Peace and quiet couldn’t last long when you shared the same bedroom with a blond bomb-shell. Kain burst into the room and slammed the door behind him. Spotting Alexi on the bed, he hesitated one moment, unsure of how to proceed. He put one hand on his hip and cocked his head to the side, watching his roommate. Alexi was sprawled onto the dark blue covers, resting his chin on his left arm. He was lying on his stomach, his shirt riding up just one or two inches, leaving a line of creamy, white skin uncovered. His baggy jeans were riding low enough to show a glimpse of his butt, his round buttocks creating a delicious curve in contrast with the narrow plane of his lower back.
Kain licked his lips, arousal overtaking his senses, making him feel hot and sweaty. His skinny jeans grew tight and uncomfortable. He had seen a lot of unbearably sexy cambions and he had fucked them all. But this time, it was different. Alexi wasn’t the submissive kind of guy who would give anything to get into the blond legend’s bed. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge his stalker. He was unreachable. Because Alexi was a Lure legend himself. And, as he was lying on his bed, looking all hot, he was playing his role perfectly: he didn’t give any sign that he had even noticed Kain’s presence, which made the blond add the last touch to his newly formed decision. He walked to his own bed, making a total show of his swaying hips. He hoped that the feeling of being watched wasn’t just his imagination.
“Aren’t you going to take a break? I’ve never seen you do anything else but study.” Now he was sure Alexi was fixing his gaze on him, so he turned around.
“No. I want to finish this tonight.”
Kain saw that Alexi wasn’t looking at his face, but lower, way lower. A smirk grew on his lips.
“Suit yourself. I’m taking a shower, and then I’m going to see the new prisoners before the stupid Midnight Ceremony ruins my night. I thought you’d like to come. Mikal asked about you.”
“Did he?” Alexi was trying to convince himself not to talk to the bulge inside Kain’s pants.
“Yeah… Since your last mission you’ve stopped coming to Oriens. He was thinking it might have something to do with…”
“Mikal should mind his own business.” Alexi turned his gaze from Kain’s lower regions. The blond was way more likable when he shut his mouth. “I can think of some ways of shutting his mouth.” He shook away the offending thought and moved into a sitting position, facing his desk.
Kain merely shrugged. He was simply trying to make conversation. “Oh, well, might as well go on with the plan. He was staring at my hard-on, anyway.”
Alexi was staring intently at all the books and materials on his desk, brows furrowed and lips pursed. He was unconsciously squeezing the edges of his mattress, knuckles almost white. “Mikal… that annoying bastard doesn’t have anything better to do? And asking Kain about me… well, why don’t you just tell him the entire thing, you manwhore? So I could feel perfectly miserable and get this over with.”
“Hey, man, chill. Was just saying…”
Alexi was startled by the other’s soft voice. Maybe he was over-thinking the whole thing. Relaxing a bit, he felt his muscles tense again when he heard shuffling behind him. Like clothes dropping onto the floor. Alexi turned just in time to see a shirtless Kain struggling with his own belt. “Right… taking a shower…” He gulped while tracing the blond’s upper body with his hungry eyes. Kain was rather slim and delicate, his narrow hips almost feminine. Alexi internally laughed at his thought, knowing that in reality his roommate was anything but feminine and delicate. You wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side. He was entranced by how the strong muscles moved under his smooth skin, and he found he couldn’t take his eyes off the tattoo that was covering Kain’s right pectoral - the sigil of his inner demon, an intricate pattern of lines and circles. Every cambion who had gone through training and released their personal demon with all its power had a unique sigil on their skin, which they could camouflage when needed, but glowed dark and effervescent when the cambion attacked. Alexi’s own sigil was on his left shoulder.
Alexi let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when Kain finally managed to take off his belt and unzip his fly. Behind the thin fabric of his black boxers, the blond’s cock seemed even bigger and more edible. Alexi found himself gulping down more saliva as he was imagining what that hard piece of flesh would feel like between his expert fingers. Squeezing… caressing… maybe licking… No. He had to turn around. He simply had to look away. No, this was Kain Svjetlo… this was the one taking all those cases, the cases that should have been his. “Just look away, dammit. Look away!” And that he did. Blocking all of his senses, he didn’t hear his roommate strip off his boxers and going into the bathroom. When he snapped out of his self-induced trance, the shower was already running.
?
Kain couldn’t understand how Alexi had been able to turn his gaze when things had just started to get interesting. Slowing down his stripping had been useless because his roommate didn’t look at him even once afterwards. So, he was standing now under the hot water, with a huge, aching problem between his legs. “Might as well take care of it.” Gripping his flushed cock, he pictured Alexi sprawled onto his bed, just like he had found him when he had entered the room, only now he was naked, butt in the air, shamelessly begging for attention.
?
When the blond walked out of the bathroom, Alexi was engrossed in his book.
“Last call. You sure you don’t want to come?”
Alexi cleared his throat, willing his voice not to tremble. “Yes.”
“Okay, then. Laters!”
After he heard the door close, Alexi raised his eyes from the page he had been trying to read. He realized he had gone through something like ten pages since Kain went into the shower, but he couldn’t remember a thing of what he had read. Thoughts and ideas kept swirling in his head, and since he had seen his roommate almost naked, it had been even more difficult for him to make sense of anything. Sharing the same room with Svjetlo wasn’t easy for Alexi. “Every time I see him I see my own past. And that would’ve been fine, just natural. But there’s more to it. I see something else as well. He’s strong, he’s beautiful… he’s everything I’ve heard about him before knowing him. And I’ve never thought I’d give him credit. He doesn’t know it maybe, but he’s my enemy. I can’t let him get to me like that. I have to do something.”
The books and articles he had on his desk weren’t enough for what he needed. He already knew everything there was to know about the Dukes, but it was all in theory. He needed the real thing, the files of the Duke cases which were solved by Lure, or rather, by Kain Svjetlo. He couldn’t have access to them. “Unless…” Not sparing another thought, Alexi took his jacket and got out of the room. He was headed for the South Pavilion.
CHAPTER THREE
The corridor in the North Pavilion was bathed in a dim, purple light. To Sophie, it seemed huge and like nothing she had ever seen. Lamia was walking in front of her, giving her time to get used to the new surroundings. The walls were covered in purple velvet and paintings of mythological creatures. A mermaid embracing a skull in one painting, a satyr chasing a nymph in another, a fairy, a centaur, a djinn. No unicorns, as Sophie noticed. It looked like unicorns could only be found in the West Pavilion.
She followed Lamia to the end of the corridor, passed the stairs leading to the upper floors, where she assumed the classrooms were, and went down a smaller staircase that led to the semi-basement. They reached a tall, wooden door with no particular name on it, just the seal of Lure Academy.
“Here we are,” said Lamia. She smiled broadly seeing curiosity flickering in Sophie’s eyes. She opened the door and held it for her roommate.
If the corridor and the Pavilion itself looked stunning to Sophie, The Red Chamber took her breath away in a second. It was a large room with a round pool in the middle, filled with hot, steaming water. The walls were covered in red velvet for reasons Sophie would learn later. There were soft pillows of all sizes scattered across the floor. The room was divided into four parts, each having an obvious purpose. On the right side of the pool, there were six king-sized beds, three sofas and a couple of armchairs. All of them were red, covered in rich velvet and huge pillows. Here and there, there were small tables on which Sophie could see different objects, bottles and fruit. She didn’t have to be a genius to understand what they were: sex-toys, lubes, aphrodisiacs. Just seeing so many “tools” in the same place made her shiver. On the left side of the pool, the walls were covered in tall mirrors, and there were thick mattresses on the floor. The space behind the pool was the most interesting to Sophie: there were three large beds. That wouldn’t have been unusual if it weren’t for the chains and cuffs of different sizes which were attached to the bedposts and even to the tall ceiling.
“These are for…” Sophie’s voice was thick with surprise.
“Yes, for the prisoners,” answered Lamia to her roommate’s unasked question. “At least for the beginning. After a couple of minutes, they start to like it and stop fighting it.”