Shadowblade academy 3 da.., p.13
Shadowblade Academy 3: Darkness Falls, page 13
“Now, Dax—do it,” Venn said.
“W-What?” I stammered.
That’s when I felt the bulging head of Dax’s cock pressing against my wet asshole he’d just been feasting on.
“Oh Jesus Christ! I mean spirits! Ahh!”
My pleasure centers were firing off too quickly. I couldn’t think at all.
I’d never taken Dax in my ass, but he wasn’t asking for my permission—he was taking my backdoor whether I liked it or not.
“I don’t know if your fat cock will fit, Dax.”
“Don’t worry, M’shyok, it will.”
His cockhead plunged ahead, squeezing into my tight rear while Venn penetrated me from the front.
At first, there was a bit of discomfort and pain as my muscles suctioned around his girth. But my wetness lubed them both and before long they were seesawing me on their cocks and it was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
Thank god Venn had my leg lifted, because there was no way I was standing on my own at that moment.
The warmth of their bodies emanated in waves and mingled with my sweat as they both fucked me.
Within a few short minutes, I was a panting heap. Another orgasm ran through me like an Olympic sprinter and I barely had time to recover before a third one came on.
This was exactly what I’d needed: Release. Needy, greedy release, after being stuck in the Orchard prison and resisting for so long.
Both of their big dicks slammed into me, their swords nearly crossing paths and only kept at bay by the thin strip that separated my pussy’s walls from the tunnel of my ass.
But I could feel all of it.
I was stuffed full. My tongue fell out of my mouth and I realized I’d become a bitch in heat—an utter dog moaning and whimpering and giving in to their every desire.
I knew they were doing this for me as much as them.
Dax’s hand caressed my ass cheek and then he gripped it and lifted my other leg.
They had me in the air between them now. My legs bent at the knees and bounced off to the sides as they rammed their cocks inside me from below.
I held onto Venn, arms crossed around his neck, nails biting into his back. He grunted as he fucked me, smashing my tits against his strong chest.
Together, the two of them kept me lifted, feet off the ground. I came so hard I nearly passed out, my toes twitching up near my face.
I’d never known I was so fucking bendy!
But wild sex did wild things to me. It showed I was more capable than I’d realized.
“Don’t break an arm twisting yourself into a pretzel, princess.”
Now I understood what Sunny had meant. I felt like a freaking pretzel for sure—the tastiest, juiciest, happiest pretzel ever baked.
It was like he’d known what was going to happen before it happened. Like he could read the horniness on all three of our faces.
Venn and Dax brought me back to reality, getting the mental picture of Sunny’s infuriatingly hot smirk out of my mind.
I was bouncing, my whole body jiggling from their potent ministrations.
My eyes rolled back.
Venn groaned and Dax stayed relatively silent. When I felt his cock grow inside me, I knew I was in trouble. I was going to be a gaping mess when the panther shifter was through with me. I’d be lucky if I could sit right tomorrow.
As Dax throbbed, Venn did too. His cock pulsated and I could feel every vein rubbing against the warm, wet walls of my pussy.
I clamped down on him instinctively. It made him feel twice as big.
His eyes widened, panic fluttering across his fine features. He yanked out of me and came in one fluid motion, sending ropes of cum splattering against my tummy and chest.
Dax heard and saw Venn lose himself, but he didn’t move quite as quickly as the fae. His hot release warmed my insides before flooding out as he withdrew a second too late and managed to fill my ass.
I croaked as they let me down on my feet, their seed dripping down and trickling onto the floor.
I wobbled over to the bed—which we’d never made it to—and fell face-first. It gave them a perfect view of my abused holes. Dax’s essence trickled down my thighs and I felt so naughty and perfect at the same time.
So in control—something I hadn’t had in weeks in the Forbidden Orchard. Here, it felt right. I’d taken my agency back . . . somewhat.
Apparently, it felt right to them too, because Venn muttered, “Ah, hun, you look perfect with our cum dripping out of you.”
And Dax said, “You’re a marvel of a woman, M’shyok.”
And all I could do was take a deep breath, sigh, and drift away into a deep sleep, with Venn’s filthy words and Dax’s kind ones lingering in my ears.
Chapter 19
Coralia
I WISH I COULD HAVE said Venn and Dax’s words carried me through a heady, contented sleep . . . but they didn’t.
Instead of feeding into a pleasantly naughty dream, they molded into something dark and terrifying.
A nightmare.
I was back in the Forbidden Orchard. I should’ve seen this coming—the trauma after the fact. It felt so real, with Ornoth taking the place of my mates and fucking me raw in the cell. The demon was powerful, wicked, and rammed inside me without hesitation.
He knew exactly which buttons to press to get me going; exactly which words to say to bring me to orgasm as I took his huge, demonic cock in my tight cunt.
The worst part? I didn’t even try to fight him off.
Afterward, I stared at myself in the mirror.
No, not the mirror. It was my doppelganger. I sat on the ground in the prison cell, quietly weeping as Ornoth trickled out of me.
She drifting between the bars like an ethereal apparition, though she looked real enough.
My doppelganger looked, sounded, and moved just like me. “He has you, you know.” She drifted over my shoulder to rest her chin there.
I glanced over, jerking, but she wasn’t there anymore. She was in front of me again, startling me when I turned back around. “What do you mean?” I whined.
“Ornoth will have you. He will destroy you and turn you into his breeding sow, like he has all those other women. He is too powerful to fail.”
An alarmed squeak pushed past my lips, making me feel meek. “Bullshit! He can’t get me here.”
“Oh, honey . . . here is where he can get you easiest.”
I looked around at the walls of the prison cell. They looked so real. “And just where is . . . here?”
“The Spectral Realm, silly. But you already knew that.”
Ah, of course. I had Slipped in my dream. It wasn’t the first time that had happened. The last times had been more pleasant, when I’d met Quentin before rescuing his body from Asberald City.
I was much less excited about interacting with this version of me over the hunky Dreamwatcher.
“Just who are you?”
“Do you really need to ask that, Coralia?”
“For my own sanity, yes, I do.”
“Clearly you aren’t sane. I am you, girl. Your Spectral Self. Your better half.”
“Better?”
“Wiser, smarter, sexier. More confident. I know what you want and, more importantly, what you need.”
“And what is that?”
She laughed. “Well, you were close to having it back in the Orchard. Now it’ll have to wait.”
Frustration pulsed through me. “Spectral Self” me loved riddles, apparently, but I hated them. “What do you want with me, dammit?”
“I want you to understand your potential. In time, you will. You’ll see.”
I shook my head, trying to free myself of my eerie twin. But she wouldn’t go away. She kept flitting into the darkness, reappearing next to me, then vanishing again.
She said, “You can’t escape your destiny, girl. As cliché as that sounds.”
“And what is my destiny?”
“Patience, young one. Follow me and you’ll know soon enough.”
“Follow you where?”
“Into the trenches. Into the recesses of your depraved mind. You are too strong to let others use you.”
“You’re using me!”
She tilted her head. “But I’m you. So . . .”
I put the heels of my palms to my temples and pushed hard. “Ugh, I just want you to go away! Get out of my head!”
Another hissing chuckle. “You can’t escape yourself, Coralia, any more than you can escape your own shadow.”
Shadow?
. . . adow . . .
. . . ow . . .
Ow!
I awoke with a jolt, gasping to an upright position. Venn stood over me. A fist hammered at the door.
Dax was near the door, looking back at us with a surprised expression.
“What’s going on?” I croaked.
Venn put his hands on his hips. “Seems our fairytale daydream is over, hun.”
“Huh?”
He nudged his chin toward the door, where the incessant knocking and unintelligible words were starting to give me a migraine.
“Campus guards, my sweet. Our escort.” When my fuzzy brain still didn’t pick up what he was putting down, he sighed. “Alaric Cane wants to see us. Now.”
I COULD ALREADY TELL this was going to be a meeting unlike any before it. Guards stood at the doors of the conference room. Inside, more masked, black-garbed men and women stood watch. Alaric Cane sat on one side of the oval table. Sunny and Quentin were opposite him, and they both looked over their shoulders as Dax, Venn, and I walked in, led by the soldiers who had gathered us.
“We’re all congregated,” Alaric began once the five of us were across from him. His beard had become longer since I’d seen him last, if that was possible. Whiter, too. It seemed Hudson’s Glove was the eternal headache, and we were aging the withered old man.
His beady eyes fell on us. Though he appeared calm and in control, I could see the rage thrumming just below the surface of his wrinkles. “You’ve disobeyed me once gain.” He looked to Sunny. “Even though I warned you there would be repercussions if you left this campus and returned to the Forbidden Orchard.”
Sunny said, “We couldn’t just stand by and do nothing, Headmaster. Not with Coralia missing. And look, we’ve gotten her back.” He gestured out to his side, like I was some sort of trophy.
“Our Glove is whole again,” Quentin added.
“Yes, and in doing so, you’ve destabilized the entire region. Mayhem reigns. Waichee Village has fallen into renegade hands. The Forbidden Orchard is no more.” He said all this with chilling calmness.
“We had to act,” Sunny said easily.
“And you will be punished for it.” Alaric walked out from behind the table, shaking his head. His beard wobbled. “You’ve gotten yourselves into affairs you don’t understand. How could you, being students? You don’t know the lengths I go to to keep peace among the supernatural communities.” He counted off the things on his fingers. “The various shifter packs across the country; the vampire circles; the witch covens; even the demon cabals. There is a thread connecting all of them—a thin, fragile thread—and this is just one more step in the wrong direction of snapping it. The order has been unbalanced.”
“Sir, with all due respect,” Sunny said, “that sounds a little melodrama—”
“You don’t know a damn thing, Conway! It’s a careful operation keeping everyone tethered and watched. Now, the Academy has lost its edge.”
I saw where he was going. We were the foolish kids with no self-control. The unruly children who didn’t deserve to eat at the grown-up’s table.
Alaric Cane had a stranglehold on supernatural society, and now it was slipping through his grasp like sand.
And we were the cause of it.
“I don’t regret what we did,” Sunny finished.
“Neither do I,” Quentin added.
“None of us do, sir,” Venn said. “Though it came with loss and sacrifice, we were victorious.”
Alaric raised an expectant brow. “Oh? Well I hope you’re proud of yourselves. Now the Leatherwings are out in their masses, in the wild. We have no way of keeping track of them without the Forbidden Orchard—no way of keeping them corralled.”
I wrinkled my nose, head reeling back in surprise. “As if you’ve ever had control over them. Sir.”
A twitch of anger in his eyes. “Excuse me, Miss Hargrave?”
The words had poured out without thinking, because he was pissing me off. I needed to gain control of that. “You say you’ve lost control of the Leatherwings, sir. I don’t think you ever had it. That’s why the Forbidden Orchard scared you so badly, because it was the one group of supernaturals you could never keep under your thumb. In this instance, Headmaster, I think your reach exceeded your grasp.”
Alaric crossed his arms over his chest. “And I think you should watch your tongue, girl. All of you. Thinking you’ve got it all figured out, that you’re the big men on campus. You’re little more than runaways—childish vagabonds who think you can do whatever you want.”
Okay, now things were getting nasty.
He pointed at each of us in turn, with a skinny, skeletal finger. “I rescued you from the chopping block, Donovenn Gable. From the accountability of your own reckless decisions. Dax Kilmeade, I took you from a destitute, hopeless home and helped transform you into a paragon of strength. Sunder Conway, you would have no following or stature if I didn’t allow you to gallivant around Shadowblade Academy like you own the place. And Quentin, you always showed promise, but had no outlet for it until I gave you an opening here.”
I put my hands on my hips. “How about me, Headmaster Cane? How did you fix me, other than uprooting my life and throwing me into this shit?”
He scoffed. “You were going nowhere, Coralia Hargrave. I gave you what you desired most: a chance to find your sister.”
“And I have.”
“There you go.”
“Here I thought you just kidnapped me to keep me out of the hands of your enemies. How foolish of me.”
His face twisted with a scowl. “You are all powerful supernaturals, but you aren’t infallible or invulnerable. What have you done with the opportunities I’ve given you? You’ve squandered them.”
If he was trying to make us feel bad about ourselves, I thought it was having the opposite effect. The only thing he was doing was building the resentment between us and him.
But Alaric Cane was caught in his spiel, in his grandeur and self-righteousness. “You five are supposed to be the cream of the crop. The ones other students turn to and admire. Instead, you’ve set a bad example and tarnished the reputation of this institution.”
I wanted to say, “You did that yourself long before we got here,” but I couldn’t muster up the courage. Not if I wanted to keep my head attached to my neck.
“What would you rather we did?” Sunny asked, throwing his arms out wide. “Let the Forbidden Orchard stand, as a blight to the forest and our supernatural brethren?”
“And let them continue the despicable things they’re doing in there, unchallenged?” Dax added. “They destroyed my people. They raped women. We were only trying to stop all that. Now we are to be punished for it?”
I’d never expected Dax to get up in arms over this, but ever since learning the Academy had basically betrayed his people—ensuring their deaths in order to keep Levia’s smuggled Oblyx Steel from getting into the demon’s hands—his tune had changed regarding Shadowblade Academy and Alaric Cane.
Venn said, “I never thought in all my days I’d see the ugly truth of this Academy, Headmaster. But you’ve shown it time and time again, in all its warts and blemishes. Have you even shown a hint of concern for Coralia? Asked how she is since her rescue? Asked her thoughts on the Forbidden Orchard—a person kept there for weeks? I’m sure she has invaluable information, if you’d only ask.”
I appreciated all my Glovemates finally standing up to the headmaster, but I knew it was a slippery slope.
It was too little too late.
This was exactly how grudges began. Feuds and vendettas. I didn’t like it one bit, because we were five measly people up against an entire institution.
While we were all on a roll and letting Alaric have it, I stepped forward between my guys. “I thought Shadowblade Academy was supposed to ‘right the wrongs,’ Headmaster. When I first got here, you said in your orientation speech we’re ‘trained to stop the dissident, malcontent supernaturals that wish to use their abilities to cause harm.’ I remember that statement, because I thought it was so powerful. If that’s not the Forbidden Orchard to a tee . . . then what is? Or were those just empty words?”
Alaric’s jaw clamped shut after taking the barrage from all of us. The anger sizzled in his eyes, and I expected him to lash out.
Instead, he stayed eerily calm. “I don’t have to explain myself to any of you. We had plans in motion, and you jumped the gun and ruined them. Period.”
Sunny said, “There was no time to dawdle—”
Alaric cut him off, uncaring. “For your indiscretions, I’m sentencing the five of you to the initiation cells, where you will stay for the next month.”
My jaw dropped to the floor. My Glovemates raised their voices. A whole fucking month?!
Sunny was the loudest, walking forward in front of us as the guards around the room began descending on our group. “Headmaster, do with us what you will.” He gestured at the other guys. “But Coralia has spent weeks in a jail cell already. If you return her to one now, by the spirits, you’d better kill me where I stand, because I’ll burn this entire fucking school down when I get out . . . with everyone in it.”
He challenged the headmaster with an indignant glare. For a moment, I thought Alaric would say, “Fine, have it your way,” and try to kill Sunny.
My heart tried to burst out of my chest from adrenaline and fear, but also for Sunder defending me so gallantly.
I never thought he had it in him.
“Sunny is right,” Quentin said. “How would that make you any different than the damned Leatherwings, Headmaster?”
