Chapter 1 #3
Going on years now.
A shock of fuchsia filled my vision, the blaze of punk defiance that was his tousled, wild hair.
His espresso eyes pierced into mine, harsh and challenging all at once as he ground his sharp jaw.
That familiar spicy scent of his infused me.
His fitted white T-shirt clung to the sculpted lines of his toned, muscled and compact body.
Black jeans hung low on his hips and his studded belt ground into me.
“Winter,” he rumbled dangerously, his inked hand tightening around my throat, his bicep bulging from the effort and his bunching muscles making it appear as though his tattoos with the skeletal motifs, flame patterns, and abstract symbols were moving and come to life.
I reached out and brushed my fingers over the left side of his neck, tracing the sharp, stylized thorned vine tattoo there.
He batted my hand away and slammed it down beside me with such force it had me grunting.
He was using his magic to imbue himself with additional physical strength, because when it came to pure power and muscle where our magic wasn’t a factor, he couldn’t normally overpower me.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” he hissed, his eyes blazing fuchsia, just like his hand still wrapped around my throat.
“You’re the one all over me.”
Fury and passion spilled from him and bled into me.
And it tasted absolutely glorious.
Because it was him unmasked.
A true rarity.
And the fact that it was a rarity was painful to me.
“You piece of shit! What you pulled today… I can’t even… how fucking dare you?”
“So, you finally saw the painting.”
He growled like an animal, wrenched me off the wall by my throat, only to slam me into it again—so hard that I heard the wood crack, and I knew this place to be reinforced against supernatural strength to an extent.
“Not just any painting! A fucking enchanted painting that you spelled into my room—of me! One that puts all my shit on display for everyone to see.”
“Everyone to see? It’s in your dorm room.”
“My dorm room that experiences a lot of foot traffic.” I grimaced at what he was obviously getting at, and he sneered.
“Does that upset you, Win? Me fucking around? Pretty much non-stop? Even though I’m single and free?
Huh? Does it? Go on, say it! Fucking admit that’s why you did this!
It’s why you broke through my ward, invaded my privacy and then conjured that fucking thing—something that I can’t remove, by the way. ”
“It’s not why.”
He didn’t register my words, raging on instead, exasperation melding with it now as well.
“I mean, you’re not even there yet… the year hasn’t officially started…
this was just your moving-in day… and already you’re pulling this shit.
It's bad enough you’re gonna be there all the goddamn time as it is! ”
“Bad enough?”
“Yes! Of course!”
I swallowed down the white-hot lance of his words through my chest.
He stilled, finally actually hearing himself.
Then he released me and abruptly stepped back, snuffing out his magic, then shoving his hand through his hair, making it wilder than ever.
“I didn’t conjure that painting to hurt you, nor to punish you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then looked up at me, while fiddling with his worry stone bracelet on his left wrist, the band made of spherical onyx stones, with a large oval fuchsia stone at its center.
“I know,” he admitted. “I know you’re not capable of that.”
“What did it convey?”
“What?”
“What did it show you that sent you into this rage?”
He grunted at me, then pulled out his phone. In the next moment, he was shoving it in my face.
As he held it there, I took in a video of the oil painting of him sitting on a golden stool in the very outfit he was wearing now.
And there was a chain around his throat glowing, his eyes were hooded with clear sexual need, and his lips were parted in a very obvious offering.
There was an amber mist rolling through it too—the mark of my magic.
But it wasn’t my magic imbued in the making of the painting, it was the message that I’d spelled it to communicate.
The default was just him sitting on the stool.
Any additions like the chain and the shift in his expression was the enchantment at work, an enchantment that brought his repressed emotions and needs to life through the visual nature of the painting.
“I see,” I said.
He’d wanted me.
Yeah, that would definitely send him into a rage.
“That’s not all it’s spelled to demonstrate,” I assured him.
“I get it. It’s all repressed bullshit. Bullshit I don’t want thrust in my face, Win!”
“It hurts you, sweetheart.”
He started, as he shoved his phone back into his front pocket. “Excuse me?”
“It hurts you to keep burying it all. I thought… me attending Loxley with you finally this year… I could help you. The painting being the beginning of working through it with you and—”
“Fuck, no. We’re not doing that.”
“You aren’t going to even consider it? That it could help? Even a small chance that it—”
“No. I’m gonna have it removed.”
“Fine. But… I did it, so I’ll take it out.”
“Stay the fuck away from it. I’ll have another magic-wielder of your caliber remove it.”
“As you wish. And… I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have done that, so I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” he snapped.
“What?”
“I’m too worked up to be managed by an apology from you.”
“Managed? That’s not what I’m—”
His eyes flashed and then he was on me again, digging his blunt nails into my shirt.
I hissed as his pink flame flared, burning into me. It wasn’t heat, per se… not with my death-cold nature in play. But it certainly stung.
I called my power in response, my frost pushing against his magical flame.
So this was what he’d wanted… to let it out like this.
“Dammit,” he choked, his eyes rolling back in his head. He gazed up at me. “I hate you.”
I smiled. “If that were true, things would be a great deal simpler.”
Another grunt came, and then he shoved me into one of the stalls and locked the door behind him with a flick of his magic.
“I’m here for dinner with my dad,” I told him, as he grabbed at the waistband of my jeans.
He stilled. “Sylas is here?”
“Right outside.”
“Then I’ll teleport out if he barges on in here wielding all that crazy-level necromantic power, which will leave you all alone with your dick in your hand, cum dripping all over.”
“Hmm, your form of payback is definitely graphic—and mean.”
“That’s just it, Win, I am mean. Yet, you keep thrusting yourself into my path.”
“As I vividly recall, you’re rather fond of me thrusting myself at you.” My lips quirked. “Or, into you. Does that capture it better?”
He snarled. “You little—”
I snagged his hand, removing it from my waistband, then used the hold to spin him around and shove him up against the stall wall, face-first.
He growled, but it wasn’t in pain. No, I recognized his needy growl all too well. It was fury, passion, and desperate desire all rolled into one.
And it was utterly intoxicating.
Before I could make another move, he did, shoving his jeans and boxer briefs down and exposing his ass to me, then reaching back for me.
I stroked my hand over his lovely ass, back and forth, feeling all that warmth, listening to his breathing growing more choppy by the moment.
He grabbed himself and started working his cock that was already rock hard.
He wasn’t the only one.
As I freed my own, I was so hard, so heavy with need, that just taking myself into my hand sent a zap of harsh pain-pleasure through me.
This was what he did to me.
I heard his breath hitch as I grasped his nape, then ground my cock over his ass cheek.
“Don’t mess around. Just get straight to it,” he told me.
I frowned. “It’ll hurt.”
“Good.”
“Zayn—”
“Do it, Winter. Fuck me.”
His power sparked and a groan spilled from me as I saw magical lube then dripping from his tight little hole that he was offering to me so aggressively.
“Like that, huh?” he asked over his shoulder as he raised his head, but didn’t turn it to look at me.
“You know I do.”
“Yes, I damn well do. So drop the white knight complex and take what you want. What we both fucking want.”
Fuck.
I eased his right cheek aside and teased his slippery hole with my crown. Pleasure shot through me, making me pant with it, my body basically vibrating with the need he was stoking in me. Not just stoking it, escalating it so rapidly that I couldn’t even begin to attempt to get a hold on it.
I couldn’t… I was too far gone.
I pushed forward and a guttural groan rumbled from him that rolled right through me.
Somehow I managed to wait, to hold steady while he adjusted, even having to keep him from shoving back against me.
“Breathe.”
I felt him relax a little more.
“Now,” he demanded. “More. Don’t stop. Don’t take it easy. Let it go, wunderkind.”
“Accursed fireball,” I returned.
A dark chuckle escaped him, but it was cut off as I sank in deeper, another couple of inches, opening him for me, making me grind my teeth against the intensity of his ass clenching so fiercely around my cock.
I slapped my hand down by his head for purchase.
Then I eased out right to the tip, before driving all the way in.
“Fucking dammit!” he roared out into the room. “Yes!”
I saw his pink magic spark, then heard the door lock.
And then he snagged my hand, his magic glowing, that pink fire flaming.
I pushed back with my Wraith frost, and it had the both of us growling.
Life flooded through me—or the illusion of life in the form of his raging fire.
And my frost cracked across his skin, cooling him down, bringing that peace he always craved.
I rocked into him, grinding then thrusting, then angling.
He cursed out into the stall as I hit that sweet spot deep inside, and his thighs trembled.
“Look at me,” I breathed at his neck, before lashing it with my tongue, then biting his ear, earning delicious shudders from him.
“No,” he ground out, squeezing his eyes shut instead.