Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,40

my lips. “Do you want us to stop?” His voice was a breathy whisper against my ear that only intensified the desire and rush of magic trying to batter its way through the dam I had cranked all the way up.

There was a split second where I wondered what the hell I was doing—I swear there was. A split second where I was on the outside looking in and seeing a girl who was sandwiched between two insanely gorgeous wolf shifters. Who also maybe had a little thing for a vampire and was romantically involved with her Arcane History professor. I almost didn’t recognize her. But in that second, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with her choices. She cared for them all, and they cared for her. There was a connection there, and if they were also physically attracted to each other, then wasn’t that just a bonus? Couldn’t she have them all?

Cal and Adrian knew, even though I hadn’t outright told them about Elias, and yet they still wanted me. Wanted this. My stomach fluttered as Cal’s hands tugged the headband from my hair, setting the wild mane of red locks free.

Adrian’s strong hands squeezed my arms, reminding me he’d asked me a question that I’d yet to answer. Both he and Cal were waiting for permission before they allowed their animal urges to be satisfied.

My lips parted, the breaths coming from them heavy and hitched. “No,” I managed, and Cal’s gaze burned into me at the word. “I don’t ever want you to stop.”

It was the unfiltered truth. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel the full force of what was truly between the three of us, too afraid that they would reject it or that they simply didn’t feel the same way.

To hear them say it now—that they wanted me in the same way I wanted them—it was like someone had just handed me the keys to open up a passageway I thought would be forever locked.

Cal’s hand, gentle only a second before, grasped the back of my neck with a fevered passion. A muted snarl left his throat before he tipped my face up to his, stealing a kiss unlike any I’d ever had before. It was raw—animal—and I could tell he was working hard to subdue it, but the same feelings overwhelming me from head to toe were washing over him, too. And his inner wolf wanted to come out.

He slipped his tongue between my lips and a high-pitched moan tripped up my body and slipped from my mouth into his.

Adrian’s hand took hold of my hips, pressing my back more firmly into him as he moved his hands over the smooth skin of my lower back, making my entire body convulse at the wild sensation. My skin prickled as though there was electricity running just over the surface, sending little shock waves out to my hungry fingers clutching at Cal’s t-shirt, and my toes as they curled into the plush carpet. Hot breath stirred my hair where Adrian buried his nose into the untamed strands.

The muscles beneath my fingers tensed as Cal pulled back—only a little—to kiss me again, but lighter, his lips pillow-soft.

In a flash of movement, Adrian had me torn from Cal and spun around. Where my back was pressed against him a second before, now was my front. My breasts ached as they pressed into his chest, and the hardness of him rested firmly against my waist, making me want to cry out at the riotous sensations all but taking me over.

I was hungry for them. Ravenous. My fingernails dug into Adrian’s back, and his eyes lit brighter than before. His wolf surfaced for an instant before he shoved the beast back down.

He tried to pull away, maybe worried that he couldn’t keep control, but I wasn’t afraid. I tugged him closer, my grip on him hardening possessively as I gazed up at him, begging him to give me what I wanted. Please, I spoke the word through the connection, finding it as easy to latch onto as a rope in this moment. His eyes widened at the intrusion into his thoughts, and his expression became guarded.

No. Please. I clutched at him. I knew he would fight it—that they both would. But this was right. I knew it in my bones. This was meant to be.

And I wanted to taste him as I’d tasted Cal. To feel the irrevocable connection that awakened in me the strongest of power, and the strongest of