Zodiac Academy 4: Shadow Princess: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts)

I’d asked the students who were housed in the rooms closest to her dorm to keep an eye on her and report anything strange back to me. A few of them had told me she woke up in the night screaming pretty regularly. But when I’d tried to ask her about that, she’d taken it as some kind of attack and had just started placing a silencing bubble around her room every night so that no one would be able to hear her scream anymore. I knew because I often walked to her door in the middle of the night and pressed my hand to it, reaching out with my own magic until it brushed against hers and reassured me that she was okay. Or if not okay, then at least alive.

I’m not ever going to put my life on hold for a man. Especially one who doesn’t think I’m good enough to make the cut long term.

“I don’t want you on your knees. I want you fighting me and hating me and fucking me like you mean it. You’re Roxanya Vega and you weren’t built to bow to anyone,” he growled passionately.

“You want me to hate you?” I asked in surprise.

“I want you to feel for me. And I’ll take hate if that’s all you’re offering.”

My voice echoed off of the stone walls of the throne room and I wondered what would happen if anyone found us here like this. A Vega and an Heir screwing on the throne we fought over so desperately.

“You’re going to be the ruin of me,” Darius growled in my ear and I pushed myself back just enough to look down at him.

“Not if you destroy me first,” I breathed in response as I painted the lines of his jaw with my fingertips.

“That’s why you push me even when you don’t have to,” he said. “You want me to punish you and you want to hurt me in return,” he pressed, not caring that my scowl was deepening and my hands were curling into fists at my sides. “And I think you get off on seeing me in pain.”

“How have I ever hurt you?” I snapped.

“You hurt me every time you ignore me. You hurt me every time you spend time with Milton or that douchebag with the hat or Cal or any other fucker who catches your eye.”

I pursed my lips at him. “Maybe you’ve been believing your own bullshit. I’m not the one who told the world I was a sex addict.”

“You did actually,” he pointed out, clearly meaning that interview I’d done for The Daily Solaria.

“Only because you gave me no choice.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I had that model fired.”

“What?” I asked with a frown.

“The one in that photo shoot with you. The one it looked like you really did screw.”

“Wow. You’re insane,” I said harshly. “That poor guy probably really needed that job.”

“He didn’t need to take his work so fucking seriously,” Darius growled.

“What the hell is this, Darius?” I asked him angrily. “What is it you want from me? Because you’re acting a hell of a lot like some scorned lover, but we never even made it off the starting line so I don’t understand why-”

“Neither do I,” he growled. “But when I see you, all I want is to lay claim to you. I want you to be mine and I know you never will be and it’s making me even more fucked up than I was to begin with. That’s why I hate you. Not because I’m supposed to or because my father wants me to, but because you represent every freedom I’ve never been given. It’s like you were designed entirely to taunt me and toy with me and crack me open and I won’t let it stand.”

“So what do you want from me?” I demanded. “Do you want to sit up on that throne with me on my knees before you. Would that end this feud between us?”

“I don’t know.”

I stared at him for a long moment with heat building in my skin and an ache of longing warring through my body. I might still hate him, but I wanted him too. When my nights weren’t possessed by the shadows they were haunted by dreams of him. Of the taste of his lips and the touch of his flesh. He watched me like he didn’t know what to expect from me and I placed my foot on the first step of the raised platform which held the throne. There were three in all. To make sure that whoever sat up there would look down on anyone who stood before them. And if that was what he needed from me so badly then he could have it.

I would never bow to him, but he could have me on my knees.

“What are you doing here?” I breathed, my quiet voice echoing in the stone room.

“I couldn’t watch you dancing with Caleb,” he said, holding my eye and just owning how he felt for once.

“Why?” I asked, still not moving despite the fact that a smarter girl would have run by now.

He shifted in his position on the throne and I looked up at him as he moved to lean his elbows on his knees as he gazed down at me.

“Because you’re in my head all the time. You pulse through my blood with each beat of my heart. I live for every scrap of attention you offer me and suffer through every moment you spend ignoring me,” he said darkly, holding my eye the entire time.

“I thought you hated me?” I asked.

“I do,” he agreed. “Because you represent everything I want and everything I can’t have.”

“You want me?” I asked slowly, taking a step towards him despite the dark energy which coiled around him.

“You know I do,” he replied simply as if anything about us was simple.

“No I don’t. I know you like to hurt me and tear me down,” I said. “I know you want to control me and take from me and make me bow at your feet.”

“I do,” he agreed, not even trying to deny any of it. “And I think a fucked up part of you likes it when I do those things.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed, but I still hadn’t left.

“I think you like it when I hurt you because on some level you believe you deserve it.”

He created little worlds that belonged just to us. Beneath a swimming pool, between the sheets, under a willow tree. He could make anywhere ours and shut out every other living thing.

His throat bobbed and a vulnerable kind of smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve not really dated a girl before. Not like this. Not the proper way. But with you, making you smile like that…it’s everything. A few months ago, I would have looked at myself now and thought I was losing my fucking mind. You make me wanna dress up trees, Blue. I’m one hundred percent a lunatic for you. And I don’t give a damn.”

What could I say to her about it anyway? Don’t be with him because we were together once. For one, too brief, earth shattering moment, you were mine. And I never should have let you go.

“Well, can you do me a favour?” he asked just as he pressed healing magic beneath my skin to remove the bite Caleb had given me.

“What?” I asked cautiously.

“The next time you want to drown in them, tell me about it.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re going to drown then I’m going to drown with you.”