Page 136 of Shadows in Bloom

The hallways blur as my shoulders crash into students. I see nothing, stumbling forward with my head down. She was slaughtered in her home. It was so bad that the responding officers puked their guts up on the porch outside.

A large hand grabs my arm and pulls me into an empty lecture hall. Cruz slams his hand on the door behind me, but I don’t see him. Not even when he slides his fingers into my hair and fists the strands hard enough to make my scalp burn. I stare at him, blinking slowly.

His intoxicating scent evokes another memory, and I search his devastating face while he talks to me. I can’t hear him. His mouth moves, but no words reach my ears.

“Where were you last night?” I ask.

He stiffens, then a smirk creeps over his lips, and it’s enough to rouse me from the haze. I escape from his hold, and he stalks me deeper into the lecture hall. His jeans hang low on his hips, revealing a sliver of olive skin below the hem of his black T-shirt. When he stalks me, that sliver of skin is all I can focus on, knowing where it leads.

“I was inside your mouth, Marshall.”

My head shakes, and I lock eyes with him. “No, it was late when you arrived. Where were you before you broke into my home?”

He cocks his head to the side and taps his finger and thumb together. “Why don’t you say it?”

A breath escapes me when the backs of my ankles crash against the raised podium. There’s nowhere to go. I glance down at his hands, remembering the tangy, iron-rich scent that assaulted my senses. “I could smell blood on you.”

His eyebrow quirks, and his smirk returns. “Is that so?”

I try to decipher his expression, but if there’s one thing Cruz has perfected throughout the years, it’s his cocky mask. With a chuckle, his brown eyes hold mine as he licks his lips and saunters toward me until he’s within reach. Up close, he’s nothing short of deadly, carved like stone and perfected by a vengeful god. He’s breathtaking.

“You killed her, Cruz,” I whisper.

He devours my face with eyes that hunger for my very soul. “I didn’t kill anyone, Marshall.”

My teeth grind as he steps even closer.

“Your mind is playing tricks on you.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I know what I saw last night.”

“What did you see?” he presses, fisting my shirt and pulling me into him. My heart stutters as he drags his tongue up the column of my throat, whispering in my ear, “You saw nothing.”

“You smelled of?—”

“Blood? Did you see any, Professor? Did I look like I’d returned from a bloodbath?”

No, he didn’t. There wasn’t a spot of blood on him, but the smell…

“Stop pushing me away.”

My pulse pounds beneath his grip on my shirt as his dark chuckle drifts across my ear. “Stop fighting this pull between us.”

“Promise me that you didn’t kill her, Cruz. It’ll break your dad.” My voice crackles on the last note, and he eases back to look me in the eye as though he wants to taste the hurt in my voice. “Promise me.”

Instead of replying, he shoves me back onto the podium, then kneels over my body as the back of my head smacks against the hard surface.

“Fuck.” I wince, clasping my throbbing skull, but he hauls me up by my shirt and sinks his teeth into my bottom lip, breaking the skin. He kisses me like he wants to reach into my chest and pull my thrashing heart from its cavity. I’ve never been feasted on like this until him. His tongue massages mine in a slow, unhurried kiss as my sweaty hands dig into his wrist, his T-shirt—anywhere I can reach.

He drops me just as fast and I fall back against the hard surface while he claws at my belt, ripping my pants open. His enticing lips envelop my dick, and all my doubts and fear drift away. He sucks me deep and I lift my aching head, caught in his nefarious eyes. Fuck me… My hips buck, and I choke on a groan while he stares up at me from beneath his dark lashes.

“Someone could walk in,” I remind him in a breathy voice I barely recognize.

“Then you better hurry up and stuff my mouth full of cum, Professor.” He takes all of me again, relaxing his throat around my crown and sinking down farther. His head bobs faster and faster. I know I won’t last long when he sucks the soul from my body.

My head falls back, and I give in. What’s the point of fighting the inevitable? My dick pulses as he drools all over my veiny shaft. It’s sloppy, wet, and so erotic.

“Cruz,” I groan, pulling my knees up and fisting his hair with both hands. Shuddering, I feel his head bob beneath my fingers, his appreciative moan rumbling like the brewing war inside me. The vibration around my length pushes me over the edge, and I clamp my hand over my mouth when a wave of pleasure ignites my core.

---