Victoria was also athletic and slender, but not in the same way as Lexus. Her hips and bust suggested that she’d be a lot curvier if she didn’t work out as much as she did. Or hadn’t grown up with a werewolf’s metabolism. She lacked the definition of a professional athlete but was flush with healthy strength, the kind that came from regularly using your body and she’d only become more toned since she’d started joining Lexus and me on our morning runs and added a swimming regimen to her schedule.
I’d finally worked up the courage to ask her about her ethnicity, wondering where her exotic dusky skin and dark eyes came from and she’d told me her grandmother was Blackfoot. She’d joked that the Road Wolves, the motorcycle club and werewolf pack she’d been a part of before joining me and Lexus, had preferred everything to be “original American.” Her bikini, like most everything she wore, was black and edgy.
Both girls were possessed of fiery green eyes, a color that had superseded their original coloration when they’d magically bonded to me, and which more and more often were prone to transforming into enormous glowing orbs when their emotions ran high. Like a wolf’s, but no wolf had ever had eyes this particular shade of green. Those eyes lit up at the sight of me, glowing in time with a low pulse of happiness laden lust that brought a smile to my lips. I don’t care who you are or where you come from, literally being able to feel that people in your life want you is one of the best feelings in the world.
Thomas took note of my arrival too, though less enthusiastically. He’d realized quickly that while the girls liked him well enough and actually seemed to think some of his techie stuff was fun, that they weren’t interested in him for more. That they didn’t mind him checking them out probably didn’t hurt either. A part of me was a little bit relieved when I realized that there was no chemistry beyond friendship and one-way-lust between Thomas and the girls. I had absolutely no right to be jealous, but the potential for it had been there. I’m a hypocrite, you understand. A sick and twisted hypocrite.
Both girls, through no fault of their own, and maybe more than a little fault of mine, were magically bonded to me and loved me. Victoria had once called us a menage a troi. We all lived together. We slept together, though not all at once, in part because the bed was small, in part because Lexus didn’t technically live with us and spent most evening back at her mom’s house, and in part because…I don’t know. It had just never felt right.
I think they’d do it if I asked, but that’s exactly why I wouldn’t. They’d both do just about anything I asked. Our relationship was definitely skewed in my favor in terms of power and that made me very nervous about treating my girls right. Not the least of which because while they were in love with me, I was head over heels for Lexus’ stepsister and my best friend, Jadeite. I did say I was a hypocrite didn’t I?
“Caleb, Caleb,” Lexus called, pulling away from Thomas and Victoria to hurry around the pool toward me, only to stop halfway there and step out into the grass, away from all of us.
Small pulses of pleasing power answered her footsteps. The land here liked us. That was what Eleanor, our boss and landlord had told us when I’d been pressed to explain how the magic of this place reacted to me and how I’d drawn upon it to power my spells back when Victoria’s pack had been trying to rip me to pieces. Long story.
“Check this out,” Lexus said, eyes brimming with emerald energy. She took a breath and let it out. I may have been paying more attention to her small but pert breasts than what she was trying to do but even I couldn’t miss her suddenly going up in flames. Green flames, just like the kind I conjured.
I almost ran to her side but the flames died down as quickly as they’d come and in her place stood an enormous white wolf-dog the size of a horse, lit from within with green energy that spilled out its eyes and mouth. Eleanor said that I’d somehow turned Lexus and Victoria into a sort of fae hound called a Cuth Sith. Only Victoria had already been a werewolf when I’d worked my magic upon her and she’d been biting both Lexus and I while we’d had our one and only three way. Probably the most brutal sex I’d ever had. The werewolf magic had mixed with mine and now, instead of turning into a giant wolf or fae dog, the result was this cross breed. Only they’d never been able to transform without the aid of my spell-fire before.
Lexus opened her mouth and grinned at me, enormous pink tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.
“We can change on our own now,” Victoria said, coming to stand beside me, Thomas in tow, holding up his iPad. Was he recording this? I guess if the girls were okay with it who was I to judge. I still did lawn work for Thomas’ father on the weekend so technically his dad was my boss. And he may have helped me figure out how to actually connect to Eleanor’s wifi when we’d first moved in when I’d proven myself technologically illiterate.
“And that’s not all,” she went on, beaming at Lexus. “Show him.”
Lexus bobbed her hand and danced in place, for all the world like a two ton puppy. She came to an abrupt halt and threw her head back. I expected her to let out some kind of howl but instead she let fly a stream of green fire from her mouth.
“Damn!” Since when could werewolves or Cu Sith do that? I’d done a bit of research on both since I’d taken up living—kind of—with two of them. The Cu Sith were amazing and dangerous hunters but they didn’t have anything more to do with fire than werewolves did. “Wow, oh wow, what the hell?”
Lexus gave a yip and went up in flames, bounding out of them in human form to throw her arms around me. “We’ve got fire too!”
“And can keep our clothes on when we shift,” Victoria said dryly.
I guess it would get annoying if every time you transformed you either had to strip naked or ruin your clothing. Still, I couldn’t help giving her a cheeky grin and saying, “That’s too bad.”
She punched me in the arm though not with any real heat.
I turned to Thomas, giving the still-recording iPad a nervous glance. “You got any idea how this is happening?”
He shook his head. “Not a clue, man.”
His eyes drifted past me and I turned to find Eleanor Hardin walking out the back door in a flowing white dress, a big sun hat over her steely blond hair, and a tray laden with glasses of iced tea balanced in one hand. “You kid’s thirsty?”
Eleanor was one of those beautiful women who are utterly ageless. There was only a minute flaw in her beauty. The very first time I’d seen her she’d been carrying a cane. I’d thought she hadn’t needed it. Mostly I’d been right, but every few steps there’d be a slight hitch that would interrupt her otherwise flowing and graceful movements. I wasn’t brave enough to ask what had happened but I knew it had something to do with her knee. Eleanor was something called an arcanologist, sort of like a magical equivalent of Indiana Jones, and lived an adventurous life and mostly used her house as a way station between crazy adventures.
I’d been hired as a house sitter and part time intern, helping out with paper work when she was here and keeping the place clean and running when she wasn’t. Truth be told, it was the cushiest job I’d ever had and considering I was getting my own rent-free place to stay over her garage with Victoria, easily the best paying. I suspect that she was mostly keeping me around out of a sense of curiosity about my magic and heritage, but if so who cared? I was benefiting in a very real and tangible way. Hell, I was actually learning to shape my fire into more than just blasts and balls under her tutelage. Without a doubt, the day a bunch of werewolves had run me to ground on her property had been one of the luckiest of my life.
She was also the sister to one of my professors and I was pretty sure he hated my guts. I deliberately hadn’t Googled her or pried into her background. It seemed like a bad idea to look a gift horse in the mouth when she’d effectively saved me from homelessness.
“Are you our boss or our caretaker?” I asked, gratefully taking a glass of tea.
It had taken me a little while to figure out, but if I wasn�
�t the first to say yes to food or drink, then Victoria and Lexus would automatically turn it down and they always waited until I’d had first bite or sip. Now I said yes to everything edible so that they felt they had the option. I think it was a werewolf thing because it hadn’t been an issue before Victoria joined us.
“I’m allowed to be a bit of both,” Eleanor said, lowering the tray after the girls and Thomas had taken their own sweet tea.
I downed half of mine and felt a restorative energy fill me, flowing up and down my spine from my stomach and into the rest of my bones, easing tensions I hadn’t even been aware of.
Eleanor had a gift with tea. I think it was one of her magical affinities.
I took another gulp and set the now empty glass back on the tray, realizing as I did so that there were more items on it.
I frowned. “Is that a syringe?”
Eleanor grinned and took a seat on the pool-side lounger. “It is. And these are cotton swabs and sandwich bags. We’re going to get to the bottom of what you are.”
I eyed the syringe’s needle with more than a little skepticism. “We are?”
“Dude, don’t wimp out,” Thomas said. He was still recording with his iPad.
“Are you going to record everything?” I asked with more than a little exasperation.
He bobbed his head up and down. “Hell yeah. You might not realize this, but you’re living the—“ he stopped himself from swearing, turning the foul word into a cough at a look from Eleanor—“the life, man. It is my solemn duty to document everything.”
“Right,” I said slowly, still eying the needle. “Whatever. Do you really need to stick me with that thing?”
Eleanor scowled at me. “You and the girls fought an entire werewolf pack to a standstill. You can’t tell me you’re afraid of needles.”
“No,” I said way too fast. “Not at all.”
The girls and Thomas snickered.
My ears burned. “Maybe a little.”
Eleanor offered me a sympathetic smile and patted the space beside her on the lounger.
Reluctantly I took it. Letting her study me was part of our arrangement after all. And it could mean answers. I’d actually looked up how much DNA tests costs and they weren’t cheap. Also, they had a hard time detecting magical heritage from inhuman sources without specific equipment that required specialized training. Needless to say, those were even more expensive.
“A friend of mine owes me a favor,” Eleanor said, cleaning off a spot on my forearm. “We’ll know what you are by the time I’m back from Portugal.”
Eleanor was currently on some quest that had taken her from Brazil to Spain and in the next few days, to Portugal. She was kind of closed lipped about it but had said that it had to do with conquistadors. History had never been as interesting before Eleanor started talking about it.
I gave a nod and bit down on my cheek as she drew blood into the syringe. Then she took my face in one hand, popped my mouth open, and swabbed my bitten cheek with a bit of cotton. She paused with the swab halfway to a plastic baggie then reached back to my face and popped my mouth open again. I’d thought that she was going back for more saliva but apparently something else had caught her attention.
She drew close, close enough that I had trouble seeing her face. “Your teeth are sharper.”
I flushed. I’d hoped no one would notice. They’d gotten sharper after I’d first broken my curse but I’d thought that was where the side effects had ended. I’d been wrong. They’d been getting a little bit sharper each day since and they weren’t the only things changing.
Eleanor tilted my head and examined the six pronged antlers growing from my head. At first I’d thought they’d been a side effect of the curse that had been on me for as long as anyone could remember. I was beginning to suspect that I’d been wrong about that too.
“They’re getting sharper too,” Eleanor said, reaching up to tap a single prong. She scowled, an expression she sometimes got when she was deep in thought. “Are they darker than before?”
I tried to nod but she had too firm a grip on my head so I settled instead for, “Yes.”
And she wasn’t the first one to notice. Jadeite had commented on both my teeth and antlers today when we’d been hanging out. It wasn’t something we’d done as often as we used to. Back before I’d started sleeping with her stepsister, Jadeite was the most active ingredient in my social life. We’d been watching our favorite episodes of Firefly when she’d commented on them. She said the changes made her nervous.
“Have you noticed any other changes?” Eleanor asked, not unkindly.
I glanced at Thomas’ and his iPad.
“I’ll send you a copy of this, Ms. Hardin,” he said and she nodded her thanks without looking at him and then beckoned for me to go on.
“I’m running now,” I said. “I didn’t used to but now I feel restless if I don’t. Um, I’ve been craving meat.”
Lexus popped down on the lounge behind me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, pressing her small breasts into my back and laying a quick peck on my neck. “We all have.”
The gesture wasn’t overtly sexual, Lexus wasn’t radiating lust or intending anything when she’d done that, but I still felt a pulse of desire shiver through my body and my member throb in response between my legs. Both Victoria and Lexus exchanged a look, sensing my reaction at the same time and then bursting out in giggles. Thomas blushed and looked away but kept the tablet trained on me. I wasn’t showing was I? Oh wait, craving meat—ha ha. I got it.
Eleanor shook her head but was still smiling. “Anything else?”
I blushed. I didn’t want to admit the next thing, especially not in front of a camera, even though I knew it was probably the most relevant.
Victoria answered before I could deny anything though. “He’s insatiable. Gets a hard on at the drop of a hat. Stamina, recovery…” she trailed off suggestively and threw me a wink.
I blinked at her, dumbfounded and unsure whether to be bursting with pride or humiliation.
“I’m pretty sure he’s a bit bigger down there too,” Lexus said with a smirk.
Pride and humiliation. Who knew you could feel both at once.
“Really,” Eleanor said. “Would you mind letting me meas—“
“No!” I threw my hands over my lap.
All three girls burst out laughing.
“I’m kidding,” Eleanor said, wiping away a tear. “I’m kidding. But this is all good to know.”
“Good for who?” I muttered under my breath. Nobody answered me so I changed gears and hopefully would get them off the subject of how I freaking horny I’d become. “Do you have any idea what’s happening to me?”
She stopped laughing and seemed to think about it for a bit. “As best I can tell, whatever curse was placed upon you was in fact sealing away your heritage. Not all of it, obviously, but quite a bit. And your magic doesn’t work like a traditional human with regular affinities. You have affinities of course, but they are unusual. You’re very good within your affinities but can barely cast any spell outside of them and I think that’s only going to get worse. Without the curse holding your heritage back, it’s trying to catch up. It’s almost like you’re going through a second puberty.”
Oh my Dear and Fluffy Lord. I planted my face in the palm of my hand. That was so much worse than before.
“It’s kind of a blessing, really,” Eleanor went on. “Could you imagine how much worse off you’d be if everything that’s happening to you had happened when regular puberty had set in?”
Despite myself I shuddered at the thought. It would have been none stop sex and fire. I’d have been completely out of control.
“Whoever put that curse upon you, they may have been doing you a huge favor,” she said.
I scowled and lifted my head. “I doubt that.”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. We won’t know for certain until we get the reports bac
k from the lab.” She stood up and collected the now empty glasses and tray. “I have to go finish packing. You kids have fun.”
I was too mortified for fun. Naturally that meant the girls chose that moment to grab me beneath my arms and with preternatural strength, they hurled me into the deep end of the pool.
I came up sputtering and indignant, ready to give them what for. At least until they joined me in the water. They came up, pressing me against the side of the pool with their bodies and took it in turns to kiss me. Slowly. Sensuously. Until my brain was much and my brain surrendered control to the smaller head.
“You know,” Thomas said from the side of the pool, still recording us with his tablet. “Y’all could make a killing doing that naked for the camera.”
He was forced to flee as the girls splashed water at him and leapt from the pool, chasing him back to his own yard and slamming the gate behind him.
I leaned my head back against the edge of the pool and let out a deep sigh. My life was weird as ever, but things were definitely looking up.
In retrospect I’m a fucking idiot for jinxing us like that.
Chapter Two
Riddle me this, what does every beginner level class have that every student hates? The answer: group projects. Prof. Hardin had just assigned us one and by happy coincidence I’d ended up in Jadeite’s group. Hardin seemed more than a little miffed when he realized how that had worked out—he’d intended the groupings to be random and definitely knew that Jadeite was the only reason I was passing his class—but left us well enough alone to get started, warning us that we’d have to find time outside of class to work on this and that he was giving us today just so that we could coordinate our efforts. How the hell this asshole was related to Eleanor was beyond me.
The Horned Mage: Books 1-5 Page 15
