Page 164 of Drown Like Heaven
You know I can never change it.
Without hesitating, for the first time in my life, I took everything from him. Sight, speech, hearing, smell, touch.
He was trapped inside the confines of his own skull, and I could control him there, too.
It was easy to get away from him after that, which I did, stalking through the living room towards the stairs, fingerstwitching. I slammed the door to my bedroom behind me, releasing my control on Mason’s mind as the harsh sound echoed through the room. I didn’t think he’d break in here to kill me for what I’d done, because he knew I could just do it again.
I screwed my eyes shut, my body too hot under my blankets, limbs tangled in the sheets.
Dakota should be here.
I craved her, needed to hold her in my hands. Something to stop the out of control feeling spiraling through me. Mason was hard to contain, and the more I tried to control him, the more it drained me, and the sloppier I got. No, I didn’t require much neon to use my aspect, but holding every jagged piece of him wasn’t easy.
I fucking need her.
Her soft body, tucked against mine under the blankets. Thunder constructing a backdrop while lightning illuminated her pretty features. Big green eyes, wanting to trust me even when she knew she shouldn’t.
Dakota was it. She gave me the purpose I’d been so desperately searching for. My second chance at creating a life worth living.
Now that I knew she existed, I just…couldn’t go back to not knowing.
I rolled flat on my back, arms splayed wide on the mattress, head resting on the pillow. I stared at the ceiling, attempting to remind myself that I was her literal professor—which meant something to humans. She’d even brought it up today, as a point against me. I’d done well at acclimating to human life, familiarizing myself with their systems of morality, but sometimes I forgot how I was supposed to be reacting to things.
If someone got too close to me having sex with Dakota, I’d just alter their hearing a little bit, cause some slippage in theirmemory, erase any suspicions from their mind. But Dakota didn’t know I could do that.
There were reasons I’d been able to stay at Blackpine so long without aging—nobody truly remembered me or what I looked like. It was a conscious choice to pull memories of myself from the humans who saw me in passing, but I hardly realized I was doing it anymore. People who didn’t see me regularly couldn’t remember who I was or what I looked like when they weren’t staring directly at me, and people whodidsee me regularly…well, the mind was malleable. I couldn’t manipulate memories of things other than myself, and only in this vague way, but that was enough for my purposes.
I bent my arm, resting my palm flat on my chest. Tomorrow, I’d see Dakota again.
Tonight, I needed to try and rest while a reckless nightmare slept a few doors down.
Chapter 44
Dakota
Micah’s mouth was on mine the second the door to his truck swung shut. He tasted good, minty and clean. I grabbed at his shoulders, his neck, running my fingers through his hair as my lips parted for his tongue. I couldn’t understand how he didn’t seem nervous we would get caught, but his confidence soothed most of my anxieties.
“Aren’t you worried we’ll get caught?” I panted against his mouth, half climbing onto his-lap to grind on his thigh. “You could lose your lab.”
He sighed, shaking his head as he pulled away from me. I frowned. “I wouldn’t lose the lab,” he started. “They’d expel you to keep me—but we’renotgoing to get caught.”
A cold chill slid down my spine, a harsh reminder of the way this would end differently for him than it would for me. I looked down at his chest, finger tracing a line of stitching on his collar.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Nobody is going to see you.”
He kissed me again, his hand gripping my throat to bring me closer. I surrendered to the fuzzy feeling of blood loss in my head, melting into him, my tongue gliding against his, my thighs angling wider. I felt like such a slut with him, like I’d let him do anything he wanted to me. We’d fucked a few times since thefirst time, always in his truck, but I still got nervous about it. About him.
His hand slid up my thigh to my hip, palm dragging over the curve of my ass while he kneaded my flesh. We were parked at the back of the lot, shadows from the pine trees falling over the car and the branches brushing the roof when the wind blew.
“I want to take you somewhere,” he mumbled against my mouth, nipping with his teeth.
“Are we going on a field trip, Professor?”
“Donotstart calling me that.” His hand came down hard on my ass and I yelped with the sting. He was grinning now. “You hear me?”
“I hear you. Where are we going?”
