Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (37 page)
She also knew he’d never hurt her. She didn’t need powers to know it was Gray. She knew it from his dark laugh, from the cinnamon scent of his shirtless chest, from the way he pretended to be tough but flicked his tongue lightly over her breasts. She really hoped Pippa wasn’t watching this.
“I could be anyone.” Through her shirt, hot breath teased her earlobe through the shirt. “Anyone you’ve ever fantasized about.”
“No.” The word came out of her angrily. “Gray. Only you.”
The arm around her back flexed, turning into a solid iron band constricting her chest until she had trouble breathing. A subtle shift in the air signaled playtime was over. He released her and she felt his hands easing her shirt over her head.
Her breath caught. She’d seen his bare chest before—seen his bare
everything
before—and it never failed to make her burn in every way a woman could.
Please run your fingers through me,
requested the splay of fine black hair. His dark nipples asked,
Do you think I taste like chocolate?
She wasn’t done looking at his chest when the floor under her feet disappeared. He lifted her. She drank in his cinnamon scent as she nuzzled the sinews between his neck and shoulders.
Pippa was wrong. Gray didn’t throw her on the bed. He lowered her reverently. As she sank into the dark red duvet, he followed after, rolling on his shoulder to land beside her.
He propped himself on one elbow to look down on her, as if he was desperate to memorize every contour of her face.
“What’s wrong? Something shifted there before you took my shirt off.”
“You said you only want me. Do you know who my wife will be fantasizing about on our wedding night?”
A sour taste filled her mouth. She shook her head.
“Me neither,” he said. “But it won’t be me.”
She struggled to understand how a woman could be tied to this beautiful, self-sacrificing man and want someone else.
For once, she didn’t have the words. Instead, she reached into the soft hairs at the nape of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. She whispered his name as she nibbled at his lips.
When he tried to push her back, down into the covers, she resisted with her own insistent pressure, shoving at his shoulders. He tensed, his mouth buried in the crook of her neck, as if deciding whether to overpower her. They both knew he could have her at his mercy in an instant.
But he relaxed, giving in to her urging, rolling onto his back. She ended up sitting astride his chest in only her panties. From his roving gaze, he seemed to like the view.
“What are you going to do up there?” he drawled, pretending tepid interest.
But he was interested, oh yes. Every muscle in his neck strained against his skin, tense and hard. The flare of his nostrils betrayed his excitement.
For the first time, she considered that she might have some power over him after all, even if it was only between the sheets. “Anything I want to,” she said, her voice husky from desire. “I think I’ll start with this.”
She inched back until she sat lower on his body, and put her hand on the crotch of his jeans. He responded with a heavy sound of appreciation as his penis stretched the fabric. She lowered the fly and slipped her hand inside, capturing his cock, wrapping it in the silk of his boxers.
She stroked, moving the fabric against the sensitive skin that covered the hot, hard member. His jaw twitched as he visibly fought for self-control. The sight set off a responding warmth in her own body, heating her thong.
“Enough.” He growled it like an order she must obey, his pupils nearly black with passion.
She swallowed the urge to crow with laughter. She drove him to the edge, but she knew that he, unlike any other man she’d dated, would never lose that last inch of control. Love washed over her, mixed with pure animal lust for the perfect male lying under her.
He fumbled at the button of his jeans, unfastened them and kicked them away, his underwear inside.
Which left only her thong between them. He clasped her hips in a possessive grip, as if he were the one dominating this. But she knew the truth. He was hers in every way that mattered. He just couldn’t admit it to himself.
She pushed away the bitter thought and toyed with the ribbons of her thong as if she could wait forever to take him inside her. As if the smell of aroused male, tangy on the air, and the sight of his hard-muscled chest didn’t drive her wild.
“Take it off,” he ordered in his throaty baritone.
“Hmmm. No.” She put a finger to her lips, feigning innocence, and leaned over him, dangling her breasts in front over his face. He grasped the opportunity to nuzzle them, taking the sensitized tips into his mouth. With pleasure spiking through her body, straight to her core, she barely had the brain cells to remember to take the prophylactic potion out of her bedside table.
“If you don’t take those off,” he warned, “I’ll just make love to you with them on.”
She caught his beautiful, silky, hot mouth in a kiss that had him groaning.
Breaking it off, she gave him a feline smile. “You do it. With your teeth.”
His lips curled back in a grin of a predator, but he obeyed. When the silk fluttered away, letting cool air onto her overheated flesh, something seemed to snap inside him. He grabbed the potion from her and poured it on his hand.
He pressed thick fingers over her, slickening already wet flesh. Deep inside, he probed, explored, learning every inch of her all over again.
“Stop,” she cried, feeling the warning spasms start.
He’d barely taken his fingers out of her when she impaled herself. Only he could give her this pleasure, touch her this intimately in her secret places. She couldn’t seem to get enough of him, and she greedily lifted herself so she could drive him inside her again, as deep as she could.
Her body clenched around his invading cock, wanting more, wanting everything. And Gray watched her, just as greedy for the sight of her taking her pleasure.
When he touched her clit, the rasp of his thumb sent her spinning into pure sensation. She gasped at the intensity of the orgasm that came over her, throbbing around his pulsing cock. The force of her joy wrung every ounce of energy from her. And Gray joined her, straining up and spurting hot liquid with a strangled cry.
She collapsed onto him, limp and satiated.
He held her to his chest for a long time, stroking her hair like she was something precious.
“Thank you,” he said, his softening cock still inside her.
Something about the breathlessness of his words told her this wasn’t about the sex. She rolled off of him and waited for him to continue.
“You always know what to do for the kids. If you were...”
This was about Sterling and Argent and the divorce. And she knew what he refused to say.
If you were a Meta. If you were a Meta, I’d marry you. If you were a Meta, I’d let myself love you.
Telling him would make everything easy, but she would always have that doubt, niggling inside her, that she hadn’t been good enough for him.
“Gray, I’m the same as always. I’ll never be anything else.”
Please, tell me you want me,
she begged wordlessly.
Tell me that it doesn’t matter. That you love me, no matter what.
“I want to...” His voice trailed off.
“Please, Gray, you’re so close.”
Gray stroked the white hair at her temple.
Hot desperation filled her, like acid that ate away at everything it touched. If only he could take this one leap. “You can have anything. You look after everyone else—look after yourself. Look after us.”
Gray’s turned away from her to stare at the ceiling. “School ends next week.”
That was the answer. This was the end. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She closed her eyes, needing darkness. “You won’t be back, will you?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I want you to know I admire you for putting your family ahead of your own feelings.”
Just not enough to give up my own self-respect,
she didn’t add.
“If things were different...” Gray held her tighter.
There was only one thing left to do now. Something she’d been putting off. “I’m meeting Sterling in the library tomorrow after last period. Will you come?”
“The library?”
“Please,” she said. “It’s important.”
Gray had never thought much about the library. As a kid, he’d spent most of his time in the science labs, cooking up—and blowing up—spells. The only memory he had of the library from his youth was playing on the wooden ladders, sliding on brass rails until Mr. English, the librarian, had treated him to a week of detention.
Only the library and the bell in the Quad had survived the 1864 fire. No one remembered how old the building was. Well, Cross might, but like most things, he wasn’t telling.
Gray stepped through the glass doors, a recent addition since his student days, and noticed the place was deserted. But Sadie’s voice came from between the freestanding walls of books stretching out from the wooden card catalog like the fingers of a Japanese fan. He strode toward her voice and saw her distracted by a burgundy leather-bound tome, wearing a shoulder-baring sundress. Had she planned to pose spotlighted in a slant of yellow late-afternoon sunlight pouring in from the overhead windows? The light gilded the white lock in her dark hair. Gold flecks of dust danced around her like magic.
She tossed her head and laughed for no reason. He smelled her distinct citrus smell. And tea, again.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“Thanks for the warning,” Sadie said to thin air. She lifted the book. “Just reading out loud. Is there anything you want to tell me, Gray? Have you made any—”
Anger flashed through him. “No, I haven’t made any life-altering decisions and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What are you guys doing here?” an adolescent voice interrupted.
He twisted to see his nephew standing in a shadow thrown across the floor by a wall of books. He swallowed his irritation at Sadie’s odd question. “Meeting you,” he said.
“I’m returning a book.” Sterling’s school tie was loose. He shrugged his backpack onto the floor.
“Sadie—Miss Strange—said you were meeting her here.”
Sterling shook his head. The effect of yesterday’s emotional trauma didn’t show. Gray made a mental note to call Argent in Switzerland later.
“Confession time.” Sadie shrugged in mock surrender. “I lured Sterling here with my mystical powers. Anyone else have anything to confess? Sterling?”
“Funny,” Gray said, without humor.
“Isn’t it? Me, with mystical powers. Hysterical.” She slipped the book back on the shelf and hefted a hardcover the size of a tabletop. She held it out to Sterling with both hands. “I brought you something.”
Gold letters glittered on the dark gray cover.
The Atlas of Ancient and Medieval Architecture
. Seeing it, Gray’s temper burst at the seams. “I don’t know what you’re playing at. Let’s go, Sterling.”
He turned his back on her and put a protective hand on Sterling’s shoulder. He’d deal with her later.
Sterling’s face was ashen, his lips the color of concrete.
He was about to ask whether Sterling’s stomach hurt again when a ripple of
otherness
moved through the library. The hairs on the back of his neck stood. Every muscle in his body tensed for the coming combat. A black, malevolent force pushed its way into their reality with a silent roar of outrage. Books shivered on their shelves, as if they needed to escape.
Something was here. And it didn’t like them very much.
His training took over. While Sadie and Sterling stood frozen, he pulled out a vial of gold powder and crafted a magic circle. Inside, nothing could hurt them. Then he’d deal with whatever demon had wormed through the academy’s barriers.
He grabbed Sadie’s slim wrist and pulled her into the circle. Caught by surprise, she overbalanced and landed on the floor at his feet.
A book fell. It never touched the ground. Just as it was about to, leather-bound wings flapped and it soared upward.
He grabbed for Sterling. His nephew dodged and dashed.
Dozens of volumes followed, launching themselves from the shelves as if some careless god had given them life. Eyeless, they thwacked against walls and tumbled down. Some recovered and flapped upward again. Others thrashed on the floor.
“Sterling!” Gray called after him, over the noise of books flapping, but his nephew had already disappeared around a corner.
He tried to go after Sterling, but something held him.
Sadie, on her knees, had a death-grip on his pants. “Stay with me. I’m asking you now.”
“Are you crazy?” He raised his voice to be heard above the flap of paper and leather wings. He needed to protect his nephew. He needed to find out what was causing this. “No time.”
“There was time before. There won’t be time after. This is your last chance.”
He looked down on her, clinging, pleading. His saliva soured in his mouth.
He’d been warned.
She could go back to the way she was,
Chloë had said. In the end, it was his fault. He’d reduced her to this.
“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t stand seeing her this way. Begging. Beneath him. Helpless. Things a Meta would never be. Things his children could never be. “I’m sorry.”
“Keep him here,” she ordered thin air.
He felt invisible hands clamp his shoulders. Panicked, he twisted, but the steel grip kept him pinned.
She rose with sudden dignity, whisking dust from her dress. Behind her, a flying book thunked into the invisible wall of his magic circle and spiraled. It hit the floor on its spine and flapped uselessly against the marble.
“Why do you call us ‘Nons?’” Her voice was oddly calm.
“Sadie?”
“Words have power,
Lorde
Gray. You call yourselves ‘Metanormals.’ So, we should be ‘Normals.’ But instead you make us non-something. Less than you.”
She stepped toward the edge of the circle, in the direction Sterling had disappeared. A few more inches and she’d be outside it, vulnerable to whatever was causing the disturbance.
