Page 20 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part One
I could feel the hard press of his body, including his dick, and I was desperately trying not to think about it. Had I mentioned his cock was hard too? “Not like this.”
His hands wandered up my spine, and he smiled down at me. That smile should be illegal. Maybe that was his magic really; getting girls to lift their skirts with just a smile. I knew I was helpless to resist.
“Relax, Avalon,” he whispered against my ear. “Feel the music. Let it flow through you into me.” I was so close to him now that if my father could see me, he would have had me thrown in a temple to devote myself to the Goddess quicker than you could saywhore.But Father wasn’t here. He would never know that Hayle was almost fucking me with our clothes on, and that I wanted more. So, so much more.
I wanted tofeel.I wanted someone to look at me like Hayle was right now, every day and forever.
Shaking away the dangerous thoughts, I stepped back slowly, and Hayle let me go. His eyes were burning with desire. He could have had any person here, and he was undressingmewith his eyes. He let me put space between us, but his fingertips remained on my body, like he was finding it difficult. Wishful thinking on my behalf.
He let out a shuddering breath, before a self-deprecating smile crossed his face. “Give me a minute, then I’ll walk you back to your dorm,” he said softly, and I made the mistake of looking down between us. At the hard line of his cock.
Holy shit, Viana was right. Definitely a horse shifter.
“Avalon, if you don’t stop looking at my cock like that…” The gentle threat was there, but the threat was sounding more like a promise of pleasure. With willpower I didn’t know I possessed, I lifted my focus back to his forehead, then down to his laughing eyes. My face felt like it was on fire, and he chuckled deep in his chest; I could almost feel the sound against my skin. “I’m not sure the doe-eyed look is much better. Come, let’s go.”
He led me off the dancefloor, and I couldn’t help but look over at Vox Vylan one more time. He raised an eyebrow at me,and I gave him a rude gesture in return. My etiquette tutor would have been horrified that I’d given the two-fingered salute to the Heir of the Goddess-damned First Line.
More surprising was the fact that Vox threw back his head and laughed, making everyone in the room turn toward him. Hayle looked between us, but shuffled me out of the Third Line dorms and into the stairwell.
Shaking his head at me, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, his fingers brushing over my bare skin, making goosebumps of pleasure rise in their wake. “I bet you were the kind of kid who stuck their head in a beehive just to see how it worked, weren’t you, Avalon Halhed? Just beware that it doesn’t come back to bite you.”
“Lucky I’m friends with the Prince of Beasts then, isn’t it? A predator with even bigger teeth,” I said haughtily, though it was hard to hold back my grin.
“A Prince, am I? Or was it a predator?” he growled, picking me up and walking down the stairs as sure-footed as one of the wild mountain goats near my home. Still, I squealed and wiggled to get down.
“Hayle, if you drop me down these stairs, I’ll kick your ass,” I warned, making him laugh again. He shifted me in his arms and looked down at me. I realized we were already at the atrium—the halfway point between us and them.
“I’d really like to kiss you,” he whispered, and my heart stopped beating.
It was so foolish, but my tongue darted out, wetting my lips. “I’d like that too,” I whispered, like the silly little idiot I was.
He lowered me slightly, until my feet barely touched the ground, and then he kissed me softly. Just a brush of his lips against mine. He sighed, or maybe it was me, and brushed another kiss across my lower lip once more.
“I knew it would be perfect,” he whispered. Then he scooped me back up in his arms and all but ran down the rest of the stairs. I hung on tight, and when we stopped outside my floor, I looked up at him.
He backed me up against the door to my dorm and kissed me again, but there was nothing soft about this kiss. Nothing delicate. He plundered my mouth with his own, his tongue stroking along mine, tempting me to throw caution to the wind and invite him in. To have a night of something I would remember forever, even if I left it all behind in two years.
Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than that. Nothing more than to see a gloriously naked Hayle. To feel every inch of his skin. To taste him intimately. Fuck the consequences and my goals and Boellium and the Lines.
But Hayle dragged his lips from mine and took a small step away. His lips curled at the edges in a grin that set my soul on fire. “You’re going to ruin me, Avalon Halhed, and I can’t wait.” One more brush of his lips, and then he was climbing the stairs.
I watched him go, forever changed.
Thirteen
Avalon
Something had changed since the party with Hayle. Before last week, the other conscripts of Boellium had been happy to let me live on the periphery. An anomaly, sure, but ultimately uninteresting. Now? Now they knew I was firmly Team Hayle, and the divide in the college was all the more pronounced.
People who’d never spoken to me before went out of their way to converse with me. I’d said hello to more people in the last week than I had in the month I’d been at Boellium. And it wasn’t just the Lower Six Lines, either. Even some of the Upper Six acknowledged my existence, especially the Third Line. Their Heir had all but announced that he was interested in me, and they let it subtly be known that they had my back.
However, the people who were loyalists to the First Line had decided to curry favor with Vox Vylan by making my life as miserable as they could. They aimed to maim me in battle practice. They tried to trip me down the stairs of the auditorium. They talked about me behind my back and sometimes to my face.
The ringleader of the new Avalon Halhed Hate Club was none other than the girl who probably still had cock breathfrom Vox’s dick. She was definitely trying to get in Vox’s good books by being an almighty bitch, and I even understood, kind of. There weren’t a lot of places for women to go in our society, especially if you were of noble blood. Other than being bartered through marriage or being good enough at Boellium to become some kind of high-ranking officer, you were pretty screwed. Literally. Just there to make Heirs.
What a conquest the second son of the First Line would be, the best thing outside the actual Heir, I guess. I’d heard rumors that Vox’s older brother, Yaron, was an utter manwhore and already betrothed to some powerful First Line daughter. I’d also heard that he cheated on her as often as he bathed, as was often the trade-off for a life of luxury and power.
So while I felt sorry for Ephily, she was still a raging asshole. As she tripped me once more by using the Fifth Line’s terraforma powers to create a divot in the training ring, I contemplated punching her in that cute button nose and burying her in one of her own potholes. I glared at the woman, then continued back to the large barrels that held the swords. It was hand-to-hand combat day, and she was making it all the more miserable.
