Friday March 20th 2015

Anastasia bumped his shoulder with a smile as she got her books into her backpack. They liked to get to Viktor’s class early. It wasn't just the extra time to warm up, it was being alone without the stares of the school.

Giving him a wicked wink, she bumped him with her butt. Laughing quietly, Cesare cinched his duffel bag against his back, the long black jacket a heavy weight along his shoulders.

Stepping away from the table, the girls settled into place next to him. Flowing across the room like a dark tide of carnage tainted air, the trio were followed by eyes. It was the feel around them that drew the wary fear in the kid’s eyes, like cold steel sliding across the inner thigh, they were abominations in all but form. Each possessing a darkness of the soul that darkened the world around them, a disciplined blaze that consumed everything in their wake.

Cesare watched the students study them, noting the open stares and sidelong glances. The recent attack had added an oil slick shine to Cesare, a new batch of gossip springing up like fungus burrowing in week old corpses. One thing that stayed the same was the skim of revulsion in their eyes, they’d decided long ago what he was, and no story would change it.

It was Alexandra's subtle tensing that sent Cesare sweeping the cafeteria. The Enochian Blade slithered into his hand, ready warmth radiating up his arm. Blaez stalked around tables, pushing through the small groups that wouldn’t move aside for him, eyes locked on Cesare.

Few of the students dared openly disrespect the volatile boy, but they still made it known. Cutting their eyes as he passed, stepping away a little too quickly. He was a failure, a thing to be made fun of, a joke given flesh. It was probably a sign of how much of an asshole he was, that Cesare got a thrill at the werewolf's degradation.

Alexandra's backpack hit the round, moving away from Cesare, she opened space to maneuver. Tightening her own pack, Anastasia fanned out to the side, hands lose and ready, dark eyes sparking with hints of sin born flames.

Cesare set himself, the moment on the cusp of wrapping him in its predatory bubble of ruthlessness. Aleph and Beth prowled along the edge of his consciousness, eager to flood him with primeval power. The Root Chakra trembled on the point of blooming. Blaez wouldn't start shit in the cafeteria with everyone watching, but if he did, Cesare wanted to be ready to put him down.

Slowing, the werewolf gave the girls a wary look. He’d tangled with Anastasia and been annihilated. No matter what he’d thought before, she was light years ahead of where she’d been. Alexandra was always a threat, a nuclear bomb with a faulty detonator.

Stepping carefully, the boy kept his hands at his sides. “I wanted to talk.” The words were loud enough to capture the interest of the students clustered around the tables near them. Slowly, people quieted, straining to hear what Blaez had to say to the Furies. The rumors of some homicidal love triangle between the werewolf, pariah and school princess, made every word juicy with new blood.

“I want you to train me,” Blaez said, refusing to take his eyes off Cesare.

Cesare’s mouth snapped shut as his heels hit the ground in shock. A ripple of silence ran from the group with the speed of a meth high cheetah. Alexandra stared; mind frozen at the insanity of the request. Anastasia’s lips quirked, eyes glittering with barely suppressed amusement.

For the first time, Cesare didn't know what to say. The wolf didn’t have that problem. “You know who we’re going up against.” Cesare nodded, Greg had given him the folder a few days ago. The brief look was enough to throw his heart into overdrive. “I can’t win against them, not as I am. But I can’t back out after everything I've fucked up. I’d rather die than disgrace my family any more than I have. Everyone knows what you’ve done for Anastasia.”

“Why the fuck would I help you?” An obsidian tide swelled inside Cesare, the cancer tainted brother to anger. Darkness spread from his shadow, eating away at the light that streamed in through the stained-glass window of medusa.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll get butchered out there,” Blaez said, words threaded with uncertainty as if even he couldn’t find a good reason for Cesare to help him.

In that moment, Cesare looked into the wolfs desperate eyes and found a touchstone, humility. Starving kids learned quick you can’t eat pride. It only takes a few days for you to sell things you never thought you would. Bits of innocence sold for the price of a meal or a warm bed.

These last months had been Blaez's own crucible. Horrible pressure cracking anything gentle in his soul, unfathomable heat destroying softness, leaving only etched steel behind. He’d had everything he loved stripped from him. Maimed by a homeless damnati, lost his pack in a mass desertion, and been annihilated by his ex in the arena.

“I don’t have anyone else to turn to.” Desperation overwhelmed the arrogance that normally colored his voice. Watching from behind the boy, Abraxas eyes burned with impotent anger.

It would be a hell of a coup for Cesare if he trained one of the last members of the Thagirion. It didn't matter if the boy won, the Furies would gain prestige simply by having the Thagirion beg for help. Cesare would be raised up by standing on the corpse of the werewolf’s reputation. That shine would reflect on Alexandra as his vassal. Each was a weapon ready to be used. It was something he should take hold of with both hands. But two things held his tongue

There was no way to half train for a life and death fight. You either gave them your all or you had no business training them. If Cesare trained him, Blaez would become lethal. But the werewolf would never owe his allegiance to Cesare. One day, the girls might turn against him with all the deadliness he'd burned into their bones, but Cesare had long ago decided it was a price he was willing to pay. Blaez wasn't worth that price.

There was another reason, one that squirmed and wriggled deep in his heart. A hidden agenda that bathed and glutted itself on his hate, fear, and spite. One he avoided even as it grinned gleefully in the filth of his soul.

Cesare opened his arms to Anastasia when she entered his space, the act so natural it didn't require thought. She pressed her back into his body as his arms enfolded her. She knew, even if he’d never said a word to her about it. The thing that tore at him with petty vindictiveness was obvious to a girl who'd taken in the game of seduction with her mother’s milk.

Molding to his body, her soft curves pressed against his hard angles. She’d dropped her backpack, leaving nothing between his body and hers but a few pieces of fabric. A hot wave of sexual heat enveloped Cesare with caressing tendrils of obscenity.

Dipping his head, his breath ghosted over ravaged, redly veined, translucent flesh. A shiver of desire shuddered in a wave over Anastasia. Caressing his hands over her jacket, the night black material cool as a mountain stream along the sides of her soft breasts. Pushing his hardened flesh into soft yielding warmth, a low growl thrummed through the air.

Cesare's hands parted the liquid black fabric, entering through the front. Laying his palm flat across her warm dress shirt, he felt her core muscles tighten. Kissing along the tortured skin of her neck, Cesare tasted the faint tang of salt, flesh tightening at her sigh of pleasure. His other hand quested lower, pressing the skirt flat, fingers running along the top of her sex.

Anastasia settled with a lazy, sensual purr of pleasure escaping her lips. It was how they trained, at their most intimate outside of the frenzied feedings. Close, together, and wholly with each other, their bodies joined at hips, chest, and shoulder. Cesare ran his tongue up her neck, over the ridges of ravaged, melted flesh.

She was the reason holding him back. It was stupid, but that didn’t make it less real. He loved her, wanted, and desired her the way a starving wolf needed the wounded deer. Cesare still remembered every time he’d seen her with Blaez, every one of the werewolf’s smooth smiles and grasping hands. Every time he’d watched them kiss or touch was a brand across his heart. He’d kill Blaez before he’d let him touch Anastasia again.

She knew it, had seen it in the possessive, needy thing that never left his eyes. Could feel it in every touch of his hands and wanton look. There was a time when he could've been more than the twisted thing he was, before life had savaged him. Her purr of approval soothed that monstrous part of him, saying without words, she was his, totally, and completely.

Seeing the princess so intimately twisted around the leper would earn Cesare a new crop of enemies. Even now, he felt eyes studying the easy way they held each other, the familiarity that couldn’t be hidden.

She was degrading herself by being with him. They’d think the two of them were together, instead of the half living thing they had, neither of them able to kill the feeling or move forward. She was gold, and he was shit, all he could do was taint her. Yet he couldn’t let go, glorying in having her in his arms in front of everyone. For the first time, he felt that maybe, just maybe, their story might have a happy ending.

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the werewolf. Blaez kept his eyes locked on Cesare. No lascivious glances ran over Anastasia’s lush form, no raised eyebrows at the way the girl molded to Cesare’s body.

“Meet me at the gladiator’s area after school,” Cesare said. Shocked, Anastasia stiffened in his arms. Only Cesare knew Alexandra well enough to see surprise in her tensing frame.

The boy gave a low whine of relief, shoulders slumping as tension fled its body. “I’ll be there,” Blaez said, heading for the exit without looking at the enthralled audience.

An avenue opened as Abraxas moved through the lunchroom, a shark locked on a fleeing seal. Cesare watched the serpent chase Blaez. One thing Cesare knew for certain, this was a wedge that would fracture the Thagirion. It would be up to Cesare to make sure that fracture broke it apart and shattered its hold on the school.

Dipping his head, his lips kissed the melted flesh of her neck. “Thank you.” Husky and needy, each syllable filled with a warped and maimed sense of self.

Tightening her hands, she pulled his arms around her, the tips of his fingers coming dangerously close to cupping her sex. “Don’t.” Her words were a breathy whisper. “I’d never throw you away. I was a fool to push you away back then, and even more of a fool to let you think he meant more to me than you.”

She turned in his arms, his hands falling smoothly to her soft ass, openly holding her as the school watched with avid faces. Holding his face, she pulled him down, eagerly meeting his lips with hers.

Sexual heat detonated from her, blasting out in a widening circle. Twisting the desires of the kids around them, perverting them into things born in tainted darkness. Serpents of night black sin wound around the boys, warping thoughts into images of domination. Girls drowned in an ocean of dreams only ever birthed in the depths of night, when fleshly hungers rule the world.

Scorching hot lips burned his flesh, molten sex pouring into his mouth. His lips twisted in a snarl, tongue penetrating her mouth, pushing into welcoming wet heat. Squeezing her ass hard enough to leave bruises, his tongue moved slow and heavy in her mouth, pressing her tongue down and around, taking what he wanted from her. Pushing into him, Anastasia's lush curves collapsed against his chest, a low moan of need pulsing between them.

Anastasia’s fingers fisted in his hair with cruel desire, pain adding sharks’ teeth to pleasure, forming something jaggedly beautiful. Stygian dreams of dark possession swam through his soul, gleefully smiling with needle teeth, tendrils of need spider webbing his heart.

Ripping himself away, he stared into Anastasia's lust crazed eyes. Lips parted, pink tongue tracing across blood red lips, she eyed him with fathomlessly darkly wanton eyes. “If I was going to belong to anyone, it would be you.” The husky words were heavy with promise. Shuddering under those eyes, words hooks digging deep into his flesh, it took a physical wrench to banish the visions of perversity from his mind.

Slowly, painfully, they disengaged, knowing they’d bear the marks of their embrace. Her ass would bruise, and his head would ache, reminders of unfulfilled needs.

A tormented sigh came from the kids as the two parted. Caught in the storm of sexual power that was the Harab Serapel’s birthright, they’d been shaken to their bones by the primal thing they’d seen.

Anastasia swiped her bag off the floor, the swing in her hips letting everyone know she wasn’t in the least embarrassed by the show. Looking at the grinning girl, Cesare wondered if she even got off on it. She was a sexual predator, like a tiger was a born carnivore. Sex was food, pleasure, and power, woven around a sacredness that defied understanding.

Sex for the Harab Serapel was a complex thing woven through every aspect of their lives. Anastasia gloried in her sex appeal, used her body as a weapon without compunction, and reveled in the pleasure it could bring her. None of that changed that sex with the man she loved meant as much to her as it did any virgin.

Intimacy was a thing of endless depth for them. Touching more important than sex, it meant acceptance, commitment, ownership, and love. When he touched her ass or breasts it was a declaration of her power over him, his acceptance of her domination of his heart. That he allowed her to play her hands across his body was trust given form. That she offered him the same in return, turned the needs of lust into something beautiful.