Royals of Villain Academy 6: Foul Conjuring

by Eva Chase

  Declan eased toward me, his already rigid cock brushing my belly. A jolt of excitement sparked between my legs. As both of the guys continued drawing bliss through my chest, I turned my head to steal a kiss from Jude. He leaned over my shoulder to meet me, his mouth hot and slick from the water. He tweaked my nipple hard enough that I nearly bit his lip.

  Malcolm was watching us, still in his languid pose at the other end of the pool. When I caught his eyes, his gaze smoldered into mine, but he stayed where he was. Did he think I wouldn’t want him joining in? Or did he not want to share me quite this openly? The most we’d done with any of the other guys in the mix was kiss once.

  But we’d done a whole lot more since then, even if we hadn’t consummated our relationship yet. He’d proven he was so much more than the guy who’d tormented me during my first couple months at Blood U. I couldn’t hold those actions against him anymore, not when he’d worked so hard to make up for them. Not when I understood him so much better now.

  I would have beckoned him over, but at that moment, Declan tugged me upward in the water. He tucked one of my legs around his back, and the other joined it instinctively to steady my body there as he lowered his mouth to my breast.

  His tongue worked me over even more thoroughly than his fingers had, leaving me quivering. Jude took the opportunity to claim my mouth again, his hand trailing lower. He teased his fingertips over my mound until they could press down on my clit.

  Another graze of pressure found me—a determined current that licked over my unattended breast and then down my belly. I didn’t need to look to know it was Malcolm using his magic to join in.

  A giddy pulse raced through me. The current raced over my core alongside Jude’s fingers, and his mouth captured my moan. I arched into Declan’s body automatically, in just the right position for the base of my thigh to graze his erection. His breath shuddered against my breast.

  My fingers tangled in Declan’s hair, damp and in perfect disarray. I loved it when he got messy in his passion.

  “I want you,” I said. “Please.”

  Jude continued to stroke my clit at a steady rhythm that was already building a wave of pleasure inside me. More currents swirled around me, teasing every sensitive inch of my skin. Declan dipped his hand lower to trace my slit. He mumbled a casting with his lips grazing my sternum, hooking his forefinger up inside me. I couldn’t help bucking against him.

  “You’d better give our girl what she needs,” Jude said in his usual careless tone, but he gave my shoulder a tender peck a moment later. He was telling Declan in a roundabout way that he wouldn’t resent the other guy taking the lead in this moment. My heart swelled with affection for him as well.

  Declan kissed me one more time, so thoroughly it left me breathless. As his lips left mine, he shifted me to align with his cock. The long, hard length of him slid into me inch by inch. Bliss crackled through my core. My fingers curled against his scalp, just shy of scratching the sensitive skin there. The Ashgrave scion groaned.

  “Happy birthday to me,” I murmured in a singsong tone, and Jude chuckled behind me. He gave my clit one last caress and then smoothed his hand over my ass. His erection grazed my outer thigh. I reached back to grip him with a careful pump as Declan started to ease in and out of me. Malcolm’s current throbbed more firmly against the nub between my thighs, amplifying the sensation.

  Jude pressed his cock into my hand, his teeth nicking my shoulder. He squeezed my ass. “You know,” he said, roughly and unusually hesitant, “if you think you’d like it… we could see how you’d enjoy being doubly satisfied.”

  His finger traced down the line between my cheeks, leaving little doubt about his meaning. Oh, God. I’d never really thought about having sex that way before. When I’d first come to Blood U, I’d only had sex any way once. But after opening up so much to these two guys, the idea that might have made me balk back then now felt perfectly appropriate. I could have them both inside me at the same time. Just imagining it made me twice as giddy.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s just—let’s try.”

  Declan stilled against me, as deep as he could get, as Jude traced his fingers right around my other opening. The nerves there quivered with a different but no less heady pleasure. He murmured a casting word and pressed one finger inside me so smoothly it was hard to imagine I wasn’t simply built for this. I made an encouraging sound.

  Jude spent a few minutes simply working me over and making sure I was relaxed. My head tipped against Declan’s shoulder with the waves of sensation, and he kissed my temple. Just when I started to feel I would die if we didn’t get on with it, Jude brushed the head of his cock over the space he’d made ready.

  “Good?” he asked even more raggedly than before.

  I hummed almost desperately. “So good.”

  He edged into me even more carefully than Declan had, but all the new rush of pressure brought was more bliss. They held me between them, one hand on my waist and another on my thigh, keeping the perfect balance. And then I was filled twice as much as before, and it was more heavenly than I could have imagined.

  But our joint embrace didn’t feel quite complete. I turned my gaze toward Malcolm again, and this time I didn’t wait. I wanted him, not just his magical tricks. I reached my hand across the surface of the water to call him over.

  In the first instant, he tensed against the pool wall. His eyes practically scorched me, they held so much heat and hunger. Then he pushed himself toward us in one brusque movement.

  “Even two isn’t enough to satisfy you?” he teased in a voice gone raw.

  I held his gaze through the pleasure singing all across my body. “Not when I can have three.”

  He caught my chin to draw me into a kiss, holding himself on the end of the ledge. Through some unspoken communication, Declan and Jude started to move at the same time. They eased back and plunged deeper into me in unison with a crash of ecstasy. I cried out.

  Malcolm captured the sound, kissing me like a command. He stroked one breast and then the other, urging even more bliss from my body the way he had when he’d brought me to release with just his hands the other morning in the hotel.

  I hadn’t repaid him for that pleasure at the time—he hadn’t let me. I couldn’t bear to be that selfish now. I wanted to touch him, to feel him give himself over as much as I was to all three of them.

  My hand drifted down over his well-muscled chest to his jutting erection. My fingers closed around its solid girth. A growl grumbled in Malcolm’s throat. His body went still, and for a second I thought he was going to pull away from me. Then he was kissing me even harder with a thrust into my grasp.

  “Fucking hell,” Jude managed to say with an awed laugh. He kissed the back of my neck, and Declan nipped my shoulder, both of them speeding up their rhythm. With the pleasure skyrocketing through me, I knew I wasn’t going to last long.

  I kept my own rhythm, gripping Malcolm’s cock as steady as I could even as I careened toward my release. I twisted my wrist and flicked my thumb over the head, and it twitched against my palm. His mouth devoured mine hard enough to bruise, leaving me dizzier.

  “Rory,” Declan murmured. “God. I’m going to—”

  He jerked his hand between our bodies to fondle my clit, and then I was falling and soaring all at once, tumbling into an ecstasy that shook me down to my bones. Jude let out a choked sound, and Malcolm’s breath broke, and somewhere in the collision of our four bodies, we all reached our peak.

  Malcolm kept his hand by my jaw, his head close to mine, as the other two guys withdrew. He pressed his lips to my cheek as gently as his kisses before had been fierce. Right then, I felt what Declan had said earlier with every ounce of my being.

  The three of them were here for me no matter what came our way. And I intended to be there for them and Connar just as much.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rory

  I checked my phone for the hundredth or so time as I crossed the green to Night
wood Tower, as if it were at all likely I’d have missed the alert of an incoming call or message. It was mid-morning the day after my birthday, and I hadn’t heard a thing from my mother.

  Maybe birthdays weren’t much of a thing in the fearmancer world? Although the scions had thought it was worth celebrating mine. If the dinner the night before had been intended for my birthday, I’d have expected some acknowledgment on the day of.

  It could be that she’d been out of the loop for so long that any important dates from before her imprisonment had faded away. She’d only been back for a week. It was amazing she’d gotten herself together as much as she already had.

  Anyway, I had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that I was heading to Persuasion class for the first time since Connar’s mind had been warped against me, and it happened to be the one class I shared with the Stormhurst scion.

  I climbed the stairs with growing trepidation. I’d just reached the last flight before the right floor when a bunch of Nary students came flooding down toward me.

  The dazed expressions on all their faces made me stop in my tracks. I pressed myself off to the side to give them room to pass, watching them as they went by. Some of them were outright stumbling. The vagueness in their eyes reminded me uneasily of Shelby’s odd spaciness the other morning. Where were they coming from?

  I touched the arm of one of the girls to get her attention, and she flinched with a jerk of her head to face me.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I was just wondering—what class are you coming out of?”

  She stared at me blankly for a few seconds. “Class?” she said, sounding puzzled. “I was— There were— We just wanted to take a look around upstairs.”

  That was one of the least plausible excuses I’d ever heard. She didn’t give me the impression she was purposefully lying, though. I frowned as she walked on and then murmured my insight casting word under my breath. “Franco.”

  As a Nary, she had no defenses. My awareness tumbled right into her head. Flashes of impressions darted by me—a muffin she’d particularly enjoyed at breakfast, a boy she was hoping to see on the green… and a haze far more blurred than any memories I’d encountered before.

  I tried to focus on it, and my attention jittered away as if repelled. Then the girl slipped out of view, and my connection with her broke.

  That was strange. If I’d been asked, my best guess would have been that someone had magically interfered with her mind.

  I continued on up the stairs in time to encounter several fearmancer students leaving Professor Crowford’s classroom. They were talking amongst themselves in hushed voices, their gazes flicking warily over those of us just arriving at the classroom, but most of them were smiling in a way that unnerved me even more than the look of the Nary students had.

  What were they all wrapped up in? Did it have anything to do with the Naries? I had seen Professor Crowford with a class of both Naries and mages the other day.

  The seminar was starting in just a few minutes, but I hesitated outside the door and then drifted back down the stairs after the previous students. I hadn’t gotten very far with my peek into the Nary girl’s thoughts, but this bunch might offer more.

  “Franco,” I whispered, training my eyes on the back of the head of a boy who’d been smiling particularly gleefully.

  My attempt smacked into a wall of magic around his mind. His head twitched as if he’d noticed. I stopped and pretended to be searching for something in my purse in case he looked right around. If I put any more power into the spell, I’d probably be able to break through his shields—but he’d almost definitely notice I had too.

  One of the girls said something, and the others laughed. They went around the bend in the staircase out of view. I slipped after them, thinking maybe I could try the spell again with someone else, but by the time I’d reached the bend, they’d picked up their pace and were already disappearing around the next landing.

  It’d get obvious if I started outright chasing them—and I did have to get to class. My jaw clenched in frustration as I hurried back up to Professor Crowford’s room.

  I stepped through the doorway just as the professor was coming over to close it, and found I’d set myself up in a situation that might be even worse. All of my classmates had arrived, filling every desk except the one in the back corner. Next to Connar.

  “You are joining us, Miss Bloodstone?” Professor Crowford said at my hesitation, the corners of his heavy-lidded eyes crinkling to match his smooth but lightly teasing tone. With his classically handsome features and his suave demeanor, it was easy to tell that in his earlier years he’d have been able to charm plenty of people without needing any magic at all. Hell, he probably still did.

  “Sorry,” I said, and hustled across the room to the vacant desk. Connar glowered at me as I came, but he didn’t say anything or move. Apparently the spell was flexible enough to allow him to stay in the same room as me if his schooling demanded it. I guessed if his parents had made him too reactive, he’d have ended up looking like a problem to more than just us scions. Lucky me.

  As Crowford started his lecture, I tried not to notice the stiffness of Connar’s stance or the way he tensed even more with every shift I made in my chair. It was too easy to remember the way just a couple weeks ago he’d have glanced over at me with a smile here and there, to share a subtle joke or just because he could. My throat tightened.

  In my distraction, I didn’t catch everything the professor said, but the gist sank in. He was talking about internal forms of persuasion today—altering people’s thoughts and beliefs rather than their actions. Did he have any idea that the guy sitting next to me was the victim of that kind of magic?

  Crowford had been on Professor Banefield’s list of the older barons’ allies. My mentor had left a packet of documents for me in case of his death, since the spell the barons had cast on him had prevented him from giving me more than a vague warning directly. In his last few words to me, he’d called the people who worked with Malcolm’s and Connar’s parents and Baron Killbrook “reapers.”

  I had no idea how that term fit in with their plans or how involved Professor Crowford had been with their schemes. It didn’t seem likely that Baron Stormhurst would have publicized what she probably saw as familial discipline even to her allies. But I started listening more closely, staying wary, anyway.

  Unfortunately, Crowford didn’t touch on how you’d go about snapping someone out of a thought pattern they’d been persuaded into. He described some techniques for subtly shifting a person’s attitudes without outright commanding them to think a different way, and then clapped his hands together.

  “Let’s pair off and see if you can make a go of this. Write down the thought you want to place in your partner’s head, and after ten minutes, my aide and I will come around and check whether each of you has been successful. Work with the person sitting next to you. I’ll spare the rest of you the challenge of facing off against one of our scions.”

  He winked at the class, but I couldn’t appreciate his good humor. My stomach sank as I looked at Connar. His mouth had twisted.

  I turned gingerly to face him as the students around us began to chatter with their attempts to work their persuasive spells into casual conversation. “Well,” I said, and didn’t know how to continue.

  “Forget it,” he said, low but harsh. His shoulders were outright rigid now. “I’m not even going to try, because there’s no way I’m risking giving you an opening.”

  “Okay. Fair enough.” I curled my fingers around the notepad on my desk. “We should probably at least pretend that we’re doing the assignment, even if we’re both going to fail it?”

  He made a disgruntled sound that must have been some kind of agreement, because he pulled out a notebook and pen of his own. I tore a page out of mine and looked at it uncertainly for a moment. I knew what I’d have wanted to try to plant in his head. I’m not the enemy. You care about me, and I care about you just as mu
ch. But I wasn’t writing that down for Crowford or his aide to see.

  I settled on a random innocuous idea about buttered pecan being the best ever ice cream flavor. When I looked up, Connar was folding his paper, having already written his own theoretical goal. I wet my lips.

  Who knew when I’d next get a chance to talk to him without him totally exploding at me? I had to take advantage of the classroom sort-of truce while I could. I just… had no idea what I could possibly say that might sink in through the magical clouding of his mind.

  “I know you don’t trust me right now,” I said quietly. “And I’m not going to ask you to. I’ve got no idea what you’re remembering or seeing that’s convincing you I’m out to hurt you or the other scions.”

  Connar scoffed before I could continue. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  I held in a wince at the derision in his tone. “Maybe not. I just— I hope sometime when I’m not here and you’re not feeling so angry with me, you’ll really look at those impressions and consider how… real they actually feel. Whether they line up with other kinds of impressions that might rise up too.”

  The Stormhurst scion managed to keep his voice down, but his expression hardened. “Are you trying to suggest that I’m somehow deluded? You’re trying to mess with my mind right now, aren’t you? For fuck’s sake.”

  I ducked my head, trying to give every appearance of meekness. “You don’t have to listen to me. I only wanted to ask. Just… think about it.”

  Connar turned away, muttering to himself. “Why the hell would I listen to a bitch who’s out to bring the whole pentacle down?”

  Pain prickled through my chest. For a second, I could hardly look at him, it hurt so much to compare the hostility on that chiseled face to the fondness that had shone through it so many times before. A lump filled my throat, but I couldn’t help letting one last attempt slip out, even if it was a long-shot, even if it got me nowhere. A simple appeal straight from my heart.