Chapter 15 Kyren
Chapter fifteen
Kyren
I kept staring at the numbers on the page, but I couldn’t get my mind to make sense of them. Working on the household accounts wasn’t something I usually did. I had people for that.
Except I couldn’t focus on anything other than seeing Jack last night.
She’d been magnificent.
Obviously out of her element being the center of attention, but a queen in her own right. The way her face flushed whenever someone complimented her. The way she talked about her family. It made my emotions war inside of me.
My loyalty to my sire, Kleon, fought with the part of me that loved her and wanted her to be happy. It was becoming more and more of a struggle to remind myself of all the reasons why I couldn’t be with her.
I’d been harder than a rock as I watched her with all her admirers and then putting those two males in their place. I had to get out of there before anyone caught a whiff, or worse, I gave in and kidnapped her.
Now, I sat at my desk, trying to keep my mind on something, anything, but her and failing.
The front door creaked open, and Tate’s scent drifted towards me. I gave him a passing glance when he walked into the room before scribbling something on the paper. Fuck if I knew if it was right.
“Wow,” Tate murmured, standing in the doorway of my office. “Isn’t this depressing?”
He pushed off the doorway and walked toward me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his gym shorts. His gaze lifted to behind me.
“Kyren, babe, your shadows are blotting out the world.”
I glanced behind me, saw the swirling vortex of black behind me, and closed my eyes, thinking calming thoughts toward them. Eventually, the light in the room brightened, and my shadows calmed.
“Better?” I asked, leaning my face on my hand while I stared at the numbers on the page.
“Much.” Tate sat on the edge of my desk, peering over my shoulder. “Why are you doing the household accounts? What happened to Manny?”
“Figured I’d take a crack at them,” I murmured, not meeting his prodding gaze.
Tate hummed. “This mood you’re in doesn’t have to do with a certain female, does it?”
I tugged on a sheet of paper under his butt and grunted. Tate lifted his hips slightly for me, his hand moving to settle further onto my desk.
“You know, I heard a rumor.”
I grunted again.
He leaned toward me, his breath on the side of my face.
“That you were at the bar last night.” My nose twitched as a familiar scent hit my senses.
“And not just that, but a certain two supernaturals are now missing. Strangely enough, the same two guys who were hassling Jack. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? ”
My eyes zeroed in on the hand on my desk, sniffing once more. The spicy scent of arousal filled my nose. But not just anyone’s… Jack’s. My eyes slowly lifted to Tate’s smirking face, and the knowing look on his face told me all I needed to know.
“And what if I did?” I croaked, leaning back in my chair, fingers curling into the arm rests. “No one would blame me.”
“Of course not. You were just protecting what was ours.” Tate licked his lips suggestively.
“Ours, right,” I murmured. The arousal on his hand was also on his face, but there was something else. Blood. And not just any blood…
I shoved out of my chair and backed up from him, eyes wide and fangs aching.
“What’s the matter, Kyren?” Tate lifted the offending hand to his face, stroking his lips with his fingers. “You seem to be having a hard time there.” His eyes dropped to the front of my slacks, his own arousal mixing with Jack’s.
“You’re a right bastard,” I snarled, backing further away from him. “If you’re going to fuck her behind my back, then have the decency to shower first.”
“Oh, this?” Tate held his hand toward me. “This was just a taste. And didn’t you tell me I could do what I wanted?” He cocked his head to the side, taking a step toward me. “What I wanted was to bury my cock into the hilt, listening to her scream while she came all over that desk I had her on.”
My body shook at the visual, the scent of her arousal coming closer to me. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to…”
“I find that hard to believe.” I swallowed, then regretted tasting the scent on my tongue. “Did she not want to?”
“Oh, she wanted to.” Tate closed in on me, my back hitting the wall behind me.
He propped his arms over my head, engulfing me in their scents.
“But I had to have a taste…” He leaned down until our mouths were inches apart.
“Don’t you remember? How good she tastes? Especially after you’ve fed on her?”
I blinked rapidly up at him before shoving under his arm. Shaking my head, I tried to get the smell out of my nose.
“No, I don’t.”
Tate didn’t chase after me, leaning against the wall I’d been pinned against and chuckling.
“She’s on her period. Every vampire and werewolf in that place is going to be sniffing in her direction. And since, technically, she’s not ours anymore…”
I kept my back to him, staring into the fireplace, trying not to think about what he and Jack had done. How he’d ended up with not only her arousal but her blood on his hand, his face.
Blood to a vampire was always a battle of wills. The older you were, the easier it was to fight against the need to feed the moment blood appears.
But period blood? It was the sweetest kind there was. Heroine to a crack addict.
Normally, the humans stayed close to their vampire partners during that time of the month.
Same with the female werewolves, who hid in their rooms or, if they were really daring, flaunted it to their male counterparts.
The witches used charms to hide their scent, making it impossible to know when they were menstruating or not.
The last time Jack had her period, we weren’t together.
Tate had just started dating her, and I’d still been watching her from a distance.
There were several days where her bleeding was particularly heavy that I’d had to leave campus all together so I wouldn’t pin her down and bury my face between her thighs.
This time…
I shuddered. If we were still together, I could have partaken in Tate’s and Jack’s encounter. Spent the week camped between her legs, eased her cramps, and made her come with my tongue and cock inside of her.
For Tate to come here, flaunting her state in front of me like this, was cruel. Torturous.
“Do you hate me so much?” I murmured at the fireplace.
“No, Kyren. Of course not.” Tate’s form appeared behind me, arms wrapping around my shoulders. “But I think you’re hating yourself enough right now, and I just wanted to remind you of what you’re missing. What you could be having right now if you’d just let go of this grudge.”
Anger welled in my chest, which was better than the desperation and hunger I felt.
“A grudge?” I scoffed a laugh. “You think this is just some grudge?” I shoved out of his arms and spun on him. “They killed my sire.”
“Who did?” Tate countered, his face calm not reacting to my outburst.
“The Durands. You know that.”
“Which Durands? Specifically.”
“Piper,” I growled, glaring at him.
“So… not Jack,” Tate pushed.
The muscles in my jaw tightened as I bit out, “No.”
“So… you’re torturing yourself and her because of something both your parents did?” Tate cocked his head to the side. “Sounds kind of medieval to me.”
“I’m not going to argue the semantics of vengeance with you.”
“Alright, don’t. Let this get between you and Jack. Let it eat you alive until all you have is your hate for her family.” He took a step back as if to leave and then paused. “Oh, yeah. Something else important. That professor, the hunter?”
I didn’t say anything waiting for him to finish.
“Yeah, him.” He locked eyes with me, a kind of glint to his gaze. “They used to date and have been awfully cozy as of late. Just thought you should know.”
His words hit me square in the chest. The hunter. I knew it. I fucking knew it. He looked at her too much. Even in class, he spent more time with his eyes on her than everyone else combined, and Jack’s explanation that they had a history never felt completely true.
Knowing that itchy feeling I had toward him wasn’t unwarranted made me want to smash something.
It made me wish I’d spent longer on those two last night.
Really wrung out every bit of pain I could get from them, because right now, I wanted to rip someone’s throat out. That throat being the professor’s.
“Fuck you, Tate.” I pressed my lips hard against his. “I love you but… fuck you.”
Then I let the shadows engulf me, taking me from my apartment and across town until I landed outside the school gates.
I stalked through the hallways, ignoring the looks and greetings directed at me. I had only one person in mind right now and that was the professor.
Even if I couldn’t have Jack. I sure as hell wasn’t letting him have her. I’d see him bleeding out on the stones before I let that happen.
My fist banged on the door of his office, my foot tapping impatiently for him to answer. When there wasn’t one, I glanced down each stretch of hallway before using my shadows to portal inside, ending up on the backside of his desk.
Empty.
I moved around his desk, preparing to leave, but I caught sight of something white inside a partially open drawer. Curiosity getting the better of me, I pulled the drawer open. My hand dipped inside and drew out the white cotton thong.
My nose crinkled. This guy was messed up. He was keeping women’s panties in his office drawer. Then my nose twitched. I brought the material closer to my nose and inhaled.
My teeth gnashed together so hard that my fangs cut the inside of my lips.
The scent was faint but unmistakable. These were Jack’s. Why did he have Jack’s panties if he wasn’t sleeping with her? Tate said they had dated before. Maybe it was a souvenir of their time together?
Either way, the thought of him having a piece of her only drove my need to see him bleed out.
I shoved the panties back into the drawer, slamming it closed before letting my shadows take me back out of the office and into the hallway. A couple of students jumped back at my sudden appearance, but besides a few dirty looks, they didn’t say anything.
If the hunter wasn’t in the office, then he must be at lunch or in his apartment. My feet made the decision for me, moving me down the hallway toward the cafeteria. Everyone stepped out of my way as I came, no doubt feeling the need for violence rippling off me.
Before I could get to the cafeteria, a familiar sweet scent hit my nose, and my feet detoured on their own.
I rounded a corner and found myself face-to-face with Jack coming toward me.
Her eyes were down on her phone, her nose wrinkled up as she chewed on her bottom lip, not paying any mind to where she was going until she was about two feet away.
She jerked to a stop, eyes lifting to mine. Her mouth dropped open.
“Kyren,” she stuttered out, her eyes darting around the hallway. “You’re back.”
Not responding to her statement, I stepped forward and wrapped my hand around her throat. I pressed her up against the stone wall.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t stop me. I didn’t know if I should laugh or be mad that she still trusted me not to hurt her.
“What are you doing?” She licked her lips, her voice low.
I placed my other hand on the wall beside her head, leaning into her. “Just came to remind you, la mia, who you belong to.”
“Oh, really.” Jack arched a brow, her surprise morphing into sass. “And who would that be?”
“You’re ours,” I growled, dropping my mouth next to her ear. “And if I find out that hunter touched you, I’ll kill him. Slowly. Same as the others. But this time, you’ll watch.”
She gasped, staring up at me. “So it was you.”
I stepped back and released her throat, a smug smile on my lips. “Don’t forget, la mia. You’re mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to bleed. Mine to kill.”
Pleasure rippled through me as I watched her hands tighten into fists, anger crossing her features at my words.
“All you are to me right now is a shadow on the wall. So do what you do best and disappear.”
I let my eyes linger on her for a heartbeat before letting my shadows wrap around me. Her aggravated growl followed me, like a sweet symphony in my ears.
When I reappeared back at my apartment, Tate was there waiting. He saw the look on my face and sighed.
“Damn it, Kyren. What did you do now?”