Primal Awakening (Prime Shifter Academy #1)

by Melody Rose

He looked at me like I was the exotic diamond at the end of a carefully planned, high-stakes, high-reward heist. There was a greed in his eyes, and a thirst that went far deeper than the body’s physical desires.

I’d tapped into the attitude that my mother occasionally grounded me for when I was younger.

I wanted him to know that if he wanted to threaten me, I was going to show my teeth.

I watched as his thickly veined hands rolled up his button-down sleeves before moving to unbutton the top button of his shirt.

I should try to enroll in a class to learn how to shut up for once.

“If you are already deciding this is too hard, then I can’t help you,” Garoux announced as he walked around the carpet to stand in front of me. I turned my head to the side, already committed to being grumpy.

time ticked on as time tends to do,

he would always walk behind me up the stairs or keep me on the inside when we’d walk down the hall, as if he were the living barrier between me and the rest of the academy.

No big deal. Truly.

I was about as smooth as sandpaper.

I hadn’t known Dexter long. Only a week and a half at that point, but he was such a creature of habit that these tiny blips of interruption to his regularly scheduled programming stuck out like mad.

“I know you wish you had a better mirror in your quarters. I know you think about wearing one of your skirts every day but have yet to do so because you’re worried about what others might think. I know you have an ugly dog at home that you miss quite a lot, and I know you’re a phoenix.”

“I felt it, too,” he admitted as he leaned over the table. “Right away. Instantly. It was like everything in the entire universe suddenly made sense because you were finally here.”

“Mate?” I asked, my voice cracking with nervousness.

All the times I thought I’d been awkward couldn’t hold a candle to how I felt then.

My chest began to burn when I saw him smiling back at me. “There it is,” he mused, a crooked smile plastered to his face. “What?” I asked. “I can tell when you’re feeling happy,” he explained, placing his hand on his heart. “It feels like a burning in my chest, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s like curling up in front of a fireplace.”

There was a flicker in his eyes like the glint of a predator in the moonlight, making him look deliciously dangerous. “Now,” he growled. “Get over here.” He reached out and pulled me back into him, running his hands down my back and cupping my ass wholly with both hands.

The risk of someone dropping in didn’t feel like a risk so much as it felt like a declaration of him being mine.

I could feel the tension of his hard-on along the mating connection.

I wasn’t sure how long I could stand to linger in this purgatory of desperate wanting.

More than anything, he was proving that he really was naturally talented at everything he tried.

repeating his name in an undone voice that bordered on worship.

he rose to his feet and unhooked his belt with one hand and gripped my face with the other.

“Once this is done, it’s done.” His hands held my jaw firm enough to feel powerfully erotic but gentle enough it didn’t hurt one bit. “Do you understand? You will be mine.”

“Take me,” I insisted, feeling myself swoon under his words.

Even at his most unhinged, the thunderbird still wanted to do right by me—and that was more than I could have ever asked from anyone.

His hands wrapped around my backside as he scooted me forward at a perfect angle for him to penetrate me slowly as he pulled me toward him.

“Come for me, Sunny,” he demanded, reaching up to grab another handful of my hair as he forced me to look him in the eye. “I want to watch what your pretty little face does when you come all over my cock.”

I was a woman undone, and all the pleasure I’d been storing within me spilled over, and over, and over.

Um, can you hand me my panties?” I pointed to the ground, where they lay like a casualty of war.

“You kinda look like you’re going to either shut down or explode, and if nothing else, I’d like to be prepared for which one is coming.”

Slade shot him a look that was a perfect balance between oh, no and I can’t wait to see how this unfolds.

I could use a little smug satisfaction right about now.

It was simultaneously the longest awaited and the least expected turn of events.

He turned to smirk at me, and I caught a hint of a fang in his smile.

Then, my tall, blue-haired, dangerously handsome mate tilted my face upward with the knuckle of his index finger and kissed me softly on the lips, breathing new life into me and into our connection.

Talon’s thoughts grew filthier as he watched Dexter hold me in his hand, and I knew the gryphon was feeling the same insisting, nearly painful need that I was.

“If you want to take her and make permanent the connection between the two of you,” Dexter spoke to Talon with militant cadence, “then you’ll have to accept that I will be there as well. To watch you and make sure you take care of her. She was my mate first, after all. It’s only natural that I should want her to be touched the way she deserves.”

I wanted him so deep inside me that I could feel him in my stomach.

Any single thing he wanted to do to me, I wanted, too.

Dexter was made for this role—his need for control made him a perfect observer, and his intimate connection to my own fantasies made him a perfect instructor.

“Would you rather Talon please you with his tongue or his fingers?” he said, as if asking me the weather.

“You heard her,” Dexter mused. “Get up there beside her and feel her pleasure. Make her fucking come.”

“Come for me, baby,” the gryphon hissed. “I want to see how many I can get out of you. Come for me now so I can fuck you in your tight little cunt.”

“You’re mine, you’re mine,” Talon began to repeat, and I was happy to hear him claim me. I was his.

“You’re so pretty,” Dexter mused with a blissful smile.

“I’m going to make you scream.”

He let out a deep moan of satisfaction that ended in a purr.

Who cared if he would have crawled on broken glass to have her to himself for an hour?

What a twist. What a disgusting, unfair, nonsense, backward, garbage, infuriating twist.