25. Lucy
Lucy
M idnight closes the door and patrols around the penthouse, checking the windows and the front door about fourteen times before she’s satisfied.
She double takes at what I assume is my apartment’s moth room. Her face scrunches and tips this way and that. Her mouth forms around the words what the fuck.
“I swear they weren’t here when?—”
“When you broke into my apartment to watch me masturbate?” I say, folding my arms and leaning a hip against my kitchen counter. Probably not the most appropriate time to joke, but I need to lighten the mood after what happened tonight.
Her jaw hangs loose. “I… umm. It was just a little light stalking…”
“They’re my…” I start, but Mortem strolls into view and distracts me.
“They’re her pets,” he says.
“You call those ‘pets?’” Midnight answers.
“I mean, no… I don’t.”
Mortem meows. “They’re pets, like me.”
He’s solid enough that I lean down and give him scratches under his chin. “Actually, I believe you foisted yourself on me.”
He bites my hand and then rubs his head into my shins, asking for more scratches. “I’m the best part of your day and you know it.”
Midnight throws the moth room several surreptitious glances. “But they’re…” Her face scrunches so tight I don’t know how she can see out her eyelids.
“Dead?” I ask, the hint of a laughter twitch tickling my lips.
“Yeah,” she says almost whiny. “Why would you want dead moths?”
“Well, they’re reanimated so they’re not, like, dead-dead.”
She glares at me.
“Okay, they’re dead. But at least they won’t break my heart by dying.”
“That is… a bizarre thought process. Whoa,” she says as one of them flies at her head and she attempts to swat it out the way.
“Careful. They’re extremely delicate. Stay still, I bet it will?—”
It does.
It lands on her forehead.
She goes rigid and this time I do laugh. She looks extremely, intensely uncomfortable.
“I would like you to get it off me,” she says very calmly but with absolute authority.
I do not, in fact, get it off her.
I burst out laughing.
“Now. Please,” she says, more insistent and an octave or two too high. But I’m gone. The more she protests, the more I buckle.
“It’s just a moth,” I say through breathy hysteria.
“I have a strong aversion to them, given what the ashkissing entropy moths do to me.”
“These aren’t entropy moths. They’re just normal ones.”
It moves, dancing across her brow. She flinches and makes a high-pitched sound.
I can’t.
I collapse to my knees, holding my belly.
“This. Is. Not. Fucking. Funny,” she growls.
Which, of course, makes me howl so hard tears leak out my eyes.
I can barely see when another moth, my most delicate of all—its wings frayed like the skeleton of an autumn leaf, flutters out the door.
“Oh, fuck no,” she says and starts to stagger away. But Mortem drops to the floor, his butt wiggling. Then he flies at an unimaginable speed down the apartment and leaps up to catch it.
“Mortem,” I bellow, but he ignores me, chasing the moth, hissing and swiping at it. The moth and the cat skitter in and out of rooms until I’m convinced the moth is winding Mortem up as much as Mortem is trying to catch it.
The moth on Midnight’s forehead finally flutters away, and she visibly sags. There’s even a hint of sweat on her skin.
“I can’t believe a big, strong reaper like you, who just chased after and beat the crap out of a Societas member, is scared of a little moth.”
She strides down the corridor towards me. “One, I am not scared. I just don’t like them, there’s a difference. And two, they’re hideous little creatures.”
I raise an eyebrow. “The uneducated see horror where the educated see beauty.”
She slides to a halt in front of me. “So educate me, Professor.” Her words dip, that sultry tone I’ve heard her use too many times. We said we wouldn’t sleep with each other anymore. That we’d keep things professional while she was at the academy, especially if I was going to be training her.
It’s been… excruciating.
Every time she strides into a room, my pussy clenches. Every time she beams when she successfully executes another form of magic, every time she looks at me with those piercing blue eyes, another piece of my self-control chips away.
She is temptation incarnate, and I have to be honest, I am struggling to keep my hands off her. Especially when she indulges me with these flights of intellectual fancy.
“Well, did you know that many of the moth species don’t eat when they become adults and leave their pupa?”
She squints at me. “What? How do they survive?”
“That’s the point. They don’t. Much of their life is as eggs, larva, pupa and then the ones that don’t eat only live for five to twelve days as adult moths.”
“Then why not feed and live longer?”
“Because the energetic cost of building and carrying that digestive system is expensive. Plus, they’d have to spend a good portion of the little time they have as moths eating.
Food is expensive. So when they’re in the pupa, they sacrifice digestion, they don’t even have mouths.
The result is less time as moths. But they can focus on their sole purpose: mating and laying eggs. ”
“Not a bad life, getting off for your entire adulthood.”
“Midnight,” I scold.
“What?” She shrugs. “Okay, fine, that is quite interesting. But I don’t think that’s what we should be talking about. How did Malifax keep his association quiet for so long?”
The moth that landed on her head flutters in my direction.
I hold my hand out. Its faded wings are so worn I can see through them.
He won’t last much longer, they eventually crumble to dust unless you constantly reanimate them.
He’s a delicate boy as he drifts down and lands on my finger.
I bring it close, tilting it this way and that.
“They fascinate me,” I say and wave my hand, encouraging him to fly back to the room where his food is.
Midnight strides towards me, cupping my chin and turning my face to hers. “This is important. Put the moths aside. Why is the Societas interested in you?”
“Who knows. Father thinks it’s to get at him. He was the one who disposed of Architecti, after all. Maybe the Societas were after the old Head of House Inferos.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve been the Head for a couple of months now. Malifax knew that along with the fact Dregan was gone. Try again,” she says, folding her arms.
“Then maybe he was after my father,” I say, trying not to get huffy.
“Then why wouldn’t he go straight for him? Malifax knows the campus, he would have been well aware of where your father was and where he could find him. No. I think this is to do with you.”
I purse my lips. I’d already come to the same conclusion. I just didn’t want to admit it, because saying it out loud makes it real. Just like I’ve already concluded it must be something to do with the runes on my neck. There’s nothing else unique about me.
“You know, don’t you?” she says, narrowing her gaze at me.
“No. I suspect though…”
She paces the apartment. “Why you? What could they want with you?”
Her brain whirs loud as she strides up and down, up and down. I wait, knowing she’ll come to the same conclusion I did. Her body moves bold and confident as she thinks. It makes the question I have to ask her easier.
She halts suddenly. “The runes?”
I nod.
“Then we have to make them appear again…” she says, her features brightening, knowing we can take action in this mystery.
“Yes… But… I’ve been thinking about that, and the fact we’ve only seen them twice.”
“That’s right, we saw them—Oh,” she stops mid-sentence, her eyes widening as once again, she comes to the same conclusion I did.
“Oh dear, Professor,” she growls.
My skin heats. I’ve been avoiding this conversation, knowing the risks we’d have to take. And the fact I am barely clinging to my self-control around her as it is.
“That is a real shame… isn’t it…” Her expression glimmers.
I shake my head, trying and failing to suppress the smile.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Says the woman needing an orgasm.” She saunters over, nudges my thighs apart, sliding hers between mine and pressing up against my pussy.
My breath hitches.
“I think, Professor, that you want… correction. I think you need me to spread your legs. Bend you over that sofa and finish what I started in the library.”
I whimper because that’s exactly what I want and need. Her fingers come to my belt, which she unbuckles, followed by my trousers.
She slides to her knees and pulls my shoes, socks, trousers and underwear off.
And I don’t stop her.
Because it’s not just the runes I want, it’s her.
She starts on my top and bra until I’m fully naked while she’s still fully clothed.
There is something about the dominance of that. The fact I’m utterly bare, vulnerable, desperate.
And she is wholly in control.
She pushes between my legs, spreading my naked pussy with the force of her hips. A cold rush of air caresses my cunt as she lifts me by the thighs and places me on the kitchen counter.
She keeps her eyes on me but grips my knees and shoves them further apart.
Her eyes never leave mine, but they want to. I know it by the way she bites her bottom lip that she’s clinging to my gaze instead of raking them down my body.
“Midnight, we shouldn’t.”
She grins.
“Midnight…” I whine.
“Oh, I heard you. But there’s a difference between shouldn’t and can’t.
And…” she kneels between my legs. My pussy is spread so far open, my lips are parted.
I squirm at being so on display—the vulgarity of it.
But fuck, her eyes are hungry, obsessed.
Lust pools in her gaze as she takes in every inch of me.
It shifts the tension clinging to my insides.
Dropping it into a warm coil in my belly.
I like making her look like she’s starved.
I push my hips out a little further. Her nostrils flare and she turns away, leaning her face into my thigh.
“Tell me no,” she says against my flesh.
“No,” I hum, unable to keep the brattish giggle from my voice.