Thief

by Sadie Moss

  It’s not like I want to get caught though.

  I just don’t want to stop.

  Cam’s hand palms one breast as his mouth works the other, and my nipple hardens as he pinches and rolls it between his fingers. I arch my back, chasing the sensation, as Asher’s hand slides down my stomach toward the button of my jeans. He flicks it open and works my zipper down, and then his hand dips inside.

  “Do you like it when we both show you how crazy you drive us?” Cam whispers, his blue eyes shining as he darts a glance up to my face.

  “Yeah, it’s—” I suck in a breath as Asher slides a finger inside me. “It’s okay,” I pant, the casual tone I was going for totally destroyed by the needy plea in my voice.

  Cam grins, straightening slightly and arching an eyebrow.

  “Just okay, she says.” His gaze moves behind me to Asher, and his smile turns sinful. “Guess we’ll have to try a little harder.”

  Then he steps in closer, grabbing my face in his hands and angling my head for a deep kiss as Asher uses the wetness he’s gathered on his finger to work circles over my clit. His other arm bands around my stomach, holding me secure as my hips twist and jerk. I know I’m grinding my ass back against his cock as sensations flood me, and I know he likes it, because pleased little sounds are rumbling in his chest.

  Cam’s hands go back to my breasts, kneading and massaging them, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders as Asher licks and bites my neck and the blond mage kisses me like there’s no tomorrow.

  When Asher slides his finger back inside me and uses the heel of his hand to keep pressure on my clit, I grab Cam’s ass and haul him even closer. I’m pretty sure the bulge of his cock is pressed up against the back of his friend’s hand, but he doesn’t seem to mind. We’re all so close again, moving in a three-part, syncopated rhythm, and it’s so fucking hot, so perfect, so—

  My clit spasms hard, my pussy clamping down around the intrusion of Asher’s finger as I press up into his touch, chasing the orgasm even as it crashes over me.

  My mouth opens as a loud cry works its way up my throat, but Cam just uses the opportunity to devour me with another kiss.

  Aftershocks tremble through my body, and our lips cling together as we all breathe hard. Asher draws his hand out of my pants, trailing it up the front of my body and presenting it to me as Cam and I break apart.

  Oh, that dirty, dirty boy.

  I lean my head forward and draw his entire finger into my mouth, wrapping my lips around it before withdrawing slowly, sucking on it like a lollipop. Cam’s jaw drops open, heat flashing in his eyes, and I can feel a shiver work its way through the man behind me.

  “Goddamn, Sin.” Cam stares at me for another few seconds, looking turned on and totally entranced, then he shakes his head slightly and takes another step back. “Um, maybe we should get out of here. A comfortable horizontal surface wouldn’t be a bad thing to have right now.”

  I laugh because that’s such a very Cam way of putting it.

  And he’s not wrong at all.

  I have a condom in the little front pocket of my jeans. I stole the idea from Cam, and my preparedness has come in handy more than once. But if this is going the way I think it might be, we need a bed, and we definitely need to be someplace we won’t have to worry about getting caught.

  “Yeah,” I say, still a little breathless. “Good call.”

  Chapter 20

  Asher stands up, helping me find my feet again. I turn my head to kiss him before he zips and buttons my pants back up. Cam helps straighten my shirt, and the two of them adjust themselves as well, getting things a bit better, er, situated for our walk back to our dorm.

  We all look a little disheveled and flushed, but since no clothes actually came off, I don’t think it’s completely obvious what we’ve been doing. And when Cam opens the door and peeks into the hallway, he gives the all-clear sign right away.

  Odds are high we won’t even run into anyone on our way back across campus.

  “It’s a good thing I don’t have any classes in that room this year,” I say with a grin as we head down the steps outside Wellwood Hall. I’m holding hands with each of the guys, and we’re all walking at a pretty fast clip, eager to reach our destination. “I’d never be able to focus on a lecture again.”

  Cam lets out a disgruntled noise, shaking his head. “You’re right about that. I’ve got Theory of Magic in the Inter-academy Ball classroom this semester, and the number of times I’ve almost popped a boner in that class… I mean, Professor Binns is totally gonna get the wrong idea.”

  I throw back my head and laugh, and Asher chuckles, squeezing my hand. The two of them continue to banter back and forth, and I look back up at the massive school building as we cross the quad, curious if I can pick out the window we were in front of, when movement draws my eye.

  My gaze tracks up to—

  A bird.

  It’s large, really large, and its wings catch the sunlight as it swoops down to land on the roof, disappearing from sight behind the uneven gables and turrets.

  Unconsciously, my footsteps slow, my brows drawing together as I stare up at the roof of Wellwood Hall.

  I know I’ve seen that bird before. When…?

  Right. On our first day back. As Dmitri was pulling his car into the student lot, I peered out the back window, admiring the massive old stone building. I saw a bird on the roof then. It took off against the sun, and I remember thinking oh, wow, this place really is beautiful…

  Now the bird is back, in the same spot as before. And it’s bigger than I remember—it’s hard to judge size very well at a distance, but it looks bigger than any kind of bird of prey I’ve ever seen.

  And the thing is, I don’t remember seeing any birds like that around here last year. There are swallows and sparrows and that kind of thing in the woods, a few crows or ravens—I can never remember how you tell the difference—and I’m sure there are owls. But no birds of prey like this.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up a little. Maybe I’m reading too much into things—it’s just a stupid bird after all—but my instincts are good. They haven’t failed me yet. And right now, those instincts are telling me that something is up with that thing.

  “Elle? You okay?”

  Asher’s voice shakes me out of my thoughts. I didn’t realize it until now, but my footsteps stopped entirely as I tried to figure out where I’d seen the massive bird before. Now both the guys are looking at me with curious and slightly concerned expressions.

  I shake my head to clear it, suddenly remembering why we were headed back to our dorm room.

  And I got distracted by a damn bird?

  Come on! Priorities, Elliot!

  “Um, yeah.” I try to brush away the weird feeling that’s still making the back of my neck prickle. “It’s nothing.”

  “You sure?” Cam narrows his eyes at me. “You look like you saw a ghost or something.”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just…” My gaze flicks back up toward the roof. I can’t see the bird anymore, but I know it’s there. I would’ve noticed if it took flight again.

  “Just what?” Asher’s brows draw together.

  “Um…”

  Oh Lord, I can’t believe I’m about to say this.

  I have two heart-stoppingly handsome men in front of me who just rocked my world, who’d be more than willing to do things to me that I’ve only ever imagined in my dirtiest fantasies—and yet, when I open my mouth, the words that fall out are, “Can we go check out the roof?”

  The guys both glance up.

  “Why?” Cam asks, curiosity in his voice.

  “I saw a bird land up there.”

  Two sets of eyes—one pair sky-blue and the other mossy green—look at me in surprise.

  “I’m sorry, are you saying a bird is more interesting than”—Cam clutches at his chest, feigning a grievous injury—“than us?” He shakes his head, eyebrows rising. “Elliot, I am wounded. I am betrayed, I am

hurt, I am—”

  I shove him in the shoulder. “You’re a dingus, that’s what you are.”

  “Ouch! I haven’t been called a dingus since I was, what, twelve? Woman up, Sin, call me a dumbass like you mean it.”

  “I thought you wanted to get laid sometime this decade?” I did too, damn it.

  “Children, children,” Asher says, his voice weary but his eyes warm with amusement. Then he turns to me. “Do you really want to check out the roof?”

  I nod, biting my lip. “I know it’s probably stupid, but…”

  “No, hey, it’s obviously important to you. There’s always time for…” Heat flares in his eyes briefly, and I decide I really must be the dumbest person on the planet to not already be in our dorm room, naked in bed with these guys. Then he clears his throat. “We’ll have the whole rest of the evening to do whatever we want. Let’s see if we can find a way up there.”

  “How?” Cam asks, his gaze already scanning the building.

  The thing about Wellwood Hall, and a lot of the other buildings on campus too, is that they’re not your typical school buildings or dorms. I’m sketchy on the details, but once, this school was supposed to be some rich person’s estate. Or a couple of estates that made up some kind of rich person community. Something like that.

  The point is, the architecture of Wellwood Hall is a little crazy. Whoever built it seems to have changed their designs several times while in the middle of construction, and they obviously drew inspiration from a variety of architectural styles, because the massive building has towers, crazy staircases, levels of various heights, and all kinds of crazy stuff. I think some of the original rooms and hallways were taken down to create the wider hallways and bigger classrooms that we need for a school, but you can still tell the space isn’t being used for its original intended purpose.

  Roman told me once that was why the Griffin Academy founders ended up getting this place—it was a rundown failure, so the board was able to get it cheap and fix it up enough to make it a school, since the High Circuit wasn’t all that keen on spending a ton of money on Unpredictables.

  Yay.

  This all means that the roof is uneven, not one flat surface, so it’ll be a bit tricky to figure out how to get up there. But there is one round tower on the southwest side of the building that rises above the rest.

  “There!” I point to it. “There are a couple windows in that tower wall. If we can make our way up inside it, maybe we can get one open, then shimmy out onto the roof proper from there.”

  Asher looks a little doubtful. “I don’t want you to fall.”

  “We’re all athletic,” I point out. “And I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  That seems to set aside some of his fears, so we head back inside Wellwood Hall and poke around for a bit, trying to find the way into the tower.

  “When was the last time anyone was up in that tower?” Cam asks as we search the hallway.

  “Probably not for years.” Asher shrugs. “Prepare for a lot of dust. These places in the building don’t really get used that often—I think mostly it’s just people looking for a quiet place to make out.”

  “Well, hey, if nothing else, we can use it for that,” I point out, still sort of kicking myself for dragging them along on this goose chase instead of back to our dorm room.

  “I’m not going to fuck you on a stairwell when there’s a perfectly good bed I can take you to,” Cam deadpans.

  Maybe he forgot about the stack of mats in the Combat classroom. Although those were more comfortable than stairs, I guess.

  Still, I can’t help but tease him a little. “Are you sure? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “Hey! I think I found it,” Asher calls, gesturing to a corner door at the end of a short hallway.

  Right next to a janitor’s closet. How romantic.

  Cam jimmies the lock open and pushes on the door. It groans slightly as it swings open, and he has to put his shoulder into it. Asher was right—I don’t think anybody’s been in here in a while. Dust stirs up as we enter, but there are windows placed along the spiraling staircase, so it’s not as creepy as it could be. Hopefully the light has kept the spiders at bay.

  “Damn. Guess maybe the janitorial staff decided to take a pass on this one,” Cam jokes. Then he starts up the stairs.

  Out of the three of us, he’s the most energetic, so he gets ahead quickly. Asher and I hurry after him, taking the spiraling stone steps two at a time.

  “Slow down!” I call up, laughing. “Jesus, if you’re that eager to get this over with so we can get back to the room and have se—”

  My voice breaks off and my stomach flips when Cam lets out an ear-splitting scream of pain.

  “Cam!”

  The word is wrenched out of me as my blood turns to water. Asher is hot on my heels as I bolt up the steps, yelling at the top of my lungs.

  There’s a crashing sound, and then I’m nearly knocked backward as Cam falls into me. Asher braces his hands on either side of the wall and holds with all his might as I crash into him, saving all three of us from toppling down the winding staircase.

  “Oh, God, no. Cam, Cam, Cam,” I chant in a panic, grabbing him. He’s sweating, groaning in pain, and before he even says it, I know what’s happened—I’ve seen it twice now.

  “It’s gone.” His blue eyes are wide with pain and shock. He looks panicked. No, terrified. “It’s gone. Fuck, Sin, it’s gone… My magic’s gone.”

  Chapter 21

  Cam’s in a huge amount of pain.

  He can’t stand. He can barely speak coherently. His large, muscled body is shaking from head to toe, and it breaks my heart and makes my stomach churn with fear to see him like this.

  I don’t want to move him, but how else will we get him help? Neither Asher nor I have the training to heal him or stop the pain, and Asher’s not leaving me and Cam alone to go get the healers—and like fuck am I leaving the two of them alone.

  Someone could still be up in this tower.

  The only solution is to carry Cam.

  I’m shaking almost as bad as the blond mage as Asher picks up his top half, arms hooked under his shoulders, and I take his legs. That way Cam can still see my face.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, lying with everything I have as we carry him out of the tower and head toward the infirmary. “You’re going to be okay. We’re getting you help, just concentrate on me, it’s okay.”

  It reminds me of when Maddy would get awful nightmares after Mom died. While Mom was sick, my little sister was fine, fine, fine, brave and smiling—but then as soon as she was gone, Mads just crumbled. She used to dream all the time about losing me, usually to something awful, which is how we ended up sharing one big bed. It was just easier, since I always ended up holding her and rocking her back to sleep.

  Now it’s the same but worse, because this isn’t a nightmare. It’s real, and inescapable. Cam’s magic—a part of him, a part of his damn soul—is just gone, ripped away.

  I can’t even imagine what that feels like.

  Asher doesn’t say anything, but his face is pale and his eyes are darting around as we carry Cam across campus, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.

  We’re practically alone out here. Sure, there are students, faculty, and staff still on campus—but with so many people gone for the holidays, it’s only a skeleton crew left. There’s nobody nearby. Nobody that can help us if whoever attacked Cam chooses to attack Asher and me too.

  My heart is pounding with fear and adrenaline by the time we get to the infirmary.

  “Help!” I yell. “Help! We need help! He’s been attacked!”

  I don’t even have to explain further—everyone knows what that means.

  The infirmary doors open, and two healers hold the doors out of the way so we can enter while two more rush to us. Cam’s still sweaty, moaning in pain, his breath harsh and shallow, his chest heaving. My heart twists and jolts with terror. Please, please let him be okay.

  “We’ve got him,” one of the healers says firmly but kindly. “You can let go.”

  It takes effort to peel my hands away from him. I don’t want to let him go, don’t want to let him out of my sight. But I know they can take care of him better than I can right now.

  Asher and I release him, and the healers levitate Cam onto a stretcher. When they start to carry him away, my feet lurch after them.

  “Wait! Can I—I need to be with him—”

  “I’m sorry,” another healer tells me, “but you need to stay out of the way.”

  “No, but I—he needs me. He—I have to—” My throat is closing up, and my chest is tight. Cam’s in so much pain, and it’s reminding me way too much of my mom. “I have to stay with him—”

  What if something goes wrong? The others who’ve had their magic taken have all survived so far, but when magic is ripped out this violently… what if something goes wrong, and Cam doesn’t make it?

  What if—

  Asher catches me by the shoulders and tugs me back. I turn toward him, holding on with everything I have as we watch the healers rush Cam down the hall.

  “You’re okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay, Elle, it’s all right. I’ve got you. He’ll be okay. Cam’s tough as hell, he’s not gonna let anything keep him down.”

  I can’t stop the words tumbling out of my mouth. My legs aren’t supporting my weight anymore, and if it weren’t for Asher’s arms around me, I’d be in a pile on the floor.

  “My mom… Her last moments were—I wasn’t even there. I was in the waiting room with Maddy—I didn’t—we didn’t get to say goodbye. They just took her—Asher—”

  “Cam’s gonna be fine.” His voice is quiet and terrified, but full of conviction. He strokes my hair, speaking into the top of my head. “He’s gonna make it. This won’t be like your mom, Elle, I promise. I promise you, okay?” He guides me back toward a row of chairs that line the hallway so we can wait. “I’m here. It’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”

  We sink down into the chairs, Asher’s arms still around me, and I cling to him. I’ve never been this way with him, with any of the guys—this panicked, this close to tears. It’s been a rough semester for my emotional stability.

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