I changed into my yoga pants and a top with a built-in sports bra and shortly thereafter we were in the campus gym. Better yet, we were alone in the campus gym. I had my treadmill set low and I was walking along mindlessly, staring at Alec as he lifted heavy stuff, pulled on tense stuff, flexed on flexy things, and basically showed off every inch of his toned physique, his tattoos shifting around the muscles beneath, working up a sweat I swear I could smell across the room.
At one point, he was moving his arms outward and making eye contact with me, his reddish eyes burning through me, while I was panting, and he had to stop because he was getting very obviously hard. He grabbed his wand and traced it over the tattoos on his arms to try and cool his desire. But he couldn’t take his eyes off me.
He could hardly control himself. Shit, that was so hot. I knew as soon as he was done with this, I was in for it. Torturously long minutes of his medium brown skin taut against his toned, gleaming muscles while he looked at me like he was already about to come, while I—
“Wah!” I got so distracted I forgot to jog and was thrown off the treadmill, tripping over my own legs and finally falling on my ass.
He got up and walked over to me, but I was already getting up. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“That was my fault,” he said.
“Nah. I could have been thinking about anything.”
He laughed. “I doubt that.”
“You do this every day?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And I haven’t been watching?”
“You never asked.”
I grabbed the waist of his shorts. “I think you’ve done enough for today.”
“Not enough,” he said. “The best exercise is yet to come.”
“Mm…” We sank into a kiss fit to melt my underwear right off me.
“Which piece of exercise equipment do you want me to spread you across when I fuck you?”
“This is a public place! With windows!”
“But we’re alone,” he said. “It’s a quiet corner of campus. I’m usually working out by myself at this time of day. Worst case scenario, we work on our skills at casting illusions. You’re into it, huh?” he said, as his hand stroked my slickness. “I think you need a personal trainer. Yoga isn’t enough for a full-body workout.”
“You’re terrible,” I said, with a smile that certainly wasn’t fooling an incubus.
He tugged my pants and underwear down and then he walked over to the exercise bike.
“Let’s see…this is a pretty easy workout for a beginner. You know to ride a bike, right?”
“I know how to ride you and I have a feeling that’s enough…”
“Char.” He laughed as I straddled the bike seat, standing up. He stood just behind me, the head of his cock pushing inside me.
“Ooh…” I gripped the handles and he gripped me.
“Can you pedal?” he purred in my ear.
“This is a whole new level of naughty,” I groaned. “Seriously…” I pedaled, awkwardly as he kept my ass stuck out, but his cock was so long that even with all the movement, he managed to stay in, even as I shifted. My arms burned with the strain but all I really noticed was his cock bouncing in and out of me and his hand stroking my clit. Desire coiled fast inside me as I sweated.
“That hot ass,” he said. “Fuck.”
“I’m so tired…”
“Come on. You need to train, right?”
“Mm…”
I looked up and my eyes met the mirrored wall so I could see his expression of ecstasy while I rode him, plus his ripped, tattoo-covered arms and the way his black hair was messy and he was just lost inside me.
If someone walked in the door right now, we would probably both murder them.
“Mm…”
Would we even notice?
All the build-up, and when I hit a release it was insane. I almost fell sideways. Alec had to catch me and pull me off the bike, pushing me down onto a bench so he could finish off with a few fierce strokes.
“You are so dirty,” I said. “And now, so is this gym.”
“I have no regrets,” he said. “You’re pretty dirty yourself.”
“Oh yeah.”
We tugged our pants back on, with relief at having succeeded in avoiding the public gaze, and made out until I felt like my whole face was swollen with kisses.
He slid a ring on my finger. I already had one from him for every day this week. “I wonder if you’re the reason I keep almost nodding off in class this year,” I said. “You’re wiping me out.”
“I warned you.” He kissed me again. “It would be a lie to say I can’t help it, because I hold back. A lot. If I had my way, my life would revolve around your pleasure, but humans can’t handle that much.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You want to have sex every two hours?”
“Well…to be honest, no. Not most days.”
“I thought so.” Alec opened a supply closet. “I’d better clean up, huh? I know what will happen if they find cum in the gym. Always blame the incubus.”
“Right? So unfair.”
I heard yelling outside.
“Maybe I’ll go see what that’s all about,” I said.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Alec said.
“It sounds like Professor Adams…”
I wandered over to the windows on the opposite wall anyway, and then I couldn’t help my sheer nosiness. When I couldn’t see or hear much of anything, I cracked the door.
“This is some bullshit!” Professor Adams was yelling, very loudly, the way people yell when they’re having a drunken parking lot argument. “Bull. Shit!”
Now Alec couldn’t help himself. We both walked out to the expanse of lawn in front of the main hall, where Professor Adams was screaming at Piers.
One of the guards tried to hand him a box. “We cleared out your desk.”
“I don’t care about the contents of my damn desk!”
“Please calm down or we will have to escort you off the grounds physically,” Piers said.
“I’ve worked here for twenty years! I didn’t know anything about Ignatius Blair being a woman, but I do know that you can’t just ‘purify’ the students.”
“It’s very safe,” Piers said calmly. “A precautionary measure. We already have one student here who was turned by vampires. The council is protecting the students from danger. I’m not sure why you feel the need to rant and rave about it. Very few of the students here will have any bad blood in their lines, but I’m sure the ones who do would rather be rid of it.”
“Like I said, I spent more than twenty years here. I taught a whole generation. Never once did I need to purify anybody. I know what this is about.” Professor Adams picked up a suitcase that was sitting, forlorn, on the sidewalk, and threw it in the back of a waiting car driven by one of the school staff.
Alec frowned.
“Poor Professor Adams,” I said softly, with a sinking feeling in my gut. I remembered Adams and McGuinness watching over us like friendly uncles at Christmas when I thought I wouldn’t be able to go home to Dad. I was pretty sure he had the hots for a demoness, so I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise.
Sinistral and Etherium seem like they aren’t just fighting each other, they also have plenty of romantic crossover, I thought.
But that wasn’t going to be tolerated anymore.
Once Professor Adams was gone, Piers went back to the main building and everyone who had stepped out to watch dispersed, but Henry Wells came walking up to us. Alec stepped forward protectively. With the Locke brothers gone, Henry Wells was my biggest antagonist among the students. He didn’t target me as viciously as the Locke brothers did, at least. Snide comments were about as far as he went.
“You must be nervous,” he said to Alec.
“No,” Alec said.
“No? You’re not worried that Master Nicolescu will try to extract the incubus right out of you?”
“It’s half of my heritage,” Alec said. “I
don’t think that’s actually possible.”
“I guess you aren’t in the loop,” Henry said. “This is groundbreaking therapy developed by the Order of the Blessed. They have already been purifying the demon blood out of dozens of halfbreed ethereal witches, in some cases releasing people back home who were there for years. It’s a potent weapon in securing more ground for Etherium.”
“What the hell is the ‘Order of the Blessed’?” Montague asked.
“A religious sect of warlocks,” Harris said, frowning. “They’re up in the Adirondacks, so I’ve heard of them, although still not much. I had no idea we were trusting new therapeutic methods to religious cults.”
“If it works, it works,” Henry said. “Who cares where it came from?”
“What does this therapy do when it works?” I asked, although I probably shouldn’t have engaged.
“Alec would just be a normal warlock,” he said, giving me a cool look. “He would no longer be tormented by demonic needs. What a relief for all of you, I’m sure, since you are dating Montague, aren’t you? It must be so awkward.”
“I have it all under control,” Alec said. “No purification needed. I’ve heard some little men pay a lot of money to get what I’ve got.” He slung a casual arm around my shoulders and spun me off toward our dorm, leaving Henry—who was a few inches shorter than Alec and way less built—standing there fuming.
“Great. We needed to piss off another rich-ass warlock,” I said, suppressing a smile.
“What can I say? I get overconfident when I can still feel your desire coursing through me,” he said. “There’s a reason all incubi are sinistrals. It’s a classy way of saying I’m a rape demon.”
“You’re not a ‘rape demon’. Dude. That’s just a gross way to describe yourself. You have never once hurt me, you know that.”
“I put out magic that makes you want me,” he said. “And it’s all I want.”
“At this point, who cares if you make me want you? I trust you. We’re careful. I’m happy at the end of it. You have my permission to make me want you and act on it. It’s a lot better than the first two years when you made me want you and did not act on it.”
“Fair point,” he said. “The warlock in me wants to be more of a gentleman like Montague or my dad.”
“I already have a gentleman,” I said. “I don’t need it from you.”
He stopped and gave me a devastating smile. “Watch out, ‘princess’,” he said. “Don’t make me take you again that soon. All this sweet talk. You could keep a little more distance.”
“Can you call me princess without making it sound vaguely sarcastic? Firian is the sarcastic one. You’re the earnest one.”
“I reject your labels.” He smirked. “Anyway, I’ve seen all I needed to know.”
“Know for what?”
“That we need to fight Harris’ cousin,” he said. “Whenever the reckoning comes.”
Chapter Seventeen
Charlotte
I kept hoping things would be okay-ish at school. A reckoning sounded ominous. Sure, we had this purifying nonsense, but maybe it would blow over. Professor Adams was replaced by a new guy. His name was—for real—Professor John Stamos. I was all ready with the Full House jokes.
Then I saw him. He was like two hundred years old, bald and hideous, covered in age spots, with wispy white hair and fleshy lips, and I heard him refer to me as ‘the little woman’.
I didn’t even dare call him Uncle Jesse in private. Ew. Not even funny.
Thank god I didn’t have theurgy this year.
I was finally in Alchemy class, which meant potions, and I was pumped about that. Alchemy was taught by Professor Pelham. He was British, reserved, and fairly charming, even though he had a very soft voice and we all leaned forward to hear him.
Potions was just like a dangerous chemistry class. Perhaps a more careful reading of Harry Potter would have reminded me of that. I was bad at it. It was even worse when I missed about every fifth word Professor Pelham softly whispered. A potion literally exploded in my face and burned me in the first month so I had to spend an entire day in the infirmary with this cloth mask covering my face. It was dipped in—you guessed it—potions.
The circle of life.
I had not turned myself into a cat person yet, but if Hermione could manage it, that was probably coming.
No doubt, punishments had grown more intense under Master Nicolescu. When a guy was caught with a dark magic book, he was tied to a post beneath Piers’ office window for the entire day and denied dinner. The next day, we were all gathered for another purification ceremony.
“I wasn’t going to cast dark magic. I just wanted to know what it was all about,” the guy, a freshman named Lucas, announced to everyone. “How can I fight dark magic if I don’t know what it is?”
“These are lies,” Piers said. “No one can read a book of dark magic and emerge uncorrupted. The rules of the school strictly state that you can only study dark magic within the lessons you are assigned.”
I felt generally confused, because I didn’t like Piers, but it actually didn’t sound that unreasonable. When did reading a book of dark magic in a fantasy movie ever lead to anything good? They were always tempting and had unexpected consequences, and every professor had warned us about that.
“I banish the darkness within you,” Piers said, waving a hand over him after some pretentious Latin chanting.
The guy looked sickly as some dark smoke wafted out of him.
“Uhh…” He reached out like he was going to collapse, and Piers took his hand.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Feel the shadow as it passes away, and know that this is the consequence of your actions.”
“I’m going to throw up,” Lucas said, and then he did. I winced.
Piers was hardcore. When someone tells me they’re going to throw up, I put ten feet between me and that person, but Piers barely shuffled his feet out of the way while Lucas vomited on the ground and then slumped forward into the puddle.
“I can’t watch,” Montague said, kneading his forehead.
“Squeamish vampire,” I said, petting him.
Piers crouched over him and waved his wand down the length of his body. “Take him to the infirmary to recover,” he told some other staff members. “We are lucky this was caught early. This is serious. Merlin College is near the veil between worlds, as you all know—it’s what allows us to practice magic here. But the betrayal of Professor Blair has weakened its power. It is within the realm of possibility that Sinistrals could gain control of this space. This is, more than anything, why the council sent me here. You know the adage: if you see something, say something. No Sinistral magic is permitted.”
Was it my imagination, or did he look at me when he said it?
I was trying not to attract his attention, and he was mostly ignoring me after his attempt to purify me didn’t work, but I never got the sense he forgot me. If anything else, because Harris warned me that Piers would never forget something like that.
“You made him look stupid,” Harris said while we were quietly studying in the attic. “He’s just waiting for the moment when you won’t make him look stupid next time.”
“Right. Your family hates looking stupid,” I said.
“Everyone hates looking stupid,” Harris said.
“But some more than others,” Alec said. “I don’t really mind looking stupid. Most things, you can just shrug off.”
“And then you’re even more charming than before,” I said sweetly.
“We’ll see if you shrug it off when Piers figures out a way to make you look stupid,” Harris said.
“And we’ll see if you shrug it off when I make you look stupid,” I retorted.
Alec got up and clapped his hands like he was trying to break up fighting animals. “No! Bad wizards!” he said. “Go back to your study corners. I’m working on a paper on the history of lore and ritual at Merlin, and I just found something interesting. Th
is has gotta be your hipster beard priest.”
He held up an old book with an old photograph of a guy with a beard and a priest collar. Father Patrick Early, Merlin College (1881-1883).
“Oh yeah, that’s him!”
“It says he was the first priest at the chapel here but—get this—he was ‘hired for his skill at holy healing, but dismissed when it was found that he consorted with faeries of dubious origins for his healing spells. The morning after his dismissal, Father Early took ill with a fever and was confined to his bed, never to leave it. He died three days later, near the stroke of midnight, and it has since been whispered that the faeries punished him for his carelessness with their secrets. It was said that Father Early’s wand came from a faery tree and it was burnt with his body on a pyre of ash wood to banish the fae magic in ritual fashion, but it has since been said that he haunts the chapel.’”
My hair stood on end. This was hardcore. Faery fevers? Giving a priest a frickin’ Game of Thrones death on our college campus? “We should tell Stuart that story.”
“So he had a Wyrd wand,” Harris said.
“Sounds like it…”
“Is this about the faeries, or is it about Wyrd itself?” Montague said. “We’ve always been told to beware of faeries and faery magic. But the council seems afraid of Wyrd. Like if we could tap into Wyrd magic, we would take ourselves out of the fight between Etherium and Sinistral, right? That’s what the council really doesn’t seem to want.”
“But why do they keep wanting to fight?”
“They have to fight,” Harris said. “There is only so much territory. Only so many humans who believe in magic.”
“Well, now I know why my great-grandmother was always like, ‘Never trust an Irish priest’,” Montague said. “They really do talk to faeries…”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlotte
we seem to be far from home.
I came to these dessert realms a long time ago once, Larius said. I was here with Firia…
you miss her…
“It’s desert,” Firian said. “One s. Why do you never get that one right?”
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