Chapter 7

I dragged myself up the three flights of stairs to my dorm room, my limbs heavy with an overwhelming fatigue, yet my blood still singing with electric heat. Chloe was already passed out across her bed, snoring softly, half her body draped over her duvet. I didn’t even bother changing into pajamas; I stripped off my boots and collapsed onto my twin mattress, my phone clutched tight in my hand. The moment my head hit the pillow, the lingering pine-and-frost scent of Ryder pulled me straight under into a thick, suffocating darkness.

Except it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. It was an absolute inferno.

In the dream, the dark room was choked with the heavy scent of turpentine, charcoal, and cold mountain air. I was pinned against the smooth, polished wood of the lecture podium in Room 204, my chest heaving, my wrists trapped firmly above my head by a large, calloused hand.

I looked up, expecting the sharp, aristocratic face of Dante Black—his dark button-down half-unbuttoned, his icy blue eyes burning through me with absolute, unforgiving authority as he leaned down to murmur a dark command against my lips. “You’re late for class, Miss Green,” he rasped, his cold, commanding touch sliding up my thighs, spreading me wide across his desk, taking what he wanted with a ruthless, calculated precision.

My breath hitched, a whimper escaping my throat—but before he could claim my mouth, heavy, leather-clad arms wrapped around me from behind, crushing my back against a broad, iron-hard chest.

“He might own your daytime thoughts, little wolf,” Ryder’s gravelly, dark voice growled against my ear, his large hand sliding under my shirt, tracing a trail of pure wildfire over my stomach, “but you’re mine.”

The dream twisted into a chaotic blur of heat, friction, and sensory overload. I was completely trapped between them—sandwiched between the dark, sophisticated control of the professor and the raw, unhinged power of my mate. Dante held my jaw, sinking into me with slow, brutal control, while Ryder’s dark, feral growls echoed in my ear, his teeth biting down hard on the pulse point of my neck, claiming me from behind. A wicked, dual rhythm of possession and pleasure tore through my body, driving me completely unhinged until every nerve ending ignited at once, shattering me into a million burning pieces.

I sat up in bed with a violent gasp, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

My sheets were tangled wildly around my legs, my clothes drenched in sweat, my skin burning as if I were still caught in their fire. I clutched my chest, taking ragged, shallow gulps of cold dorm room air. It was barely 6:00 AM, the pale morning light just beginning to bleed through the cheap plastic blinds.

My hands were shaking. My entire body throbbed with an ache so deep it made my teeth grind. I fell back onto the mattress, staring at the water-stained ceiling as my mind reeled from the wicked, filthy fantasy my brain had just spun.

Fuck, I thought, pressing both palms over my burning face. How the hell was I supposed to sit through Art History at nine in the morning and look Professor Black in the eye?