Page 19 of Zodiac Demons

“Why is it such a big deal that it’s me? It’s not like I’m anything to you, remember?” That boldness that had been slowly coming to blossom flashed in her eyes, “I think someone as disinterested and mature as Professor Adrian Karras can avoid falling in love with someone as reckless and naïve as I am.” There was a hint of teasing in a statement that was disguised as a challenge. Her eye roll was playful, but her words were kerosene in a furnace. “I’m your student, after all. Well…” she looked up with careful consideration. “I guess technically it’s summer break, so I’m not your student at the moment. I’m just a woman in your house, offering to let you use me however you need to in order to stay alive.” Her ho-hum tone didn’t suit the gravity of her words.

She stood from her bench seat, and side stepped the breakfast bar, fully entering the kitchen with nothing in between us but space. Space that she slowly claimed with steady steps, and space that offered nothing to hold me back.

“It’s more than that. You’re mated to my brother. You’re a victim of both of our personal grudges, and you haven’t had a choice at any point in this process. If we’d met in a café and progressed naturally from there, it would be one thing, but our entire relationship is a mess from start to finish.”

“So you’d die before you’d touch me?” She moved into my personal bubble, and looked up from me from her quaint height. Her expression carried pity, while her pheromones were penetrating my skull, and those pouty lips were centered in my view. “Am I really that undesirable to you?”

“That’s not what I mean.” I swallowed thickly, and I gripped the edge of the counter behind me, so I had something to occupy my hands that wasn’t bunched in her hair, or on her waist, or squeezing her full breasts. Devil’s grace, she had definitely been spending way too much time with Marcus, because not only had she become dangerously confident, but every word was so perfectly chosen to stretch my strings of control until they were begging to snap.

“Would it be easier if I just kept my clothes on, and I said understand that it’s just something quick and impersonal?” That question from anyone else would sound seductive, but she spoke with honest concern, like she was asking me if I wanted soup to help with my cold.

“That’s…” I was at a loss for words as she bent to the side to reach under her own skirt. She started tugging down her panties in a silent and intensely bold invitation. My whole body jerked back and my knuckles were white as the sound of cracking stone pierced the space when the marble countertop started to give under my grip strength. That scent of her bare arousal hit, and I was breathing slow and heavy through my nose, and I would love to claim the sweat on my brow was from my workout, but it absolutely wasn’t. “Lila, you don’t know what you’re doing right now.”

Her sigh was exasperated and she shook her head. “Someone I care about just told me he’s literally going to die if he doesn’t have sex with me, and I’m the one who doesn’t know what they’re doing? I’m making a rational decision based on the cards in front of me, and you’re letting yourself starve to death because… why exactly?” Her logical mind was much more enjoyable in mathematical situations than it was in personal ones. As she was the one making sense, and I was the one being irrational.

“You’re. Mated.” I said through gritted teeth.

“I just told you I have two other mates. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.” She bent one leg to step out of her panties, and fuck, this was too much already. “Who exactly is winning by you being stubborn about this, when I’m fine with it. If you had any concept of some of the things I’ve handled at this point, you wouldn’t be worried about breaking me.” She practically snort laughed at her own misdeeds, and to her credit, she’d now been fucking different monsters in all sorts of different ways for six months now. She had a point. It just wasn’t the point I felt was relevant.

“I know you can handle it.” I exhaled a shaky breath through my nose, and I closed my eyes to try to center myself. A poor choice, as the second my eyelids washed my vision in black, my mind was filled with the vivid mental image of fucking her against my refrigerator. “I know you can take me.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to say out loud, but it was also exactly what I was thinking as she nudged up against me, with only a few layers of fabric between her dripping pussy and my very responsive cock.

“Then take me.” She whispered, a blush on her cheeks, and the mixture of both her concern and excitement swirling through her emotions.

The thought that this girl was offering me a pity fuck because she was worried about me and not because we were anything legitimate to each other should have been abhorrent to me, but instead, I was nearly choking on how fast I was trying to take in that desperate energy.

“Lila…” Her name was a distant echo in my head. “You shouldn’t…”

Why was I fighting this so hard? She was completely into this. She wasn’t currently my student. This was a necessary defect of my species. And she had multiple other mates, so it wasn’t like she was asking me to commit beyond a simple feeding session.

I was the one building this into something more than it was. Because Lila wasn’t someone I saw as disposable or a mindless person to feed on.

Because I couldn’t do this, while in my sane mind, without any excuses or scape goats to fall back on, and still say I wasn’t falling for her. I needed those barriers to protect the lies I built for myself, and the moment I let them so much as flicker, they would crumble.

“I shouldn’t? Or you don’t want me to?” She was being playful, while I was losing my mind.

“I can make it another month. You don’t have to throw yourself at me like this just for my sake.” I forced out the words my whole soul regretted—my cock most of all—but they had to be said.

Because this was what terrified me the most. The idea of a woman only being with me out of obligation, when she had other men who treated her better and who deserved her more, was everything I never wanted. Maybe right now she was excited by the thrill of fucking her teacher, but what would happen in another year, another ten, another two hundred—at some point, she would get tired of me, and I would still have no choice but to take her, and only her, lest I end up in a bad way.

I liked her too much to let that be either of our fates.

I still had the card I’d gotten at the succubus den in my wallet, and it was about time I committed to speaking with the witch. At least now I had all of the pieces to the puzzle, so I might have a better chance of getting the right magic.

She exhaled with earned frustration. “I can’t see how letting yourself get to a breaking point is safe.”

“It’s not, but…” I ran a hand through my hair, and dragged my teeth over my lower lip. “If I keep enough distance from you, I’ll manage one more month at least. Otherwise, if you were to be my feeding partner right now, when I can feel my monster clawing at its cage this intense, we would risk completing our mate pact, in which case I couldn’t be apart from you on a full moon without experiencing separation sickness. This is safer for both of us with such a public event coming up so soon. I can handle it.”

That was the too honest reason that had her perk up with a slow and slightly devious grin. “That’s fair. I don’t know that I could reject your mark on a normal day, so if you don’t think you can resist biting me right now, than you’re probably right.” Lila said, rubbing the back of her neck. “But before we’re back at school and officially professor and student again, let’s get this sorted. Ethically.” She took a step back, and I released a hard held breath at the slight relief from her pheromones. “But speaking of separation sickness, I need to invite Marcus still. No one had told me that was what happened on full moon nights after sealing the pact, and I still feel bad about it.”

I snorted a laugh. “I wouldn’t. He deserved it.”

Lila shook her head, though she looked as amused as I was. “For some reason, I feel like your relationship with him is going to be the hardest part of all of this.”

She had no idea how spot on she really was.

I drove her back to the dorms that night, and with the restraint of a god, I didn’t touch her. I said goodnight, and I turned my car back towards home.