“You up for Happy Burger?” she asked as we walked out of the room.
“Absolutely,” I said, then thought of something. “I need to make a quick stop. Meet you there?”
A short while later I joined her at Happy Burger at our usual booth in the back. She stood up as I approached and pulled me into a hug. Oh my dear and fluffy lord she felt good against me.
She sat down and before I could say anything she said, “Thank you.”
I stared at her, uncomprehending. “For what?”
Dammit, Caleb you idiot! She’s speaking with you again, don’t ask stupid questions and just accept it!
“For your talk with Lexus,” she said. “I know I don’t have any right to be mad at you for getting a girlfriend, or whatever your relationship is with her. Not judging. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Anyway, she had a talk with her mom yesterday and wants to finish high school. I know you had a talk with her about it. Thank you.”
I could only nod and hope that she never learned that her sister considered herself as belonging to me and that I had effectively ordered that she wrap up her education. No, no that was something that Jadeite definitely never needed to learn about.
She fixed me with her dark eyes. “There’s some kind of magical connection between you two now, isn’t there?”
Dammit.
Slowly I nodded. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
She smiled. Smiled. “I kind of figured. My guess is you either didn’t break your curse right or your curse was suppressing more than your magical affinities.”
That made sense. We spent the next few minutes discussing my affinities. Definitely fire, and I admitted while blushing, sex. She thought I might have one more but we weren’t quite sure what it could be.
Eventually she asked, “What did you have to pick up, anyway?”
I grinned at her and opened my backpack. The pixie I’d rescued skipped out onto the table.
She’d been staying in my room ever since I’d rescued her though she’d never said why. Today I’d told her I was calling in my final boon and she’d all but leapt into the backpack to get it over with.
She looked around, made a face at the creepy smiling burger mascot, and then at Jadeite before returning her attention to me. “You want to use your boon here?”
Jadeite gasped. “You got a fae to owe you a boon? How?”
I grinned at her. “It’s kind of a long story.” I looked down at the pixie. “My friend is in need of a familiar. My boon is that you are to agree to a contract with her.”
Jadeite gasped again and the pixie stomped her foot. “That is a very big boon!”
“I did you a really big favor,” I replied. “And you’ve been freeloading in my house. Don’t think I haven’t noticed those empty beer cans.”
The pixie beat her wings and created a sound like bell chimes.
“Caleb she’s perfect!” Jadeite squealed.
The pixie spun around to take her in. “Yes. Yes I am.” She took a moment to consider Jadeite and then said, “Very well. I shall be your familiar.”
“I’ll draw up the contract right away!” Jadeite said. “Oh, Caleb thank you!”
She got up and I followed suit so that she could hug me. Damn her pillowy breasts felt good pressing into my body, even with several thick layers of clothing between us.
“Of course,” the pixie said from the table. “You could instead use your boon to ask me what you are.”
Jadeite and I both froze and pulled apart to look at the pixie who was smirking up at us. She casually picked up a French fry off my plate that was easily as long as she was tall and bit off the end off. I winced, remembering where that seemingly delicate mouth had been.
“I know what you are, Caleb Marshal. Instead of giving me to your friend to be bound, I could give you the answer. It might even explain why you had that curse put on you.”
I frowned down at her. The little bug had the absolute worst sense of timing.
“Take her up on it,” Jadeite said. “That’s something that’s going to be hard to find out. And fae can’t lie. You should use your boon for this.”
Slowly I shook my head. “No, I’m using it to make her your familiar. You gave up your chance for those whatever they were the other night when you came over. Let me make this up to you.”
“You got Lexus to go back to school,” she said.
“Yeah but that’s something for Lexus. This is for my best friend.”
She grinned at me, and there may have been something a little sad in her eyes, but it vanished quickly beneath her enthusiasm. “Alright!”
If the bug knew what I was then chances are someone or something else would too. Hell, it might even be at the library. I’d lived my whole life with that curse over my head, what was another mystery to solve compared to that?
The Horned Mage
Book Two: Collateral Alpha
Chapter One
Running was so much better with something to chase. When that something was a deliciously toned girl with long legs and a tight ass even getting up at 5:30 was worthwhile. Especially knowing that the girl in question was mine to catch.
Lexus glanced back over her shoulder, feline face grinning in the morning light. She wore nothing but running shorts and a sports bra, leaving her delicious chocolate skin bare and beaded with rivulets of sweat. Her green eyes flashed with mischief.
She hadn’t been born with green eyes. They’d turned that color after I’d magically claimed her with powers I didn’t fully understand. Powers I was sure were changing me.
Case and point; it was the butt crack of dawn and I’d been awake and eager to take to the streets with my new running partner. I’d never hated exercise exactly, but the thought of doing it for its own sake had never appealed to me, especially not early in the morning. And I was actually eager to get out of bed to meet with Lexus and chase her down. Used to be the thought of getting up before the sun was…well, not really a thought at all. Not even in the realm of possibilities really.
Lexus was fast, on her school’s track team in fact, but I was building up speed and endurance quickly. After a few weeks of this though I was almost as fast as she was and I swear I wasn’t as winded at the end of our runs as she was.
At first I’d blamed my initial slowness on my antlers—they were six pronged and added a few pounds to my head. We both knew it was bullshit but she’d humored me. They were my main reason for having never participated in sports. Nothing with a helmet or that risked collision was really an option. I could really hurt someone if something went wrong. Running though…I’d never really considered it.
I’m a freshmen in college only in my second semester. Lexus is a recently returned to school high-school-drop-out in her senior year. She’d returned at my insistence and part of her school’s condition had been her participation on their track team. Lexus had hated the idea until I’d offered to get up to run with her in the mornings. Now they were something we both looked forward to.
I chased her up through the neighborhood, around my house (admittedly, it’s also my roommates’ house but I really wasn’t thinking of them at the moment), and around toward the park. The park had a gazebo, a great big pond full of ducks, and a few meandering walking trails that were abandoned at this time in the morning. It was officially our playground.
She was fast, leaping through the park like some kind of gazelle and it was all I could do to keep after her. But I kept after her. Two weeks ago, even after I’d bonded her to me, I would have given up at this point and reduced my pace to something less likely to give me a heart attack. Now though I had fixated upon her as my quarry, my prey, and letting her go wasn’t an option.
It was as if something deep inside of me was bleeding up through my chest and into my limbs and pushing them to pump harder. I was hard enough to hurt and the chase became more about the sight of her barely clothed body ahead of me and what I wanted to do with it
than exercising. Nothing slowed me down or got in my way. At one point she actually leaped over a picnic table, pausing to smirk at me only for her eyes to widen as I followed right after—something I would never have been crazy enough to attempt before breaking my curse and setting free my magic.
She squealed and put on an extra burst of speed, narrowly avoiding my outstretched hand. We both knew what would happen when I caught her and in hindsight I’m glad she had the foresight to keep from my grasp in the middle of the public park. She tore out of the park and up the street, laughing as I pursued.
My world shrank down to the running beauty ahead of me. Her lithe legs, taut ass, limber form, supple skin that would taste like salt when I finally got my mouth on her. She cut right all of a sudden and I darted after, unthinking until she came to an abrupt halt and allowed me to press her body against the door…the front door to my house. She’d taken us home.
She turned her head and I captured her mouth with mine. Our kiss tasted of sweat and adrenaline and my hands found her hips and side. My left hand slid up and beneath her sports bra to capture her breasts and she moaned into my mouth. Her hand found the doorknob and twisted. We fell in, barely catching ourselves before crashing to the floor. She didn’t wait for me—taking off at a dead sprint through the house and up the stairs before I could catch her again.
One of my roommates—I was too distracted to tell who—called from the living room to shut up and close the door. I kicked it closed and took off after Lexus, chasing her down to my bedroom. She ducked out of my reach again when I came for her and closed the door behind us.
“Now,” she said, gasping for breath in a way that did enticing things to her small but pert breasts. “Now we can—”
I took her mouth with mine. The world fell away. I had my quarry, my prey, and I would take her. I pressed our groins together and lifted her hands above her head, pinning her wrists together against the door. She moaned into my mouth. My free hand massaged her breasts, rubbing fingers and then my palm over the erect nipples tenting her bra before sliding down to yank off her running shorts.
She hadn’t worn panties, leaving her bare sex ready for me. I groaned into her mouth and released her hands so that I could grab her ass with both hands and carry her over to the bed. She squealed with delight and kicked her shorts loose. She managed to get them off one foot but they caught on her other running shoe.
I kicked off my own shoes and socks while she ripped her sports bra over her head, leaving her naked before me save for her running shoes. My erection bobbed in front of me with every pulsing beat of my heart, so hard I felt ready to shatter. I started for her but Lexus didn’t wait, throwing herself off the bed and capturing my cock in her mouth. She swallowed the head in her first bob and pressed deeper each time after.
Her green eyes rolled up to look at me and I swear, even though her mouth was full of my penis, she was smirking at me. I threw my head back and groaned, feeling her tongue lathe my length and saliva dribble down to coat my balls. I ran my fingers through her black hair and pushed her mouth further onto my member, letting out another groan as she began moaning on my cock, sending little vibrations through the rigid core.
I pulled her off and tossed her back on the bed. I briefly considered burying my face between her legs, but her heady gasps for me to get inside of her changed my mind. I threw myself onto Lexus and thrust into her soaking sex, burying half my length inside of her on the first thrust and then ramming the rest of myself inside of her.
She screamed.
Someone else started slamming on the wall followed by a “Shut up!”
I crushed my mouth to her and swallowed her screams, slamming my cock deep into her over and over again, holding nothing back and pouring every remaining ounce of strength and adrenaline from our run into her. Over and over. She screamed again into my mouth, pussy contracting around my cock, squeezing down tight even as her legs tried to wrap around my waist to hold me inside of her.
I broke her grip and kept on pounding until her legs fell limp on either side of me and her pussy spasmed again, drenching my balls and thighs. I broke our kiss, slammed my face into the pillow beside her, and roared as my orgasm overtook me and I spurted my seed deep into her womb.
I lay on top of her for a few minutes, hot and sweaty and getting hotter from our combined heat until I managed to roll over. My cock slipped free and the cool air hit our combined juices coating me. Lexus let out a gasp as something similar happened to her sex. The air conditioning was not kind to our sweaty bodies where we had just been pressed together and in short order we were both shivering.
Without thinking I threw a blanket over us and pulled her back into my chest.
And woke up an hour later to an alarm screaming at us. I pulled away from Lexus to find my phone and turn it off, only to let out a four letter word when I saw the time. 7:52. I had eight minutes to get to class and she had about the same to get to school. I leapt from the bed and hurried to toss on clothes, hoping like hell I didn’t stink too bad of sweat and sex.
Lexus followed suit with her own swearing, jogging down to use the restroom while I grabbed my notebooks and slipped on my jeans. I fought to get my button up shirt on (seriously, try a putting on shirt when you’ve got antlers), had to redo it three times, and then was out the door running to campus. At least it was close.
Chapter Two
Needless to say, I was late to class. Late enough that Prof. Hardin stopped his lecture to give me a baleful glare and ask why I’d bothered coming at all. Admittedly this was entirely my fault, but his tone still made me want to snap back. And maybe punch him in the nose. Alas, that was so not happening. Not only because I had no intention of being kicked out of school, but because his teaching assistant, Deirdre She, was standing off to the side watching and assessing. She looked at me with mild curiosity in her eyes and I barely repressed a shiver.
If you’d seen someone turn into a giant snake and eat a couple of drug dealers, you’d be scared of them too. It didn’t help that the drug dealers in question had been cooking meth mixed with pixie dust on her orders to begin with. Nor that she’d actually trapped a pixie in a bird cage so that its dust could be used. The pretty and surprisingly tall Chinese girl terrified me and it took a conscious effort on my part not to show it as I found my seat beside my best friend, Jadeite.
My relationship with Jadeite had become more complicated over the last few weeks, ever since I bonded with and subsequently started boning her stepsister. Best friend or not, stuff like that makes things awkward between anyone. Jadeite wore her traditionally baggy clothes that made her look heavier than she actually was (truth is she’s got some knockout curves, but you’d never know it unless she took off her enormous hoodie) and tossed one of her many braids irritably over her shoulder as I approached, then wrinkled her nose when I sat down, giving me a “what the hell is wrong with you?” look.
I gave her a quick scowl and plopped my notebook onto the table. And then realized that it was the wrong notebook. Dammit. I’m not particularly neurotic, hell, I’m a freaking messy, but I need my notes to have some semblance of order if they’re to do me any good whatsoever. This, right here, meant I was going to have to copy down everything I wrote for this class all over again in the proper notebook, unless I felt like tearing these pages out and gluing them into the other notebook and I am not nearly dedicated enough to do that.
“You reek,” Jadeite whispered to me. “Gah—you ever hear of a shower.”
“You’re hilarious,” I muttered. “Catch me up.”
She did. Or tried to. Prof. Hardin’s class is basically about a bunch of dead white guys who wrote down every inane thought they had about spellcraft and magic. Right or wrong, their works were discussed at length. How the hell this was supposed to help us become better mages was anyone’s guess but there you go. College, the land of poor choices and convoluted degree plans.
“You missed half the freaking class,” sh
e hissed. “There’s no way I can—“
“All right, everyone, let’s begin. Find a partner to practice with,” Prof. Hardin said. Wait, practice? Were we actually, finally, moving on to practical magic use? Jadeite and I started to pair up but Hardin stopped us. “Ah, Mr. Marshall, perhaps you should partner with Deirdre for this. No need to hold Miss Rush back.”
My cheeks burned. He was right, it wasn’t fair to Jadeite. Not that I wanted to spend any time around Giant-Death-Snake-Lady, but Deirdre was already coming for me and unless I wanted to explain how I knew she was a cold blooded murder machine, I was going to have to treat her like everyone else.
When she reached me her nose wrinkled. “You know, there’s living the life of a college bachelor, and then there’s just plain being a slob.”
I threw my hands up. “Everyone’s a critic. Ran out of time this morning after my workout.”
“Right. Workout.” She gave another, more delicate sniff. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
I almost missed Jadeite stiffening over where she stood with her new practice partner. She’d heard and either figured I was sleeping with someone who wasn’t her stepsister, or I’d been sleeping with her stepsister. Either way had to equal a sudden dose of stomach churning squick for her. And extra bad for me. No offense to Lexus, but I’d had a crush on Jadeite since we’d first met. My thing with Lexus was purely accidental. Was I enjoying the sex? Hell yeah! I was even really starting to like Lexus as a person and someone to be around now that she wasn’t going out of her way to be annoying. It didn’t lessen my crush on Jadeite though, and every time she was reminded of what was going on between me and Lexus was just another nail in the coffin containing my dreams of a possible future with us together.
The Horned Mage: Books 1-5 Page 7
