Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
She steps out around me, making her way down the hall, but I keep up easily. “
Pass? Where else would you stay so late?”
“Kenzie offered a spare room in her apartment.”
My keeper staying with another quintet? I don’t care how much she trusts her shifter friend. The others might slit her throat in her sleep to get a head start on the quintet rankings next semester.
That thought has me reaching out to grip her arm before I can think better. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Maven halts and faces me slowly, something flaring in her eyes that I haven’t seen before. Something intoxicatingly dark and…unexpectedly dangerous. It’s as if some level of her facade has slipped, and she’s rearing her true personality for the first time.
When she looks pointedly at my hand on her sleeve, I slowly remove it. Baelfire was right. Touch is a trigger for her and yet another thing I need to understand.
“Let’s get something straight, Crane. I give exactly zero fucks if you don’t like where I rest my head. Whatever interrogation you have in mind to try to understand my motives for rejecting all of you, it will wait. This has been a shit day, and I’m exhausted.”
She’s not at all the reserved wallflower we all initially took her for.
But although her tone is savage and her glare could kill, something in my chest softens as I study her. I can tell she truly is tired. That’s not a lie. I can’t stand that she has no place to stay tonight because of those bastards’ reactions to her earlier absence. I’ll take care of her door myself.
She’s right. It’s late, and I should leave her be because the longer I stand here with her, the more I don’t want to watch her walk away. I’m just procrastinating leaving her presence because I don’t want to be sucked back into the void of paranoia that I’ve been existing in without her.
“Forgive me,” I murmur. “Sleep well.”
Maven walks away, leaving me with a budding feeling that I have no idea how to handle.
MAVEN
Heavy, slow heartbeats echo in my ears until I jolt awake soaked in a cold sweat, shaking from the residual monsters clawing at my mind. When my magical alarm spell dissipates, I roll out of Kenzie’s spare bed and catch myself on the floor in a plank position, inhaling deeply before dropping into my usual reps.
Push-ups, crunches, burpees, squats, lunges, tricep dips, mountain climbers…
The list goes on.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Finally, when the sun is just coming up outside, and my core and limbs are on fire, I drag myself to her quintet apartment’s sizable shared bathroom, grateful for the icy-cold blast of water overhead that washes away all traces of the horrors that haunt my nights. A brutal workout routine first thing in the morning is the only thing I know to calm myself down after my nightmares. It helps that it’s the same routine I grew up on.
Toweling off, I toss on more of my oversized clothes and return to the guest room, glancing at my phone charging on the nightstand.
Last night, I snuck out to a seedy bar in Halfton to track down the number of a supernatural black market dealer. I need to obtain nightshade root powder—a spell ingredient that is highly monitored by the Legacy Council due to it being a potent ingredient used in so many outlawed dark magic spells. All my digging and careful listening last night got me an encrypted number to call for a warlock two states over.
I’m just glad Silas didn’t insist on escorting me to Kenzie’s apartment, and it’s a good thing Crypt must’ve been busy eating dreams all night. I didn’t sense him the entire time.
But how the hell am I going to get away from my not-a-quintet long enough to call this warlock today? Not to mention, I can’t allow them to witness me have an episode like the one I had yesterday. It’s already a miracle that no one else, not even Kenzie, has witnessed that.
The sooner I break up the quintet and get them to appeal for a different keeper, the sooner I can complete my mission without so many eyes following me all the time. So today, to make them jealous, I’ll have to flirt with a modelesque professor who also happens to be one of the wealthiest legacies alive.
Boo hoo, poor little me.
A muffled sound nearby makes me tense. I frown and listen harder.
“Yes, yes, yes…” a breathy voice chants. Someone grunts, and I hear something get knocked over before more panting ensues in the nearby room. Someone else moans.
Sounds like Kenzie’s quintet is waking up, which is my cue to leave. I didn’t mind crashing one night with them, but it’s a good thing I’ve already sent a maintenance request to Everbound’s dormitory management to get my door replaced as soon as fucking possible.
I tuck my phone in my back pocket, sliding on gloves from my overnight bag as I step out the door.
I’m not even surprised to see Baelfire waiting for me. You’d think that after I’ve given him nothing but brush-offs and purposefully let him spiral yesterday not knowing where I was, he would lose the enthusiasm—but no. Instead, his entire face lights up, gold eyes glittering as he falls into step next to me.
“You still owe me three questions, you know. I’m cashing in on them today.”
“Before or after you apologize for destroying my door?”
He grins not at all apologetically. “Crypt’s more to blame for that than I am. So. Three questions. Ready?”
Stop being so fucking persistent. I’m tempted to find you charming.
But I can’t say that, so instead, I tell him, “Make them bland. They’ll suit me better.”
“Please. You’re the furthest thing from bland, my sexy little Boo.”
My neck feels unusually warm. Which is terrible timing because we’ve just passed into a large corridor full of legacies who keep sneaking glances at us. Bael is used to being high-profile, but I’m looking forward to being done with the shifting eyes and whispers that carry my name.
“Just ask your damn questions before we get to my combat course.”
“All right. What was your family like?”
“Dead.”
He winces. “I meant before they…you know.”
“I don’t remember. I was a baby when they passed.” Which is a mild term for what happened to my parents, or so I’ve been told.
His voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. “That’s really shitty that you didn’t even get to know them. Who raised you, then?”
I hesitate momentarily before deciding it’s probably better to get this over with. “I was adopted by a strict man who wanted a family but never got the chance until he found me.”
“Was he a good father to you, at least?”
Gods. I don’t even know where to start with that question.
“There’s far worse out there. He did his best. And now you’re out of questions.”
We’re approaching the door that will let out to the training grounds. He slows and drops his voice to a whisper.
“Wait—one more. And please, please, please answer this one. Because I know it’s invasive, intimate, and borderline rude to ask, but my inner dragon has been hell to put up with for the last couple of weeks since I first scented you, and I just need to know.”
“Know what?”
Baelfire stops, prompting me to pause, too. He leans close until his lips nearly brush my ear. The heat from his body wraps around me, along with a pleasant musky scent like singed cedar wood.
“Are you a virgin?”
Why does his voice have to be so gravelly and sensual? Its raw hunger sends warmth tingling over my skin, settling low in my belly. Instinctively, I press my legs together in an attempt to keep Bael from scenting what he just did with his heightened shifter senses, but when I hear his soft groan, I know he can smell the arousal I’m trying to hide.
“Damn it, Maven, it’ll be so embarrassing to walk out there with this raging boner,” he rasps.
It’s difficult to steady my voice. “Then go attend one of your classes.”
“No. I want an answer. Do I get to be the first to worship and spoil the fuck out of your sweet pussy? Or do I get to put anyone who tried to please you in the past to absolute shame? I won’t touch you until you tell me to, but I want to know how to fantasize about fucking you when I jack myself raw later. Gentle and sweet for a virgin or rough and hard for my mate?”
Oh gods.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.