Page 32 of Wings of Ashes
“Professor Bowen!” Graeves whined.
“Come to my desk at the front,” Professor Bowen said. “I have a healing potion.”
“Yeah, and bring me back my blade when the hole in your hand is gone,” Bael called after him.
Mara whistled and raised a brow at Bael.
“I do not like what your expression is implying,” Bael told her.
Nix’s eyes were narrowed onto Ryker, tracking his every movement, as she shivered and shifted her stool as far away from him as possible. To be this close to a dragon shifter… Her parents must have been turning in their graves.
Dragons only crave fire and destruction, Elle’s parents drilled into Nix since she was a kid.
Ryker glanced away from the potion to look at her. His gaze darted to where her stool had been, to where she was now.
Yup. He noticed her inch away from him. Not that she hid it very well.
Hurt and anger flashed beneath his cool exterior. The muscles in his broad shoulders bunched; the tendons in his neck tensed. Ryker’s nostrils flared, and his fingers tightened around the vial, shattering it instantly. The potion dripped around his hand as he shook off the bits of glass.
“Damn it,” Bael cursed. “We were fucking finished. What the hell, man?”
Ryker glared at his hand as if he had notmeantto break the vial. As if his strength betrayed him.
Dragons are too damn strong, Nix thought to herself. She inched her stool even further away.He could snap my neck as easily as snap his fingers. And he would enjoy it.
The memory of her parents screaming at Nix to run…
“We have enough of the ingredients to start over,” Mara said as the voice of reason. “We can probably still finish in this class period.” She began building the potion again in a new vial.
Bael focused back on Nix. His scorching, narrowed red eyes burned into hers as the incubus leaned over the lab table. Her skin prickled with awareness the way it did when she got too close to the incubus.
His sensual, earthy, and midnight rain scent penetrated her senses as he invaded her space. Her body temperature spiked whenever he neared her.
The sex demon just radiated so muchheat, like a sauna or a hot spring, trying to lull her into a relaxed and submissive state.
“Did you enchant him to break it?” Bael growled at her as his body released another wave of heat that crashed over her.
Damn it. She felt her nipples tingle and tighten beneath her academy blazer.
“Did you enchant him to destroy the potion?” he asked, as if her silence suggested she did not understand the first time.
Her mouth fell open. Piqued, Nix took a deep breath when she realized she had started breathing heavier. From vexation or desire? “How many times do I have to tell you—”
Bael leaned in even closer, so close that his delicious, minty breath wafted over her face and blanked her brain for a moment. “You had him break it, so I couldn’t prove what a manipulative bitch you are. To enchant someone when you have amate—”
Heart beating hard and fast in her chest, Nix stressed, “I. Am. Not. Enchanting. You.”
His face was so close to hers. Too close? Did he notice how just an inch separated their mouths from touching? His fiery red gaze dipped to her lips for a split second, and she felt a consequential pulse between her legs.
“Every word out of your mouth is a fucking lie,” Bael accused.
Hitting her breaking point in annoyance at how all the men keptprojectingtheir own issues onto her, Nix slammed her palms onto the smooth, black tabletop and stood from the stool. “As if I would waste any goddamn energy to enchant a mentally unstable incubus and a vicious, violent dragon who are both so privileged in their supernatural strength and abilities that they think they can look down on others and do whatever they want and not care who they hurt.”
Bael’s eyebrows furrowed as he frowned.
“Privileged?” Ryker repeated in a low, grumbly voice.
Ryker’s head was bowed down, but he looked up at her from under his long, dark reddish-bronze eyelashes. The melted gold hue of his irises stunned her for a moment as they fully met each other’s gazes.
