Page 53 of Great Falls Rogue
“Unlike even Headmaster Sage himself, as an Academy healer, I’ve the power to remove you from all physical training with a single stroke of my pen.” Pushing away from the column, Shade put his hands in his pockets. “Continue this dance of lies and evasions, and I’ll put an end to the whole thing so efficiently, it will leave your head spinning.”
8
Shade
As they made their way across the Academy grounds, the occasional student casting them a curious look, Shade felt like a warden escorting a prisoner to an execution block. The effort Lera put intonotlimping was enough to make him swallow another growl. Did the cadet not understand how her every evasion only fed Shade’s drive to hunt, straining his self-control until it trembled?
No. Of course she didn’t. Neither did he.
“Last chance to speak truthfully before I stop wasting my breath on questions.” Shade closed the infirmary door behind them, the thick scent of salves and tonics overwhelming after the fresh outdoor air. With her shoulders bare and gown clinging to a supple waist before billowing in a cascade of red skirts, Lera was making him hard just by standing near him. Leaning a hip against a countertop, he crossed his arms and waited.
Leralynn scowled at him and remained silent.
Shade sighed. “Very well. Strip.”
A muscle ticked in the girl’s jaw. For a second, Shade thought—hoped—she would break, talk to him. Stop this absurd battle of wills.
Instead of melting, Lera reached back to take off her gown, the fabric spilling onto the floor as she released each hook with a soft snap, snap, snap.Heartbeats later, instead of a pliable cadet, Shade had Lera standing before him in her underclothes, looking even more tempting—and more hurt. The girl’s thighs and hips were shifted to take weight off the left leg, her creamy skin marred with dark bruises that disappeared under her chest wrap and thin white undershorts. An especially wince-worthy mark, likely originating at one of the many vessels on the side of the groin, spilled from beneath the remaining cloth. Not that Lera gave any indication she was even aware of her injuries’ existence.
Stars.The combination of stubbornness and vulnerability wafting off the girl prodded at the leashed predator inside Shade. Remaining where he stood, towering over her, Shade nodded to Lera’s remaining covering. “Keep going.”
His last play.
The spots of color flooding Lera’s cheeks were too delicious by half, and Shade swallowed a sigh of relief. He truly preferred the role of a kind healer to that of interrogator and once Lera asked him for something—a blanket, an averted gaze, a moment to herself—the dynamic would shift. The girl would acknowledge she was a patient in Shade’s infirmary and cooperate as such.
Lera’s lips parted. Closed. And, with no further hesitation, she pulled at the end of her chest wrap.
Shade froze.
Lera did not.
A mix of hunger and horror washed over Shade as he watched Leralynn unwind the cloth. Everything Shade’s body screamed at him was the very opposite of good bedside manner, yet he could do nothing to banish the thought. As she slipped out of her briefs, taking extra care to fold them as if her nakedness little bothered her, Shade forgot to breathe.
He’d been a fool. He should have known the girl—thisgirl—would wage their stubborn war to its bitter end. Which now left him with a very naked cadet, a very throbbing cock, and a deafeningly roaring conscience.
Lera’s perfect, lush breasts rose into pink tips that begged to be suckled. Lower down, the smoothly flared hips opened to a perfect width to wrap around a man. And her mound, covered in damp auburn curls…Stars.
Shade closed his eyes for a brief moment that he knew Lera wouldn’t miss. Lilac filling his senses, Shade gathered every bit of strength inside himself. When he opened his eyes once more, he was a healer.
Ribs to toes, splotches of bruises covered Lera’s satin skin. The particularly large one Shade had noted earlier indeed started at the crease on the left of her groin, where someone had landed a lucky blow. Coal had said he was pushing Lera hard, but hearing and seeing weren’t the same. Especially when it came to the girl before him.
Without waiting for instruction, Leralynn hoisted herself up onto the exam table, her auburn hair falling freely over bare shoulders. Stretching herself flat, she curled her hands around the table’s edges, her knuckles blanching in the first true echo of her vulnerability. Beneath her bruised skin, Lera’s chest rose and fell with too quick breaths, the pulse in the hollow of her neck fast and thready.
Shade’s gut twisted. Lera was stubborn and insolent and incorrigible. And caring and nervous and frightened. Ofhim.Which Shade was quickly discovering he had no appetite for. Leralynn had had a hell of a morning, and Shade had thus far succeeded only in making her afternoon worse.
“You know, most people feel better after seeing me.” Shade softened his voice to a healer’s trained cadence. As he spoke, his hands were already roaming along Lera’s head and ribs, his eyes watching for any sign of pain the bruises couldn’t account for. “It is what the Academy thinks it’s paying me for.”
Lera’s brows tightened for a moment before she schooled her face to the same false flatness she’d had since the reflection garden.
“You don’t believe me?” Shade asked, surprised by how much the implication bothered him.
“I think you believe it.”
Making a noncommittal sound, Shade palpated the slightly swollen shin he’d been eyeing since the girl undressed. Unsurprisingly, the tissue crackled beneath his touch, as if a hundred tiny bubbles took up residence in the muscle. Seeing Lera’s body go rigid, he lightened his touch—though he’d pressed lightly to begin with. “Is that what hurts the most?”
“No.” She swallowed, frustration leaking through her placid facade—finally. “It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. I want to go back to training, please.”
“I never said you couldn’t—” Shade stopped himself. Of course he had—he downright threatened to take her out of action in the reflection garden. And he brought up Coal, who Lera was probably trying to prove something to, hence her resistance to Shade’s medical attention. With the puzzle pieces now in place, he saw too clearly the crossroads he stood at with the girl—and he wanted to curse at himself for not seeing it sooner.
