Chapter Seven
PROFESSOR KANE
Lucy’s head is on my chest, her arm wrapped around my waist. I pulled her down to the hardwood floor of the lecture hall after she came the second time and before we went for a third. She’s panting, dressed in only the glittering sheen of her sweat.
My body is spent, my wolf sated and at ease in ways I don’t ever remember feeling before, certainly never with any of my exes. I’m somewhere in mid-transformation. I still have the tail, but my muzzle is gone.
Lucy is holding my paw, her fingers tracing over one long, curved claw.
“Pretty,” she murmurs, her voice hazy and thick. “You didn’t hurt me before. Honestly, it was just a scratch; it was nothing.”
“But it could’ve been, Lucy. I should’ve…
could’ve prepared and held back.” I had tried to put on my chains after I ordered her to leave, but I’d failed to be quick enough.
Then, I scented her in the hall, and her allure was too much.
I needed to be sure she left, but she hadn’t.
Lucy just kept taking me by surprise. I would have to be better prepared for her.
“I normally sand down a few claws for my partners, but I wasn’t expecting you to show up, and I certainly wasn’t expecting you to—”
“Beg you to fuck me?” she interjects with a grin, speaking her desires so easily, I finally trust them.
“Yes, Lucy,” I confirm with a short laugh.
“I didn’t want you to hold back.” She’s tracing circles in my fur now, her delicate finger brushing over my hot skin, and I squeeze her tighter to my side. She feels good against me, molding to my body, so soft against my unyielding muscled curves.
“I can be safer with you. I want to be safer in the future.”
The future? I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“Why weren’t you more scared of me?” I ask quickly, uncomfortable with the easy way my mind wanted to insert Lucy into my life.
This wasn’t supposed to happen once, and it shouldn’t happen again. Right?
“Why weren’t you at least surprised to discover werewolves are real?” I pull Lucy off me, needing space to rein myself back in. I prop myself up on an elbow, brows scrunched as I look down at her, repeating with more insistence, “Why weren’t you shocked, Lucy?”
“My dad is an incubus,” she says casually, shrugging, and I jerk back at her statement.
“Not possible.” I sniff the air and her skin. “Your life force is not strong enough to carry magic.”
“Hey! I’m plenty strong,” she laughs, “but yeah, you’re right.
My mom is human, and I inherited her human life force levels, so I’m human too.
I don’t get all the special magical goodness you get with your Strange extra life force, but I do get to know what goes bump in the night.
I’ve got plenty of Strange among my family and friends—well, a few anyways.
Never met a werewolf before, but I learned about them from books, and then…
well…even more in your class. I thought I was making that clear in my last paper, but…
um…writing has never been my strong suit, so maybe I fucked it up. ”
The erotic passages, the graphic and verbose detail, the unique way she managed to describe the transformation…
Relief I didn’t know I needed washes over me. Lucy knew all along; she knew my power and strength, and she still chose to bounce into my classroom, and on my tongue, tonight.
“No, you did not fuck it up,” I tell her firmly.
“It was there, on the page, and I just couldn’t see it.
Maybe I couldn’t believe you might be able to see through my cover,” I admit, squirming a bit against the admission of my inability to see what had been right in front of me.
I’d been so desperate for it, it seemed far too good to be true, but maybe Lucy is just really that good.
A very odd, very good girl.
“I am an artist, you know. I can be pretty observant. ” She says it so sweetly, I kiss her.
It’s brief, no tongue, but I taste myself on her lips, and it feels right.
“Also,” she laughs, “I wasn’t joking when I said you nearly bit that kid’s head off for cheating on the mid-term. I saw your fangs.”
“Shit.” I reach to cover my mouth and then laugh. It’s too late for that. “I really do need to escape to my cabin for a bit.”
Lucy is suddenly quiet, her body still and her blue eyes focused on the glowing, almost full moon in the window above our heads.
“What’s wrong?” I finally ask.
“Nothing,” she says with a quick, insufficient smile.
“Answer me, Ms. Anderson,” I demand, realizing I’ve returned to my professor voice, questioning and pushing for a more thorough explanation. “Tell me, Lucy—or should I send you back to the corner?”
She blushes but then speaks quickly, her gaze firmly on mine. “You’re wrong by the way.”
“I was wrong?” I ask seriously, because it seems Lucy has a great ability to point out my blind spots. “Tell me. Now!”
“With the whole me not thinking things through thing you said earlier in the hallway,.” she says softly, but there is certainty in her voice, and I trust what she is about to tell me is the truth.
“I mean, I don’t think things through all the time, that's true. I never know where I’ll end up when I start painting.
I still have no idea what the hell I’m going to do in the fall…
and I didn't know what I was going to say to you when I got here tonight. But I knew I wanted you, that, I was sure of, and I knew what I was getting into. I know I want exactly this.”
“You weren’t worried I would turn you down?” I ask.
“Why would I let that stop me from at least trying to get what I always wanted?” she says with a breezy shrug.
“Rejection? Failure? Complete humiliation?” My voice grows louder as years of feral desires held back by fear push towards the surface.
“Oh, huh…” She shrugs again. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t mind a bit of humiliation if it was coming from you. You were worth the risk.”
Lucy snuggles deeper into me as I lie back down and squeeze her tightly to my side.
“You know what else I know?” she asks.
“What, Lucy?”
“I know I want to come with you to your cabin.”
“Jesus, Lucy.” I laugh so hard, my body shakes. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I told you, whatever you want.” She grins.
“Which is much easier to do if I’m nearby, say staying at your cabin with you.
You need to get out all your wolfy energy, and I’m willing and eager to help you do just that…
and…and…it’ll be like the best graduation present ever…
It’ll give me time to figure out what I want to do in the fall— more school or work or maybe something else entirely.
And then we’d have a whole… How long do you stay for? ”
“Usually just a couple days, but after tonight, I think I’ll be extending my trip to a couple weeks.”
“So a couple weeks— we’d have a couple weeks to figure out what we are to each other, what we could become,” she says brightly, her enthusiasm gaining such swirling momentum, I can’t help but be pulled in.
“No bouncing into anything. Just seriously thinking things through, together at your cabin…in between doing, you know, other very important things.”
She shifts into a seated position, and I roll onto my back to see her clearly. She is a beautiful, wild thing, so eager, her pale skin seems to be illuminated by her never ending energy.
“I mean, only if it would please you.”
The large window and the dark night sky behind her, the moon glowing on her red hair, give her a fiery halo.
Angel. Pet. Good Girl.
“It would please me.” My wolf and I agree—Lucy is worth the risk of potential failure. “You please me quite a bit.”
My claws are still long and thick as I grab her shoulders, yanking her mouth down to mine. I kiss her fiercely, bruising her lips and mine, marking us both, at least for at least a couple weeks, if not, much, much longer.