Page 35 of Shattered & Returned

“You can’t know that!” I objected and tried to press my thighs together, but he’d lashed out, faster than lightning. While his hand grabbed my throat to pin me down, his free hand roughly spread my legs open, shoved up my skirt, and slid into my soaked panties. Two fingers thrust into my wet heat.

I gasped, back arching as pleasure surged through me, my eyes flying wide. Foreplay clearly wasn’t his style—he hadn’t even palmed my flesh down there first. Then again, he’d conjured my orgasm in the forest before his lips had met mine.

“So hot, so fucking tight,” he growled, curling his fingers in my narrow channel.

Electric sensation danced across every nerve, yet a sliver of reason still held on.

“We shouldn’t do this, Professor…Ravencrux,” I managed, swallowing a moan.

“Why not?” His voice was a lust-darkened hiss, eyes locked on my reaction. “We both enjoy it.”

I hated my weakness, hated how easily I compromised my integrity—if this evenwasintegrity. But the pleasure was too addictive, and my body had been starved too long. No one had ever looked at me the way this devil of a professor did. No one else could play my body as he did.

I was an expert at brewing homemade potions and crafting poisons, and I knewhewas my brand of poison. My addiction.

“What if we’re caught?” I countered, then gasped, eyes widening beneath heavy lids as he added another finger, thrusting in and out and hitting my G-spot over and over.

“Yes—oh, yes, right there.”My head fell back as pleasure coiled tight through me.“Someone could walk in and see us.”

“I sealed the door,” he said with satisfaction.“No one gets to watch how I play with you, or how prettily your body weeps for me.”

“Stop! Ah, stop with the crude words,” I moaned, even as I arched into his touch. “It’s not just impolite. It’sfilthy.”

He chuckled, low and wicked.“Oh, you haven’t even heard the dirtiest things yet, baby. Consider this your first lesson.”His voice roughened as he inhaled sharply.“Fuck, your arousal is so thick it’s choking me. I’ve never smelled anyone as desperate and ready as you.”

I opened my mouth to scold him—how dare he be so offensive? But the words shattered as he drove his fingers deep inside me. My knees buckled; I barely stayed upright, hands clawing at his shoulders, nails biting through his shirt. Every rational thought burned away.

Being tongue-licked had been eye-opening; being finger-fucked was another experience. I kept musing how it would feel to have his massive cock buried in my molten core, impaling my needy flesh over and over, for hours, like hard waves hammering the shore.

I needed more. I wanted his cock.

I burned for him, a reckless, forbidden heat searing me from within.

His fingers halted within me. I writhed to urge him on.

“Don’t you stop.”

“Tell me what you saw,”he demanded, his voice cutting through the haze.“What paralyzed you with fear earlier in the class?”

Ice flooded my veins, leaching the lust from my blood.

I had seen my deaths. Not one, but many—overlapping, tangled. I’d been inside other women’s skins, felt their final breaths as if they were mine. Their violent endings became mine, over and over.

I stared back at Nero Ravencrux. I knew his game. But no pleasure, no matter how intoxicating, would make me drop my guard.

Fear was intimate, and it was mine. Only fools gave trust away for free.

“Nothing,”I lied.“Just nerves. This school—it’s all new to me.”

His stern gaze bored into me, though the heat in his icy green eyes still simmered. He didn’t believe me, but for once, he didn’t push.

“Maybe I don’t belong here.”I swallowed, the memory of those deaths clinging like cobwebs, even as his burning touch threatened to drown them out.“Everyone has a mark of their magic, except me. The academy should just cut me loose.”

But that wasn’t entirely true. I’d felt the spark in my veins, had seen and heard the dead my first day here. Maybe my magicwasdark—tied to death itself. Was that why I dreamed of drowning? Maybe the deaths in my dreams weren’t physical deaths…but transformations?

“You’re exactly where you need to be,”he said, cold fury sharpening his words.“Where Iwantyou to be.”Moody asshole. Probably a universal flaw—hot enough to be sculpted by the gods, emotionally unstable enough to balance it out.

His grip on me tightened, shadows and death coiled around my skin—not as a threat, but a claim.“Whatever you saw, I won’t let it touch you.”His voice turned to a blade of ice.“I’ll shatter even the oldest curse in existence.”

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