Corvina stayed rooted to her spot, absolutely stunned.
Vad Deverell was the actual heir of Verenmore.
What the fuck?
She mutely watched as he marched up to Ajax, getting right in his face, their heights placing them even with each other.
“I don’t feed money into the Squad for you to run your mouth, just to prove dick is bigger, asshole,” he grit out. “I’m going to overlook it this one time, for the sake of your brother, and pretend your tongue slipped in your grief. But if this happens again, you’ll need to watch yourself. Am I clear?”
Ajax gave a slashing grin. “But my dick is bigger, Deverell.”
Vad’s lips twitched. “Get lost before I throw you off this damn mountain, Hunter.”
Ajax gave him a mocking salute. “Unless there’s something shady with my brother’s death, I’ll be gone at dawn. But don’t forget to tell her about your history, man. We don’t want a repeat of Zoe.”
“Zoe?” Corvina asked, her mind trying to keep up with the information overload.
“The girl who disappeared on the last Black Ball,” Ajax told her even as his eyes stayed on Vad. “My ex-girlfriend. First her, and now my brother.”
A vein pulsed at the side of Vad’s forehead.
Ajax gave her a nod and turned to go into the woods, leaving her standing there with a man she didn’t know at all.
“Who are you?” she whispered, trying to find some kind of answers in his eyes.
His jaw clenched. “Come,” he extended his hand to her. “It’s getting late.”
Corvina flinched, stepping back. “Don’t touch me. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m who I’ve always been to you.”
“A stranger.”
His silver eyes flashed. “A stranger?”
Something pulsed in the air between them, an aura of danger wrapping around him that sent a perverse thrill to her lizard brain. She knew, just knew that if she ran, he would chase. And she wanted him to chase. She wanted him to catch her, conquer her, claim her, and reassure her everything would be okay, that their chemistry, their connection was still the sun while her world tilted on its axis.
Heart drumming incessantly, Corvina threw the lantern on the ground to distract him, and ran down the bridge, her shawl flying away from her body and falling to the grass. She looked up and saw a dark burette of the castle above the woods, and pumped her legs towards it.
A hand on the back of her neck suddenly slammed her into a tree, her front pressed to the thick, rough bark, and she yelped as his tall, warm body pressed into her from behind.
“A stranger, little crow?” his lips found her ear, whispering the words right into them. A hand wrapped itself around her loose braid, pulling her head back. “Would a stranger know the exact taste of your come on his tongue?” he murmured into the side of her neck, tilting her head for his leisure. “Would a stranger know exactly how deep his cock can go in that tight pussy, hmm?” his words rolled over her as the hand from the back of her neck gathered both her wrists in one hand and held them behind her back. “Would a stranger know the way those your tits bounce when your nipple is flicked?”
“If I had sex with a stranger, yes, Mr. Deverell,” her words came out more breathless than she’d intended.
“Then would a stranger know the fears of your mind?” he demanded, his teeth scouring the side of her neck. “Would a stranger know that you like to break the rules, that you like doing the exact things people tell you not to do, that you get shy when someone gives you attention and bold when you think no one is watching? Would a stranger know the hunger in your soul? Would he feed it as I have?”
No, no he wouldn’t.
“You’ve lied to me,” Corvina closed her eyes, knowing she couldn’t move if he didn’t want her to.
“By omission,” he admitted.
“I can’t give my trust to a liar.”
“And I can’t give the truth to someone I don’t trust not to flee yet,” he pressed a kiss on her earlobe. “You earn my trust and I earn yours, and you’ll get all the answers you want.”
“And until then?” Corvina truly questioned her sanity at this point.
“Until then,” he bit the skin where her sweater had drooped to expose her shoulder. “I teach you.”
His words came with him freeing her hands and pulling her skirt up her hips, exposing her ass to the cold air. He tugged her panties to the side, and found her shamefully wet, a chuckle escaping him at her drenched heat. “A stranger, she says. Would you be drenching your thighs for a stranger?”
Corvina felt a flush crawl up her chest. Resting her forehead against the trunk of the tree, she held the sides of it just as he entered her with one clean thrust. Her body pushed up to her toes, the angle making her head roll back to his shoulder, a loud moan leaving her throat at the fullness.
“You want to know who I am?” he punched his hips harshly against her.
“I,” slam “am” slam “your” slam “madness.”
He bit the side of her neck, wild in his passion. “I’m in your head, in your blood, in your very veins. I’ve claimed you before anything else ever could. Your body, your heart, your mind, your fucking soul, it’s all mine. Your hunger is mine to feed, your madness is mine to tame. Do you feel that?”
She felt it. She felt it from her toes that were curled clinging to the ground to her thighs burning with the weight to her pussy being rammed repeatedly to her nipples scraping against the back of the tree to her neck throbbing from the bite of his teeth to her eyes burning with the overload of stimuli all over her body. She felt him own her, possess her, consume her until she was nothing but trembling sensation.
He tugged her hair. “Do you feel that?”
“Yes,” she panted, holding onto the tree as he slammed her against it again and again with his brutal thrusts.
“Yes what?” his deep voice breathed in her ear.
“Vad.”
“Fuck yes, baby,” he pounded into her. “My little witch with those fucking purple eyes, fucking made for me. And I’m your devil, am I not?”
Corvina rocked her hips back against him, whimpering. “My devil.”
“All yours,” he kissed her shoulder, his hand going down to stimulate her clit, sending tendrils of intense pleasure spreading out from the spot. He canted his hips slightly, changing the angle of the penetration so completely she screamed, her breasts pushing against the tree as she tried to get air into her lungs.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he demanded. “Tell me I finally get you Corvina Clemm.”
The heat of his body was so solid behind her. Wasn’t this what she had always wanted? To belong to someone completely, wholly, utterly, someone who knew her past and the potential issues that could arise in her future, and still claimed her entirely for himself? They didn’t know each other as they should, but time could change that. Time could make her understand his reasons for being the way he was, and make him trust her enough to share.
‘What if he’s evil?’ a cautious voice inside her whispered.
Only time would tell. Time. One thing she knew for certain – she was done denying whatever this was.
Lust was only their beginning. They were meant for more. She had to give it time.
“I’m yours,” she admitted, both to him and herself, and he responded with a thrust so sharp it made stars burst behind her lids, liquid fire spreading from where they were joined, running through her core as she shattered into a million pieces in the cage of his arms, anchored by his consummation of her.
He came inside her with a groan, his breaths warm on her neck, his chest heaving against her back as they both caught their breaths. She suddenly became aware of the quiet of the woods, the moonlight glowing on them through the branches, the scent of his body and the tree invading her senses. He pulled out of her, leaving a trail of their combined wetness on her thighs, and put her panties in place.
“You’ll walk to your tower with my come inside you,” he eased back enough to turn her around, his hands finding her breasts and massaging them, soothing them after the friction with the rough tree. “And tomorrow, when you start doubting this again, feel your sore pussy and remember who owns it.”
Corvina gazed up at him, her hands holding the sides of his waist. “And Verenmore? You… own it too?”
He squeezed her breasts. “Yes.”
“I have so many questions. I don’t even know which to ask first.”
He patiently waited her out.
“I’m willing to give this a chance. But I just… I need one thing from you,” she told him. “One thing, and then I won’t doubt whatever this is again.”
He waited more.
“Don’t lie to me or keep things from me,” she gripped the muscles on his sides. “Don’t make me feel like an idiot. If you can’t tell me something, just tell me you can’t. But not about something that affects me or whatever this is. You do that, and I’ll never trust you.”
He flicked her nipples. “Okay.”
“So many questions,” Corvina arched into his hands.
“Save them for later,” he let her go and went to where her shawl had fallen down. Flicking it a few times, he returned to her, draping it around her shoulders, cocooning her in the warmth.
“Stay back after class tomorrow,” he told her, covering the place on her shoulder he’d bitten her slightly. Once done, he tucked a strand of fallen hair behind her ear and gazed down at her.
“I’ve waited a very long time for you, little witch,” he kissed her piercing.
Her mouth trembled. “Will you tell me your story?”
“Tomorrow.”
Nodding, she began heading towards the castle, feeling his warm presence by her side. “Why pretend?” she asked the question at the forefront of her mind. “Why pretend to be just another teacher here? And say stuff like the student-teacher rule could affect you? And why don’t people know about the castle being in your family?”
He took his pack of cigarettes out from his coat, lighting it up. “So curious, little crow.” He puffed. “Which one do you want answered first?”
“I guess the last one.”
He pressed his hand to the small of her back, leading her back to the castle. “The mountain and the castle have been in my family for many generations, but nobody lived here for centuries. One of my great-grandfathers became a university board member and offered the castle grounds as the location for the school. When the disappearances started, my grandfather pulled back the Deverell family name from public knowledge and put the Board at the forefront.”
Corvina held her shawl tighter as they climbed up the incline. “So does that mean you’re one of the members of the Board?”
He guided her up. “A silent one, yes. I took my grandfather’s place the night he died. That’s why I came here. I wanted to see this place.”
They emerged into the clearing in front of the tower, still shielded by the thicket overhead, and Corvina turned to him under the light coming from the tower.
“Tell me you’re not evil,” she gripped the front flap of his coat. “That’s all I need to know for now. Rest can wait until tomorrow. Tell me you’re not responsible for all the evil touching this place.”
He caressed the side of her face with the back of his fingers, tilting his head. “And if I am? Does that make you loathe me? Will that keep your pussy dry?”
Corvina felt her heart stutter, shame filling her as she realized it didn’t make her want him any less. She was truly not right in the head.
He pressed his lips to hers, soft and tender, unlike his grip on her chin. “Rest your pretty head, witch. I’m the devil you know, not the devil you don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that while I’m not a good man, not by any stretch of the imagination, I’m not the evil haunting this place. I’m the evil hunting for it.” He gave her another little kiss. “Stay back after class tomorrow. Now go.”
Corvina took off to her tower at a run, trying to wrap her head around everything that had been revealed to her in the short span of a few hours, trying to understand who exactly her lover was with the little pieces of him he’d shared. She ran over the mountain she now knew was his, towards a tower that was his, a woman who belonged to him too, changed from the girl she had been when she’d entered these walls.
She reached the thick wooden door to her tower and turned around to see the entrance to the woods where they’d been standing.
The orange glow of the tip of his cigarette was all she could make out, his entire form hidden in the shadows, the master of the castle masquerading under the guise of a commoner.
Tomorrow, she would know why.
