Page 22 of Zodiac Demons

No, this wasn’t how this night was supposed to go. I was supposed to pass the hours alone, locked in a small space, uncomfortable, and miserable. I wasn’t actually trying to find a mate. Why did I invite him here, and why did he smell so damn good?

It’s not like I was imagining this might happen.

I wasn’t.

My family would never approve, Omari would make me suffer, and nothing good could come of this. What I wanted and I needed wasn’t the point. I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t let this go any further.

“This is too dangerous,” I said weakly as he nudged my pants down my hips, exposing me to the crisp air of the late night library in winter. Though my words were saying much less than my half lidded eyes or the hands I kept pressed to the books behind me, instead of using them to push him away.

“We’re alone. It’s fine. I promise I won’t be letting anyone else see you like this tonight.” He wrapped his hand around my cock again offering a warmth that flickered between hot and cold, like his body couldn’t commit to a temperature, as his Vampire and his shifter fought for dominance in his blood. Not a reptilian shifter then. He must be mixed with something warm blooded.

“No, that’s not what I meant.” I shook my head, though the thought was cut short, and my mind forgot its protests, as he started moving that hand up and down again, tugging and massaging every nerve along the way. I braced myself by grabbing his shoulders and burying my face into his chest, not wanting him to see me completely giving in to him. It was hard to say if this was just the heightened aggression and the fucked up hormones that came with the natural intensity of the night, or if it was some strange draw of two hybrids finding each other at the wrong time, but by the devil, I might open that window and let myself shift, just so I wouldn’t back down if he even considered stopping.

That thought was so terrifying, I had to force myself to speak the fears my body now rejected. “Y-you’re an Alpha. I’m an Omega. I can’t…”

“I promise you won’t get pregnant.” He chuckled against me, his whole body pressing me harder into the bookcase as he continued to inch me toward the edge of sanity. “We’re just going to relieve a little tension so you can rest easy tonight. No need to be so uptight. You’re safer with me than the monsters outside.”

One cell somewhere in my brain told me I couldn’t trust him, but all of the rest agreed that he was right. I threw my head back and just focused on my breathing, because fuck, I needed this, no matter how hard I was mentally fighting it. I wasn’t one to self-pleasure if I didn’t absolutely have to, but I’d been wound so tight since I’d been forced to go back to school against my will, on top of having to find some unwanted mate to have offspring I never wanted. I had to believe there was no real harm in just one night with just one man. Whatever power he could have, he wasn’t trying to claim an Omega as his conduit, nor could either of us get pregnant. Being I was obligated to find someone who could give my family an heir, this was, if anything, a small act of defiance.

It was just for fun. It wasn’t that serious. I was just going to…

He took me in another deep, and probing connection of our lips, tasting me, and filling my mouth with his tongue to pin my own in place, so I couldn’t even argue with him on this level. That domination and forcefulness did things to me that I wasn’t comfortable acknowledging, and the way he never stopped stroking me.

Fuck, don’t stop.

Why did I need him right now? All I knew was that with every single touch, the more I believed that I might die without him. That something about him was written into my DNA, and I had no idea what magic was doing that to me. I didn’t have a fated mate. I’d been forced into uncomfortable positions with more than one Alpha, and every one of those had been more terrifying and traumatic than enjoyable, but right now I felt… desperate.

I’d often pushed back against my fate, but tonight I wanted to be the devil’s puppet if it meant he wouldn’t stop touching me like that.

He unsnapped the button on his own jeans, then he grabbed my hand, and directed it to his cock. I nervously obliged, feeling the sheer size of him, and asking myself why I wanted to know what it would feel like if he—stop, stop, stop. Get a hold of yourself.

My breathing picked up in my own ears, more heavy, yet more restrained and controlled. I was letting him kiss me, devour me, taste me, need me, while he circled the head of my cock with the massaging pressure of his thumb.

“I want to fuck you against this bookcase so fucking badly.” He growled into my ear, and I was seconds away from begging him to.

“You can’t mark me.” I shook my head, while I continued to stroke him through his clothing, with signals so mixed, I didn’t even know what side I was on myself. The line dividing the push and pull of my twin star sign was impossible to distinguish.

“Mark you?” He repeated the words with a low laugh. “Is that what you’re so afraid of?” He exhaled through shaking lungs, before leaning in and sniffing along my neck, then brushing his lips over my pulse. The smooth, flat surface of his fangs glided over my racing heartbeat. “But the way your heart is pounding doesn’t sound like fear.” His fangs threatened but didn’t penetrate. What would it feel like if he fed on me? Did I want him to?

No. No, of course I didn’t.

“Well, unless fear is what gets you off.” That purr in his voice lifted my heart rate even higher, and he chuckled at the reaction. He varied the tempo of his stroke, switching from quick to agonizingly slow, playing both my body and my mind with every idly whispered threat. “It is, isn’t it?” I could feel the way his body physically enjoyed that truth, as he firmed and practically twitched in my hand, obvious even through the thin barrier of clothing. “I wanted you before, but that’s too much.” His lips climbed up past my jaw, and he spoke breathlessly into my ear, “You would make such a cute little toy.”

I swallowed thickly, my treacherous mind on the verge of giving that to him, while my survival instincts reminded me that that was power I never wanted to give to anyone, no matter how good it might feel at the time. If I let him inside me, if I took in that essence of his magic, he would be able to mark me any time he wanted, and I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it. That would be the step too far. This was just a one-time thing. A bad decision on a bad night. I had enough rationality, even through my lust and haze, to know better than to cross that threshold.

“I can’t.” I whispered, contradicting myself as I thrust my hips into his hand, needing him to increase the pace of his strokes again and just get me off and get him out of my system. “I mean, we can’t.” I started undoing his jeans the rest of the way against my better judgment. By the devil, it wasn’t the night of the Gemini. There was no good excuse for letting my other mind take over. I shouldn’t be tapping into my shifter in a moment like this, when my Basilisk was the one who knew better.

When I was about to fully free him from his jeans, without warning, he grabbed my wrists, and shoved my arms back against the bookcase again, pinning me there, despite the near possessed look in his eye.

“What are you—”

“Don’t fucking move.” He used an Alpha command, obvious from the tickle of its magic tingling down my spine. The Basilisk in my blood was enough to push back on it without completely losing myself to hierarchical puppetry, but magic or not, I still froze against the wall, and I held perfectly still, shamefully doing as I was told of my own volition, while hoping he’d think it was his bark, so I wouldn’t have to admit it wasn’t.

He released my wrists slowly, watching me and waiting for me to defy him, then he let slip a knowing smirk as he lowered to his knees.

He shoved my hips hard into the books before he pressed his lips to the head of my cock. He took me into his mouth slowly, and I tensed as that electric sensation engulfed every sensitive nerve in my body. He took me deeper and deeper into his throat with every pass, and he used his hand to compensate for how much of me he couldn’t fit, assuring I had contact on every inch at all times.

I was already losing my mind, when he removed the aid of his hand and took me in deep, letting me feel his throat constrict on my tip as I triggered his gag reflex. Having mostly been with Greek and Egyptian snake shifters in the past, this was an entirely new sensation that had my knees shaking and my full weight pressing into the books behind me to hold myself up.