“I can adjust to almost anything,” her father said grimly. “I can adapt to whatever you want your life to be—up to a point. The one thing that I won’t budge on is your finding the kind of love your mahmen and I had. That is the non-negotiable for me.”

Read: a male who was from the same class she was, who could provide her with the same life she had grown up in.

“Oh, Father,” she said sadly.

“I’m sorry, that’s just how I am.”

“I know.”

As the grandfather clock out in the foyer began to chime eight times, she cast off the pall that had settled in the room and got to her feet again.

“I have to be off.” She straightened the clothes she had chosen for the evening. “I’m going to go out with my classmates, and then there’s a project we’re working on during the day, so I’ll be home tomorrow night after class? And yes, there will be chaperones.”

As she stared across the perfectly appointed room at him, the ambience of old wealth and distinction that hadn’t been bought, but had been curated over the hundreds of years her family had had money, truly sunk in on her.

Would Craeg even be comfortable here?

Probably not.

“Father?”

“Forgive me.” He looked down at the papers on his desk. “But of course, I understand you must needs be gone. Do know you are missed, however. Also know that the Brothers do not tell me much, yet what they have shared … makes me very, very proud of you.”

That now-familiar pain in her chest, the one that came from her lying, lit off again as she thought that actually, he would not be very proud of her at all.

She intended to lose her virginity tonight to a male he would never approve of.

The trouble was, the Brothers had given no indication of how long this training program would last or what the long-term prospects for the class sticking together were. And her need for Craeg’s body was making her desperate—and very conscious that time was passing with alacrity.

She wasn’t going to miss her chance. And she had the sense that the more they were together, the more Craeg’s priorities were changing, too. He was becoming attached to her.

Paradise could feel it.

If it weren’t for the omissions with her father, she would be on cloud nine.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night after class,” she said in a rough voice.

“I’ll be here. Do take care of yourself.”

“I will.” She nodded to him. “I promise, Father.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Craeg couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone out with “friends.” In fact, he might never have done it before.

As he pulled on his jeans and cursed the holes, he told himself to get over it. He’d never been into “fashion”—one, he couldn’t have afforded it even if he had given a shit, and two, worrying about what you put on your body had always struck him as a criminal waste of brainpower.

“You look so incredibly average.”

Rolling his eyes, he turned around to Axe and—

“What the fuck are you wearing, asshole?”

The male looked like he’d been hit with the freak bat harder than usual, his big body wearing a shiny black skin suit that smelled like chemicals and made a strange creaking sound as he walked. Black piercings were in his ears and his face, a chain running from one lobe to his fucking nose, for crissakes.

He didn’t look like a pussy, though—Craeg had to give him that. Something about the bastard radiated aggression, power, strength. Sex.

Kinky sex, that was.

Axe shrugged like he was in nothing more unusual than a granhmen’s housecoat. “I’m going to hang out with my kind. If I don’t get laid my way soon, I’m going to kill myself—hell, much more of you vanilla types and I’m going to need Cialis to get it up. You’re killing my burn.”

“Well, no offense, but an open flame is not what you need around that getup.”

And out came the mask. It was black, of course, but like he’d expected something pink and green? And it fit over Axe’s features like a glove, changing his not-bad-looking-at-all face into something downright hideous—a morphing that was no longer vampire, but another species.

Alien.

“To think I assumed you were fugly before,” Craeg remarked.

“Again I say, you normals are killing me.”

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd that was how he and a whatever-the-hell-it-was ended up riding out of the training center together.

As the bus went along, pausing at all those gates, they were both quiet, but he was damn sure they had the same things on their minds: Axe was clearly looking to get his freak all over some Goth variety of a heart-n’-a-hole, while Craeg was trying desperately to convince himself he could keep from losing control with Paradise.

Ostensibly, this whole meet-up-with-the-class thing shouldn’t have been a big deal—they were just going to a regular club, with music and booze. Nothing close to where Axe was heading, for sure.

But sex was going to be front and center, at least for him.

Shit, Paradise was killing him—and he’d identified the essential problem. Since the first night of the program, he’d set up barrier after barrier to keep her away, and each one of them had crumbled. It was like he was a mountain climber and had taken a fall—and every tethering of the rope that was there to save his life had popped, one after the other.

“You know, you look like shit, and not just because you’re wearing that ridiculous getup,” Axe muttered.