Mr. Bateman pulled his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you know how many students I get who request Royce? Frankly, he’s one of the best math tutors we have. Are you sure about this?”
Carmen didn’t need to think about it. There was no way she would be able to face either one of the Durant brothers without them thinking she was crazy or her feeling like a complete idiot for imagining she had a shot with one of them. They probably wouldn’t even give her a second thought.
“I’m sure,” she said. She could see the disappointment on her teacher’s face, but nothing he said could change her mind.
He must have seen her determination because he didn’t push her more. “Very well, Carmen.”
She was thankful that her next tutor was a girl. Janice was helpful, but part of Carmen still missed the interaction she had with Royce. But he’d made it perfectly clear what he thought of her, and there was no way she was going to work with someone who didn’t see her for who she was, even if he was only her tutor.
She avoided the brothers when she could by ducking out of view every time she saw them in the hallways. Thankfully, they didn’t have classes together, or she’d never be free of them. It made going to each class a marathon, trying to get to her classrooms before she could run into one or both of them.
Carmen was surprised to see Royce show up at her house one day. She hid before he saw her and made Charice answer the door.
“May I help you?” Charice asked him.
“Is Carmen in?” Royce asked.
His voice still had an impact on her. Just a few words made her knees feel weak. Damn it.
Charice looked back at her for permission.
Carmen shook her head so hard, she was sure she would snap something.
“I’m sorry,” Charice said. “She’s out right now. Both physically and mentally.”
Carmen gritted her teeth and snapped her fingers, magic pinching her older sister.
“Ow!” Charice yelped.
“Are you okay?” Royce asked her. He sounded genuinely concerned as he tried to peer into the house.
“I will be soon,” Charice said before glancing over at Carmen.
“Stop looking at me,” Carmen mouthed. Her sister was starting to seem obvious. She was sure Royce knew she was home, but she still wasn’t ready to talk to him.
“Can you tell her to call me when she can? It’s important.”
“Will do,” Charice said. “When I see her.” She made a face at Carmen.
Carmen stuck out her tongue. Yeah, her big sis thought she was a coward by not facing him, but that was Carmen’s insecurity to deal with. Avoidance was key.
Royce didn’t pressure Charice.
“Thanks,” he said before walking away.
Carmen peeped out the window, and she thought she actually saw sadness in Royce’s face, but that made no sense. He’d proven she was insignificant in his popular world. Didn’t he?
When Charice gave Carmen her annoyed stare, Carmen acted like she didn’t even see her.
“You know he’s not going to leave you alone, right?” Charice said, closing the door.
“He will. Eventually.”
Charice stared at Carmen. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“Wow. You really don’t.”
“When you stop talking in code, let me know.”
“That boy likes you. A lot.”
“You’re wrong about that. He thinks I’m a nobody.”
“Would he visit a nobody, Car? I don’t think so.”
Carmen just shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
“Trust me. He’s got it bad for you.” Charice snapped her fingers.
Carmen jumped. “Hey!”
Charice smirked and blew on her fingers. “Payback’s a bitchy goddess.”
Carmen rubbed her arm and did her best to forget about Royce.
Try as she might to shake her sister’s words out of her head, they stuck with Carmen as she went to school the next day.
He couldn’t possibly like me, she thought. Could he?
She wasn’t paying enough attention to do her regular Durant lookout routine as she walked the hallways, so she was caught off guard when an arm snatched her into an empty classroom.
“Hey!” she shouted. “What do you think...” Carmen couldn’t finish her sentence because she was face to face with Ryan.
He grinned in that addictive way that had girls fawning over him.
Even Carmen failed to be immune to it, and she found herself smiling goofily back at him.
“Hi, Carmen,” he said, pushing the door shut behind her. She was trapped in the room with him.
“Ryan, what are you doing?” She realized she’d never been alone with him before. He had a commanding presence, just like Royce. Only his made her feel like a deer caught in headlights.
“Give Royce a break, will you?” he asked.
“A break?” Carmen couldn’t think of anything other than she was alone with Ryan.
He backed Carmen up until she was pressed up against the door. His arms were on either side of her, trapping her in even more for good measure.
His cool breath caressed her face and smelled minty. His frame gave off a slight chlorine scent from the pool water, and his hair was that cute, wet, and messy way it got after each swim.
Carmen’s fingers itched to touch a strand and end her exploration by rubbing her hand through it.
She only had a few inches between him and her. Any closer and his lips would brush up against hers.
That was when she felt it, a cool breeze that reminded her of summers on the Gulf. It was a wind that had the right amount of heat balanced with the perfect mixture of coolness.
Ryan was an air warlock, and Carmen was completely at his mercy.
“It’s not his fault.” Ryan’s eyes drifted down to her lips, studying them carefully.
“What’s not his fault?” She barely recognized her own voice anymore.
“This.” He bent forward until his lips pressed into hers.
Carmen’s shock melted away and formed into something new, something completely different: desire.
His kiss was demanding as he trapped her in an embrace she wasn’t sure she wanted to free herself from. It was strong and urgent, but somehow she still felt gentleness from it.
That wasn’t all. Deep within her, she felt an ember stroke her fire magic to life. It roared and sought out a claim to Ryan’s magic. Air. Carmen realized then that he was an air warlock, and she wasn’t sure how that realization came to her. She just knew as if it were a power of her own.
Their magics reached for each other until they tried to consume their hosts.
Ryan’s eyes widened with some type of understanding.
When he pulled away, the room spun around Carmen.
“It’s not just me,” Ryan said.
“Huh?” Carmen was in a daze. She tried to focus on what he was saying, but the kiss lingered long after their lips separated.
“Royce was protecting you from both of us.”
That made Carmen shake the warm fuzzies away until clear thoughts appeared. “Protect me?”
“I’m so sorry Carmen,” he said. “Forgive us. We won’t be a problem anymore.”
Ryan opened the door so fast that Carmen had to scramble out of the way.
Before she knew it, she was standing in an empty classroom. Did her kiss scare him off? Was she that bad at it? Granted, it was her first one. If he’d given her more time to not be taken off guard, maybe she could have done better.
And what was all that talk about staying away and protecting her?
Forget if Ryan thought she was a bad kisser, she needed some answers. Both brothers were acting weird. First Royce showed up to her house unexpectedly and now Ryan had kissed her out of nowhere?
Carmen needed information from the Durant brothers. ASAP.
She promised herself she would confront them as soon as school di
smissed, but she never got the chance.
Janice was the one to tell Carmen the awful news about the brothers’ parents. They were pulled out of school by their uncle right away. Everything happened so fast. After the funeral, the brothers left Kala West completely.
Carmen had heard the rumors. She heard of how the brothers’ uncle had found their parents dead in the Durants’ mansion. How the uncle chose to take them away to spare them from the aftermath.
She regretted that she didn’t get to talk to them before they disappeared, especially Royce. She couldn’t help but think of what could have happened if she’d just heard him out. Maybe Royce would have told her where they were going if she hadn’t chosen to avoid them. She could have written to them, made sure they knew she cared and still thought about them.
Carmen promised herself she wouldn’t live her life regretting her actions. Not after her heart broke from losing two of the best reasons high school wasn’t hell. Even if she wasn’t close to Ryan and Royce, she took comfort in seeing them, knowing they were under the same roof as she was, thriving off the possibility of passing by them. Now, that would never happen again.
She wasn’t the only one who felt their absence. The swim and debate teams weren’t the same without their star players, and it showed in their losing matches.
Carmen got through high school, and used college to figure herself out. She learned to speak her mind, even if those on the receiving end didn’t like what she had to say.
Even as she moved on, one conversation she’d had with Royce after he learned about her similar fire element stayed with her.
“You’re kind of like me, aren’t you?” he asked as they worked on more evil math in their tutoring session.
She looked up from the complicated problem they were working on. “What do you mean?”
“People think fire conjurers should be angry all the time, but not you and me. We harbor a quiet fire, Carmen. When it’s restrained, it can be a good thing because we’re observers.”
“And when it’s released?” she asked.
“It could bring out the firestorm in us and take out anyone within reach.”
Carmen didn’t press Royce further because he seemed to be struggling with something that went far beyond his words. She figured if he wanted to share it with her, he would. Not long after that was when their distance started.
That moment with him helped her realize that she couldn’t spend the rest of her life not speaking her mind, always hiding behind her books. Not if doing so could eventually release a power beyond her control. She was already struggling to learn how to control her magic. It just took the twins leaving for her to actually become free of herself.
Even as the years passed and she grew into a stronger woman, she would always drift to thoughts of the Durants. Where were they in that moment? Were they happy, even though their parents’ murderer had never been found?
She even got used to comparing other men to them, and no man ever lived up to Royce’s quiet patience or Ryan’s vibrant passion. Not the hot surfers she always dragged Claire with her to ogle over or the occasional hot warlock who found her sister’s magic shop, Ethereal Delusions. None of them did it for her.
How could any man live up to Carmen’s expectations when she didn’t even fully know what those high standards were? She just knew something was missing, so she stayed away from dating altogether. Soon the Durants seemed like figments of her imagination, like a memory slowly peeling away without her even knowing it. At least, she thought it had.
Chapter Four
Carmen’s mind had been so consumed with her memories of the brothers that she didn’t realize she was following that familiar laughter. Part of her remembered it and missed the way it sounded. Missed who was attached to that laughter.
She wasn’t imagining it, was she?
She slipped past two warlocks trying to smooth talk an annoyed witch.
Carmen’s arm hit one of the warlocks accidentally.
“Watch it!” he said, looking up.
“Sorry,” she said on instinct, but his gaze went right through her.
That was weird. No one could see or hear her, but she could touch people. Did that mean her spell was wearing off?
Earlier when the strange warlock burst into the magic shop and got cozy with her sister, Claire, he hadn’t seen or heard Carmen either. He didn’t know Carmen was there, but she never tried touching him.
She had no way of knowing if her ability to touch others was just how the spell worked or if it was weakening.
“What’s wrong?” the other warlock asked.
“Somebody just hit me.”
“Well, I’m the only one standing next to you, idiot, and I sure as hell didn’t hit you.”
“Somebody did!”
The witch they were pursuing shook her head. “I’m pretty sure there’s no connection here, boys,” she said before scurrying away from them, moving on to a larger group.
Carmen heard the two deserted warlocks bickering over whose fault it was that their potential witch had run off.
So the spell still worked. No one could see her, unless she found her warlocks, but she didn’t know if she even wanted to anymore. Could it actually happen without a formal invite? She had a habit of leaping and asking questions later. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
She’d almost forgotten why she’d decided to stay. Almost. Then she heard that voice again.
“You’ve got to relax, man,” the familiar male tone said. It was the same voice of the one whose laughter she’d been following.
It came from the next bonfire over.
Carmen could see the backs of two men. Although she couldn’t make out their faces from where she stood, she knew it was them. A deep part of her that tried to forget them but never could recognized them as if they hadn’t been separated by years and miles.
She was drawn to them like a moth, which was fitting with all the nearby flames.
“I promised I’d come,” the second one said. “Didn’t say I’d enjoy it.”
She froze. Their voices were ingrained in her head, seared in her soul. She’d recognize them with her eyes closed, and they were so close. Close enough for her to take a few more steps and reach out to touch them.
It was like a trance held her as she moved forward. She was so out of herself that she didn’t see the empty beer can until she stepped on it, bringing a loud crunching noise with it.
The sound made both figures turn around and stare at her. They weren’t looking through her like everyone else. Not as they both stood up like mirrored images and turned to face her. No, these tall and muscular men, overtaking the frames of their younger selves, were looking right at her.
“Carmen?” Royce said.
“Carmen Brixton?” Ryan echoed.
Her legs must have felt the sand turn into cement, because a deep instinct told her to bail and run, but she couldn’t move her feet.
Oh goddess. They saw her. The Durant Brothers were staring right at her. She quickly remembered the specifics of her spell.
No. They couldn’t be. Could they?
No one else at the party had acknowledged her. Her spell worked. She was certain of it.
Now the two boys she had obsessed over in high school were giving her direct gazes. No, “boys” wasn’t the right term for these overshadowing figures. The two people staring back at her were men. Two grown-ass and sexy-as-hell warlocks, and the look in their eyes didn’t seem all that innocent.
That only meant one possible thing: Royce and Ryan Durant were her warlocks.
Someone, somewhere, had to be fucking with her life, and as soon as she figured out who it was, she was going to ignite their ass. Charbroiled style.
Chapter Five
Royce had to be seeing things. He had only downed one beer, at his brother’s insistence that he needed to loosen up, so he knew he wasn’t drunk. If he wasn’t drunk, and he was almost certain he wasn’t crazy, why was Carmen Brixt
on standing only feet away from him?
Damn. In high school, he thought she was stunning. Now, with full curves to drive a man wild, she was irresistible.
He felt his pants stretch. One look at her, and he was hard. He was thankful for the shadows and partial darkness, because if it was daylight, he knew his happiness to see her would be more than evident.
The flickering firelight made her look like an enchanting witch who came to consume his every being and claim his soul.
In fact, he was surprised that no other warlocks were throwing themselves at her feet. Just the thought of other men touching her made rage spring up inside him. If anyone touched her in front of him, they would lose a hand and possibly their life.
It’d been close to six years since he’d seen her, and already he felt protective again.
He had the urge to skip niceties and reintroductions and just grab her and claim her tantalizing mouth.
Royce had to shake his head to regain common sense.
Where did those emotions come from? He hadn’t seen this girl, this woman, in years, and already he was ready to fight for her and ravish that tempting body of hers.
Ryan stilled next to him, so he knew his brother caught sight of her too. He even felt a similar desire for the luscious witch coming from their warlock link.
Thanks to their Warlock Pair bond, he was getting even more emotions from Ryan seeing Carmen. Royce was used to it, and he was happy it wasn’t another warlock, or he would have to kill the guy.
When he and Ryan merged their strength years ago, they had made the decision that they would share a witch in a triad or wouldn’t bond with one at all. They could trust each other, even if they were leery of others. It made logical sense to Royce. Most things had to, or he wasn’t giving in to it.
Now, Royce’s logical mind had vanished somewhere in the warm Florida night because seeing Carmen made him as far from reasonable as he could be.
He felt an emotion stir in Royce, one that started as confusion and turned into something much more primal. He wasn’t the only one happy to see the sexy little fire witch again.
The Alpha Warlocks' Own: An Alpha Warlocks of Kala West Story #3 (A BWWM and BBW Paranormal Ménage Romance) Page 3