“Same. For all of it. We have to meet Spence at the Atrium, and then I have a shitload of homework. Bitchy assed professors assigning it right off the bat.Damn.”
The blood draw was anticlimactic. A needle in a vein, Spence filled three bags with blood, and then he removed the needle, she undressed,changedto her dragon, took a dozen breaths,changedback, collected her belly button ring from the floor, and then returned to the coterie house in the back of a different SUV with Spence, where he made her a half-dozen steaks, plus she ate some of the beef stew in the crock pot.
And before she went to bed, she pierced her belly button again, unscrewed the needle from the jewelry, washed it, and put it back in the hard plastic container. Dragons aren’t worried about germs, so she could reuse the needle until it went dull.
Later that night, she and Felix had sex. She’d intended it to be simple, a way to blow off some steam, but when she’d bitten his shoulder hard enough to draw blood, expecting him to pull back, he’d moaned and pressed closer, begging for more without words.
She’d obliged, testing his limits with nails and teeth, and he’d only begged for permission to come, which she denied for quite some time.
When she finally let him come, he’d looked at her with something close to worship, and she’d felt a spark of genuine interest. Not love, because Emmy didn’t fall in love, but curiosity. Felix was intelligent, funny, and was turning into an interesting submissive.
The following night, they had their first full scene. Emmy tied him spread-eagle to her reinforced-steel bedframe,gagged him, and spent three hours testing every pain point on his body with her flogger, cane, paddle, and tawse. Over and over, she took him to the edge of what he could handle, watched him break apart and put himself back together, and then did it again.
The hare wasn’t just a masochist. Oh no, he enjoyed playing on the edge of sanity — the moment where pain and pleasure blurred into something transcendent, where his mind fractured and reformed. And that worked for Emmy, who’d always needed her partners to match her intensity.
After, when she’d untied him and pulled him into her arms, he’d curled against her chest and cried. Not from pain, but from release. From being seen and given exactly what he needed.
They’d agreed to a casual relationship in the negotiation before the scene, but Emmy needed to be certain he wasn’t getting mixed messages from the aftercare.
“No strings,” she told him, stroking his sweat-damp hair.
He nodded. “Right. No commitment, no demands,” he agreed, voice rough. And yet, she could see him easily becoming a good friend. Someone who understood the darker parts of her, who didn’t flinch from what she needed to give.
Ten days later, Emmy unlocked Felix’s wrist from her reinforced-steel bedframe, ordered him to go down on her, had three amazing orgasms — and then sent him on his way with his cock rock hard and needy, watching his bruised, striped ass walk out of her room and through their shared bathroom to his own room. Once there, he could beat off ifhe wanted, but she didn’t allow him to touch himself without permission in her room.
He’d turned into a fun playtoy. Bonus, she actually enjoyed spending time with him, and having a handy masochist to hurt made life as food-for-vampires not as terrible.
Okay, if she was honest, most days she actually enjoyed feeding them. Even Matthias, the fucking asshole, had given her an orgasm she’d needed hours to recover from. One of the ten best orgasms of her life, and that was saying something.
The following day was much the same, though she had to cook her own breakfast, and she packed herself three fried baloney, cheese, and scrambled egg sandwiches to eat for lunch. The coterie had insulated lunch bags, complete with little packs you could put in the microwave to keep her food warm until lunch. Handy.
She had some money now, but she wanted to save as much as she could, and the coterie food was free.
Today she wore black faux-leather leggings, a crop top that showed her belly, a black denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up to show her forearms, with an enamel pin of a tiny ouroboros on one of the lapels. Also, ass-kicking, chunky stacked-heel boots, and a messy bun with dragonfly stickpins.
And she’d gone a little softer on her makeup: smokey eyes, lipstick that matched her nipples, and just enough contour to make her cheekbones look knife-sharp in the sunlight.
It was a Tuesday, and that meant she had Advanced Genetics. Someone had actually recognized her on the first day of this class, about fifteen seconds after she walked in. “Holy Shit. You’re Emerald Drake! I read your mitochondrial lineage paper last year after watching you talk about it on a YouTube thing. You cracked the hybrid code, right?”
Emmy froze for half a second, then smiled. “Yeah, but only for how the cytonuclear incompatibilities work in mallard-Muscovy hybrids, and how to avoid them to get viable offspring. Others are going broader in search of a reliable pattern across different species combos.”
Research she’d still be involved in if she hadn’t fucked three frat guys on a balcony with an audience below and gotten herself kicked out of … it didn’t matter. She’d pick it up again later, and in better facilities. Or maybe she’d choose an entirely different species. Something easier to house.
She wasn’t terribly impressed by the professor, but that was fine. She figured she could dazzle him enough to get the letter she needed. She wasn’t taking his class to learn, but to impress.
Next up was Principles of Genetics, another class she’d taken at other universities, and it was proving to be a piece of cake.
By the time she got back to the SUV, Delaney was waiting with hot cider in a to-go mug.
“Nearly two weeks without public sex. Go you.”
Emmy took a swig of the cider. “Thanks for this. Hits the spot. It occurs to me that I may not be spending enough time on campus to get in a whole lot of trouble this summer.”
“With lots of opportunities to fuck and be fucked at the coterie house, yes, it might actually work for you.”
Emmy sat back and closed her eyes. “I have a vampire I haven’t fed yet on my schedule. What do you know about Chase?” She would ask Rhea and Felix, too, but she’d figured out her guard had a nice handle on everyone living in the house.
“Recruits flock on campus. Can look like a nineteen-year-old surfer dude when he wants. Blond hair and blue eyes, compact with killer muscles, but…” She sighed. “He has ancient eyes when he wants to show them. Creepy as fuck. He isn’t actually that old. Eight hundred or so, maybe even younger, but he has the power of twice that sometimes. Not always. I think he can power up another way, besides just blood. Can’t prove it, though.”
