Root Rot Academy: Term 1

by Rhea Watson

  In an instant, the world vanished, his kiss a balm that wouldn’t make a difference in the cold light of day. All the shit on my shoulders would still be there tomorrow, but for now, as I raked my fingers through his hair, it fell away—and I remembered what it was like to fly, to float on clouds…

  To just exist.

  From my hazy recollection of that first night, this kiss was slowly becoming our style: no buildup, no easing into it—just aggression and passion, breaths rising and hands groping and feet tripping over themselves as we both tried to march the other back somewhere unseen. Gavriel eventually won out, steering me until my ass hit a table and prickly leaves kissed the backs of my arms. I hissed, then clumsily swatted the pot of holly aside. In my distraction, Gavriel pounced, dragging a sharp kiss along my jaw and down my neck, nibbling at the base of my throat with a growl that I felt between my thighs.

  Last time, I’d let him steer the ship. Tipsy and happy to play around in the back seat, I had gone where he led me. Tonight, I wanted to drive. One hand threaded into his hair while the other skimmed down his side, and as much as I wanted to slow down and appreciate the muscly ridges beneath the high-quality cotton, I charged southward until I met a belt loop. No belt though. No nothing in my way as I popped the button and attacked the zipper. The fae twitched when I brushed his cock over his briefs, then groaned and slammed his hand to the table behind me when my caresses turned purposeful. A few strokes had his semi at full-mast, and when I slipped my hand beneath the waistband, a sword of velvet steel stood waiting.

  His soft hiss had me grinning, and I swiped my thumb over the sensitive head, smearing his desire around, then gently stroked all the way down to the hilt, experimenting with pressure and speed. Bigger than I remembered, but not so huge that our minimal foreplay had been an issue last time.

  Gavriel’s breath fell in hot, heavy pants against my neck as I stroked him, and I steered his mouth back to mine by his hair. From his slack-jawed expression, I’d expected a lackluster kiss, but he came in swinging, nipping hard at my lower lip before thrusting his tongue into my mouth, fucking me, dominating me, tipping my head back to fully claim me. My pace under his briefs faltered, but as soon as I showed just a little more attention to the silky head, his brutality faltered.

  Fooling around had never felt like a fight before. Past partners had always been on the same team as me—or they were a team of one. Kissing him, stroking him, bending to his will almost made us enemies, trying to punish and take and give as we fought for control.

  Control over who would hand out the pleasure and who would take it.

  Gods, this was new.

  Gavriel suddenly snatched my chin and forced me back into the table. In the same breath, he coiled his other hand around my wrist and wrenched me away from his cock. Lips slightly parted, teeth gritted, breath coming hard like we were in a fight, the fae spun me around like I was just a marionette on his string, then bent me over the pine. My cheek settled on the wood, the table’s height forcing me up onto my toes, my hips driving into the edge, and I slashed back at him—a little reminder than I wasn’t his puppet and he definitely wasn’t my master.

  He responded with a hard smack to my ass, one that forced a shocked squeak up my throat, but I bit down before it escaped. Barely taking the time to undo the top button on my jeans, Gavriel ripped the stiff, clingy fabric down my thighs, followed swiftly by my panties, then speared me with two confident fingers. The power behind his thrust actually hoisted me off the ground, and I buried my head under my arms, squealing again as he zeroed in on my G-spot, massaging it, unleashing a maelstrom of pleasure that had been building, building, building from the moment he first grabbed me.

  Legs trembling, I planted both hands on the table just as everything inside became a blissful blur, still desperate to prove that I could give as good as I got. Before I could push upright, however, Gavriel caught the back of my neck and shoved me down again, pinning me in place as his pace quickened, jumping from frantic to manic in a heartbeat. Driving me to the edge—mercilessly, unmoved by my squirming and mewling protests, by my legs halfheartedly kicking back as the pleasure sharpened, verging on pain in the most delicious way.

  Once again, just before I could implode, he fucking stopped. The fae was an expert in the art of teasing, in edging a woman to the brink and then pulling back.

  Turning us into addicts.

  “Gods, not again,” I growled, slapping my hand against the table just as the winds picked up outside. The greenhouse glass rattled with my discontent, the gale raging just like my body, but before I could rear back and snap at him, Gavriel delivered two additional well-aimed smacks to my ass, one for each cheek. The flesh stung and sang in equal measures, the burst of pain slicing through the pent-up pleasure, and I blinked, too stunned to say whatever I’d had in mind a second ago.

  No one had ever spanked me before.

  No one had ever even tried.

  But the sting added something exquisite to the moment, and apparently I was into it—being bent over a table and spanked—because desire dripped down my thighs like a great big neon sign.

  With one hand still clamped on the back of my neck, hard enough to leave bruises that would require a lot of foundation tomorrow, Gavriel gripped my hip and finally replaced his fingers with his cock. He pounded into me like he was coming home, a tight fit and a brutal plunge that had my toes off the ground again and the table bucking forward, legs scraping across the stone. With my jeans just barely down my thighs, I couldn’t open my legs all that much, couldn’t ease the snugness or widen my stance to accommodate for him.

  And that seemed to be a part of the game.

  He didn’t bother with a beat for adjustment—just fucked me from the word go, driving into me, slamming me into the table as starlight exploded behind my tightly clenched lids.

  “Gods—”

  “Gavriel will do,” he grunted back, the hand on my neck slowly working into my hair, gripping tight—using it like reins. My head arched back, throat bowed and mouth hanging open. The table groaned. Potted plants swayed and shivered. The wind screamed. Darkness closed in from every side—all of it punctuated by the fae’s dangerous little chuckles.

  I came apart in his arms, with his hand in my hair and the other between my thighs. Gavriel played my clit like we had done this a hundred times before, not just the once, expert in the way he stroked and swirled and pinched just when I needed the added oomph to drop-kick me into the abyss. Hands curling over the tabletop, I screeched into the wood as pleasure ripped me apart from the inside out, heat exploding over my skin and going nuclear in my core. Body clenching around him, the fae who was supposed to be a one and done jerked hard, his rough pounding dropping to a slow, sensuous grind that coaxed out a few tantalizing aftershocks, cold shivers tickling down my spine to my toes.

  Gavriel stilled with a sharp inhale, hips pumping ever so slightly, and when his hand loosened in my hair, it was over. No cuddling. No languid kisses and hazy smiles. He eased away and flopped back against the table, sweat on his brow and a cocky little grin on his lips. Even though my bones had turned to jelly, I couldn’t just lie there, ass out and probably bruised. Wishing we had done this in bed so I could just roll over and pass out, I groaned and slowly pushed off the table, then bent over to tug my panties and jeans up.

  Just then noticing…

  Clippings on the ground. Recently harvested—my eyes narrowed, struggling against the dark and the loopy haze of yet another mind-blowing orgasm from some fae playboy. Fresh belladonna and wolfsbane. Big leaves for drying from both, purple flower heads on the cusp of blooming for the wolfsbane and bell-shaped petals sealed tight on the belladonna.

  Both plants could kill in the right quantities, but from the stems and leaves and petals around his feet…

  Well, that would probably give a fae one hell of a high.

  I snapped upright in a fury. “It was you.”

  He had been sneaking around my fucking greenhouse
s—then lied about it and used sex to distract me.

  What the fuck.

  “What?” Gavriel speared his hand through his hair, then lazily tucked his spent cock into his briefs and zipped his pants up. “What are you on about?”

  “Those,” I hissed, pointing a trembling, rigid finger at the clipping scattered at his feet. “What—did they fall out of your fucking pocket?”

  The fae glanced down, then shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Gavriel—”

  “Oh, stop the melodrama.” He ambled off the table with a lopsided grin, reaching like he intended to do up my jeans. I smacked his hand away, stomach twisting painfully at the thought of him… using me for this. Head cocked, he motioned to his harvest like it was no big deal. “My stash was running a bit low, so I just—”

  “You could have asked me,” I snapped, roughly zipping up my jeans and then struggling for a few embarrassing seconds with the button.

  “This was easier.”

  My initial read on this breathtaking creature had been spot-on: what a giant douchebag. “Get out.”

  Rolling his eyes, Gavriel dropped into a crouch to collect his bounty.

  “Leave them,” I ordered, my wand across the aisle on the other table, the end still lit and nowhere near close enough to use as a threat. Gavriel glanced up at me, smirking, and collected his haul in a single sweep.

  “No.” Stolen blooms back in his pocket, he looked me over with a smirk that made me furious, then left.

  Stewing, I just watched him go, clothes askew and hair a mess, looking thoroughly fucked and feeling it in more ways than one. As soon as the door shut behind him, blotting out the howling wind, I went for my wand and clutched it in a death grip, glaring at his murky outline fading into the black.

  And when he was gone for good, a little voice at the back of my mind whispered what I’d been thinking for weeks now, how I had seen myself ever since that first run-in with Benedict in the stairwell…

  Coward.

  11

  Alecto

  This week had been an absolute horror show, and not even the raw, wild splendor of the highlands kissed by dawn’s first light could change that.

  Lungs burning, legs on fire, I came to the crest of yet another scraggly hill, then finally forced myself to stop at the peak. My breath fell in hard, uneven pants, a stitch prickling in my side, the toll of not running in an eternity and then suddenly thinking I could just go at my old pace setting in immediately.

  Which. You know. Was just perfect. Totally made sense that this was how I’d end the week—dying in the middle of nowhere. Sharpening by the second, the stitch was just the cherry on top of the world’s shittiest sundae.

  Gasping like I had never run a day in my life, pulse pounding between my ears, I stared out across the lush green beauty. August in the highlands had a tinge of autumn to it; my breath, back when it was normal, had fogged when I first stepped out of the castle almost an hour ago, surrounded by lingering stretches of darkness, totally alone.

  I’d wanted that—to run alone, to not talk to a soul until tonight. Even Bjorn was off my radar today, the bullshit of this week stuck to me like darts in my back: not exactly a death sentence, a dart, but add ten of its friends and you were in a world of hurt.

  Gavriel and his lies had started the landslide. Even now, four days later, I was still hurt that not only had he literally robbed me, stealing from my cache, but he had outright lied to my face, then thought I was such a dumb, smitten girl that he could distract with mind-blowing sex.

  And yes, the sex had been awesome. Phenomenal and rough and hot and different, but that changed nothing. As far as I was concerned, never again. I rarely hated myself after a one-night stand, but walking out of the greenhouse that night, rumpled and smelling of him, I did. Sex was supposed to be a distraction from everything else, but I felt just as stupid and naïve as I had since I’d first met Benedict and let him carry on living. Gavriel hadn’t turned into a fun escape—just another problem.

  After him, I’d had three student outbursts during classes. Nothing that I couldn’t handle, but had I wanted to handle them? No. Would I have preferred a den mother saved the day like always? Absolutely. But none of these little displays had been an issue of magic or accidental shifting—just attitude. Just kids being kids, angry and sullen and defiant in the face of authority. Even though I had managed to subdue each episode, I walked out of them shaky and angry, feeling like even more of a failure than usual.

  Yesterday, a much-needed Saturday reprieve, I had gone full hermit inside my room so I could make an actual plan. Finally, indecisiveness went out the window: it was time to build a case against Benedict Hammond. Bring it to the high council of our old northern Ontario town where neither of us had lived since he set my ancestral home on fire and eventually see that he was prosecuted to the full extent of witch law. No murder—that wasn’t my style. No eye-for-an-eye bullshit; I hadn’t the stomach. Despite my trust issues with our justice system, I had been willing to take the chance.

  Then my only witness refused to show up. The academy wasn’t warded, which meant when I performed the summoning ritual, Daigon the PI djinn should have materialized in my bedroom just as he had the last time, spitting curses, pissed as fuck that he had been called on.

  Djinns apparently had serious issues with anything that came with even a whiff of captivity, so summoning him with a spell I had paid some creepy old mage fifteen grand for from my inheritance hadn’t exactly gone over well. But it had done the job back then, way before Root Rot Academy meant a damn thing to me.

  I guess the spell was a onetime thing.

  Because he didn’t show—and if the ritual had worked, he wouldn’t have had a choice. When our work had finished, his end of the bargain delivered and my bank account nearly dry, he must have found a way to circumvent the call.

  Daigon was my only witness—the one being on this planet who could relay exactly what had happened that night without an ounce of bias.

  So.

  There went that plan. My efforts to do this as bloodlessly as possible—poof. A full day of stressing and hair-pulling, trying to get the fucking summoning spell to work, and I had nothing to show for it but bloodshot eyes and a super-fun headache that, despite an hour outside, still hadn’t cleared.

  In fact, now that I’d stopped running, the headache came shrieking back into focus like it had a sick bet with the stitch in my side to see who could hurt me more.

  “Ugh.” My echoing frustration barely made a dent in the landscape, tall yellowing grasses swaying under the morning breeze, sky a brilliant sapphire blue. All this primal beauty should put anyone at ease, knock a sense of wonder into even the most seasoned city slicker—this morning, it was like a giant middle finger to my mood. Polar opposites. Frustration churned in my gut, and desperation made my chest beyond tight, throttling me from the inside.

  Friday evening, Benedict had touched me.

  Innocently. Unintentionally. Loitering around the staff room condiments table with the younger professor crowd, chatting and laughing, I’d been stupid to think there was safety in numbers. He probably hadn’t even noticed the way he gently nudged my arm in passing as he went for a tea refill—but I had. I felt every fucking fingertip on my body. They lingered for hours afterward, and I’d cried myself to sleep that night, once again feeling pathetic and lost, numb and alone, just a little girl frozen in bed as the fire tore through the walls around her.

  Defeat gnawed even deeper into my bones this morning. In the height of my running days, when I used morning or late-night jogs as a distraction in much the same way I did alcohol and sex, a three-hour round-trip was nothing. I’d barely been out an hour today and it was like death had finally come calling.

  And what pissed me off even more was that I should have expected that. It had been ages since I ran properly. I should have started off slow. I should have paced myself. Instead, I just ran—ran from the kids, the work, from Gavriel’s lies and Ben
edict’s unassuming touch. Now some invisible dagger had burrowed into my side and my lungs were working overtime…

  Pathetic. Again.

  Shaking my head, I smoothed my hands over my hair, used to shoving back curls and fighting with them—suddenly needing to fiddle with them. But the pins held strong for once, the annoyingly tight bun at the crown of my skull doing its job.

  And probably making my headache worse.

  Even though I could have spent ages standing at the top of the little hill, staring out to the horizon, high enough to take in the coastline, I turned and headed back. Breakfast was still an hour out, which meant I’d have to hurry if I wanted to slink onto the school grounds unnoticed, head hanging low as I limped along.

  Stupid came easy today, and I quickly fell into the same punishing pace, feet pounding the dusty worn paths through the greenery. I took hills hard, dreading a few of the steeper ones around the academy, and flung myself around turns fast, passing cloisters of shrubs and brambles, bit by bit sinking back into my miserable headspace, totally unaware—

  Until I collided with a body made of stone, so tall and imposing and unyielding that it hurt my pride as much as it stung the rest of me to have not noticed him. Staggering back, panting and sweaty and light-headed, I gawked into the handsome, utterly in-control face of Root Rot’s progressive headmaster.

  Gods, of course I’d barrel straight into Jack Clemonte all the way out here. Trust me to make a complete idiot of myself in front of my boss—again.

  “H-headmaster,” I greeted with a shaky wave, my other hand stabbing hard into my side stitch, my back rounded and thighs quivering. “So s-sorry…”

  “Nonsense. If anything, it was my fault.” That rich, full baritone did wickedly wonderful things to me, but no more than the look of this usually immaculate warlock in jogging gear. A simple white tee stretched across his broad chest, short sleeves exposing deliciously toned biceps for all the world to drool over. Muscle corded down his forearms, veiny and thick and strong, and I noted a distinct lack of his usual gold rings. Below, he sported a pair of simple black track pants with white racing stripes down the sides, the material struggling to contain what I’d already ogled to be glorious tree trunk thighs. Simple running shoes on his feet, worn and durable—made for people who took their jogs very seriously.