by Kathryn Moon
“It won’t bite, Joanna,” he soothed, holding a brush out by its handle.
“But it doesn’t come with a set of instructions, either,” I said.
“Pick a color, put it on the brush, apply to canvas,” he said and even without looking I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Is that how you got your teaching position?” I asked, hovering the soft bristles over the paint palette, eyes darting between the painting and the field in front of us.
“I save that speech for my problem students,” he said, folding his legs on the ground, sitting down to give me space.
The painting as it was looked complete, sunlight catching at the tips of tall grass with the depth of the woods behind turning darker, like a warning. I hated to alter it in any way. I found a small smear of blue paint sneaking it’s way over an ashy brown and swirled them together, thinking the least obtrusive addition I could make was adding a bit more shadow near the back. My hand shook as I lifted the paintbrush, but with the first stroke of the bristles against the canvas the action felt like a circuit connecting me to the painting. The process of painting was less choice and action than it was the follow through of a background thought into an image on the canvas.
An image that looked less like the tree I had intended, and more like a dark figure lurking in the shadows.
I frowned and Isaac sat up, peering at the painting.
“Sinister,” he said, eyebrows raised in surprise but smiling as if he were pleased. “How did it feel?”
“Magical,” I said, voice tight. I cleared my throat and asked, “Was that yours or mine?”
“Some was mine,” he said and his eyes were on my face as he spoke. “There’s magic on the canvas, the brush, in the paints I mix. Whatever power you felt was yours.”
My lips pursed and I stared at the figure, passing in dark between the trees and sending a chill up my spine.
“It gives the painting something to say,” he said. “Like a story.”
“I think you’re being kind,” I said, rolling my eyes. But when I turned my head back to look down at him he was still staring at me.
“Would you sit for me?” he asked. “I’d like to paint you.”
I dropped the paint palette and brush into my lap at the question. “I…what? Today?”
“No,” he laughed. “I think I’m done for the day, before the light goes. And Callum and Aiden are useless at dinner. But I would like to, soon.” He watched me for a minute, struggling to find a word to say or even to make eye contact, and then his hand settled gently on my arm. “I promise not to bully you into it like I did the painting. If you’d rather not…”
“Maybe,” I said, finding my voice. “Let me think about it.”
“Of course,” he said.
Some openness had faded in his face, the smile going out of his eyes and I floundered for a moment. I wanted the time with him, but it was a desire accompanied by worry. Of enjoying myself too much, pretending the time meant more than friendly camaraderie.
“Would you walk me back to campus?” I asked. “I don’t really know how I got here.”
His shoulders eased and he stood, nodding. “I would love to.”
I tried to help him in his packing but Isaac shooed me back to my seat on his jacket. “I have a system,” he said.
It looked more like ‘tossing everything together in a small collapsible box.’ Considering the box was smaller by far than the contents it carried, I figured it must require Isaac’s magic more than any organization. By the end all he had was a light backpack that fit around his stool and over his shoulders, and his painting in hand. He held his free hand out to me and I rose, bringing his coat along with me.
I slid my hand in his, trying not to think too much of the action, to stamp down lightness that burned through me at the touch. He had a growing coven and it was only a friendly gesture, like two country folk together on a walk. Except then I couldn’t think of any example of me holding a man’s hand on a walk that wasn’t romantic enough to start all of Bridgeston gossiping about who was getting grandchildren in the spring or whose heart would be broken before winter.
Even then, it would have been my heart broken. Isaac wasn’t the type of man to stay in a place like Hammish or Bridgeston and it was a plain fact. And I…I could barely believe that I hadn’t woken up back in my father’s house by now, with my brother and his wife and their squalling, darling twins calling for me from downstairs.
“No wonder you got lost,” Isaac said, drawing me back. “Your head’s always traveling.”
“Either in a book or daydreams,” I agreed.
He drew me in, wrapping my hand around his elbow and pointing out scenes in the woods I had missed on my walk.
We were back on campus in the late afternoon and the bustle of activity had returned. Not only that, but for the first time since I had arrived at Canderfey, I felt something other than invisible. Several groups of students, and more than one person I suspected was faculty, paused in their tracks as Isaac walked me back to my little house on the row.
“It’s more like a small town than it seems at first,” Isaac whispered to me.
I didn’t take any comfort in that. “I can find my way from here,” I said. We were barely a block away from the street and Isaac probably could have seen me walk up to my door from where we stood now.
He didn’t comment and I didn’t let go of his arm so the suggestion died in the air.
I spent the rest of the walk considering what I could expect from Isaac. I knew what would be impossible, given who he was and who I was not. But it left so much room, for the possibility of a friendship at least.
“I’d make a very awkward model,” I said as he walked up to my door.
His footsteps broke pace for a moment before turning to me. “I beg to differ,” he said, eyes widening.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing as his face broke into a full grin. “Well, alright,” I said, pulling my hand from his arm and taking the first step to my house. It gave me the inches I needed to be on eye level with him.
“Sometime soon?” he asked.
I nodded and shrugged. I didn’t know when I’d really be brave enough but now that he had offered there was a nervous little excitement in my belly to see what he would paint. To know how he saw me.
“Thank you for the afternoon, Joanna,” he said, catching my hand again. And then he leaned in, with the scratch of stubble against my cheek and a soft, chaste kiss at the corner of my mouth.
He pulled away before I’d known what to do with myself and I searched his face for something I also refused to believe would be there. But he was smiling, easy and relaxed.
“See you soon,” he said, releasing my hand with a last squeeze and starting off down the sidewalk.
“Yes,” I managed, dumbly, after finding my throat too dry to say anything. I darted up the stairs, fumbling in my pockets for my keys as my cheeks heated. A part of me wanted to turn again, watch him walk away and wait to see if he looked back too. Instead I focused on turning the key in the lock and making it inside before I made a fool of myself.
An envelope skidded across the floorboards as I opened the door. I let myself droop down to the floor, the corner of my mouth still singing with the warmth of a kiss. I leant against the doorframe and picked up the envelope finding my name scrolled across the front.
Joanna,
The university has finally come through and one of Wrenshaw’s last instruments—a horn rumored to gift the listener with the sensation of flight—is being delivered to my office this Tuesday. Come listen?
A. King
My head thunked back against the wood and a dull pounding started in my temples, matching the beat of my racing heart.
8. Isaac
I was barely drifting off when the stairwell lamps flickered on and the boards began to creak. Then they muted and I sat up, staring at the mouth and waiting. Callum’s hair shone fire red in the yellow light, bobbing up the stairs as he tip
toed up to the hall in the dead of night, shoulders hunched.
“Where were you?” I hissed, whispering from my bed.
He froze at the top of the stairs, shoulders drooping further. The stair lights turned off and he shuffled to my door, the moonlight catching at the muddy knees of his pants.
“There was something on the campus,” he whispered from the door. “I went…hunting. Came up with nothing. Checked on Joanna’s house, the wards are good there. Then-”
“You went to Joanna’s?” I asked, the surprise stealing all the quiet out of my voice.
There was a thunk and Callum dropped his bag to the floor, then huff of breath as he walked in, landing in the blue glow of light from the night. He was wrestling with his coat as if he’d forgotten how they worked. I almost snapped at him as the coat landed on the floor too but he went straight for the buttons of his vest next and his fingers slipped in exhaustion. I sighed and climbed out from under my sheets.
“She’s alright,” he said as I pushed his hands out of the way and started helping him out of his clothes.
“Was she home?” I asked.
“Think so…” he yawned and his jaw cracked. “Didn’t knock.”
I screwed my mouth shut and refrained from commenting. It was maybe a misguided gesture but I couldn’t blame him and I was a little too pleased that he thought of her in the first place.
“Are you alright?” I asked, looking up at his face. His cheeks looked hollow. It occurred to me then that he hadn’t meant ‘hunting’ as searching. He’d been using magic.
“Frustrated,” he bit out in a growl, then added, “Tired. I’ve never felt anything like it and then…then it just skittered away. I tracked every inch of campus and then the surrounding woods and town and nothing.”
“Are you-?”
“I’m sure,” he said, glaring at me, taking his belt from my hand and pulling it loose. “I don’t know what it was or where it went but I know it was there. Can I sleep in here tonight?”
“If you don’t you’ll have to pick up all your things and take them with you,” I said. Aiden might be a laundry chute but I was not.
Callum nodded and bumped against me as he crossed to the bed, practically falling into it.
“Did you eat?” I asked.
“Mmmhmp.” He nodded into my pillow. “S’good.”
I rolled my eyes while he couldn’t see and kicked his clothes out of the way before following him back into the bed. I settled on my side with my back to him but after one deep sigh of breath Callum shuffled closer, pulling me down to my back and curling himself up to my side, pressing his face into my neck and hooking his bare leg over mine. I froze in surprise and then shifted to wrap my arm around his shoulder, scratching my nails into his hair and listening to his groan.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked, lifting my free arm to brush at his shoulder resting over my chest.
“Mmfine,” he said, voice already scratching with sleep and he settled as I squeezed him tight and set my lips against his forehead.
I woke again in the dark with a mouth sucking at the curve of my neck and Callum’s hard length bumping against my back. His arm was stretched over my side, hand gripping at a pillow with a white knuckle grip as his hips rolled into me. He growled into my skin, teeth pinching and making me arch, and then the growl became a word.
“Joanna.”
I didn’t mean to but it came out all the same, a bright and sudden laugh. Callum froze and then inhaled sharply, breath panting against my neck, before rolling away. I went with him, turning to my other side so I could look at him in the dim light. His face was scrunched up tight in a grimace and he blinked one eye open at me before groaning and swinging his arm up over his face.
I stifled another laugh and bent to kiss at his shoulder, rubbing a hand over his tense stomach and feeling it twitch against my touch. “I’m flattered,” I said. “But I imagine her to be much softer than any of us.” Then I slid my hand down to squeeze where he was still hard and hot, stretching at the fabric of his underwear.
He snarled behind his arm as his hips lifted up into my hand.
“Don’t tell Aiden,” he said, words almost muffled by his arm. Then the arm was swung away and he surged up pulling me into a messy, anxious kiss.
Callum was never what I expected; always greedier for affection, more passionate, body always wound tight with the craving until it burst out of him. I let him pull me down, trapping my hand against him as his hips bucked and his teeth bit, lips sucking until the sleep at the back of my head was being replaced with hunger.
“Tell him what?” I asked.
Callum pulled back, head landing against the pillow and a knot between his eyes as he looked up at me. “That I…That I-” He stopped himself, kicking his legs between us until they were framing me, my cock fitting against his ass.
“That you’re dreaming of her?” I asked, rearing back as he tried to lift up and kiss me again.
“Yes,” he snapped, forehead furrowing.
“That you’re attracted to her?” My cheeks almost hurt with my grin and Callum’s eyes narrowed dangerously at me.
“Yes.”
Then his legs knotted around my hips and he surged up, pushing at my chest until we had flipped on the mattress. I landed with an ‘oof’ that turned into an open mouthed moan as he lowered his head and wrapped his lips around my ear lobe. He sucked at it with a ‘pop’ and then moved to the corner of my jaw.
“Do you think about her here?” I asked, low in his ear. “With us?”
He stiffened and then his hips pressed hard against mine, erections nuzzling together through the thin layer of cloth until we were both panting.
“Yes,” he hissed into my neck.
“Tell me where you would want her,” I said and Callum whimpered, a soft whine as his chest lowered and stuck to mine. “Next to us, watching? Between us? Or like this, like I am now? Squirming beneath you as I fill you up?”
“Fuck, Isaac,” Callum breathed. His eyes were huge and dark and fixed to mine as I slid my hands under the band of his underwear and started to push them down his hips. “Yes. That’s what I want.”
I could taste the words, the way it tore at Callum to admit them. I liked to look at my lovers, watch their faces change with every touch, but I could make an exception for this. To imagine with him, to picture her face on the pillow. I leaned up and kissed Callum, hands busy easing fabric over his stiffness, and he muttered soft begging words against my lips.
I slid out from under him and he kicked his legs free, elbows braced against the mattress and head hanging low as I moved behind him.
“Lay down, love.”
Callum settled and I straddled his hips, digging my fingers into his shoulders and working at the tension. He hissed behind his teeth, back tightening, and then sighed as I pushed my thumbs up the back of his neck.
“You’ll have me asleep,” he mumbled, cheek smashed to a pillow.
“So play with yourself,” I said, smirking. It would do half the work for me and keep him distracted. Aiden said that Callum was like a jack in the box, coiling tighter until the strain was too much and he exploded with pent up kinetic energy. I assumed Aiden just preferred to be the target for that energy. I had tricks for uncoiling him.
Callum’s hips twisted and his hand burrowed beneath him. I watched his arm flex and twist as I moved down his back, wrestling with the knots beneath his shoulder-blades until I could see the way he melted into the mattress, eyes drooping and hand growing lazy. I stretched for the bedside table and grabbed the bottle of oil, squeezing some out into my palms and warming it before stroking it down his sides and then up over his ass, barely dipping my fingers between his cheeks.
