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“That’s better,” he murmured.
Then he kissed me.
Holding me tightly but tenderly, he poured himself into me. I drank him in, every taste, every sensation. Clinging to him like my life depended on it, I relaxed in his arms, freezing every thought and outside feeling so I could focus solely on the man pressed against me. He tasted vaguely like ginger and felt like velvet and power. I trembled under his touch as my energy skyrocketed past anything it had ever been before.
We had kissed before, but never like this.
Because this was so much more than a kiss.
After several long moments, when my lips were swollen and pink, he released my mouth slowly, gently. He brushed my hair back behind my ears and swept the dampness from my face. As his gaze burned into mine, I felt something radiating from him that was stronger and sweeter than lust, more powerful than anything I could think of.
I didn’t dare put a name to it, but in that moment, it made me whole.
Chapter Fourteen
Kai didn’t let me leave his room for an hour. No clothes came off, but he pressed me up against the door and kissed me over and over, devouring me with his warm, velvety lips.
He kissed me like he was trying to feed me, or maybe like he was trying to feed himself, and when he finally pulled away, there was reluctance in his eyes.
I didn’t push for sex, and even though our heavy make-out session left me with the succubus equivalent of blue balls, I felt like I could’ve run a marathon at a flat out sprint by the time I left his dorm room.
So turned on I could barely think straight, I made a beeline for the shower and let hot water pour over me as I touched myself, remembering the look on Kai’s face when I had shifted back to myself, the feel of his body pressed against mine, the warm caress of his breath on my lips.
I came so many times I thought my legs might give out, and then I came twice more imagining Kai doing the same thing I was one floor down.
One day, we’ll do this together. And I hope I fucking survive it when we do.
When I saw him the next day, Kai and I didn’t talk about what had happened between us—what had changed between us. We were both too stubborn and cowardly for that.
But to my massive relief, something had changed. He no longer avoided me or the other men in the halls, no longer kept himself apart from us. He still sometimes hovered just at the edge of our little group, but he was firmly a part of it.
And it was a good goddamn thing, because things at FU were starting to get weird.
As the weeks went on, the pressure of living in the underworld had split the students evenly. Those who couldn’t take it had been steadily whisked away to some mysterious “daycare” downstairs. Those who could stand it, who grew stronger to spite it, were given jobs.
The job that took the most time—and felt the most important—was perimeter patrol. To conserve energy and strengthen our protection, the wards had been moved in from the wall around the school to just the school building itself. Maintaining and checking them was a daily chore that rotated between assigned groups.
The guys, Hannah, and I had all been assigned to perimeter patrol on the same shift. Toland was big on keeping natural groups together; he was as much general as headmaster by this point, and he knew that we would work far more intuitively with each other than we would with strangers.
Hannah was in charge of wards, since she had the highest marks in magic. Xero took the lead on early detection—changes in the atmosphere and things like that—since he knew the place best. Kai was tasked with checking the high, dark, and small places; places where his hunter’s night vision would come in handy. Jayce used his heightened sense of smell to make sure the others hadn’t missed anything, and I double-checked Jayce’s perceptions with my own sex-seeking radar. Although honestly, I didn’t know if it worked the way Toland intended it to. I could barely taste my own guys down here, how was I going to taste a native of the underworld?
But I actually didn’t mind the patrols. They got us out of the school and gave us a chance to screw around without attracting unwanted attention from Sonja or her posse, who’d only become worse. This particular Thursday, Kai and Jayce were racing in their demon forms to see if vampires or hellhounds were faster.
“Vampires,” Kai said smugly as he perched on a rock next to the castle wall that had been the end goal. Then he frowned, confused. He glanced over his shoulder, looking for the hellhound, and almost fell off the rock when Jayce popped up behind him with a terrifying snarl.
“Damn it!” the dark-haired vampire cursed. “How did you do that?”
Laughter sounded evil and otherworldly through a hellhound’s throat, and I think it startled Jayce. He froze, then shifted back into his human form, grinning sheepishly.
“It’s the underworld,” he admitted with a shrug. “I don’t know, it’s like I’m part of the atmosphere here. I can just sort of… bleep forward at will.”
“Portal travel? Cheater.” Kai glared at him.
“It’s not portals,” Jayce objected. “It’s just—I don’t even know what it is, honestly, but it makes it easier to live in this cave. Makes me feel like I can breathe, you know?”
“You have been dealing with your claustrophobia pretty well since we’ve been here,” I said thoughtfully. "Do you feel like this place is changing you?”
He shook his head, his blue eyes as bright and open as always. He sure didn’t look like he was turning evil. “Just adapting, I guess. I’m good at that. Had lots of practice growing up.”
