Page 42 of Nova Academy

I didn’t know what they had done to me. It always happened the same way. I would find out later when the results of their experiments showed themselves, but for now I was simply waiting for my body to knit itself back together.

That process was even more difficult on days like these, because it wasn’t the usual healing process. They had to reprogram the nanites they had injected me with as a small child not to attack the foreign body in case they destroyed the scientist’s work, and then my body had to learn how to heal around the new implant they had grafted into my very bones.

I tried to stop thinking about the pain. The stinging of the blade when it first cut through my skin, and then the burning as it carved through muscle and tendons. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the sensation having experienced it countless times over my short life, but this time was different. This time they had buried something so deep inside of me that there was no possibility of escape. They had changed the very structure of my biology to accommodate for their ideas, and it hurt.

The nurses clustered into a corner of the room, gossiping about something I was too depleted to hear. The scientists had already left, leaving the nurses to wait out my healing period, and then they would tranquilise me for the guards to carry me back to my room.

It was more like a cell than a room, this place a prison of tortureand misery, but I was looking forward to seeing the guard on Artemis duty today. He called me A, and though the bottom half of his face was covered by the gas mask all the guards wore, his eyes always shone witha gentle kindness. I especially enjoyed when they crinkled in the corners with little wrinkles, the only part of his smile I was able to see.

I didn’t know his name. He told me to call him T, and it had since become my favourite letter in all the alphabets. I assumed it stood for Tornu because that’s what he was. Tall and broad, his muscles felt incredible against my body when he would lift me to carry me back, the way they tensed and undulated under his skin, hard and then soft, and then hard again.

It was the closest I had ever felt to a male; to what it would feel like to be intimate with one. Sometimes I would even take the risk to stroke down the spikes that ran along his forearms or, if I was feeling particularly courageous, the ones on his head. And he let me. One of my favourite memories was the time I had accidentally pricked my finger on the sharp, pointed tip of one on the back of his neck. A small drop of blood beaded on my skin, and he had leant forward to lick it off, sucking the digit gently into his mouth before releasing me with a deep, vibrating groan.

It was the single most erotic moment of my life, one that I held close and cherished.

But when he came in to pick me up this time, his kind face was twisted into a sneer, his eyes cold and hard and lifeless. He glared down at me as if I were a nuisance and he wanted to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but near me. I didn’t understand…

‘You’re on your own,’ his low, velvety voice spoke, but there was a maliciousness to it I had never witnessed before. ‘I won’t be helping you anymore. It’s time for you to go.’

And then he flipped the table I was lying on, still strapped to it, swung me around and hurled me as hard as he could. I soared through the air towards the door, but instead of crashing into it I slipped right though and kept going. And going… And going…

???

My internal alarm blared inside my mind. It wasn’t exactly a noise, more like a sense that fully awoke my mind and my body at the same time. One moment I was fitfully sleeping, the remnants of my dream echoing throughout my mind in a last-ditch effort to be heard before they disappeared, and the next I was wide awake.

And trapped.

I panicked, my memories converging into the present to enforce the idea that I was strapped to thatfuckingmetal slab. Except, I wasn’t lying on a cool, hard surface, and it wasn’t my wrists, ankles and throat bound. Instead, there was something long and warm covering both my torso and my legs, attached to something larger and even warmer at my back. And something was persistently stabbing into my rear.

And then it moved. I stayed completely still. Lower and lower it stroked against my skin, and it was remarkably pleasant. Too pleasant.

Bromm.

I’d fallen asleep holding his hand last night, and woke up this morning with him practically soldered to my back and his fingers creeping just under the waistband of my underwear…

His hips ground into mine from behind, his hardness thick and present and searching. And oh, my stars, did it feelgood.

Goosebumps erupted over my skin as his fingertips dragged gentle circles just above my groin, inching further and further under the fabric covering my lower half. His hot breaths puffed over the back of my head, ruffling my hair, which was how I noticed when they hitched. He gripped my hip, pulling me closer to rub himself against me, a low groan emanating from deep in his chest.

‘Arty…’ he breathed my name, low and sensual and full of need.

I meant to tell him to stop. I really did, but all that came out wasa whimper that mirrored that need, and it was as if whatever had been stopping him from pushing further crumbled to ash.

One minute I was lying on my side, embraced by him from behind. The next, I was on my back, gazing up at face full of tentacles that I could no longer bring myself to find disturbing. They grew from beneath low-lidded eyes burning with desire, and they gently stroked and suckled at a sweet spot I never knew existed on my neck. Sweet, gentle, and surprisingly sensual.

For the first time in my life, I moaned in pleasure.

And then his lips were on mine. Pressing, tempting, tasting; obliterating my every thought and overwhelming my senses.

His hips lowered to mine and he began to grind our bodies together, and for a moment I let him. Until my brain suddenly rebooted and reminded me that he was expecting to find something that wasn’t there.

In a flash, I had him flipped and pinned beneath me, but my brain short-circuited when he let out a long, deep, resounding groan. The sound did things to my body I hadn’t known it was capable of doing. He reached for me, his hands seeking my skin under the shirt and trying to pull me back down on top of him.

But I couldn’t.

I glared down at him, his own stare beckoning, his plump purple lips begging for another taste, the feel of his body writhing below mine creating a friction everywhere except where I wanted it.

Where I couldn’t have it.

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