Page 42 of Gemini Kings
He waves his own hand and looks flustered. “It’s, um, getting longer.”
“Oh, I see. Well, hair grows quite quickly for shifters,” I explain, barely resisting the habit to deliver an instructive lecture on the topic. “Normally, I’d keep it trimmed, but Zara seems to like it longer.”
“I do too,” he says quickly. He’s a natural redhead under all that magenta, and there’s nothing like a fair-skinned redhead for blushing. Now I watch with an admiration that is surely unseemly as that blush deepens. “I mean, we all do, Master Aries. And now you’re pulling it into that man-bun thing, like that vampire inMorbius, who’s so hot.” Looking deliciously self-conscious, Neo shrugs his big shoulders. “It just, um, it works for you?”
“Sweet boy.” Dear God, it’s no use at all resisting when he’s this delectable. Surely, just this once, I can—
“And, for your information, I’m not a boy. I just turned twenty-one, remember?” he flares with a sudden flash of stubbornness. “So you’re allowed to… want things with me, you know, Lucius.”
He says this with utter sincerity, just as though the sight of him smiling shyly and blowing out the candles on the big birthday cake Dez baked for him hasn’t made me fantasize feverishly about painting his buff naked body with a generous layer of buttercream frosting and then licking it all off him and tonguing that sweet cock he’s so shy about until he loses that brilliant bookworm mind of his and whimpers and writhes and begs me breathlessly please never to stop.
“Wanting things with you isn’t the problem, believe me.” I fiddle with my cuff links.
“You’re allowed todothings with me too,” he persists, brows rushing together above his eyes. “I mean, if you ever wanted to.”
“Do things?” There’s snow falling from the pewter skies beyond the leaded glass windows, but suddenly it feels a trifle hot in my classroom. I clear my throat and straighten my tie.
“Yes. You know.Things.” Indignant at my obtuseness, he scowls at me. “I mean, you don’t have to rush out of bed two hours before the bell every single morning before I wake up just so you don’t have to see me or… or touch me…”
“Merciful Christ, is that what you’ve been thinking?” I’m appalled at my own clumsiness, far too appalled to conceal.
The actual reason I’ve taken to rushing out of our bed before dawn every morning since the three of them absconded with the jet is because Neo spoons in his sleep and, when it’s just the two of us in Zara’s big medieval bed,I’mwhat he ends up spooning.
He’s bigger than I am, but somehow with me he’s always the little spoon.
I’ve been far too embarrassed to wake up every damned morning with my arm wrapped tight around my trusting student’s waist so he can’t get away, my face buried in his hair so I can smell him while we sleep, his luscious rump tucked up snug against my groin and his back pressed to my chest so I can feel his every breath, and my obscenely rigid shaft nestled between his bitable buttocks.
Even though Neo sleeps shyly in his boxer briefs, and even though I’ve taken to wearing linen pajamas to bed to guard his virtue and mine while we’re the only two occupying that bed, I’m far too disconcerted by the thought of him waking to find me like that, furiously erect and lusting over my innocent student, with my shaft in my hand while he slumbers.
Thus, I’ve been slipping out each morning and taking matters privately in hand (as it were) in the Roman baths under thedomusbefore anyone else awakens.
I can’t be certain how much of this he’s picking up. Neo is a Kryll and an absolute non-telepath—except with Zara, his fated mate. Ronin links with him and everyone else because Ronin’s Valyrian and a wickedly strong telepath himself. But Neo and I have no such bond, and we won’t unless I bite him—which, needless to say, I have utterly no intention of doing. The fact that I’ve bitten Zara and Ronin (both of them students under my charge) is more than enough indiscretion.
My precious career has barely survived the backlash.
“It—I—” Atypically, I find myself at an utter loss for words. “Neo, that is very far indeed from the truth.”
Yet he’s a clever boy. His big green eyes lock onto mine as though perhaps he’s intuiting a great deal of what I’m carefully not saying.
“Well, you don’t have to,” he repeats, blushing and pushing his spectacles (which tend to slide down when he’s excited) farther up the bridge of his nose. “Because I… Iwantyou to do those things to me, Lucius. I want that. And I’m the only person in our bed you won’t fuck.”
Despite all my resolve, the wounded look on his face and the buried hurt in his voice are my undoing.
Not to mention the use of my Christian name and the wordfuckon his nearly virginal tongue.
“Sweet boy,” I groan for the third time, and I swear it’s as though he’s bespelled me.
Why do we delay?my wolf growls in my head.He craves us. He is ours. We should claim him.
As my wolf fights to surface, I bound across the entire width of my classroom in three swift strides, lunge past Neo to close the door and slip the lock, then push his startled body flat against the door and seal my mouth to his.
His breath whooshes out in surprise against my face and his soft mouth parts willingly. He yields to me so gently, even when I’ve clearly caught him off guard by pouncing on him in this uncouth way. He smells like sage-and-lavender soap, and he tastes like spearmint, and the fact that he self-consciously ingested a breath mint before coming to see me is very likely another indication that he is indeed… crushing on me.
Under the scent of all that innocence lurks the gamy reek of wolf, which means I’ve been vigorously scenting him (despite all my virtuous intentions) while we spoon.
His chest is warm and solid under my urgent hands, so different from Ronin’s lean twisting savagery or Vasili’s sleek and vicious grace. His hands come to rest on my waist to steady both of us—again, with that gentle patience that’s so unlike anyone else in our harem—but he’s eager too.
Mother of God, he’s so eager.
