LOGINLuca stepped in front of me, which was either brave or stupid.
Probably both.
"Nothing, sir." His voice was cold. "We were just leaving."
He reached back for my hand, but Professor Ferraro moved faster, one long stride, and his hand closed around my wrist, pulling me clean out of Luca's grip.
"Hey—" Luca started, but one look from Ferraro shut him up completely. Not even a word or threat, just those dark, unreadable eyes settling on him like a verdict, and Luca went still.
"My office, Miss Benson." Ferraro's accent wrapped around my name like a hand around a throat. Gentle, yet commanding. "Now."
He didn't wait; his grip moved from my wrist to my lower back as he steered me forward, and all I could do was throw Luca a small nod over my shoulder that said I was fine while my entire body screamed the opposite.
I was totally not fine. In fact, I was on fire.
His hand burned through the thin fabric of my blouse, every point of contact between his palm and my spine felt like a brand, and I was acutely, miserably aware of how wet I still was from the hallway.
From the dream before that, and from three years of wanting this man from the third row of his classroom, and never once believing it would lead me here.
His office door opened, and he guided me through it, then clicked it shut behind us.
The lock turned. Oh god.
I stood in the middle of the room and tried to look composed while my thighs pressed together under my skirt.
His office smelled like him, dark cedar, something faintly warm underneath it, expensive and understated.
Books lined every wall, and the late afternoon light cut through the blinds in long golden strips.
He walked toward me slowly, hands loose at his sides, and I backed up instinctively until the edge of his desk pressed into the backs of my thighs.
There was nowhere else to go.
He stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze.
Six feet two of a controlled, quietly furious Italian professor, and I was five four with soaked underwear and absolutely no defense.
"What were you doing out there, little bunny?"
My breath stopped. Little bunny.
The exact words from my dream. From every dream. My knees nearly buckled.
"I—" I tried, but nothing came out; my mouth was useless.
His jaw tightened, and he reached out slowly and tucked a strand of blonde hair behind my ear, his fingertips grazing my cheekbone, and the touch was so deliberate and so gentle that it was somehow more devastating than anything else he could have done.
"You moan in my class," he said quietly. "You look at me like you want to be ruined." His thumb dragged slowly across my lower lip, pressing just slightly until my mouth parted. "And then I find you in the hallway letting another man touch what isn't his."
My heart slammed in my chest. “What—"
He gripped my hips and spun me before I could finish the sentence, pressing my chest flat against the surface of his desk. The wood was cold against my flushed skin, my breasts crushed against it, and my palms splayed on either side, trying to ground myself.
His body pressed against my back with controlled, like everything he did, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it.
"You want to be fucked." That wasn't a question. His mouth was at my ear, his accent low, dark, and private. "So badly you dream about it in my class. So badly you let your little friend touch you in an empty hallway."
His hand slid under my skirt, palm flat against the back of my thigh, dragging upward slowly. "Tell me I'm wrong."
"You're not." The words left me in a breath.
His hand reached the hem of my underwear and stopped there, fingers curled at the edge, not moving.
"Who do you want, Seren?" The use of my first name almost undid me completely. His voice was strained now, all that careful composure cracking at the edges.
"Say it."
"You." My fingers curled against the desk. "I want you. I've always—"
His fingers pushed my underwear aside and stroked through my center without warning, and the sound I made wasn't dignified or quiet. It was desperate and raw, and I didn't care.
"Cazzo," he breathed against my hair, the Italian slipping out like he hadn't meant it to. His fingers moved slowly, parting me, learning the shape of my cunt with devastating patience. "You're soaked."
"Please…" My hips rolled back against his hand. "Please, I need…"
"I know what you need." Two fingers pressed inside me in one slow, deep thrust, and I gasped so hard I nearly choked on it, my walls clenched greedily around him as he curled them precisely, finding the spot that made my vision go white at the edges. "I've known for a long time, little bunny."
He worked me open slowly, no mercy in his pace, his thumb circling my clit in tight controlled strokes while his fingers fucked me deep and steady.
My hips moved without my permission, riding his hand shamelessly against his desk while the sounds filling the room made my cheeks burn.
"That's it." He growled, low with approval. His free hand fisted in my hair, turning my face to the side so he could see my expression. "Look at you. All that innocence and you fall apart so easily."
"Vincenzo," His name left my mouth before I could stop it, and I felt him go rigid behind me.
"Again." His fingers drove deeper, harder, punishing and perfect. "Say it again."
"Vincenzo! Please…" I begged, my orgasm building as he increased the pace of his fingers, thrusting deep inside me.
"Brava ragazza." His mouth pressed to my temple, my cheek, and then the corner of my jaw. "Come for me, bunny. Don't hold it."
The orgasm cracked through me like something breaking loose, long and rolling, so intense my legs stopped working entirely.
I cried out against the desk, his name dissolving into a wordless murmur, his fingers working me through every aftershock until I was trembling, limp, and completely undone.
He withdrew slowly, pressed his lips to the back of my neck once, and then his weight lifted from behind me.
I heard him straighten, composing himself. When I finally managed to push myself upright and turn around, he was already behind his desk, jacket back on, expression unreadable.
Like nothing had happened, and his fingers weren't wrist deep inside me.
"Sit down, Miss Benson." He gestured to the chair across from him, his voice entirely calm. "We need to discuss your academic performance."
I stared in stunned silence, my heart still racing.
The ghost of a smile crossed his mouth, just barely, and it was gone before I could be sure I'd seen it.
"Siediti." Sit down, and I sat.
~ZaraThe black carriages stopped at the edge of Vesper’s clearing, and from the first one stepped an elder named Marguerite, a tall woman in grey velvet whose face looked carved from ivory and whose eyes had watched six centuries of wars begin and end. She did not look at Kael or at Vesper. She looked only at me, standing in the doorway in a stolen coat with my hair still tangled from the night, and she bowed her head by exactly one inch.“Lyra’s daughter,” she said. “We felt you break the Alpha’s hold from three valleys away. The Coven has not felt a Moonborn wake in twenty years, and the council is divided on whether to kill you or kneel to you.”“Which side are you on?” I asked.“I have not decided.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Show me something worth deciding on.”I thought of Roman’s hands stroking my hair while he explained how he had murdered my mother, and I answered with the only truth I owned. “Come to the neutral grounds at moonrise and bring your council. I’ll show
~ZaraShe lit candles around the room, and I suspected it was only because she needed something to do with her hands. Kael undressed in the firelight while I watched the long pale lines of his back, where my claws had marked him two nights ago, and when he turned to face me, he stood perfectly still and waited. Vesper let her red dress fall to the floor and stood at his side, pale as moonlight, and for once she did not smile.“On your knees, slut,” I said. They knelt together on the rug before the fire, and I circled them slowly, naked, with my pulse climbing steadily higher. The hook tugged once inside me, a spiteful little pull of warning, and I breathed through it and kept walking until I came to a stop in front of Kael.“You first.”He tilted his head and bared his throat to me. My fangs lengthened of their own accord, sharp and aching, and I realized with a startled thrill that I had never let them show in front of anyone in my life. I leaned down and pressed my tongue to the ski
~ZaraKael moved toward the door, but I reached it before he did and laid my hand flat against his chest to stop him.“If he wanted to break it down, he would have done it by now,” I said quietly.“Zara,” Vesper whispered from the hearth, “please don’t open it.”“I have obeyed that voice for twenty years,” I told her, wrapping my fingers around the handle. “I think it’s time I looked at the face that goes with it.”I pulled the door open.Alpha Roman Ashcroft stood on the porch in a plain grey shirt, as casually as a man who had wandered over for tea. He had silver threaded through his temples, shoulders as broad as a barn door, and eyes the color of old amber; behind him, the pines were crowded with shapes that shifted in the dark. I counted a dozen wolves, perhaps more, and Brannock stood at the front of them with his jaw clenched and his gaze fixed carefully on the ground.“You’ve been busy, little moon,” Roman said warmly.“Don’t call me that.”“You used to love it.” He stepped pa
~ZaraVesper’s cabin was two miles north, buried so deep in the pines that I’d have sworn it didn’t exist. It smelled like old books, woodsmoke, and her. Kael carried me the last half mile, because my legs had stopped taking orders somewhere around “this isn’t wolf blood.”“I can walk,” I told him.“You can’t.”“I can crawl, which is basically walking as well.”He didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched. I counted it as a win. Inside, Vesper lit a fire and dropped a heavy black robe over my shoulders. Then she poured wine into three glasses and set one in front of me like I wasn’t about to throw it at her face.“Talk,” I said.“Your mother.” Vesper sat across from me. “What do you remember?”“Nothing. She died when I was four. The Alpha’s father took me in.” I shrugged, because I’d had twenty years to practice that shrug. “Rogue attack. That’s the story.”“It’s a good story.” Vesper turned her glass slowly. “Your mother wasn’t a wolf, Zara. She was a Moonborn.”Kael became quiet. “That’
~Zara“Get up,” I hissed, yanking Kael off the dirt by his ruined coat. “Say something clever. I need a distraction.”“My own kind is hunting me,” he said. “Clever isn’t available.”“Useless.”“I’ve been told.”The enforcers came through the treeline before I could insult him properly. Brannock led them, a huge male with a scar through his eyebrow and the personality of a locked door. Two others trailed behind him. I’d never bothered learning their names, and they’d never bothered earning it either. They fanned out and sniffed the air—iron, sex, and me.“Zara,” Brannock said. “Jax says you smell like a graveyard.”“Jax is a snitch with a runny nose.” I planted myself in front of the shadows and lifted my chin. “I was hunting. Then I was busy. Is the Alpha’s leash so short now that I can’t finish myself off in peace?”“That’s a lot of blood for one deer.”“It was a big deer.” I countered.“And the cold stink?”I opened my mouth to lie. I had a good one ready, too, something about a de
~ZaraThe howl was too close. My heart was hammering against my ribs, not from fear, but from the sheer, electric thrill of it. I looked at the vampire, his dry skin covered with my blood, his eyes cold and predatory. If the scout saw him, it would be a bloodbath. Not because I cared about the vampire’s life, but because I wasn't ready to stop this. I wasn't done being ruined."Get back," I hissed, shoving him hard. He didn't budge at first, his strength immense, but he saw the look in my eyes. He melted back into the thick, oppressive shadows of the pines, disappearing like a ghost.I didn't have time to cover myself. I stood there, naked and glistening, my thighs smeared with his cold cum and my shoulder still stinging where he’d fed. I wiped a streak of blood from my lip and put on my meanest, most arrogant face just as the scout burst through the brush.It was Jax. He was a lean, twitchy male with a nose for trouble. He stopped dead, his eyes scanning me from my blood-stained cla







