It’s freezing outside, any pretense of lingering summer is gone. Zipping up my hoodie, I head for the rock-paved path that circles the outer rim of the campus. I always make a point of waving to the guards when I pass them. They never wave back, but I know a lot of the students here act like they’re servants, which seems like a deeply ill-advised way to treat someone who carries weapons.
This running path is safer than most of other ones laced through the campus. There are no hidden spots, no trees, or boulders where predator scum like Mateo can hide themselves. I suspect this path is kept clear for a reason, so that the guards can spot any potential threats from outside the college. Still, there are dangerous spots where the rock crumbles close to the sheer cliffside. I always wondered why Dean Christie didn’t insist on putting up fencing, but I’m sure it goes back to the unofficial school motto, “If you let it happen to you, it’s your fault.”
By lunchtime, I’m a mess, thinking about training with Lucca in less than an hour.
“What’s going on with you?” Mariya asks, eyeing me suspiciously as she digs into her stroganoff.
“Nothing,” I try for a breezy response and end up more in the range of an anxious croak. Pretending to cough, I drink half a glass of water. “Just a little stressed. I have a long afternoon of training ahead of me.”
“That’s right, your big combat test is on Monday, isn’t it?” she says, looking genuinely concerned. She’s the only one of my friends here who knows just how crucial this performance for Professor Zimmerman is going to be. “Hey, you’ve got this, I know you do!” Giving me a hug, she nods reassuringly.
Anxious to change the subject before my anxiety turns into nausea, I ask, “How was last night? Did you have fun?”
Mariya instantly scowls. “No. Konstantin was being a creeper again and dragged me off the dance floor.”
“Why?” I feel terribly guilty because, of course, I know why but I can’t tell her without admitting what I was up to out there behind the lighthouse.
“I was dancing with Ronan and that idiot Kon came charging across the room and acted like we were dry humping, or something,” she says angrily. “Etot glupyy zasranets, that stupid asshole is determined to ruin my social life! He can have sex with half the female population of this school and I’m not allowed to dance? I know everything about this arrangement is the Bratva at its misogynistic best, but this is ridiculous!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. As angry as she is, I know Konstantin’s rudeness is hurting Mariya. Their marriage was arranged between the Morozov and the Turgenev Bratvas when she was only fourteen, and she and Kon have bickered ever since. But this aggressive meanness from him is new. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think he’s sleeping with anyone else.”
“How do you know?”
“Lucca mentioned it,” I admit, “I’d asked him why Konstantin was being such a dick to you.” Seeing Lucca nod at me across the dining room, I put down my napkin. “I have to go, moy drug, my friend. If anyone can straighten Kon out, it will be you.”
Lucca’s expressionless face doesn’t give me any comfort as we head into the training room. I’m guessing he’s going with pretending it never happened. Then he insists on making this worse by pulling off his shirt, something he’s never done in front of me.
Damn him, he has a six-pack that I would have believed could only be achieved with some serious photoshopping. He’s all hard, sculpted muscle and suddenly, I wonder what it would be like to trace every one of those colorful tattoos with my tongue. Abruptly yanking my gaze from his chest, I flush.
Then his mouth is on mine in a hard, hungry kiss and when he pulls back, I’m weak-kneed and panting. “Well, that blows my theory out of the water,” I wheeze.
“What theory?”
“That you were just going to pretend last night didn’t happen,” I said, loving the feel of his bare skin against mine.
Raising a brow, he asks, “Did you want me to?”
“God, no!” I blurted, wanting to smack that cocky grin right off his face.
“Good,” he said hoarsely, kissing me again, one hand sliding down to the small of my back, pushing me harder against him. Resting my hands on the sides of his neck, I raise on tiptoe to get closer to him.
For the first time I walked through the gates of the Ares Academy, I feel safe.
“Have you talked to your brother since you came here?”
We’re lounging on a pile of mats, watching the sunset through the dirty gym window. We’ve done a little sparring, stopped to kiss, a little more sparring, much more kissing… Lucca has his arms wrapped around me.
“You know that as per Academy rules, we are only allowed to contact family members once a month from the phone bank in the main building,” I reply primly.
His silent laughter jostles me a little. “It’s interesting. The school’s best hacker and purveyor of illegal phones lives next door to Kon and me. Mark Tanner, do you know him?”
“I think I’ve seen him a couple of times, an American? He’s in the Assassins division?”
“Yeah,” Lucca’s fingers are idly stroking down my arm, as if he’s acquainting himself with all the bits and pieces of me. “He was in a panic last week because there was a new digital signal for a server that just popped up somewhere here on campus. Not an Academy-approved one.”
“Hmm,” I hum noncommittally.
His amusement is obvious. “He was scared it was going to set off the Academy sensors and get his little network shut down, but it seems like it’s impossible to trace. It’s patched into Skylink and the VPN changes every couple of minutes when it’s active.”
“Is that so?”
“Funny how it popped up right after you came here, isn’t it?” He’s goading me now. Lifting me easily, he turns me around to straddle him.
He’s watching his hands smooth up and down my thighs, his dark lashes are a thick fan against his cheekbones. “You know, it’s so unjust that you were given those eyelashes,” I complain, “you’re never going to appreciate them the way a woman would.”
“My eyelashes?” Lucca starts chuckling again. “That’s what you feel is unjust? Not genocide or… say, dengue fever. My eyelashes are the ultimate injustice?”
When I crossly attempt to climb off him, his long fingers slide down to my ass, gripping me tightly. My hands are on his shoulders, about to shove myself away from him when I feel the thick bulge in his shorts growing, pushing against my center. It makes me suck in a deep breath, and he goes still. His chuckle drifts away and he watches me closely. I feel the muscles in his shoulders flex as his hands squeeze my ass, dragging me closer against his dick, already hard and thick and separated from me by just scant bits of cloth.
There’s a weird sense of something slipping into place, a precise fit like a key to a lock. My spread legs fit perfectly around his, and Lucca’s hands curved over my ass as if they’d always belonged there.
He lifts me just slightly and drops me against his cock again, then a slow slide back and forth, and the friction is almost enough to make me combust. Sliding my hands over his shoulders and down his chest, I trace his sculpted pectorals, his chest hair brushing against my sensitive palms. Lucca doesn’t speak, just watches my face as my breath grows shorter with each slide across his hard thighs and back against his cock. It’s hot, I can feel the burn of it through his thin shorts and mine and I’m already so slick that I’m afraid I’m going to leave a wet spot on his lap.
Leaning forward to kiss me, his teeth latch onto my bottom lip, tugging slightly. “I think you can come, just like this. What do you think, piccolo bacio?”
“I… uh…” The ability to form a coherent sentence has apparently been lost and all I can focus on now is the very real need to come, rubbing shamelessly against his clothed cock. He’s pushing it against me, his hips tilting up to make sure it rubs over my clitoris on each downstroke.