Dirty Deeds: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Bonds of Blood Book 3) Read online

  Dirty Deeds

  BONDS OF BLOOD BOOK 3

  Cate Corvin

  Dirty Deeds

  BONDS OF BLOOD BOOK 3

  CATE CORVIN

  All Rights Reserved © 2019 Cate Corvin. First Printing: 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons

  Author's Note: All characters in this story are 18 years of age and older, and all sexual acts are consensual. This book is a work of fiction and liberties may be taken with people, places, and historical events.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Tori

  2. Tori

  3. Will

  4. Tori

  5. Tori

  6. Tori

  7. Suraziel

  8. Tori

  9. Tori

  10. Tori

  11. Tori

  12. Càel

  13. Tori

  14. Tori

  15. Suraziel

  16. Tori

  17. Càel

  18. Tori

  19. Tori

  20. Tori

  21. Tori

  22. Tori

  23. Tori

  24. Tori

  25. Will

  Epilogue

  Also By The Author

  One

  Tori

  The rich scent of warm blood filled the air. I took a deep breath, drinking it in, and my fangs ached to sink into the source of that enticing smell.

  My steps were silent as I crept through the undergrowth. He neither saw nor heard me; I crouched behind the dense branches of a white pine, all my focus narrowed in on a single point: the thrumming pulse that beat in his throat. One thin layer of silky skin was all that separated me from my next meal.

  He turned, staring directly at the pine I’d been crouched behind only seconds ago. My newly-Made body moved with a fluidity I’d never experienced as a human, my instincts anticipating where I should move next.

  Even if his delicious scent wasn’t permeating the pine forest- that sweet blood mixed with the tang of cedar and mint- I would’ve been able to find him another way. A song twisted through the back of my mind, growing stronger the nearer I got to him.

  A bloodsong, drawing me to the prey like a lodestone.

  I circled him, and when I was close enough that my throat ached from the scent of him, I struck.

  Will’s boot snapped out and caught me in the stomach, sending me flying backwards into one of the pines. I barely registered the dull pain before flipping back to my feet, feinting to the side and lunging in.

  An iron dagger skittered across the front of my leather jacket, but Will always hesitated to use weapons against me. I ripped it from his hand, ignoring the sharp sting of the blade cutting my palm, and drove him down with my hand clamped around his neck.

  Will looked up at me with wide green eyes. I ran my thumb over that pulsing point in his neck, which had sped up to a gallop. Fire crept up the back of my throat, and I carefully licked the blood from my cut palm as it healed.

  It was just enough to take the edge off.

  “You lose again. That makes it, what now, forty-three to Tori and two to Will?” I sat on my stepbrother’s chest, keeping him pinned in place.

  “I’ve won at least five,” he said haughtily. Hard to be haughty when you were pinned to the forest floor and had a darkening bruise on your lip, but Will Godalming managed, of course.

  To my annoyance, the song in my mind became a giddy little dance. If his body language hadn’t told me clearly enough, he liked having me perched on his chest with my hand gripping his throat.

  When I’d awoken from death, I’d had a cacophony in my head. In the two weeks that followed, it hadn’t taken me long to unravel why. The constant noise was the presence of my bloodsingers.

  Càel’s was the strongest, nearly drowning out the others when he was near. His was a steady, deep drumbeat nearly as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. It thrummed through my bones, filling every inch of me with the sureness of its song.

  A second melody entwined through that steady beat, the faster tempo of a heart pounding with lust and love. That was Suraziel’s song.

  Finally, there was Will’s. The cadence had started off jagged and discordant, but the more time we spent together, the more it smoothed into a heavy pulse with a protective edge. I never would’ve imagined Will, of all people, could produce that sort of call within someone, but there it was, strengthening with each new day.

  Three bloodsongs. They flowed together to create a beautiful harmony that was with me everywhere I went.

  That shit was deafening, and I wished I had mental earplugs.

  Right now, it wasn’t restrained to my skull, vibrating through my body and into my abdomen. The only thing that kept me from completely losing it was the fact that the bloodsong was a choice. I wasn’t irrevocably bound to Will and Sura just because I heard them inside me. I could always turn away.

  “Fine. Five to you, which makes it more like sixty to me.” We’d given up keeping track. “You can’t be hesitant to stab me, Will.”

  Those sea-green eyes flashed. “Excuse me for not wanting to bury a knife in your guts. I’ve watched you die enough for one lifetime.”

  “If you want to get technical, I didn’t diecompletely,” I pointed out helpfully. “My heart was still beating when I was Made.”

  Will’s stony glare told me that he did not want to get technical. “My point stands.”

  “Does it?” I realized I was stroking his neck, relishing the sensation of his heartbeat speeding up against my fingertips. The fangs that sometimes felt a little too big for my mouth ached fiercely, compounded by the fact that I already knew Will was delicious. The night Thraustila had snapped my spine like a twig, Will had done the Red Cross proud and donated most of his blood to ensure I turned. “I won’t die. They’re just practice blades. You need to know how to fight off a vampire, and I need to know what my new body can do.”

  Will wriggled under me, getting a little comfier in his leaf pile. He dropped the blunted knives and rested his hands on my thighs, just above my knees, the heat of his palms seeping into my skin.

  That vein in his neck pulsed. I licked my lips, imagining in vivid detail the taste of Will-

  “My eyes are up here.” I jerked my gaze upwards and met Will’s smirk. “All you do is objectify my arteries now.”

  “Not my fault when they look so delicious and you refuse to wear a turtleneck.” I tried not to leer when I said it, but I wasn’t entirely sure I succeeded. Truthfully, my throat was awash with fire now. Càel had told me fledgling vampires needed to feed more frequently, but he’d been gone for two days, and banked blood was just so… bland. Unsatisfying. But it was Headmaster Burns’ conditions for remaining in the safety of Libra Academy’s walls: no feeding on students or live blood.

  That included Will.

  “Don’t you vein-blame me.” Will tipped his chin up, exposing more of his throat like he was taunting me.

  Oh, I wasn’t blaming. I leaned forward and breathed deeply, the tip of my nose brushing his jaw. Christ on a cracker, he smelled amazing. Surely one small taste wouldn’t hurt.

  I didn’t realize I was running my tongue up his throat until his breath caught on a groan. His hands clamped down on my legs almost hard enough
to hurt, which was saying something.

  Will’s dark lashes fluttered when his lids opened, and I gazed into his eyes.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, my voice raspy. “Burns’ orders.”

  He took a hissing breath as I forced myself to sit up, my jaw aching worse than ever. I ran my tongue over my teeth, feeling the glassy smoothness of my fangs.

  “I’d say who cares what he wants, but…” Will shifted under me. “I don’t want to be responsible for getting you kicked out again.”

  “Càel would be furious,” I agreed, poking the tip of a fang. Blood welled on my fingertip with a burst of pain. I licked it away, trying to ignore how much I wanted to taste Will’s.

  “On the other hand, there are few things I like more than your mouth on my throat.”

  All the attention I’d focused on my wounded finger redirected to Will with laser focus. “Are you trying to taunt me into breaking the rules?”

  His gaze darkened. “You look hungry, Tori. Càel was pretty clear with us: you need fresh blood. The banked shit Burns is bringing in isn’t going to keep you well-fed.”

  It wasn’t. It kept me alive, sure… but it was tasteless, and it didn’t give me the same nerve-tingling zip of energy I got when I fed from Càel. “Maybe not, but Libra is my best option for safety right now.”

  He nodded, but he had that look he got when he was determined to turn the tide. “What if you fed from somewhere that isn’t obvious? It isn’t like I’ll go flashing my bite marks at anyone.”

  My mouth watered at the thought and I grinned down at him. “Will, you are a very bad man, you know that?”

  Will’s smirk died immediately and his cheeks reddened. A hint of bitter shame tinged his scent. I knew in that moment, we were thinking of the same thing: the vengeful sex tape he and Suraziel had filmed of me with them, and the night they’d sent it out… and the cherry on top, the incubus saliva that had tipped me into a drowning lust.

  “I know,” he said simply.

  We gazed at each other in silence for a long minute. “But not anymore,” I said. With an effort, I dragged my hand from his neck, running it over his chest. “You’re more than that Will now.”

  I stood up with a fluid motion and reached down to yank Will up. When I was human, I might’ve felt the exertion of pulling up a guy who was easily twice my size, but my strength more than matched his now.

  If I could still blush, I probably would’ve at the sight of the thick bulge in the front of his jeans. No wonder he was fine with me perching on his chest and licking him.

  Didn’t help that I remembered perfectly well what he felt like inside me and wanted more, despite the slowly-fading antagonism between us.

  We picked our way out of the pine forest into the wider array of Ermengol’s training grounds. It was the one place in Libra Academy, besides the tiny bedroom in an abandoned wing that Càel and I shared, that I was permitted to visit, as long as I had a slayer chaperone.

  Headmaster Burns had been very clear in his rules: no feeding and stay within the restricted sections. At times I felt a bit like a leper, but I understood. Not that long ago, I would’ve been horrified to have a Shadowed Worlder living in our midst.

  It wasn’t ‘our’ anymore, though. It was us versus them. Me against slayers. The Shadowed World was my new home.

  Or rather, it would be as soon as I knew Thraustila was no longer gunning for me, which could be, oh, I don’t know, maybe a thousand years from now?

  That was a long time to spend cooped up in a bedroom or training room, no matter how large and magical the latter was. With my newly-heightened senses, I smelled the Fae magic touching the wards of the training grounds: the sweetness of honey and tang of raw stone.

  “I hope I’m more,” Will said quietly as we climbed over a grassy ridge.

  I looked over at him with surprise. “You are, Will. I wouldn’t be here right now if you and Suraziel hadn’t let me drink from you. Wherever your turning point was, you’re getting there.” The ridge became a meandering pebbled path near the bottom. “You know, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”

  “What’s that?” His hand brushed mine as we walked, and I resisted the urge to grab it.

  “When I showed you what Suraziel was… what did you do after I left?” I’d left him with a dagger of blessed iron and an unglamoured incubus. The next time I’d seen them, I’d been getting my vertebrae snapped… and awakening into a second immortal life.

  “We hugged it out like bros.”

  “Really?”

  Will snorted. “No, I was furious. Sura’s been my best friend for four years. Finding out the one person who had my back was a frigging demon was…” His jaw tightened as he thought. “Like rolling over in bed and finding a giant spider resting on the pillow next to your head.”

  “So… pretty gross.”

  He fell silent. The pebbled path took us through a Fae forest, where the trees twinkled with glowing spiderwebs and sprites watched from knotted trees. We were taking the long way back, but I didn’t mind as long as Will and I were talking without going at each other’s throats. Metaphorically, not physically. If I knew I could get away with it, I’d have my teeth in him in a flash.

  “But everything that’s happened with us showed me that I was being an asshole for judging everyone else first. Sura was my best friend for a reason. Not once in all that time did he ever give me a reason to believe he wasn’t. He deserves a chance.”

  After my disastrous first semester in Libra, I knew how hard it was to reach the point of forgiveness. It couldn’t be forced, traded for, bought, or coerced. Somewhere deep inside, that piece just had to click on its own.

  As for me, I understood Will better now. He’d been living a miserable double-life, and me and my mother’s arrival in it had only made things worse, compounded by my own disdain for him. He’d lashed out. I lashed back.

  We’d broken each other down. Now I wanted to do what we should’ve done from the beginning, and lean on each other as support, not as enemies.

  “I know what you mean.” I bumped him with my shoulder, nearly toppling him off the path, and a faint smile touched his full lips.

  It faded as quickly as it began. “Tori, there’s something we need to talk about.”

  A stone dropped into my stomach. We broke through the Fae forest and into an open plain. “What?”

  “It’s about your-” Will cut himself short as the doors to the exit and Ermengol’s armory came into view. “I don’t know how to begin this. You have to promise me you won’t leave the academy after I tell you.”

  “Tell me what, Will?” My hackles were immediately up. Nobody wanted to hear ‘we need to talk’.

  “Promise.” He stared back at me without blinking as we walked. I knew my stepbrother. He wasn’t going to move an inch until I gave a little.

  “I promise I won’t leave… unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Will raised an eyebrow. “Promise you won’t leave at all. Thraustila is out there, Tori, and you took his only son. You can’t go outside without the chance of him sniffing you out.”

  I gritted my teeth. “This is some horseshit.”

  “It’s to keep you safe,” he said. He opened the armory door and I stepped inside, yanking practice knives from every sheath hidden on my body.

  I caught sight of Fae weapons glimmering on a corner rack, and warmth swept my body. The memory of an unveiled incubus burying himself in me was very, very vivid.

  Will dropped his weapons on the stainless-steel counter. “I want to tell you, Tori, so please make this easy for once and just swear to stay here for right now. I’m not asking for you to never leave. I’m just asking that you don’t go running off without thinking.”

  “When have I ever done that?” I snapped, and Will shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. Surely at a moment like this there was nothing admirable about the thickness of his biceps and forearms or the breadth of his chest, but… yes, yes there was.
“Fine. I promise to stay put in Libra. For now.”

  He took a deep breath and visibly relaxed once the words were out of my mouth. What on earth could have Will so wound up he’d refuse to tell me until I promised not to run off?

  “I’ve been thinking about this day and night, and no matter how many times I turn it over, I can’t come to any other conclusion.” He uncrossed his arms, pacing across the armory. I backed up against the counter and hoisted myself up to sit on it, watching him stalk back and forth. “Remember that night in the chapel over winter break?”

  “That was three weeks ago, of course I remember it,” I said. Will ran his hand through his hair.

  Crazy how much had changed in three weeks.

  “You told me I should wonder who might have it out for my family.” Will paused in front of me. There was something sharp and anguished in his eyes that had me straightening up as he approached. I didn’t protest when he stepped between my knees, resting his hands on my thighs. “You told me that summoners use invocations like the one used on my mother.”

  Without thinking, I placed my hands over his own, clamping his palms against me. “Tell me, Will.”

  “Nobody goes in the demonology room at home,” he said. “Except you. That was where I found the branding iron.”

  Sickness coiled deep in my belly. “The branding iron,” I repeated.

  “I never had a reason to go in there before. I found it the night we spoke.” Will’s thumbs dug deep into my flesh. “Someone used that iron on my mother. He burned it into her chest and brought her to the chapel. Nobody else could’ve done it.”