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I waved my dripping wrist in front of his nose. He pulled away, but I followed, cornering him against the wall between two shelves. I pressed my body against his, my wrist millimeters from his lips.
“All you have to do is stick out your tongue,” I told him, my voice throaty. “And all of this will be yours.”
“Piper.” He was whispering, pleading with me, but his hunter’s eyes were locked on the trickle of blood.
“Just one taste,” I murmured, moving my body against his, making sparks dance through me even as pain still throbbed where I had cut myself.
With a snarling growl, he took my wrist into his mouth. Sharp teeth pierced my skin, and his hot lips pressed against my flesh. His tongue worked, lapping at the blood with little sensual motions. It ignited my blood, turning the sparks of arousal into a raging inferno. I pressed closer to him, straddling his thigh, reveling in the feel of him. His breath quickened as mine slowed—the blood loss was making me dull-headed and sleepy, but I didn’t care. This was the best damn wet dream I’d ever had, and I never wanted it to end.
His powerful arm was like a vise around my waist, and I could feel how hard he was through his clothes. His cock pressed against me, hot and demanding, as his thigh ground against my clit. I wanted him more than I’d maybe ever wanted anyone. Every cell of my body wanted to be taken by him, every molecule of my essence—
Just as my vision began to darken, he pulled away. I whimpered, the sound desperate and broken. I’d been so close, so fucking close, and I ached for him to finish it. The French call orgasms la petite mort—the little death. I’d never understood why until now.
“Piper,” he whispered through lips stained with my blood. “Shit.”
He licked his lips then kissed me hard. I writhed against him, trembling with what felt like decades worth of pent-up desire. He held me close, letting his hands wander over my body as he returned my life force to me—every bit he’d taken, he gave back tenfold. I wanted him to take it farther, wanted everything he had to give, but the moment my head was clear and the cut on my wrist had healed completely, he pushed me away.
We stood staring at each other for a long moment, breathing hard, the foot of space between us vibrating with energy. His pupils had gone back to their human shape, his black irises round and dilated, no longer slits.
He almost looked… ashamed. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.
Still breathing hard, he held up a finger and gave me a stern look.
“That was the last time.” Although his voice shook, it was so full of conviction it made my chest ache. “Never again.”
Chapter Nine
Weeks went by with no visible progress toward our goal of getting home.
Actually, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure that was the goal anymore. The teachers who had remained optimistic the longest had finally succumbed to the same sort of hopelessness the others all seemed to have. Everyone was grimly preparing us for an eternity in the underworld, and it was beginning to wear on every single student at FU, from second-years to fourth-years. Tempers were shorter, emotions ran high, and people were late to class more frequently. The very air here had a way of making you want to sleep forever.
There were other little changes too. People were having more difficulty maintaining their human appearances, and every day there was another student who had given up and come to class looking like the devil. What used to be a classroom full of normal-looking adult humans was now full of hellhounds and hellbeasts of all shapes and sizes. It was colorful, but it was also disturbing.
Wyatt—a kid who had come to the pub in the little village on Mönkh Saridag with us more than once and had always seemed a little aggressive and twitchy—usually sat next to me in my last class of the day. It was one of those softer classes, focused on maintaining your inner light or whatever. Wyatt had spent the last few weeks making snippy little comments under his breath, but he hadn’t acted out much.
But on a Tuesday five months into the school year, he came to class looking for a fight. He flopped down next to me with a snarl and glared at the professor, a pale-faced woman named Serena Bowman.
“Hello, class,” she intoned in her breathy voice. “Today we’re going a little further into our guided meditation. That silver strand we created yesterday needs to be strengthened, so that no matter where you are or what you come up against, you can always find your way back to yourself. Now—”
“Sure. Great. But we couldn’t find our way anywhere else even if we wanted to though, could we?” Wyatt spoke out loud, not even bothering to whisper.
“Excuse me?” Professor Bowman blinked her owlish eyes at him.
“You heard me. There’s us, there’s the school, and there’s…what? Fire? Lava? Trees made of fucking bones? Everybody we know is everybody we’ll ever know forever. Your class is as useless as the nightly patrol.”
“Take a breath, Wyatt,” she said soothingly. “It might not be as hopeless as all that.”
“Might? It might not be? Then it is! You’re lying to yourself with this ‘might’ bullshit.”
“Yo,” Frankie, the student in front of Wyatt, turned around and addressed him with a grimace. “Chill out, man. You’re killing the vibe for everybody in here.”
Wyatt crossed his arms and glared. Class went on, but my attention was focused on him. Something definitely wasn’t right. He felt unstable. Dangerous.
After a few moments of silence, he muttered to himself, “I’ll kill something.”
Oh, shit. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out slowly, trying not to immediately suck in another lungful. Wyatt had the same look in his eye I’d seen in school-shooter mugshots, and his skin was rippling unsteadily between a human color and a bright, football-textured tangerine color. He kept his mouth shut for the rest of class, but that didn’t ease my mind any. His silence was only building pressure on the inside, making him more likely to blow at any second.
“And that’s all for today, class. Keep practicing those meditative techniques, you will need them.” Bowman blinked, then shifted her gaze to my right. “Wyatt, could you stay behind for a moment?”
