by Cecilia Tan
Jess cleared her throat, and Kyle felt his own ache. She looked so beautiful sitting there. “I’m willing. I’ve been thinking for a long time I should go into Healing Arts, but honestly, I’ve been holding off, you know, just in case something like this might come up.”
“If only more families would imbue that kind of respect for the rites of passage...” Bell said, mostly to himself.
“So, yes,” Jess said, her neck looking very long and regal as she sat up straight. “I’m willing.”
“So what is this, Mr. Wadsworth, about you being a lightning rod?” Dean Bell’s voice lilted with skepticism.
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Kyle said. “But when I made the amulet, I, um...I...”
“Brought down a hailstorm from wanking,” Alex finished for him.
“There wasn’t any hail!”
“Okay, no hail. But there was thunder and lightning, and Michael here can attest the amulet works.” Alex crossed his arms. “What odds would you give, Master Brandish, on a half-trained magic user stumbling through Bessarion’s instructions on a hunch, and succeeding? One in ten thousand?”
Kyle didn’t wait for her answer. “I get it. I had to, um, touch myself to conjure, too. So the theory is...I’ll call down the power, and it goes from me to Jess so she can heal Frost? Does it have to be me?”
Master Brandish frowned. “It can be any lightning rod, so long as he’s a virgin.”
Kyle turned to Nichols. “Are you...?”
Nichols shook his head. “But I can’t really be too jealous of you, can I? I mean...she’s your girlfriend, you clearly arranged the entire Masque because you love her, and here I am stealing her from you. I can’t really object to you having spell sex with Frost’s life on the line.”
Jess turned to Nichols and put her hands on his cheeks. “You can’t be my first, but you’ll be my last. There’ll only ever be you after this, forever and ever.” She pulled him into a kiss.
As Kyle looked away from the pair quickly. He thought he heard someone make a very quiet but disgusted sound, but when he looked he couldn’t tell whether it had been Alex or Dean Bell. Bell caught his eye. “I take it you are willing, as well? I know Timothy Frost was not exactly a close friend.”
Kyle looked at him lying there. “Yeah, but...I don’t think my virginity is worth more than his life.”
Brandish and Marjory Ransom were sharing a meaningful look. “Does the lightning rod really have to be a virgin?” Marjory asked.
“It could work with one who isn’t, though the energy is purer if he is, and given how Frost got the way he is.” Brandish brushed his hair back from his forehead. “But I see what you’re saying. If Kyle gives up his virginity now, if he decides to go into the Esoteric Arts, some disciplines will be closed to him.”
Marjory looked at Kyle. “If you really are a lightning rod, then Esoteric Studies is a good place for you.”
“It sounds like I could still study Esoteric Arts, I just...wouldn’t be able to do as much as some?” Kyle asked.
“Well, that’s true,” Marjory admitted. “There are complications, but...”
“I want to do it,” Kyle said. “If Jess wants me, that is. I don’t want it to seem like I’m doing it just for one last chance with her.”
Jess shook her head. “It’s you or nobody. I’m not doing it with some grad student from Nummus House just because he’s a rod. Ew.”
“How much time do we have to prepare?” Bell asked.
Ms. Finch got up and checked Frost over, though Kyle wasn’t sure what all the things she did were. Checked his pulse, looked at his eyes, put her hand over his heart. “He’s very weak. We could lose him at any time. He’s in much worse shape than Alex was.”
“That’s because he didn’t break my heart,” Alex said, causing Michael to burst into tears again.
Kyle stood. “That’s enough. What preparation do we need? If he really could die any time, I don’t see any good in waiting.”
Bell nodded. “I agree. I don’t even think we should move to the Sassamon chamber. Callendra, you’ll oversee. Ransom, you may need to assist Torralva and Wadsworth. Everyone else out, including Candlin. And myself.” He stood and the others stood with him.
“Jess, I’ll wait for you back at your room,” Nichols said.
“You’ll have the place to yourself,” Alex added, his arm around Monica’s shoulders.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Ms. Finch.
Kyle didn’t have time to think about any of that as the others were ushered out, until only Bell and Candlin were left of those who were supposed to leave. Marjory began moving the furniture around. Kyle wanted to help, but he didn’t know what was supposed to go where. He found himself suddenly hugging Jess instead, though over her shoulder he watched Michael.
“Quilian, I really think you ought to oversee...” Master Brandish was arguing to Bell.
“Nonsense. Someone has to keep watch on this one.” He had his hand around Michael’s upper arm.
“Shouldn’t you wear the amulet?“ Kyle called out.
Dean Bell shook his head. “I believe it will work only for you, or at the very least, more poorly for others.”
“You’re the ritualist,” Brandish argued back. “I can handle the siren.”
“I’m only part siren,” Michael said miserably. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”
Kyle felt sorry for him, not for the first time that night, as Brandish and Bell both turned the hardness of their glares on the poor thing.
“We only get one chance at this,” Brandish insisted. “You need to oversee the preparations at the very least.”
“Very well. Wadsworth, please reinforce the need for Candlin here not to interfere, though.”
Kyle let go of Jess and put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You need to be quiet and stay out of the way, okay? If you want to help Frost, that’s the only way.”
“Okay.” Candlin’s answer came back a whisper as he sank into a chair.
Master Brandish led Kyle a few steps away then. “You and Miss Torralva...”
Kyle threw up his hands. “Look, I know what’s about to happen. I’m about to have sex with my very recently no-longer girlfriend right in front of everyone. Could we at least be on a first-name basis for now?”
Master Brandish’s eyes widened, but he thought he heard a suppressed laugh come from Dean Bell’s direction. The master cleared her throat. “Of course, Kyle, if you’re more comfortable that way.”
“Yes, yes, I am.”
“Good. What I was about to say is about your comfort, partly. If the two of you wish to be alone for a while, there’s a bedroom through the door here.” She gestured to the far back of the room.
Kyle found his usual wait-and-see reaction to baffling information was not working just now. “Why is there a bedroom here?”
“Because Quilian is a workaholic who doesn’t have the good sense to go home half the time,” she said. “It’s a bit utilitarian, but you’ll have some privacy. Do what you like, just please don’t penetrate her until you rejoin us out here, and please do make sure you’re both quite aroused.”
“Okay. Anything else I need to know?”
She thought for a moment. “There are three crucial moments in this ritual. One is the moment of penetration, one is when she comes, and one is when you come. Without getting too technical, though, you can actually make it five moments. The penetration counts for two, because you’re both virgins, her first orgasm would be number three, and if you can come simultaneously with her when she comes a second time, that would be four and five. But I don’t want to put too much pressure on your first time. The most important thing is that she comes first, because if you come first and she hasn’t yet, and you go soft...”
Kyle took a deep breath, too absorbed in the details of the ritual magic to be embarrassed. “Got it. What if she comes before I even penetrate her?”
Master Brandish smiled. “Good thinking, bu
t in this case, it doesn’t get you anything magically and might actually disperse some of her energy. Make sure you’re inside her when she comes. The rest you can leave to us.”
“All right.” Kyle took a step toward Jess.
“Oh, and Kyle,” Master Brandish added. “If you’re shy about what we see...I suggest you leave her dress on and put her on top.”
He watched Jess blush a deep red at that.
Master Brandish was cutting some symbols into the carpet with the sword as he put his arm around Jess and led her into the small bedroom.
* * * *
The first thing Jess said once they were alone was, “I’m sorry.”
“Shh, you already said that.” Kyle kissed her hair. “I’ve spent six months trying to get you to figure out I’m the one, but if I’m not, then I’m not. It’s really okay.”
“Fate is a funny old thing,” she said, quoting Alex. “He fell for me Halloween night. We’ve been friends since then, but until tonight I hadn’t realized...” She broke off there, then said, “I’m just sorry for hurting you. I really do care a lot about you, you know.”
“I know. But let’s not think about me being hurt right now, all right?” He brushed stray hairs back from her cheek, tucking them behind her ear. “We’re about to do a really beautiful thing. A really noble thing. I think we can count ourselves lucky to have the chance, don’t you?”
She nodded, a smile spreading across her face. “And I really, really am glad that it’s you. Oh, Kyle.” She pulled him down into a kiss and he hugged her tightly against him.
He felt slightly amazed that the events of the evening hadn’t diminished his desire for her at all. Even as his mind and his heart were preparing to let her go, his body responded the way he would have expected it to had she just accepted the proposal he never got to make. It felt like it took only seconds for him to get hard, pressing against her. To think he would finally be inside her—his cock twitched in his tights, throbbing with anticipation.
For one last time, she was his, and would be truly his. He lifted her up and lay her on the bed, her skirts spreading around her like a giant flower. “Jess...” The dress had laces and boning and crinolines and things, but under it all she was wearing the same panties she always wore. He slipped them from her legs and parted her lips gently, placing a kiss on her clit before snaking his tongue out to lick her.
Her cries resounded in the small room as he teased her, flicking his tongue lightly over the nub for a while and then soothing it with long, wet strokes. He lifted his head. “She told me not to let you come until after I’m in you, you know.”
“Ahh! You tease! Get over here then and take some of your own medicine.”
“No, no, no, I have to hold out until after you come, you know. I’m hard as a rock already, Jess. If you tease me, I might not last past slipping inside you.” He did move to lie next to her, though, his hand toying with her laces. He kissed her. “That happens to some guys, doesn’t it? Where it’s so incredible that they just come right away? Or is that only in books?”
“No idea,” she said, wriggling a little as the dress fell open. So much for the idea of leaving it on. Kyle didn’t think it was a good idea to let Jess be on top anyway, since he truly was going to be challenged to last long enough. “But I do think you should do like you usually do. You’ve always lasted fine like that.” She pulled open the front button on his breeches.
In short order, all their finery was on the floor and Kyle was atop her, rutting gently against her hip while looking into her eyes. “What position do you think we should use?”
“I think just like this.” Her voice was breathy. “Only, you know.”
“Inside.”
“Yes.”
“Think it’ll be okay if I kiss your neck like this?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm. And suckle your nipples like this?”
“Yes!”
Kyle slipped his cock between her legs, and found she was so slick that he was quickly coated. “Wait a second.”
“What?”
“What about safe sex?”
“You really don’t know anything about sex magic, do you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Don’t worry. The energy we’re raising won’t go into conception. And any STDs you have, I would have already gotten,” she teased.
He chuckled. “All right. If you say so. I’m sure I can do this,” he thrust a bit harder, teasing her back with his cock, “but I don’t think I could have put a condom on with Dean Bell watching.”
She wrapped her hands around his buttocks with a small grunt. “Maybe we ought to get out there.”
He nodded and kissed her one more time.
They held hands as they rounded Dean Bell’s desk to find the carpet in the sitting area had been transformed into a ritual circle, ringed with candles and symbols. Frost was still on the couch, Candlin in a chair on the other side of the circle from him, and Dean Bell standing between them. Meanwhile the two women were sitting crosslegged inside the circle and Marjory was fanning the smoke from an incense burner with a leaf of some kind. They were both still dressed but barefoot, and Marjory’s skirt had been replaced by a pair of shorts.
Dean Bell stepped forward with a bowl in his hand. “So like Adam and Eve,“ he said, and Kyle had a feeling he was holding back a laugh. But he dipped his fingers in the bowl and painted something on Kyle’s forehead, then on Jess’s. He painted another symbol on Kyle’s chest, then stepped back. “You may enter the circle.”
Kyle kept hold of Jess’s hand as they stepped over the line, and suddenly he could smell the incense.
“Just ignore us,” Marjory said in a low voice.
Jess giggled at that. “Yeah, right.” But she sat at the center of the circle, then lay back, holding her arms out toward Kyle.
She was as beautiful as ever, eyes shining in the candlelight, her skin perfect and her hair still bound up with some strings of pearls. With the incense filling his head, Kyle could almost imagine they were back in her room after the Masque, finally consummating their commitment to each other. He knelt between her legs and then stretched out on top of her, keeping his upper body propped up with one arm as he adjusted the angle of his cock between her legs.
He thrust a few times the old way, the hard length of him along her clit, then settled a bit lower.
“Go on,” Jess said.
“Shhh.” He kissed her and rocked his hips, shuddering as the head of his cock slid through silk wetness, not into her yet, but close. He kept rocking his hips slowly, feeling for the right spot, the right angle. He didn’t want to reach down with his hand. He had his elbows under her arms and he nibbled at her neck. He didn’t want to reach down, he wanted to—
She cried out as he plunged into her and he realized that other sound he heard was his own voice. He’d tried before to imagine something that felt better than rubbing off on her, and now he’d found it. He rocked his hips again, and pushed deeper, and she clung to him, the sound she was making not a bad sound at all.
He rocked his hips once more, partway out of her and back in, and realized he could see a kind of glowing ball above her head, floating there. It was like a ball of mist, with two different colors of smoke roiling around inside it. He couldn’t quite say what the colors were, only that they were distinct.
But the glowing ball didn’t hold his attention nearly so much as Jess under him. Around him. His hips seemed to be moving of their own accord, and he leaned over to nibble at her ear and whisper, “I’m in you.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
“Let’s see if you can come now,” he added, trying to slip his thumb between them to her clit, but she pulled his hand back, shaking her head.
“Just keep on like that,” she said, wrapping her legs around his thighs and grinding upward against him. “Just. Like. That...”
“I can do that.” He was very aroused, but not yet close, and the pace of her grinding was slower t
han the one he would have picked to make himself come. Her neck tasted of salt and flowers and he sucked at the tender place there that had always made her writhe before. She cried out and squeezed him harder, both with her arms and the muscles inside her, a new cry ringing out on every thrust, and a dozen or so thrusts later she went suddenly limp.
“Wow,” she breathed. Kyle could see a third color had joined the two entwining in the ball.
“Good?” he asked with a grin.
“Don’t fish for compliments,” she warned, grinning back. “Think we can get it right? Come together?”
“I hope so,” he said, picking up the pace a little.
Her eyes widened and she gripped him urgently. “I might...I might be closer to a second one than...than usual.”
He slowed, kissing her softly. “You always go off pretty fast the second time.”
“Kyle...”
“Be right there,” he promised, and began to fuck her in earnest, his hips snapping as he bent one of her legs toward her chest. Yes, that was the angle his cock wanted, that feeling like he was getting as deep into her as he could, into the tightest, hottest place. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, she tightened still more around him, her eyes pleading with him.
There was no denying the demand of her body, though, and he began to come quite suddenly, making an audible sound of surprise just a moment before she began to cry out again. Each thrust felt like it was just adding fuel to the explosion, and Kyle wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sprouted wings or the carpet had caught fire or any number of things.
What actually happened was two more streams of color flooded into the glowing ball, and Jess reached up and grasped it with both hands as if it were solid, then let it go. Kyle looked up as Dean Bell, now standing over Frost’s inert form, waved a wand. The ball flew straight at Frost’s chest and disappeared. Only a moment later, Frost clutched at his chest and sat bolt upright, eyes wild.