Chapter 280: 280 | Forty-Two Minutes, Milk Boy [PS Bonus]
I brought both hands to the sides of her face. My thumbs sat along her cheekbones. My fingers curved around her jaw. I held her there, close enough that our noses almost touched.
The candlelight caught in her purple highlights and turned them into something richer, deeper, like she was made of the same impossible colors as the fake city outside.
"Addison. I killed an alpha monster with a stick two weeks ago. I committed a federal crime seventy-two hours ago and my punishment was getting career counseling from the strongest hunter on campus.
My girlfriend has a group chat called Managing the Milk Vampire where three women coordinate my schedule and compare notes about my penis."
The laugh that came out of her was nothing like what I’d heard before. Short and raw and almost confused, like her body made the sound before her brain gave permission. Like she’d forgotten how it felt to laugh about something that mattered.
"I promise you. Nothing about you is going to be too weird for me."
Her hands came up. She wrapped them over mine where they cupped her face. Her fingers were rough from weapon training, calluses catching against my skin. She held my wrists the way someone holds a railing when they’re already leaning over the edge and realizing they’ve committed to the fall.
"You have forty-five minutes."
"Forty-three now."
"Then stop wasting time talking about your milk fetish and put your mouth somewhere useful."
I kissed her.
Not soft. Not cautious. Not the kind of first kiss people write poems about with trembling lips and gentle discovery and all that other bullshit that sounds romantic but feels like fear wearing a costume.
I kissed Addison Baxter the way she’d been waiting for someone to kiss her.
She tasted like cherry candy and cheap red wine and something darker underneath that belonged to the girl who collected knives like art and slept in a coffin and had probably never let anyone see her cry.
Her hands released my wrists. She grabbed my shoulders. Her nails dug into bare skin hard enough that I’d feel them tomorrow. She ground down against me through denim and lace. The pressure of her heat against my cock made us both lose the kiss for half a second because the sensation hit like voltage.
Pain from her nails. Taste of her mouth. Smoke and sandalwood thick in the fake air. The weight of her body on my lap. My brain dropped to maybe four percent operational capacity and I was using all of it to remember how to breathe.
I pulled back. Her black lipstick was smeared down to her chin. Mine was probably covered in it now. She looked destroyed already. Face flushed pink through the pale foundation. Hair wild and messy around her shoulders. The lace bra doing its absolute best to fail at its only job.
"Top or bottom?" I asked.
Her eyes became thin lines. That was the sentence she’d used before, thrown back at her with purpose. I could see the recognition land. Her expression changed for just a second, raw and exposed, before she rebuilt those walls around herself.
"You think I’m going to make this easy for you?"
"I think you’ve spent your whole life keeping everyone at a distance because no one’s ever proved they were worth letting in."
The walls cracked wider this time, more obvious than before. Something moved behind those violet contacts. An expression I’d seen on Naomi’s face when I told her I valued what she brought to the table. Vulnerability from someone who never showed it to anyone.
Addison Baxter. The girl who listened to death metal so loud it made people’s ears bleed, who made student council members cross the hallway when they saw her coming. That same girl sat on my lap in expensive lingerie inside a dimension built from candlelight and rainfall. She looked at me like I’d just said something impossible.
It created pressure in my ribcage. Something that felt dangerous to acknowledge with thirty-eight minutes remaining before this space collapsed and we had to return to reality.
"Top," she whispered. "I want to see your face."
I wrapped my arms around her waist and stood up from the couch, bringing her with me. Her legs locked around my hips before she’d even registered what I was doing, the thigh-high stockings creating pressure points against my sides.
Her arms circled my neck. She pressed her face against my throat and stayed there while I walked toward the bed with the dark wine sheets and the fake rain painting silver streaks across the windows behind us.
I set her down on the mattress. Her hair spread across the pillow in a way that reminded me of spilled ink, all that black with purple threads running through it catching the candlelight. It reminded me of the mana crystal Aurora had made in the restricted vault, the way the glow seemed to come from inside the color itself.
Her chest rose and fell beneath the lace. Those legs that came from years of swinging heavy scythes looked even longer now, the stockings emphasizing every line and curve. The black panties sat low on her hips with a patch of damp lace darker than the rest.
Addison Baxter stared up at me from someone else’s bed in a pocket dimension I’d created out of nothing. For the first time since I’d met her, the scowl was missing from her face. No aggression. No walls. Just her, exposed and waiting.
"Well?" The crack in her voice on that single syllable betrayed everything. "Forty-two minutes, milk boy."
I crawled over her. Set my hands on either side of her head. Let my weight settle just enough that she could feel me everywhere without being pinned. Her breath hitched when my hips pressed against hers and she felt exactly how ready I was through the remaining layers between us.
I activated Euphoric Feedback at level four.
Addison’s entire body arched off the mattress.
