Tough. That was a word for it. “It wasn’t an afternoon of flower picking.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “I’m glad it worked out. I think you have a lot of potential as a mage. Don’t let Hardin get you down.”
She thought I had a lot of potential? Well at least there was something about this week that didn’t suck.
Chapter Six
The walk back to my house wasn’t a long one but I took the opportunity to do something that I should have done days ago. I called Sarah.
Sarah is my adopted sister, four years older than me and always willing to give great advice. She was the best part of being adopted by the Marshals. We had a secret, she and I, something we could never tell anyone. At first it had made things awkward as hell between us, but then she’d realized she could trust me not to blab and something opened between us. She started to confide in me and me in her. I’d never get by without her support, especially now that Jadeite was AWOL.
Sarah was fixing to graduate with a pre-med degree with the aim of becoming a naval doctor and understandably was crazy busy, especially with all the volunteer work and extra training she put herself through. Unfortunately this meant we didn’t speak more than once every two or three weeks unless one of us really had something we needed to get off our chests.
Damn if that wasn’t me just then.
She answered on the third ring and I realized I had no idea where the hell to start.
“How about the beginning,” she said when I admitted as much. “That’s usually the best.”
I let out a feeble laugh. “Yeah, just gotta figure out which beginning.”
“Oh boy.”
Oh boy was right. “Uh, I broke my curse.”
She shrieked. “That’s amazing, Caleb!”
“Not so good actually,” I confessed. “There’s something weird with my magic.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I started acting all funny when the curse broke and…I slept with my best friend’s stepsister.”
Her silence was audible over the phone. Finally she said, “Lucky girl. You like her?”
“How is my best friend lucky for me sleeping with her stepsister?”
She sighed. “Not your friend, the stepsister. The girl you slept with. Is it serious between you two?”
Oh shit. “I um, haven’t given it much thought.”
“Caleb!”
I winced. “I’ve been trying to patch up my friendship.”
“Your friendship? Seriously, this can’t be a bros before hos thing, your best friend’s a girl.”
“Yeah, and that makes this like, a thousand kinds of awkward.”
“Why? Is there a reason you shouldn’t be with her stepsister?”
Not one that I was willing to admit. So instead I repeated “Lexus is her stepsister,” hoping that that would somehow explain everything.
“And she’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions. Your friend should understand this or she’s not really your friend. Or was there something more than friendship going on between you two?”
“No,” I admitted, more reluctantly than I’d have liked. “Just friends.”
A thought suddenly occurred to me. “But I’m not really sure it was Lexus’ decision.”
I could hear her scowl through the phone. “What do you mean?”
“Remember I said my magic was acting all weird? I think I maybe sort of put a spell on her. Maybe on both of us.”
“Caleb Marshal!” she snapped. “You mean to tell me that you had magical sex with a girl, literally magical sex, and you haven’t called or spoken to her since?”
Dammit, suddenly I felt even worse. I’d been an absolute ass to Lexus. She was the one whose forgiveness I needed to be begging for, not Jadeite’s. “You know, I called you so that you could make me feel better.”
“Sorry little bro, I’ll always give you a reality check. Now you go and apologize to that poor girl and tell your friend to get over it.”
“Yeah I’ll do—oh shit.” I’d come upon my house and found the front door kicked in. “I’m going to have to call you back. Someone’s broken into my house.”
“What? Call the cops!”
I could see my roommate’s cars in the driveway and hear their voices coming from inside so clearly whatever emergency had occurred it was past. I told Sarah so and hung up, promising to call her back later.
I walked into the house and stared about at the wreckage. What our uninvited house guests a few nights ago had inflicted upon our home was nothing compared to this. The home invaders had taken a bat to the sheetrock, putting massive holes in the walls and smashing our television into shards of glass and plastic. Our gaming consoles were missing and the couch reeked of urine. Several lights had been shattered and doors broken down. My roommates were all missing a things like watches, extra cash, and DVDs. The fuckers had even taken our beer.
“What the hell?” I asked my roomies.
They’d already taken inventory of their rooms and were now in the living room assessing the damage. The cops had already come and gone and basically said there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done about the missing items and next to no chance of catching the guys that did this. Ace detectives Woodhurst did not have but even if they’d had better resources and training there probably wouldn’t have been much that they could do anyway.
“Does anyone know how to get the urine out of the couch,” asked Danny. As he’d been the one to provide the couch this didn’t seem an unreasonable question.
“No fucking clue,” said Tim. “Shit, they took my gas money. How the hell am I supposed to get to work now?” He worked in the next town over, about twenty miles south of Woodhurst.
“This wasn’t just a smash and grab,” Danny said. “I mean, they smashed sure, but if they wanted to rob us they didn’t do a good job. Who smashes a TV? Or pisses on a perfectly good couch?”
It did seem unusually spiteful and my mind raced back to Bullet and Dicario. But I’d chased them out, hadn’t I?
Someone knocked on the threshold that used to hold our front door. I turned to find Lexus cringing as she surveyed the wreckage. Her lip was split and she had one hell of a shiner darkening the left side of her face.
“Hey,” she said, looking up at me.
Chapter Seven
A few moments later I’d carried her up the stairs—despite a half-hearted squeal of protest—and deposited her on my bed. I retrieved my first aid kit from beneath the bed, which our dickhead robbers had thankfully not stolen, and came up to find Lexus blushing furiously. Then I realized what she might have thought I was doing, hauling her up to my bedroom like this, and felt my own cheeks heat up in return. I did not apologize though or try to explain myself. Instead I opened the first aid kit and set about tending to her busted lip with some Neosporin.
She made a face as the gauzy end of the cream-coated cue tip made contact. “I always hated how that stuff tastes.”
“Hold on a sec,” I said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you some ice for your face.”
She grimaced. “It looks that bad?”
“It looks like it hurts.”
She shrugged trying and failing to act tougher than she was, an illusion that was completely shattered when I turned to go down to the kitchen and she grabbed me by the sleeve of my shirt. “Don’t go.”
“It’s going to swell.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” But I didn’t go get ice. Instead I sat down with her on the bed and put an arm around her.
At first she stiffened and then she melted into me with a huge sigh. “You said I was yours the other night.”
I had said that, hadn’t I? Several times.
“Who hurt you?”
She snorted. “Who do you think?”
Bullet and Dicario. “Why? I chased them out of here.”
“Yeah so they had to save f
ace. Beat on me and then they came over to beat on your place. And they’re going to come after you again.” She looked at the wall on the far side of the room where a mirror hung. The glass had been broken by someone hitting it but it still worked well enough. “You weren’t around. You told them I was yours and then you…” her lower lip began to tremble.
I squeezed her tighter.
“You know I told her,” she said. “Jadeite. I told her that she was the one you really wanted. Told her she should be with you.”
I wasn’t sure whether to flinch, flush, or beat my chest. “Why would you tell her that?”
“Because it’s true. She’s the one you want, not me. If I hadn’t stolen her phone she’d have been there instead. I know you want her. I can feel it.” She turned away from the mirror to look me at me with those magically green eyes. “I was just an accident.”
Her hand went to her chest in a reflexive gesture, found nothing, and fell back. For the first time I realized that she wasn’t wearing her heirloom necklace.
A surge of possessiveness washed over me. “You’re mine.”
She swallowed. “You don’t want me.”
I’d never been particularly close to Lexus. We’d never spent enough time around each other to get anywhere near close, and the way she always acted like a bratty, party-obsessed wild child hadn’t exactly endeared her to me. I knew she ran with a rough crowd. I hadn’t understood just how rough. I was seeing beneath her mask now, the confident brat she used to keep herself safe from the world, and was being allowed to see the vulnerable and unsure young woman underneath.
“I was stupid.” I had been stupid. Hell I was being stupid now. I didn’t want Jadeite any less but now I was suddenly reconnected with that same spirit of possessiveness that had urged me to claim Lexus two days ago when I’d broken my curse. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. Dammit this wasn’t going to end well.
“I like what you did to my eyes,” she whispered up at me.
So did I.
I leaned down and claimed her mouth with mine. I tasted the Neosporin and the blood on her lip as my tongue entered her mouth to lock with hers. She whimpered into our kiss and pressed herself tighter against me.
Images flashed in my mind; Bullet and Dicario coming after her. Dicario managing to land a couple of blows, his hand grabbing at her throat, her necklace ripping away as she tore free and ran. They were angry. Really angry. This wasn’t the first time they’d beaten her but it was the first time they’d hit her face. Normally they hit her where the bruises wouldn’t show.
I remembered that the last time I’d seen them that the assholes had tried to make me pay for having sex with her. Had that been the first time they’d done that?
As if reading my mind she shook her head.
“That was my first time.” She blushed and then said in a rush, “In there I mean, my vagina, I mean my pussy I mean”—she blushed all the harder and couldn’t meet my eyes—“I’ve done anal with both of them. They didn’t want to spend money on condoms.”
“Assholes.”
She laughed. I realized what I’d said and then laughed too. Our laughter was too nervous to do anything to the tension that had built up around and in between us. It died an awkward death and was left to hang in silence between us.
Lexus stood up from the bed, walked over and closed my door, and then turned around, hands going to the button of her jeans. “If that’s how you want me, you can have me that way. I don’t mind.”
She pushed her jeans down. They were so tight that they didn’t fall but had to be pushed. When she stood up, kicking off her shoes in the process, she revealed to me that she was wearing a lacy black thong, the gusset so low in the front that if she hadn’t been bare down there her pubic hair would have been showing. They were sexy as hell, and I realized, old. She had a safety pin holding the snapped waistband together on the side.
My hand reached out to travel up her lean, athletic thigh up to that safety pin low on her hip. She blushed and I hooked a finger into the waistband and dragged my finger to the front of her panties so that I could slowly pull them down to reveal her hungry sex. She gasped and I let the panties fall to her ankles.
She wasn’t looking at me but up at the ceiling, her eyes closed tight and lips pressed together. I slid a finger between her netherlips, finding her hot and slick. She winced and I withdrew my finger. I stood up and cupped her face in my hand, making her look at me. “Are you hurt?”
“J-just a little sore there still,” she gasped. “Totally worth it, just…could you please be gentle with me?”
For a moment things seemed off to me. Some part of my brain knew that women who had just been beat up and run for their lives did not crave sex as soon as they got away. That just wasn’t how things worked, my rational brain shouted at me. And yet here she was, her pussy lips moist and swollen with need for me. I nodded my agreement, pushing all thoughts aside that might get between my fucking her brains out.
Lexus let out a relieved breath. That little sigh turned into a squeal as I scooped her up and deposited her on my bed.
“W-what are you doing?”
I grinned at her. “I’m going to kiss it better.”
“Oh my god,” she said as I lowered my mouth to her sex. “Oh my god!” she gasped as my lips and tongue made contact. “OH MY GOD!” she screamed as I began lathing her saturated pussy with my licks and kisses.
I moved up and lapped at her clit with hard but slow strokes, my tongue pressed wide and flat to rub over each and every nerve. Her hands grabbed my antlers and pulled my mouth tighter against her pussy. I kissed, sucked, and lathered her sex with my mouth, teasing her entrance with my tongue and sucking her clitoris. She drenched my mouth and chin with her musky fluids, squealing and keeping a death grip on my antlers.
“Caleb,” she cried out. “Caleb. Caleb. Caleb!”
I shoved my pants down and pulled myself from her pussy, breaking her hold on my antlers and letting my engorged length slide into her soaked entrance. She moaned and wrapped her legs around me, pulling me into her faster so that I was abruptly buried to the root inside of her. Lexus’ entire body went rigid and her pussy began to contract upon my length, squeezing me and soaking my thighs and balls with her juices. I could sense she was close, so close, to release.
I fought against her grip so that I could withdraw far enough out to pound myself back inside. She squealed the first time I crashed back into her. Then moaned with every subsequent thrust until her back arched and she screamed with orgasm.
I held her tight and rolled over, pulling her with me into a sitting position with her resting on my lap, my erection still fully embedded inside of her. She almost didn’t seem to realize that she had moved until her climax had fully ended and her eyes opened, widening in surprised. I gripped her hips in my hands and began helping her to lift up and down my length.
“You set the pace,” I told her.
She looked at me with a mixture of emotions I couldn’t recognize, one hand coming up to my face, the other to balance herself on my shoulder. And then she began to move and my cock entered Nirvana.
She was slick and hot and tight. So very tight. And she moved with deliberate slowness, clenching her Kegel muscles as she lifted up and then releasing as she let herself fall back down my length. We both gasped every time I bottomed out inside of her. Both of us broke out in a sweat and fought I could tell that she was fighting off her second orgasm even as I resisted my own.
This was so different from the first time we’d fucked on the hallway floor. There was still something primal about it, and definitely passionate, but there was also a new level of control, of understanding and intimacy between us that had been absent before. We weren’t in love, or at least I wasn’t, but we were making love.
I understood then that Lexus had never been made love to. She’d had sex, after a fashion, but it had always been rough and half the time only partly willing. I f
elt a pang of guilt as that knowledge flooded me. Had what we’d done together before been consensual? Would she be honest with me now if I asked? Could she be?
It didn’t matter, because more information came to me. Bullet and Dicario had nearly raped her this afternoon. She was hurting much worse than she’d let on before. They’d managed to pin her down and delivered several swift kicks to her stomach. Something had distracted them and she’d managed to kick one of them in the groin and run, though not before losing her beloved necklace. Damn she was fast. She’d run from their…meth lab, in what had once been an old hunting cabin outside of town, and straight here. To me. They’d been going to hurt her and then they were going to hurt me and both thoughts had terrified her with equal fervor and given her the energy to sprint all the way through town to my house.
She had warned me. And now she was giving herself over to me. I felt a strange mixture of guilt and honor wash over me. She was giving me such a gift.
After Lexus had a second, much smaller orgasm than the first, I stopped her movements and rolled her over again so that she was perpendicular on the bed, her butt just hanging over the end, allowing me to stand up, my cock still buried inside of her.
She stared up at me eyes wide, a trace of fear in them before I began moving and her face broke out into a grin. “Oh yes!”
I had promised to be gentle but neither of us wanted that anymore. I took her. I ploughed my length into her over and over again and brought her to another screaming orgasm. Her entire body seemed to be trying to go rigid and spasm all at once as I continued slamming into her so that her orgasm rolled into another. And that was when I couldn’t hold my own back any longer.
I shouted as I plunged as deep inside of her as I could go and let myself spill into her in a series of pulsing bursts. She pulled me into her, wrapping me in her arms and legs as I fell on top of her, pinning her to the bed beneath me.
We lay there together for a few moments before I became aware of the cheering from down below and remembered my roommates were home. And remembered the paper-thin walls that had made me want to wait to leave before casting the spell that had broken my curse. I let myself slide from her hold to roll onto the mattress beside her.
The Horned Mage: Books 1-5 Page 4
