by Eva Chase
Slowly, deliberately, with a smile of anticipation, I brought my mouth to his cock. His hips jerked at the slide of my lips over the head. “Fuck,” he muttered, the curse a strangled sound. He grasped my hair, his fingertips skimming my scalp in giddying ways.
The sound of a zipper opening behind me made me quiver with my own eagerness. I took more of Declan into my mouth, swiveling my tongue around his sweetly musky length, and Connar’s cock grazed my entrance. Need throbbed through my sex. I pressed back toward him in encouragement.
He murmured the necessary spell, ran his hands over my ass, and then gripped my thighs as he thrust inside me. I cried out over Declan’s cock. Riding the surge of pleasure that filled me, I closed my lips again and sucked even harder.
We rocked together in a perfect symphony of bliss, Connar plunging in and out of me with deeper and deeper strokes that fanned the flames inside me higher, my body swaying with his rhythm and carrying it into the bob of my head over Declan, Declan’s hips pumping in time, his fingers stroking over my head.
As I felt the wave of release building inside me, I squeezed my mouth tighter around Declan’s cock and sped up, urging him to join me. His fingers tightened in my hair. “Fuck,” he said again in a strained voice. “I’m almost there. Rory, you don’t have to—”
But I wanted to. I slicked my tongue around him as firmly as I could, and his voice broke. He came with a salty flood in the back of my mouth. As I swallowed, he drew back and urged my head up so he could kiss me.
As our breath and tongues twined, Connar sped up his thrusts too. A sound escaped me that was almost a whine. Connar’s cock pumped into me even deeper, and he tucked his hand around me to rub the sensitive nub just above where we joined. The mastered strength in his powerful body radiated through me.
I shattered, leaning forward into Declan, every muscle shaking. In the rush of ecstasy, the hitch of Connar’s chest told me he’d followed me over.
My head slumped against Declan’s shoulder, my body slack in the aftermath. He slipped an arm around my back, and Connar hugged me from behind with a kiss to the base of my neck. All I could do in that moment was wonder at the fact that I’d gotten so lucky to have moments like this at all—and whether I could really hope for that luck to last much longer.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rory
The vines rose up around me, clutching my limbs, squeezing my chest. Their thorns jabbed through my skin. I winced and gritted my teeth, willing myself not to yelp at the pain.
Professor Razeden’s voice reached me distantly. “None of it is real. You can fight them off. How can you destroy them or slip free?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? I had no doubt at all about what was being symbolized by the tangled thicket I’d found myself in for this Desensitization session. The dark chamber around me was meant to use a combination of insight and illusion to throw my worst fears at me so that I could practice tackling them. And yeah, I was plenty afraid of forces beyond my control constraining me and dragging me down. I was just glad the chamber hadn’t produced a more literal illusion this time.
Well, other than the cool chuckle that echoed off the walls, mimicking Baron Nightwood’s voice.
I’d slowly been getting better at fending for myself in these sessions, after the initial few when Razeden had needed to rescue me from my own mind. Conquering the agonizing sensations still wasn’t anywhere near easy, though.
Dragging in a breath, I retreated farther into my head. The pain dulled with the distance. The vines squeezed tighter, but they weren’t really there. They were just illusions—illusions I could change with the right spell.
They wanted to strangle me? I’d loosen them right up.
“Expand and open,” I murmured, focusing on the tight coils. I pictured the loops stretching and releasing. Magic danced behind my collarbone, but at first the vines didn’t budge. My pulse stuttered with the suffocating pressure.
Frowning, I spoke the words again, imbuing them with a harder push of magic. Sweat beaded on my forehead—and the friction around my limbs released. I scrambled away from the illusionary brambles before I lost control and they snatched at me again.
My feet skidded on the smooth floor, and I tripped onto my ass. Not my most graceful moment. But the prickly vines dissolved once I’d gotten my distance. The light blinked on overhead, revealing the domed room with every surface painted black, and nothing around me except Professor Razeden in his spot near the door.
“That one took you a little longer than last time,” he said, checking his watch, “but not by a lot.”
“I feel like it’s a success any time I don’t need you to step in,” I said with a weak laugh as I pushed myself to my feet. “That’s enough of a victory for me right now.”
“Fair enough.” He gave me a mild but genuine smile. “You’ve needed increasingly less intervention as we’ve gone on. Do you think you’re ready to return to the usual group sessions?”
A twinge of guilt shot through my gut. Normally Desensitization was run with four students at a time, three observing while each struggled through their fears. Dealing with the potential distraction and embarrassment of those witnesses was part of the learning experience.
Because I’d had so much trouble with my initial sessions—and maybe because the images summoned up, like those of my parents’ murder, had been so traumatic—the headmistress had switched me to solo sessions. But that obviously meant extra work for the professor.
The thought of my peers getting a glimpse of the things that terrified me made my stomach knot. But really, that was even more reason I should come to grips with the idea. They all had their fears exposed to each other on a weekly basis. And mine had been coming out more metaphorical recently, which was a small comfort.
“All right,” I said. “If you think I’m ready.”
“I’m sure you are, Miss Bloodstone,” Razeden said. “But I don’t resent giving you time to catch up at your own pace. It’s hardly your fault you came to your studies so late and with so little preparation.”
No, it was the joymancers’ fault. Razeden didn’t belabor that point, which I was grateful for. I nodded. “I appreciate it. I think I can handle group sessions now. I guess I should talk to Ms. Grimsworth about adjusting my schedule?”
“I can bring it up with her.” He motioned me over to the door. “You obviously have much larger matters occupying your mind for the coming week.”
Today’s metaphors hadn’t been particularly subtle, had they? Razeden must have been able to read between the lines.
He paused as I reached him, his hand resting on the door handle but not turning it. For a few seconds, he just studied me, his gaunt face even more solemn than usual.
“I can’t imagine the pressure you’re under at the moment,” he said. “So I don’t know if this will provide any comfort. But I’d like you to know that there are many of us in the school and farther abroad in the community who have certain standards of fairness and justice, even if they’re not quite what you grew up with, and who wish to see you acquitted of this crime. If I can contribute toward your hearing, or if there’s any other way I can assist you with this or future troubles, it would be my honor to serve my future baron.”
He spoke in his usual measured voice, no outburst of emotion, with a matter-of-fact tone about the “future troubles” as if he took it as a given those would appear. Still, the unexpected declaration of loyalty brought an awkward flush to my cheeks.
How much did he know about the scheming behind the scenes? How much was he risking by making this statement to me?
Unless he was with my enemies, and this was a ploy to get past my guard? I didn’t get that impression, though. He wasn’t being pushy about helping or prying for information, just stating his position for the record.
“Thank you,” I said past the tightness in my throat.
Razeden dipped his head in response and opened the door for me.
The Desensitiza
tion chamber was located in the basement of Nightwood Tower, and it had a typical basement vibe. As I climbed the stairs to the main floor, the air turned crisper and warmer, and more sunlight splashed across the walls from the windows above. The knowledge that I might have more supporters than had spoken up warmed me a little too, but it was hard to get much relief when there was no concrete way for those people to get me through the week ahead.
Jude had suggested we grab lunch in town after my session, so I headed around the tower toward the road into town. I expected to meet him at the path that ran through the woods alongside the road, but instead I spotted his dark copper hair halfway across the west field, where he was striding toward a cluster of students.
It only took a second and a gleam of the leaf pins on a couple of the figures’ clothes for me to figure out that the fearmancers were up to their usual bullying tricks. Or the not-so-usual tricks, actually. A group of fearmancer students were surrounding the two Naries. As I veered over to intervene, one of the bullies stepped to the side to reveal another boy sprawled on the ground. The Nary guy was trying to push himself up, but his arms kept giving as if a force was pressing him down.
A force the fearmancer student was directing with subtle flicks of his hand. As the other Naries knelt to try to help their friend, the bully’s lips moved with a softly spoken spell. Just like the bunch who’d harassed Shelby and her classmates the other day, these fearmancers were toeing the line of just how much magic they could get away with using without making their supernatural powers totally obvious.
Jude reached the group several strides before me—and caught the main bully’s wrist in mid-flick. As the Killbrook scion faced the guy, I caught Jude’s expression: jaw clenched and eyes dark with anger.
“I think that’s enough,” Jude said in a cuttingly flippant voice. “If you pump your ego up any bigger, it just might pop, and then everyone will see how small you actually are.”
The other guy flinched, shifting into a defensive stance but shrinking a little just staring down the scion. When I caught up, his posture deflated even more.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” he said, giving us a pointed look as if we needed reminding that we weren’t supposed to acknowledge the existence of magic. “The kid is such a weakling he couldn’t manage to get himself up.”
The “kid” in question, who looked about seventeen, had scrambled onto his feet now that he wasn’t being magically restrained. “You were doing something to me,” he accused, looking a little terrified at his own daring.
A chill shot through me. The fearmancer students really had stepped awfully close to the line for him to speak with that much certainty.
The main bully paled slightly himself, but he raised his chin with a snort. “I was just pointing out feebleness where I see it.” He strode off without another word, his friends hurrying after him.
Jude and I exchanged a glance. He didn’t look any happier about the situation than I was. I’d known he’d been working on his attitude toward the Naries, that he’d gone out of his way to help Shelby after the accidental injury he’d caused her, but I still wouldn’t have expected him to defend a bunch of strangers from fellow mages. A flutter of affection rippled through my uneasiness.
The Nary guy was wiping off his jeans, his friends standing close with concerned murmurs about his wellbeing. I wasn’t sure there was anything else we could do for them now. Would the professors care if we reported how bold some of the mages were getting with their magical harassment? I could just picture Ms. Grimsworth saying, “If we haven’t heard anything worrisome from the Naries, then the other students must have disguised their magic well enough.”
Jude was obviously thinking along similar lines. “Hey,” he said to the Naries when their hushed conversation fell into a lull. “Has that kind of thing been happening a lot since the term started?”
“People have been pretty weird,” one of the guy’s friends said, hugging herself, her gaze and her tone wary.
“I’ve seen it before,” I said quietly.
Jude frowned. His expression turned oddly contemplative for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got a strategy you could try if the regular students get ‘weird’ like that again.”
The guy considered him with narrowed eyes. “Why should we listen to you? Maybe you’re setting us up for some other trick.”
I shook my head. “We want to help. If Jude’s got an idea, it’s probably a good one.” I didn’t think he’d be offering it if he wasn’t fairly confident it’d help.
The guy stayed skeptical, but his other friend cleared his throat and tipped his head toward me. “She’s okay. I’ve seen her standing up for us to the assholes around here. I think we should at least listen.”
Jude spread his hands. “You can give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work, well, you at least shouldn’t be any worse off.”
“Okay, let’s hear it, then,” the guy said.
“It’s very simple. Bullies are cowards underneath, you know. They like seeing you scared or upset. So what you do, next time someone’s messing with you—stare right at them. Don’t stop looking at their face. Show them you’re not going to cower, and I bet you they’ll back down.”
Understanding clicked in my head. “Yeah,” I said. “Stare them down. They’ll hate that.”
“Worth trying, I guess,” the girl said with a shrug.
They all ambled back toward the green. Jude beamed at me. “You get it.”
“If the Naries are watching their faces, they can’t cast anything without giving themselves away. They’ve got to speak to get a spell out.”
“Exactly! That doesn’t mean they won’t go back to old methods, but I think it’ll cut down on some of that really overt torment.” He glanced at the spot where the Nary guy had been pinned down and grimaced. “The general jerkishness of the student population does appear to have escalated. Something in the water?”
“I wish I knew,” I muttered.
“Well, I hope the next time the bastards try that on our scholarship students, they find themselves unpleasantly surprised.” He grinned again, looking incredibly pleased at the imagined triumph he might have manufactured for the people that just a few months ago he’d sneered at.
The flutter came back into my chest. I stepped closer to him and pulled him into a hug. Jude’s arms came around my shoulders, his voice amused but happy. “What’s that for?”
“Do I need a reason?” I mumbled into his shirt, my nose filling with the spicy smell of him, like peppered coriander. But the truth was, I did have a reason. A very big one.
He hadn’t done any of this for me. He’d already been charging over to the Naries’ rescue before I’d been nearby. Protecting them really had mattered to him for their own sake.
He wasn’t the same guy who’d mocked me during my first month here, not at all, and there was something miraculous about that transformation.
I lifted my head, and he pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. Emotion swelled in my throat. It wasn’t just for him—Lord knew I felt a hell of a lot for Connar and Declan too—but I was completely sure about these words in this moment.
“I love you too,” I said.
A wider smile leapt across Jude’s lips. His embrace tightened around me, and he ducked his head lower to capture my mouth. Right then, all I could feel, taste, and smell was him, and I was okay with that.
“Of course you do,” he said, but he couldn’t quite smooth the tremor out of his voice. “I’m eminently lovable.”
I swatted him, and he laughed, his eyes shining with affection. He pressed one last kiss to my temple, holding me as if he couldn’t convince himself to let me go just yet.
“If love were enough to protect you from the assholes after you, I’d have you covered,” he murmured. “You’d never have to worry again.”
If only we had a solution that simple when it came to my enemies.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Connar
; Up in the cliff-side clearing, the morning breeze was a little biting, but I got all the warmth I needed from Rory nestled against me. She leaned her head on my shoulder, gazing out over the rippling expanse of the lake and the clear blue sky above, and sighed.
“It’s too bad I can’t just hide away up here for a few weeks and have the hearing blow over.”
“Not much chance of that,” I agreed with a grimace. I pressed a kiss to the back of her head in a way I hoped was comforting.
Having her like this was bittersweet. I couldn’t think of much I enjoyed more than the simple pleasure of getting to hold her in my arms, inhaling her scent as sweet as toffee, knowing she had enough faith in me to completely relax in my embrace. But at the same time I was sharply aware of how ineffective all the muscles I’d built in those arms and the rest of my body were when it came to defending her from the greatest threat she was facing.
I could hold her right now, comfort her right now, but I couldn’t fight or intimidate her enemies into fleeing. Why should she rely on me when I couldn’t offer anything better?
I shoved those uneasy thoughts down and focused on the softness of her body against mine. Rory stayed cuddled there, the tree I was leaning against shading us, for another few minutes. Then she checked her phone. With a groan, she pulled away from me.
“I’ve got my mentoring session with Professor Viceport. She’ll never forgive me if I’m even two seconds late.”
Guilt jabbed through my chest. The Physicality professor hadn’t exactly been warm toward Rory from the start, but the way I’d subtly sabotaged some of Rory’s spells a couple terms ago hadn’t helped the situation.
“Has she at least lightened up on you now that she’s gotten a better idea of your abilities?”
Rory smiled crookedly. “She’s not as overtly hostile as she used to be. I still don’t think she likes me very much, for whatever reason. I guess there’s not much point in worrying about that with everything else going on.”