Page 56 of Baneful Magick

WEDNESDAY

Isla froze for a few seconds before she slowly spun around to face me. Those swollen lips and the heat in her eyes made my heart pound in my chest.

It should have been me.

What a fucking idiot I was.

“We were worried when you didn’t come back in?—”

“I’m sorry?—”

“But I can see that we shouldn’t have been,” I said stiffly. My voice was so cold I was surprised I didn’t see my breath in the air between us. “I’ll see you at the dorm.”

I turned my back on her, starting to head back to the library. Right now, I needed space. My hunger was too sharp, too desperate, to be around Isla when she smelled so strongly of lust. I had fed this past weekend, but it did nothing to dull the ragged edges of my hunger when faced with the only woman I wanted.

“Echo, wait!” she called out. The quick patter of her steps told me she was running after me, and it took what remained of my self-control to keep from speeding up.

The moment she put her hand on my arm, that control started to slip. A second later, I had her back slammed against a tree trunk so hard she cried out. Tears filled her eyes.

“I warned you before, witch, to be careful with me. You have no fucking idea who you’re toying with.”

She gasped. “I didn’t— I’m nottoyingwith you.” Her voice shook with more than a hint of fear as I growled in her face. Her skin was paler than it ever was, and her gaze darted around. Was she searching for help? There was no one here to save her.Her focus should be on me.I ground into her harder, and she cried out, fanning the flames of what burned inside of me. “Echo, I swear. That was the first time he kissed me, and I… It just happened! I got lost in the moment.”

I took a deep breath, and my growl turned into a purr, the deep vibrations heaving in my chest as I leaned in so close that her hair brushed my face. Her scent surrounded me. Every instinct screamed that I needed to claim her. Fuck her. Cover her with my body and use her until the only scent on her was mine.

My stomach dropped the moment my head began to pound.

The rut.

Usually, I didn’t feel it coming. Most incubi couldn’t tell when a rut was going to hit them since it hit us at random times throughout our life. Ruts were dangerous. The massacre left behind could be catastrophic, and if the focus of the incubi’s rut tried to deny him, they’d wind up dead too.

I’d only been in a rut once before, and what I could recall was crystal clear in my mind.

Screams. Blood.Fear.

Gods, even the memories were fucking heady. The men and women I’d fucked during my week-long rut had wished for mercy that I wasn’t capable of. They’d begged for me to finish, to slow down, to stop. How pretty they’d looked when their empty corpses rolled away like discarded rag dolls. I’d been so hungry, I’d fucked them to death.

No amount of sex was capable of filling me up during a rut, and I didn’t know if there was something broken within me, butrut or not, I felt that edge most days, gnawing in the pit of my stomach.

Now, with Isla so close to me, her lust buried beneath the onslaught of fear, I felt it taking over.

I was salivating for more—her lust, her body, her very soul itself. My sanity was slowly taking a backseat to the basest part of myself. Was I Echo any longer? It felt as though I was losing that name, that identity, on the road to becoming a slave to my deadly hunger. I was no longer a friend, or a roommate, or a brother. The incubus inside was consuming me as voraciously as it wanted to consume her. After this was done, when there was nothing left of her to feed on, would there be anything left of me?

It had been so fucking long.

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I met you,” I ground out, the softness in my voice gone. I pressed my body against hers hard enough that I knew the bark of the tree would dig into her. “But I held myself back, trying to protect you, knowing that I wasn’t worth enough to even lick your fucking boots, but then I see you withhim…”

Isla flinched as I spat that final word in her face, and I laughed, rubbing my nose along her neck and savoring the goosebumps and her trembles.

“I’m tired of holding myself back. Fucking exhausted of being found lacking and left behind. After this, if you survive, you’ll never be free of me, Isla Hallowes. I’ll fucking haunt your every breathing moment.”

“Echo, please,” Isla gasped as I laid a deceptively gentle kiss on the side of her throat.

I let go.

Of my control.

Of my sanity.

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