, and his impossibly dark eyes stare down at me.
“This happened,” I whisper, and slowly, I allow one of my hands to drift—down his chest, across his firm stomach, along the waistband of his cotton trousers.
And when my fingers creep lower, I find what I was hoping to: his cock, hard and ready, straining against the fabric.
He winces when my fingers brush him through the thin material, muscles going taut in his neck and jaw.
“And we’re not going to pretend it didn’t. ”
His hips shift forward, begging for my touch.
I smile. I’ve got him exactly where I want him.
Then I step away and push my now-damp hair over my shoulder. “So, I suppose I’ll see you in class, Professor.” I take another step back. “Or maybe I’ll come to your office hours. We can continue our discussion on blood magic.”
He remains slumped against the wall, fingers clenched into fists at his sides. If I could better see his eyes in the dark, I have a feeling they’d hold a mixture of anger and hunger. And I’m just fine with that.
Let him be angry. He started this. Now he has to face the consequences.
My boot finds the first stair, and I turn to step down, calling back over my shoulder, “Good night, Severin.”
And behind me, as I start down the stairwell, I hear him barely whisper into the dark, “Good night, Maeve.”