by ERIN BEDFORD
My grandmother made a humming, pleased sound that pulled my attention out of my thoughts. “Yes, well. While I admit the thought of you dating four boys was appalling at first, they do care for you and know how to keep you happy.” She made a small amused hug. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll see about gaining a few extra beaus myself.”
“Grandmother!” I gaped at the phone my cheeks hurting from how wide my smile had gotten. “What about Grandfather?”
She made a little clicking noise with her mouth, and I could just imagine the haughty expression on her face. “Your grandfather is the love of my life, but he might appreciate some help with the load at times. We aren’t getting any younger, you know. It’s as good of a time as any to take chances.”
She paused for a moment and then, as if talking to herself she murmured, “Perhaps we’ll take up swinging.”
“I’m not hearing this,” I groaned and rubbed a hand down my face. “I choose to be blissfully ignorant of all of this."
“Oh, Maxine,” she scoffed. “I’m only joking. I’d never...”
Ha. That’s what she said, but the way she was going on about it made me wonder if she did want another set of hands or two. Either way, it wasn’t something I wanted to think about. I had my own guys to worry about.
My heart warmed at that thought. My guys. Well, they certainly were. Who would have known that when I got the letter inviting me to Winchester Academy that it would come with such delicious perks? Certainly, not me.
“In any case, we should talk about your next party,” my grandmother continued as if she hadn’t just been talking about swinging with other couples. “Christmas will be coming in a few short months, and if we want to get a head start on things-"
I groaned and flopped down on the edge of my bed. “No. No more parties. Not for me. If you want to have one, go for it.”
“But Maxine, it’s just not the same-” Her words were cut off by a knock on my dorm room door.
I stood from the bed and headed to the door. “Grandmother, as much as I am enjoying this conversation, I have class. Can I call you later?”
I opened the door just as we made our goodbyes. With a grin, I leaned on the edge of the door to peer up at a pair of green eyes, Dale’s eyes. I let my gaze drift down over Dale Varnes. His messenger bag hung across the front of his button-down shirt, the front pocket of which was filled with pens and God knows what else. Dale was a nerd but a hot one. Beneath that crisp white shirt and thick black glasses was a gloriously muscled beast that not only knew how to use his mouth to snap back at any who would dare challenge him to a battle of wits, but also how to send me into knee buckling toe-curling bliss.
Right now, that mouth was tempting me something fierce. I stepped toward him and pressed my mouth to his. Our mouths melded together, and his tongue flicked out to slide against the line of my lips. I eagerly granted him entry and pushed my front against him.
He’d cut his auburn hair recently so it no longer fell completely in his face, but it was still long enough that I could tangle my fingers in it when we kissed. So that’s what I did, tugging on a few strands until he let out a pleading moan to release him.
With a few deep breaths, I did so, stepping back from him to smile softly. “Hey, I was just heading out.”
Dale pushed his glasses up his nose and gave me a lopsided grin, his mouth puffy from our kiss. “I know. We have the next class together.”
My brows furrowed. “Uh, what?”
Dale and I were in different years. In fact, all my guys except Paul were ahead of me in school. While Dale was only one year ahead, Ian and Aidan were scheduled to graduate and head out into the wider world at the end of this year, something I’d been trying not to think about too much.
Taking my question in stride, Dale took me by the arm and closed the door behind us as we stepped into the hallway. Pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, he unfolded it and handed it to me.
Right there on Mondays at 3 o'clock, he had the exact same class as me.
Pottery.
Why would a magical school even offer Pottery as an elective? I would think that when they had so many other fascinating things to teach us, they wouldn’t even be offering bird courses, one you could fly right through, but seeing as I had finally caught up to the basics of being a witch, I actually had time to take classes outside of the core curriculum. So, pottery and broom flying were on my list of courses this year.
I know right? Broom flying. I’d jumped into another world where I thought things like wand waving and broom flying were nonsense, but apparently, they’re not. No, they were just old fashioned, so, of course, when I saw it on the list of classes, I had to pick it.
Pottery, on the other hand, was more of me giving myself an easy A than anything else, but now that I knew Dale was in it with me, I was happy I picked it.
I clutched his arm and grinned happily as we walked down the hallway toward our classroom. A few people still gave us looks every once in a while, especially when I was with all four of them, but I was determined not to let it bother me.
“So, did we have a mind-reading moment, or did you sneak a peek at my schedule?” I cocked a brow at him, giving Dale a sly grin.
Dale scratched his cheek with a finger as he glanced down at the floor. “I might have used my administrative privileges to find out what class I could take where I’d get to spend more time with you.”
I grinned at his bashfulness and then scoffed. “And pottery was the only thing you could find? I have four other classes you could have stalked me in.”
Dale rolled his eyes and wrapped his arm around my waist so he could whisper in my ear. “But none of those require you to take a bath afterward.”
My body heated and shuddered with desire. I pressed my thighs together and licked my lips at the prospect of showering with Dale. The last time we’d showered together had been more than a little fun and a whole lot of naughty.
“And besides,” he kissed the side of my head, “I can’t very well take magical herbalism and Advanced Potions two years in a row.”
“And Arithmetic?” I sneaked a peek at him.
Dale lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Numbers and I have a love-hate relationship that I am perfectly fine with.”
I stopped him with a pull of his shirt, a smirk tugging at my lips. “And here I thought you were the nerdy one.”
“Geek. Not nerd.” Dale snorted and shook his head before lowering his face down to mine. “I don’t play those little board games or whatnot... and not every geek is perfect at every subject. I’m better with dates and prose.”
“What about broom flying?”
He shrugged sheepishly. “Scared of heights.”
“That’s okay.” I pushed up on the toes of my tennis shoes and pecked him on the lips. “I have learned my way around a broom recently. I think I can drive for the both of us.” I giggled and kissed him again.
“Is that right?” Dale chuckled his pitch going low and husky the way I liked it. “Maybe after class, you can give me a lesson?”
I snuck a glance around at the hallway mostly deserted by students already in their classes and snuck my hand down to cup the hard-on beneath his slacks. He groaned and kissed me more feverishly as my hand gripped his length.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice cut in. “Are you coming in or not?”
Dale and I jerked apart, the hand that had been on his cock shoved behind my back. A woman with long wavy hair and big glasses looked down at us without amusement. Her long nose was pointed in the air, and if she hadn’t been wearing something straight out of the Sixties, she’d have given my grandmother a run for her money with her haughty gaze.
“Sorry, yes. We have this class.” Dale cleared his throat, his face all business now, but the fine blush that covered his cheeks made me squeal on the inside.
I kept my mouth promptly shut and ducked my head, doing my best not to grin at being caught not only making out in the hallway but well on our way to hea
vy petting. Could you say mortifying? I was so glad my grandmother wasn’t here to see it. She’d be changing her tune about my wizards like that.
“Fine, then I suggest you take your seats.” The hippy professor moved away from the door to allow Dale and I duck in. We found two spots in the back of the room that were miraculously empty and next to each other. The other fifteen students in the class gave us curious looks before facing the front.
Our hippy instructor stood before the class and then with a wave of her hand, the marker at the wipe board wrote out a name. “Mrs. Kitty Pottington.”
Before any of us could laugh over the irony of her name and the class she taught, Mrs. Pottington slapped a ruler on her desktop. “Now that I have your attention... there will be no laughing or giggling of any kind. You may call me Kitty or Mrs. Pottington, nothing else.” She surveyed the room, holding out her ruler as if it were a dowsing rod that could search out any perpetrators.
I met Dale’s eyes with a sidelong glance and suppressed a grin, but before even a split-second had passed, Kitty slapped the ruler again.
“Eyes up front. Those of you who think that this will be a bird course or an easy A, you have come to the wrong place.” She paused and took a deep breath as if she needed to calm herself. When she spoke again, her voice took on a lilting dreamy quality to it. “Pottery is like making love. You must be gentle with your clay, mold it, shape it into something that will love you and others in return.” Her loving expression hardened, and she slapped the ruler again. “There will be no hanky panky.”
A male with almost white hair raised a shaky hand. “Uh. Where’s the pottery stuff?”
He had a point. The classroom had none of those wheel things or a stove to cook them, not even a shelf for materials. There were only chairs, Mrs. Pottington’s desk, and that was it.
Kitty didn’t seem upset by the student’s question. She grinned almost forcefully and approached him. “You want to touch the clay?”
The blonde’s eyes skittered around the room and then he nodded hesitantly.
“Well, too bad!” She slapped the ruler against her thigh, and the sound of it made me wince. “You cannot touch the clay until you learn how to love the clay. Learn how to mold it and yourself so that your magic does not hurt it.” She had a heartbreaking smile on her face as her hand opened in front of her as if someone were giving her a gift.
We stared at her quizzically. What the fuck was wrong with her? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Kitty was huffing a bit too much of that marijuana they loved so much.
“Now!” Kitty straightened up as her eyes moved like sharp lasers across the classroom. “We will begin with the basics: the creation of the first clay pot.”
The room suppressed a groan... or at least, I know I did. So much for taking an easy class.
Chapter 4
Tuesday was the day of my broom flying lessons. The class was held out in the football field, which was weird because I didn't even know we had a team, let alone a field. The field was a bit different than the one back at the high school. It was bigger for one. For another, there were several sets of extra lines that I had no idea what were for. Asking wasn’t even an option because the teacher for this class had a broomstick shoved so far up his ass that he’d need a proctologist to remove it.
"Now, before we begin, everyone has to sign this release form," Coach Heathers announced in a Scottish accent, making him sound even angrier than he probably was. He handed out those forms as he walked down the line of students. A blue baseball cap was perched on his head, featuring the school's crest prominently on it, an owl with a scroll clasped in its claw, while doing nothing to hide the curly red hair underneath. He was pale, speckled with freckles, and wore a red t-shirt with the school logo on the left pocket that was shoved into his shorts. Knee-length socks covered his thick legs that somehow he had been able to fit into his tennis shoes.
I'd seen him around the campus more than a few times, usually talking to other teachers and athletes. I'd even saw him talk to Aidan once but I didn't know sport Aidan played until before when I talked to Ian about it. I realized it didn't know a lot about my large stoic boyfriend. He was hot sure. A good listener. And while he was a man of few words Aidan was sweet. But what he did in his spare time? No idea.
I'd always thought video games were the only thing he was really into. I mean, he wore a gamer tee almost every single day, but then again, he definitely didn't have the typical gamer body, not with all those lovely rippling muscles that made those gamer tees look one flex away from ripping open.
Coach Heathers went on about safety and liability while we quickly signed the wavers he had handed out. "Now, no one is allowed to fly above three feet until I have signed you off. Understood?" His fuzzy brows burrowed over his fierce eyes as he stared us down like we would fuck up and he knew it. "If I see you above three feet before I give you the go ahead, you are out. I don't care who your mommy or daddy is, you got it?" His eyes shot to a few select students. Unfortunately, one of those were me.
I didn't want to let my grandparents’ name affect how others treat me, but for some reason, the more I protested about it, the more people treated me differently. I'd given up by this point.
Taking the form and pen that’d been handed out, I bent over and pressed the paper and pen to my thigh, scrawling my name on the bottom of the form. I started to hand my form back, but the sound of a rolling cart drew my attention away from the scowling coach. Aidan, surprise, surprise, pushed a large metal cart on wheels filled with wooden brooms. My lips curled up as I caught sight of him and gave him a little wave.
Aidan, wearing gym shorts and a white tank top, inclined his head at me. His eyes smiled at me even if his lips barely moved. I noticed a few other women in the class checking him out, and my first instinct was to mark my territory. Before I could even think of how to do that, Coach Heathers snapped at us.
"Grab a broom and get on the twenty-yard line." Coach Heathers gestured wildly downfield before turning his back on us to flip through the signed forms.
Several females hurried over the basket Aidan stood beside and fluttered their eyelashes at him. A brunette girl with a nice figure and lashes that I would kill for placed her hand on Aidan's bulging bicep. "Could you tell me where the twenty-yard line is?"
My eyes narrowed and my lips pressed into a thin line. I pushed my way through the crowd prepared to show that girl exactly who Aidan belonged to, but I wasn't needed. Aidan shifted out of her grasp and pointed a finger across the field to the line nearby. He didn't even bother to say anything to her before he turned back to the crowd.
Happiness warmed my heart, and I waited with bated breath for my turn to come. When Aidan handed me a broom, our fingers brushed against one another and I smiled.
"Hey, I didn't know you were a teacher’s aide too?"
Aidan placed his hand on top of mine and gave me a little jerk to pull me close. My chest bumped against his stomach, and his musky masculine scent filled my nostrils. "You never asked."
I beamed up at him, a bit breathless from our closeness. "I'll have to remedy that."
After brushing a strand of hair that had escaped from my ponytail back, Aidan ducked his head to brush his lips against mine. I sighed into the kiss. The brunette from before and a few others made disgusted sounds and muttered something I didn't care to try to decipher before dispersing around us.
“Templar, make out on your own time,” Coach Heathers shouted. “I need your eyes on the air, not behind your eyelids."
As we parted, Aidan brushed his thumb across my cheek, and I leaned into his touch, pulling the edge of my lip between my teeth. When I finally moved to join my class at the twenty-yard line, Aidan smacked my ass. I jumped in place and shot him a look over my shoulder, but he had already turned to the next person in line. Shaking my head and laughing to myself, I took my place on the line.
The girl next to me fake coughed, "Slut."
I rolled my eyes and did
n’t bother to acknowledge the slight. Mature of me, right? Well, I wouldn't have been that way in high school, but when you're dating four guys, you kind of had to let things go. I'd already learned that the hard way with Sabrina. Who for some weird reason now had attached herself to me. Maybe it was because of Monica? I didn't know. Regardless, she was being nice, and that usually meant trouble. I just hoped it wasn't meant for me.
Coach Heathers walked down the line of students, his eyes scanning us as we held our broomsticks close. One guy was pretending like his broom was now his overly large dick, and Coach Heathers gave a small fake chuckle before grabbing the end of it and jerking it out of the guy's hands.
"This is not a toy,” he growled. “It is not a substitute for your sad excuse of a dick, and it is not a sword or any other kind of innuendo you sex-driven balls of hormones can think of. It is a mode of transportation." He barked at us in his Scottish accent which might have been hot in his day but now only made him sound like a hot head. "Now, you take your broom like so..." He held the guy's broom in front of his body with the handle parallel to the ground.
I held my broom out like Coach Heathers showed us. The others followed suit, none of them laughing now.
"Now, push the broom away from your palm and use your magic to make it hover." Coach Heathers did precisely that, making the broom float just below his hand.
The rest of us tried to follow him but every single broom landed on the ground with a loud thwack. Groans and muttered curses filled the field as we tried again and again to get the broom to float.
"Come on, you pansies. It's a piece of wood, not a damn building. It can't be that hard." There were a few chuckles from the guys, but a single glare from Coach Heathers shut them up real quick.
I took a deep breath and blocked them all out. I grabbed at the ball of light inside of me, the source of my magic, pushed it toward my hand, and visualized it going into the broom. On my next exhale, I uncurled my fingers from the broom and waited for the sound of the broom crashing to the ground.
