Hunt (Academy of Unpredictable Magic Book 5)

by Sadie Moss

  Asher and Cam move closer—close enough that I can reach them with my mouth, so I do. I alternate between my hands and my mouth on each of them, letting Roman and Dmitri take over the rhythm of our hips as they fuck me together. Roman’s hands still hold my hips in a tight grip, and Dmitri’s arms are banded around my torso, steadying me and keeping me upright.

  I feel… suspended between all the men. Connected to them, held up by them, and loved by them.

  It’s incredible.

  The five of us all find a rhythm together, and when I feel Cam’s cock thicken and jerk in my hand, I arch my back even more, offering myself up to him as I pump Asher a little faster. He lets out a low grunt, and the two of them lose it at almost the exact same time. Thick ropes of cum coat my chest as I feel their bodies shudder beneath my touch.

  God, that’s hot as hell.

  Roman’s fingers dig into my hips, his thrusts becoming more erratic too as he stares at my glistening breasts.

  “Jesus, Reckless. You’re so damn beautiful,” he grunts.

  I’ve been holding off my own orgasm, riding a wave of ecstasy but not letting it crest as I focused on the guys. But I can’t hold it off any longer. I can’t stop it.

  Releasing Cam and Ash, I brace my hands on Roman’s chest as he and Dmitri work my body between them. My head lolls, and I bite my lip hard as my pussy and ass clench around them both.

  I don’t know which one of us comes first, but it’s like a cascading effect, and before I know it, the two men are groaning and pulsing inside me as pleasure infuses every inch of my body.

  Dmitri and I collapse forward, and I know I’m smearing cum all over Roman’s chest, but he doesn’t seem to mind or even notice as he threads his fingers through my hair, kissing me with everything he’s got.

  Everyone’s breathing heavily, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who got a little sweaty. None of us move for a long time. I can feel Cam and Asher drawing lazy patterns on my skin from where they rest on the bed next to us.

  Dmitri pulls out first, and he presses several kisses across the line of my shoulders and down my spine before he moves away. As he heads toward the bathroom, Roman lifts me and lays me gently on the bed beside him.

  “Thank you, Reckless.” His angular features soften as he leans up on his elbow, gazing down at me. “For trusting us.”

  “Always,” I murmur, turning my head to smile at him sleepily. “And, hey, look at that, no one got an elbow to the face.”

  All three men chuckle, and Roman kisses me once more as Dmitri returns with towels for all of us to clean up with.

  We leave the two beds pushed together. None of us have the energy to move them again, and besides, I don’t really want the space. To my surprise, none of the guys seem to either—not even Dmitri, who usually prefers to sleep alone.

  I fall asleep entangled with all four of them, having no idea where one of us ends and another begins. We’re just all parts of a whole, a unit, and I can’t help but think that I’ve never been happier.

  I’m not letting anyone take this from me. Not my magic, not my guys, not my life.

  That bastard is going down.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, we go right back to the alley. The bar isn’t open yet, since it’s not quite drinking hours yet, but in the daylight and with a handy little charm or two courtesy of Roman, we manage to get back into the closed off alley without alerting anyone.

  We’re on an extremely tight deadline with this search, and maybe it’s suspicious that five people are poking around back here while the bar is closed, but we can’t afford to wait and hang around until the afternoon.

  “What are we looking for?” Asher asks as we all gaze around at the alley’s dingy walls.

  “Some kind of portal.” Roman runs a hand through his ebony hair, his brow furrowed. “We couldn’t find one last night, but perhaps we weren’t being thorough enough. If it’s a permanent portal, it’ll have an anchor of some kind. But the anchor could be very subtle…”

  “We were kind of in a rush last night,” I point out. “Now that we have more time and better light, we’ll find it.”

  Trying to believe my own reassurances, I look up at the brick walls. I can see them much better now than last night, but nothing unusual is popping out at me.

  Maybe I just need a new angle. A different perspective.

  I use my spider climb to crawl up the wall, trying to get high enough so that I can look down at it. Maybe if I—

  My hand lands on a brick, and the brick moves.

  No, scratch that. It doesn’t just move. It warms. The rough surface grows almost hot to the tough and I think it’s—it’s expanding—

  I shriek and let go, my powers disengaging in my shock.

  “Woah! Princess!”

  Dmitri catches me as I fall, holding me to his chest and stumbling a little to try to counterbalance, but managing to stay upright. He sets me gently down on my feet, and we all gape as the brick high up on the wall expands, and expands, and expands…

  It’s a portal. A large, glowing portal.

  Holy crap.

  As it grew, it almost seemed to drip down the side of the wall, so now it’s only about a foot and a half off the ground. Easy enough to step through.

  “Uh, anyone want to go first?” Cam jokes.

  The portal’s surface is a dark blueish color that seems to swirl and shift as I gaze at it, and I can’t see out the other side. I’ve got no idea where it leads.

  Oh, geez. That’s not terrifying at all.

  Roman shakes out his hands, and I don’t see anything different about them, but I know, somehow, that he has his death powers ready, just in case.

  “Follow me closely,” he says, and then he steps through.

  No way am I letting him go in alone. I dart in after him, and I hear the other three scrambling behind me to catch up.

  I’ve never traveled through a portal before, but we’ve studied them in class—and the experience turns out to be pretty much exactly how Professor Binns described it. The thing is, you don’t just step through a portal and bam, you’re in a new location. There’s a moment when you’re nowhere first, a moment of complete darkness and disorientation that makes you wonder if you’ll ever actually get out.

  So even though I’m expecting it, panic hits me right in the chest as blackness swallows me up.

  It’s like being and not being all at once. I try to suck in a breath but can’t, and I wonder wildly if that’s because there’s no oxygen in this dark ether-place, or if my lungs have simply stopped working.

  And then, finally, the portal spits me out.

  The step that started in the alley finally lands, and I stumble a little. A wave of vertigo hits me as I realize—I’m not on the ground anymore.

  We’re all up on a rooftop.

  “What the fuck?” Dmitri mutters.

  Trying to steady my wobbling legs, I look around. I recognize a few landmarks and buildings in the distance, and based on their relative position to us…

  I shake my head. “We’re on the other side of town.”

  The others glance at me before swiveling their heads to take in the view.

  “Why here?” Cam squints against the morning sun. “Why this particular rooftop?”

  “Fuck if I know.” I grimace. Why would someone want to have a portal that brought them up here? A portal could lead anywhere. This feels unnecessarily complicated.

  Which I guess makes sense if someone is trying to cover his tracks, but it’s damned inconvenient for the people trying to track him down.

  “Split up,” Roman instructs. “We need to see if we can figure out where our man went. Maybe there’s a trap door or something.”

  Dmitri concentrates, and a moment later, three more of him appear.

  “How many duplicates can you make?” I ask.

  Dmitri frowns down at himself. “Depends,” he replies. All four of them reply, actually.

  Okay, now tha
t gives me some fun bedroom ideas. One Dmitri is great, but multiple Dmitris, all working together?

  Whew. I’m not sure I’d even survive that.

  “The more duplicates I create, the more my strength and concentration are spread out,” he adds, completely unaware of what he and his doubles are doing to me in my very dirty imagination. “So it would depend on how much willpower I have.”

  I clear my throat, yanking my focus back to the task at hand. “Ah, yeah. Right.”

  “Try not to fall off the roof,” Roman says. “Any of you.”

  Cam salutes him as all four Dmitris roll their eyes.

  We start looking all over the rooftop. This is either an apartment or an old office building, I can’t tell which. But either way, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I walk slowly back and forth across the roof, keeping my gaze glued to the ground, trying to find something, anything—an old ward drawn on the cement, a handprint, a boot mark, something.

  As I look, memories of the Trials float through my head. And more particularly, memories of the challenge that I failed in spectacular fashion. We each had to find a ring that was hidden somewhere in the quad, and since my magic refused to help me, I was reduced to scouring the grass on my hands and knees, searching and searching with almost no chance of finding what I sought.

  Goddammit, this feels way too much like that moment.

  Helplessness and defeat grow in the pit of my stomach, expanding to fill my entire chest cavity. I keep pushing them down, fighting against the voice in the back of my head that tells me this will never work, that the five of us can’t possibly track down a man in seven days when the Circuit hasn’t been able to locate him in two years.

  Then again, I’m not sure how hard they were actually look—

  “Hey!” Asher calls. “I think I found something!”

  Adrenaline floods my body like a wave as my head snaps up. We all hurry over, converging on the brown-haired mage. He’s standing near one of the corners of the roof, and he’s holding something in the flat of his palm.

  “This was on the ledge here. I think it snagged somehow when he was climbing down.”

  His moss-green gaze meets mine, and he hands me the small object.

  It’s… a button.

  I hold it up, letting the sunlight catch its shiny surface. It looks like a perfectly ordinary button, nothing particularly special about it. Small, silver, could go on a nice coat or blazer. “How do we know it’s his?”

  “Who else would be up here?” Cam points out with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “With no easy access down? And that looks like a nice button. If you’re up here, you’re probably a maintenance worker taking care of the air conditioning or something. You wouldn’t be walking around in a nice coat.”

  Well. It’s not much, but it’s all we have—which seems to be the recurring theme of this hunt.

  “What do we do with it?” Dmitri asks. “How do we use it to find him? Tracking spells are notoriously difficult.”

  Ah ha! This, at least, I have an answer for.

  “I know someone,” I tell them.

  And I do.

  Chapter 16

  Cam wasn’t kidding. It’s not easy getting off the roof. Whoever used it as a portal access point definitely didn’t want it to be discovered, which bolsters my hope that we’re on the right track—that the man we’re searching for is the owner of the button we found.

  Once we’re back on solid ground, we head back to the Unpredictable holding facility.

  The last thing I want to do is go back there before I have to; I don’t even want to be near the place. But it’s where we have to go to get what we need, and I’m not going to let a little irritation or pride stop me from following every clue I can.

  We can’t take any chances here, or waste any time.

  As I enter, Roman next to me, the other three guys behind us, I see that the staff have done what they’ve said they would. They’re teaching classes.

  It’s all theoretical, as we already knew—but they’re actually doing it, and my heart swells at the sight. Hardwick’s teaching too, and I didn’t even know he did that. I mean, he must have at some point, in order to eventually work his way up and become a dean, but I guess I just didn’t ever think about it.

  All of the students look calmer and a lot more focused as a result. Tandy’s a bit more relaxed, sitting with Erin and answering a verbal quiz on different potion ingredients. I don’t see anyone screaming or fighting or fainting. Nobody’s crying.

  Even if they’re not able to teach us as well as they could under normal circumstances, if you ask me, this is already doing a fuckton of good, just for everyone’s damn mental health. Before, everyone was upset, frightened, and panicked. Now, at least there’s some measure of normalcy. At least there’s a task, a goal to focus on, something to think about and do so that people feel in control of their lives again—as much as they can, anyway.

  It makes me proud. Everyone’s pulling together and soldiering on. Nobody’s just sat down and quit. And in its own way, even if it doesn’t seem all that powerful, continuing to teach us magic—even theoretical magic—while we’re being held here is its own kind of rebellion.

  We’re greeted by Aurora, who looks a little… well, I’d say worried, if I was able to properly read Aurora’s micro-expressions, and I’m not all that sure I can.

  “You’re back early,” she says, her eyes widening and then narrowing. “I don’t suppose that you’ve found and eliminated the threat already?”

  “Nope. Not our lucky day,” I tell her with a rueful shake of my head. Then I hold up the button. “But we did get this. I need permission to take the cuff off one of our first year students. Gwen. I don’t know her last name, actually. She’s my new roommate. Her ability is tracking people.”

  Aurora raises a thin blonde eyebrow. Then she nods sharply. “I’ll get Brodie. And we’ll fetch Gwen.”

  We’re led into an administrative office to wait. Gwen, it turns out, is in fight class with Tamlin, who is none too pleased when she sees two Circuit officials taking one of her vulnerable first-years out of class. She’s so displeased, in fact, that she follows them all the way to the administrative offices.

  “I demand to know what is going on!” she shouts, following a half step after Brodie as he and Aurora bring Gwen into the room to see us.

  She draws up short when she realizes who else is in the room, blinking in surprise at the five of us. I can see her body relax as she realizes Gwen isn’t about to have her magic pulled or something.

  “Oh. Hello.”

  She clears her throat, seeming too off-balance to say anything else. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her lose her cool like this, and I wonder if the stress is finally getting to her.

  “See?” Brodie grumbles. “I wasn’t doing anything. You can lay off now.”

  She whirls on him, her dark eyes flashing. “You’re an Unpredictable! How can you stand to work with them? How can you justify working with them?”

  “Look, ma’am, some of us—”

  “Ma’am?! We’re the same age!”

  I glance at Roman, who’s eyeing the two of them with a curious, somewhat amused expression on his face. Huh. I’m not quite sure what he thinks is funny, but I’ll have to ask him about it later—no time for that now.

  He shifts his focus to my classmate, and his expression softens. “Gwen, if you’ll come here, Aurora and Brodie are going to take your cuff off.”

  Not even teachers are allowed to take the magic repressing cuffs off of us anymore, I’m guessing. The Circuit probably thought our professors would be too easily persuaded to help us, that they could free us all and start a rebellion or something.

  Brodie and Aurora take the cuff off of Gwen, who’s glancing around the room with wide eyes. She still looks ninety percent convinced something awful is about to happen, so I keep my voice and movements gentle as I approach and show her the button.

  “Hey, would you be able to use this to
track the person it belongs to?” I ask, holding it out.

  Before Gwen can answer, Aurora locks the door and makes sure the blinds are down in the office we’re in. She hasn’t said as much, but I’m pretty damn sure this is on the down-low. I doubt the other Circuit members would be happy about taking the cuffs off of even more Unpredictables, even if it’s only for a short time and under supervision. If they went through proper channels, it would probably have to get approved by a committee or something, and we don’t have that kind of time.

  Tamlin and Brodie are sniping at each other under their breath as Gwen stares at the button. I gotta say though, it’s hard not to notice how close they’re standing or how Brodie’s gaze keeps darting down to Tamlin’s mouth even as he argues fiercely with her.

  Ah. So that’s what Roman’s little smile was about.

  “Is this really okay?” Gwen whispers, yanking my attention back to her.

  Shit. She looks fucking terrified.

  Asher guides her to sit down at a large desk on one side of the room, then places the button on the desk in front of her.

  “It’s okay,” he tells her. “We’re trying to track down the person who’s been attacking the school. This belongs to him.”

  “I… I don’t know.” Gwen looks like she might burst into tears again. Or maybe barf. “I’ve never—I only just got my power, I’ve barely used it…”

  “Hey, hey.” I sit down on the edge of the desk and take her hand. I can’t help but remember how Maddy was after Mom died, how I had to comfort her through the long nights. “We just want you to try. You might not feel like you know what you’re doing, and I get that. I’ve never had any idea what I was doing either.”

  “Really?”

  Gwen looks up at me in confusion. I smile softly at her, chuckling under my breath.

  “Yep. Not in the Trials, not with that damn demon bird, not with any of it. I was just winging it the whole damn time. And look what happened. I succeeded anyway—at least, most of the time. If you wait until you’re ready to do something, you’ll never do it. I know that you have this in you, even if you don’t think you do, and that’s okay. I’m going to believe in you for you. You don’t have to have faith in yourself, I will.” I glance around the room, at the people gathered around us. “We will.”