Page 42 of Zodiac Beasts

“You can block it out, you know. You don’t have to feel everything I feel at all times.” Marcus casually spooned some eggs into his mouth. “I’ll always be able to communicate with you through telepathy because I’m a vampire, but one of the perks to a two-sided mark is that you can choose when you want to share your heart, and when you want to close the door completely.”

“Wait, really?” I stared at him, wide eyed. I knew it.

“Really. It makes these moments when you’re looking longingly at my fucking half-brother much easier to stomach when I don’t have to feel what you’re thinking through our bond.” Well, that’s embarrassing. “It’ll also make this upcoming full moon much easier when I don’t have to wonder what you’re getting up to. You can just… block me out if things get… tense.” Not sure how I felt about that incredibly off base assumption about my work relationship. Marcus rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “That may have possibly been a motivating factor for completing the pact. What you’re experiencing now, with this constant, unwanted flood of feelings that aren’t yours, is exactly what Adrian and I have been experiencing all these months. Adrian can’t close the channel between you, but I can now. You might want to learn that ability before your test, because I don’t want to be the reason all your hard work this semester goes to waste.”

“Can you teach me?” I stared at him with pleading eyes, hoping his channels were open enough to understand how desperate I was.

“I can teach you everything you’ll ever need to know, Baby Doll. Maybe now that we’re connected, I can teach you to shift at will, too.” That near constant warm, fuzzy feeling he radiated when he offered to do things for me was, admittedly, the one emotion I didn’t ever want to block out.

“I would really appreciate that.” I should have expected as much. Marcus was always sweet to me, and now we were official official, so why wouldn’t he help me? Despite his quirks, he wasn’t actually a bad guy at all.

“Let’s meet up after you get off work this weekend. We can study everything you need to know before your tests.” And before you end up in a situation you don’t know how to get out of, he added directly into my mind.

I didn’t ask what he meant by that, but I wasn’t terribly worried, either. He was just being weird and jealous, because he didn’t know Ceto yet.

Either way, I was looking forward to learning some lessons that were a bit more relevant to my everyday life for finals. I was ready to have more power over my body and mind.

Chapter 22

I sank my fingers into her pussy at the same rate that I sank my teeth into her neck. Beneath me on my bed, she clung to me like I was her safe space, and that delicious naiveté was enough to have me straining in my jeans.

Thursday was her day off, as she had Calculus in the morning and Astrology club in the evening, giving us a handful of hours to catch up on the obnoxious amount of time we had to spend outside my bedroom. I’d not forgotten that Ceto Arya shared her math class, nor that he was occupying her weekends, her study sessions, and apparently her next full moon, but that was another problem for another time. It was already enough that I was competing with Adrian. I didn’t need a third party in this game until I knew how to control it.

Lazily, I rubbed circles around her clit with my thumb, as I simulated a leisurely fuck with my fingers hooked inside her. I’d come to enjoy these feeding sessions even more when there wasn’t so much clothing between us. I was still dressed from the waist down, hoping that would help my own restraint in this situation, but she didn’t have to have any such barriers. She was happily bare and tangled in my sheets, giving me full permission to touch her any way I wanted. There really was no reason we should have been waiting an entire month between orgasms anyway. I enjoyed her boldness during the full moon, but watching this shy girl give in to me over and over was the most satisfying.

“Let’s try something new.” I whispered against her neck, letting the blood flow for an extra second before I closed the wound. I reveled in the sight of her bleeding for me. Though she didn’t need as much assistance with her healing anymore. The more entangled we were, the more her natural magic gifts surfaced. She couldn’t heal a punctured artery fast enough to be safe, but her shifter’s healing ability had opened her to playing rougher and rougher. “Concentrate on the way everything starts to build, right… here.”

I increased the pressure of my thumb the slightest amount, and I used a touch of my vampiric gifts to rub fast and consistent just beside her clit: not so direct that it might border on painfully intense, but with enough contact that it would have her buckling for me.

Her breaths were short as she unfurled in my hand.

“Grab onto this power as it overwhelms you, and try to hold it in your core. I want you to feed that beast inside you, until she’s strong enough to break out of the cage you keep her in.” I whispered in her ear, exercising the control of an Alpha command in an attempt to force her success. She was so good at unraveling, but so terrible at keeping her threads in a pile, and I wanted her to hold onto the goal today.

I licked the blood from the closed wounds on her neck, ignoring the fact that I was barely in control now. I was going to do what I could to walk her through this, while staying on the side of foreplay. I wouldn’t let myself fuck her again until she got what she needed. “Remember your fangs. Bite me again. Take back your blood.”

Words weren’t forming in her mind or on her lips, and it was entirely too satisfying to do that to her. I opened my link between us, just to enjoy her ripples of pleasure as they built into waves of tense, barely restrained explosions.

I was so fucking hard, but I was going to stay fucking disciplined.

“You can do it, Baby Doll.” I rasped into her ear through a shaky breath, while her fingernails dragged down my back and sharpened enough to break skin. My little Virgo had claws, and I wanted them clinging to me. “That’s it. Keep going.”

“It’s too much.” Lila hissed through her teeth as she dug in her nails.

“No it isn’t.” I kept pushing her. I would know when it was too much, and we weren’t there yet. “You’re going to be a good girl and come for me. You don’t get a break until you do as you’re told.”

“Yessss sir.” She hissed. Sir? Cute. The way she dragged out her ‘s’ told me she was on the verge. Fuck, I was too.

Without warning, but with all of the desperation I was looking for, she grabbed my face and took me in a kiss. A sharp needle-like point nicked my lip, and she used that puncture to drink in my blood.

Never in my life would I be interested in another vampire, but the way she was trying to steal her life force back was a true test of my restraint. She was almost there. She might not know how to control a partial shift for a while, but if I could draw it out of her at all, it would be the start to conquering her power. I wanted so badly to see it—her untainted form, without the Virgo that softened her lunar body.

Every monster suffered through this phase: the awakening, the confusion, and the inability to summon their own gifts at will. We all had to be trained to control our shifting and our desires. Typically we learned as children, and typically that involved a lot of miserable uses of cages and leather belts. She was lucky I could make it enjoyable instead of the literal torture most of us endured to come into ourselves. If I could have honed my animal through orgasms instead of being bound, whipped, and stabbed, I might have been a half way functional member of society.

C’est la vie.

I held her hips, where the texture of her skin began to take on a scale-like roughness.

“That’s it. You’re almost there.” I stayed in her head, so as not to break her kiss. I just needed to edge her until she was completely shifted. If I let her finish too soon, she would lose it. One piece at a time, the real Lila would come out to play.