Chapter 281: 281 | This is Not a Vanilla Session
The arch wasn’t subtle. Her spine curved off those wine-colored sheets like someone had run current through the mattress, and a sound came out of her mouth that I will remember for the rest of my probably short life. Not a moan. Not a gasp. Something between a snarl and a prayer, ripped from somewhere behind her sternum that she’d been keeping locked for years.
Level four. I’d barely started.
I kept my palms flat against her ribs, letting the warmth radiate outward through her skin while her chest heaved beneath the lace bra. Her stomach contracted. Her fingers twisted into the sheets hard enough that her knuckles went bone white.
"What the fuck was that."
"That was four."
"Out of what."
"Ten."
Addison’s violet eyes went wide. She grabbed the front of my jeans and yanked me down so hard I nearly headbutted her. Our faces ended up about two inches apart, her breath hot and fast against my mouth, those black-painted lips parted enough that I could see the edge of her tongue behind her teeth.
"Do it again."
I kissed her neck instead. Slow. Right below her left ear where a cluster of silver piercings caught candlelight. I pressed my mouth against the soft skin there and kept Euphoric Feedback running at four, letting the warmth spread from my lips into her pulse point while I traced a line down toward her collarbone.
Addison hissed through her teeth. Her nails raked across my shoulder blades, and this time the scratch went deep enough that I felt skin split. Not accidental. She’d drawn blood on purpose.
"Harder."
I bit the junction where her neck met her shoulder. Not a love bite. An actual bite with real pressure behind it. The Euphoric Feedback converted the edge of pain into something else entirely before it could register as discomfort, twisting the signal into a hot pulse of pleasure that made her entire body jerk against mine.
"Oh fuck. Oh, you absolute bastard."
I worked down her collarbone. Kissing each ridge of bone, each valley between, tasting salt and expensive moisturizer and the faintest trace of her perfume, something dark and floral that probably cost more than my first month’s stipend. Her chest rose to meet my mouth like she was offering herself up, and I let my tongue drag along the swell of her breast just above where the black lace started.
Addison grabbed my hair and pulled my head back. Hard. The kind of pull that made my scalp sting and my eyes water.
"Listen to me very carefully, Monroe." She was breathing like she’d just finished a gate clear, her face flushed red beneath smudged eyeliner, but her voice had that same lethal edge she used when threatening to bisect people with manifested scythes. "Whatever you did with Aurora. Whatever vanilla bullshit works on her. That’s not going to cut it here."
She released my hair. Sat up on the bed. Her legs folded underneath her and she looked at me with an expression that I recognized immediately because I’d seen it on Misato’s face a hundred times during combat drills.
She was about to teach me something.
"You want to touch me? You earn it. You want to make me feel something? You fight for it." She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra with one hand, letting the lace fall forward into her lap.
Her breasts were heavy and round, bigger than I’d expected even after three weeks of studying every woman at this academy like a lunatic, with nipples already hard from what I’d done to her neck. She didn’t cover herself. Didn’t look away. Just sat there topless in thigh-high stockings and black panties with her hair wild around her shoulders and dared me to do something about it.
"I don’t break from kisses. I don’t melt from sweet words. The last three guys who tried to seduce me got bored and left because I didn’t perform the way they expected." She leaned forward. "So if you’re going to be in this room with me, you better be ready to learn. Because I’ve got things to teach you that your other girls have never even heard of."
Something in my chest responded to that. Not the System. Not the divine benefactor. Just me, the version of me that had existed before all of this, the version that loved a challenge more than oxygen.
"Teach me then."
Her mouth curved. The first real smile I’d seen from Addison Baxter that wasn’t wrapped in sarcasm or violence.
"Good answer."
She grabbed my wrist and placed my hand flat against her left breast. The contact was firm and authoritative, her fingers pressing mine into soft flesh so I could feel the weight of her, the warmth, the way her nipple pressed against the center of my palm like a demand for attention.
"Rule one. I like pressure. Not gentle. Not teasing. When you touch me, mean it. I can tell the difference between someone who’s afraid to break me and someone who wants to own me, and the first one makes me want to leave."
I squeezed. Hard enough that the flesh compressed between my fingers and her breath caught for real this time, not performance, genuine reaction pulled from somewhere below the armor she wore like skin.
"Rule two. Pain is not a problem. Pain is a feature. If your feedback thing can turn pain into pleasure, then you should be hitting me, biting me, pulling my hair until my scalp screams, because that’s the frequency I operate on. The nice stuff you do with Naomi? Save it for Naomi."
I increased Euphoric Feedback to six while my thumb circled her nipple and pressed down. The combination of the pressure and the ability hit her nervous system in tandem. Her abs clenched. Her thighs squeezed together. The sound she made was low and ragged and absolutely gorgeous.
"Rule three." Her voice was thinner now, the authority cracking at the edges as the feedback worked through her system. "I decide when I come. Not you. Not your magic fingers. Me. You can build me up as high as you want, but if you push me over before I’m ready, I will manifest a scythe and redecorate this dimension with your internal organs."
I kissed her again. Rougher than before. My teeth caught her bottom lip and I pulled until the black lipstick smeared across my chin. She groaned into my mouth and her hips rolled forward, seeking contact, seeking pressure, seeking something to grind against.
When I pulled back, her pupils had swallowed the violet entirely.
"Any more rules?"
"Surprise me."
