THE SCHOOL PLAYBOY

Chapter 3

Morning light felt wrong on Caleb’s skin.

He woke alone in his apartment with the taste of jasmine still ghosting across his tongue and the phantom weight of Len’s thighs around his waist. The Hunger, for the first time in months, was quiet—sated, almost purring. That should have been a relief. Instead it felt like a warning.

He showered until the water ran cold, dressed carefully, and still couldn’t stop seeing the way she had looked at him while he was inside her: clear-eyed, deliberate, choosing every second of it. Most people dissolved under the Glamour. Len had sharpened.

By the time he reached campus the rumors had already started.

Someone had seen them leaving the greenhouse together. Someone else claimed the lights had flickered across the entire east wing at the exact moment the magic peaked. A third-year from the occult society gave him a long, knowing look in the corridor and murmured, “You fed deep last night.”

Caleb ignored them all.

He found her in the mythology seminar they shared, third row from the back, notebook open, pen moving in neat, precise lines. She didn’t look up when he entered, but the air between them tightened the second he took the empty seat beside her. The Glamour stirred, lazy and interested, like a cat stretching in sunlight.

Professor Harrow was droning about liminal spaces and binding contracts when Len’s knee brushed his under the table.

Once. Deliberate.

Caleb’s hand flexed on his thigh. He kept his eyes forward, jaw locked, while the memory of her coming around him replayed in high definition. The Hunger, so recently quiet, woke with a low, pleased growl.

After class she didn’t wait for him. She simply walked out into the autumn courtyard and expected him to follow. He did.

They stopped beneath one of the old oak trees whose roots were said to drink from the same underground spring that fed the university’s wards. Students moved around them in soft, ordinary clusters. None of them could feel the way the air thickened when Len finally turned to face him.

“You left,” she said.

“You were asleep.”

“I wasn’t.” Her grey eyes searched his face. “You were scared.”

Caleb laughed once, low and without humor. “I don’t get scared.”

“Liar.”

She stepped closer. Close enough that the Glamour reached for her on instinct, golden threads of want unspooling toward her skin. She let them touch her this time—let them sink in—and still remained upright, breathing steady.

“I felt it last night,” she said quietly. “Something trying to tie us together. Did you?”

His throat worked. “Yes.”

“And you ran.”

“I protected you.”

Len’s mouth curved, not quite kind. “From what? You?”

He didn’t answer. The truth was worse: he had protected himself. The bond that had started to form in the greenhouse was still there, thin and bright beneath his ribs, tugging every time she breathed. If he stayed near her too long it would thicken. If it thickened enough, the Hunger would stop being something he controlled and become something they shared.

And shared Hunger was how people stopped being people.

Len seemed to read the thought straight off his face. She reached up and brushed her fingers along the open collar of his shirt, right over the place where his pulse hammered.

“I’m not fragile, Caleb.”

“You don’t understand what I am.”

“Then show me.”

The words landed like a challenge and a promise at once.

He caught her wrist—not hard, just firm—and steered her away from the courtyard, across the lawn, and into the narrow service corridor that ran behind the old theatre. The door clicked shut behind them. Dim light. Dust. The distant sound of students laughing somewhere far away.

The second they were alone the Glamour surged.

Caleb backed her against the cool brick wall, one hand braced beside her head, the other still holding her wrist. He leaned in until his mouth almost touched hers.

“You felt the bond form,” he said, voice rough. “That was only the beginning. Every time I f**k you it will dig deeper. Every time you come for me the magic will take a little more. Eventually you won’t be able to walk away. Neither will I.”

Len’s free hand slid up his chest, over the rapid beat of his heart, and curled into the fabric of his shirt.

“Then stop talking,” she whispered, “and dig.”

He kissed her like he was starving again.

This time there was no slow exploration. He claimed her mouth hard, tongue sliding against hers, teeth catching her lower lip until she made a small, broken sound that went straight to his c**k. His hands found the waistband of her jeans, popped the button, dragged the zipper down. She helped him shove them over her hips. One of her legs hooked around his thigh, opening herself to him.

He dropped to his knees for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

The corridor was cold against his shins. Her cunt was already wet when he dragged her underwear aside and put his mouth on her. He licked her open with long, greedy strokes, then focused on her c**t, sucking and circling until her hips started to roll against his face. Two fingers pushed inside her, curling, finding the same spot that had made her shake the night before. The Glamour poured off him in waves, feeding on every tremor, every bitten-off moan.

“Caleb—f**k—”

He didn’t let her finish. He stood, freed himself, rolled a condom on with practiced speed, and lifted her. Her back hit the wall. Her legs locked around his waist. He thrust up into her in one deep, claiming stroke.

They both groaned.

The bond flared bright and hot between them—gold threads tightening, pleasure spiking in both directions. Every time he bottomed out he felt the echo of it in his own body, like her cunt was clenched around his c**k and around something deeper at the same time. He f****d her hard against the wall, the wet slap of skin and the soft, helpless sounds she made the only soundtrack. One of her hands fisted in his hair; the other braced against the brick.

“Look at me,” he ordered, voice frayed.

She did. Grey eyes dark, pupils blown, but still present. Still choosing.

That undid him more than any amount of mindless surrender ever had.

He drove into her deeper, angling until she cried out and clamped down around him. The orgasm ripped through her in hard, pulsing waves. The feedback slammed into him a heartbeat later—pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain—and he followed her over the edge with a low, guttural sound, burying himself to the hilt as the Hunger drank and drank and the bond sank another inch deeper into both of them.

For a long moment they stayed locked together, breathing hard, foreheads pressed.

Eventually he eased out, set her back on her feet, and helped her straighten her clothes with hands that were not quite steady. The corridor smelled of s*x and dust and the faint ozone crackle of spent magic.

Len touched the corner of his mouth, wiping away a trace of her own wetness with her thumb.

“Still want to run?” she asked softly.

Caleb looked at her—flushed, marked, eyes clear and dangerous—and felt the truth settle heavy in his chest.

“No,” he said. “But you might.”

Somewhere above them the old theatre’s wards gave a single, almost inaudible pulse, as if the building itself had just noticed that one of its monsters was no longer feeding alone.