Spirited: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance (The Academy of Spirits and Shadows Book 1)

by C. M. Stunich

  “This is what you do to me, Brynn,” he purred, making my toes curl inside my boots, “you warm my spirit.” Air ran his tongue up the side of my neck to the shell of my ear … and it was warm. It was hot. Flub, it felt so flipping good.

  “We,” I started, but then I wasn’t sure what I’d been planning to say so I just closed my eyes again and wrapped my arms around him, holding him close and shoving down all those horrible memories of the blood and the body and the glass coffin …

  All my reasons for not sleeping with ghosts came rushing to the forefront of my mind.

  I didn’t want meaningless sex without a real body to have it with. And I didn’t want emotional sex with a random spirit I didn’t know.

  But I did know Air. I knew him inside and out, and … I was in love with him whether he had a body or not.

  “Tell me to stop or disappear or … if …” He paused and sat up, pulling far enough away that I opened my eyes to look at him. He was as corporeal in that moment as Elijah of Haversey or Professor Cross, and I could see golden strands of hair falling over his forehead, stealing my breath away. Even if he had no breath, I’d give him mine. Every last inhale, every single exhale. “If you want me to get that griffin man, I’ll tell the guards to let him in.”

  My eyes widened, and I swear, I felt tears pressing at the edges of my lids. But screw that. I’d cried so much over the last week, and I was done crying. I had two real options, two decent ones actually. Most people never got to see their dead loved ones again: I could literally hold, fuck, and talk with mine (got to keep a feather this time!). And maybe, just maybe, I could even bring him back to life.

  Not a single other person in a century got that opportunity!

  No flubbing way was I squandering it.

  “You would … let me have Vexer here?” I asked, voice trembling. Air grit his teeth, a muscle in his jaw ticking in anger.

  “Yes,” he ground out, and I could tell that even though he was pissed, he meant it.

  “You would bring another man here and let me have sex with him while you sat in the next room?”

  “I can’t let you do anything, Brynn of Haversey,” Air said with a sad smile and a sharp … exhale?! He was breathing! Not for real, but he was at least going through the motion. And holy ship, I loved it. “You do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. I begged you not to go to that Grandberg house, remember?”

  “Yes, and look how that turned out: I brought back a cousin and a spell,” I said, but I could already feel my heart melting in my chest, and I had a feeling my no sex with ghosts rule was going right out the window. “But Air, you … I can’t believe you’d bring Vexer here for me.”

  “If you need him,” he choked out, but it sounded more like he wished he was saying if I could murder him in his sleep, “or if you want him, then he’s yours.”

  “I love you, too,” I blurted, and I felt the heat rush to my cheeks in a violent wave. I was probably the color of Jasinda’s copperberry lipstick.

  “Oh, Brynn,” Air breathed and then his mouth was on mine, and it felt like my world was repairing itself, knitting back together in slow careful loops. Gently, he teased my tongue with his own, working sounds from me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard before. They were embarrassing as Hell, and I prayed to Haversey’s erect nipples that nobody was listening in on us. “Brynn …”

  The prince’s body got warmer, brighter, more substantial until … I felt his heart beating inside his chest, and then that’s when the tears came anyway. I cracked my lids and looked at him through watery eyes, the only clue that he was a ghost, the very faint limn of blue-white light around him. But everything else was exactly as I remembered. This was Air; this was my Air.

  Wrapping my legs around him, I encouraged him to thrust his hips against me, grind the fullness of his hardened cock against my panties. I could tell I was already wet, soaking the fabric and readying myself for him, but first …

  “One second,” I breathed, breaking our kiss reluctantly. Air rolled to the side, onto my wing, and then over to the edge of the bed so I could yank it out from underneath him. Scrambling up, I moved over to the box near the bedroom door and dug around until I found the potions for spirit birth control. There was no way I was getting pregnant anytime soon—especially not with a shadow. Sure, the fox thing around Dyre’s neck was cute, but who knew what kind of horrible things it could do, would do, or had done in the past?

  My mind couldn’t stop thinking about the boar that’d gored Air to death.

  Shaking my head, I popped the cork out, dumped the cherry flavored liquid down my throat and tossed the bottle aside. One dose was good for two weeks. As I rose to my feet, I gave myself a goal: I had seven bottles of that potion—including the one I’d just taken—and three months in my first quarter at the Royal College. Well, plus this next week. So just enough to get through my first grading period at the academy.

  I would solve the mystery of this resurrection spell by then.

  Before then hopefully, but … that was my personal deadline.

  “I always hated that you kept that stuff around,” Air said as I moved back over to the bed and knelt on the edge of it, looking down at him, my wings folded carefully behind me. If we wanted to … disrobe, he’d have to unbutton both rows in the back of my jacket, below the bases of my wings. It was the only way to slip into—or out of—the tight-fitting uniform with those flubbing things.

  “Why?” I asked as I watched the prince’s body fade just enough that I could see the outlines of the pillow beneath him. Reaching out, I put a palm to the side of Air’s cheek and he slowly warmed back up, turning corporeal again.

  “Because it meant you were planning on sleeping with a spirit, with … anyone at all really. When all along, I just wanted you to be mine.”

  Bending down, I put both hands on the bed and pressed my mouth to Air’s, tasting the tangy cherry flavor of the potion, my skin rippling with goose bumps as he put warm fingers to the back of my neck.

  “We missed your birthday,” I mumbled, and felt a wave of sadness and melancholy roll over me. Air’s twenty-first birthday, his most important coming-of-age milestone … had literally passed by like it was nothing. The kingdom would’ve been celebrating; I wondered how the queen had handled the prince’s absence? I’d been so checked-out lately, I hadn’t the slightest clue.

  “We did,” Air purred, putting his forehead up against mine. “But I’ll take my present now, no harm done.”

  “Oh, you’ll take it now?” I asked, feeling Air’s hand slide around my back, deftly locating the buttons below my wings. The ease with which he undid them made me nervous. How many other girls’ jackets had he taken off like this?

  No, no, Brynn. Do not go there.

  Sucking in a sharp breath, I leaned into Air’s touch, our lips working together, tongues tangling in a slow, languorous dance. The buttons on the left side of my jacket came undone, and I felt the cool swirl of a breeze against my skin. With careful expertise, the prince started on the other side, freeing my wings before redirecting his attention to the row of buttons on the front.

  Once he had them all undone, he slid his palms up my belly and palmed the heavy weight of my breasts through my lacy black bra.

  “Say happy birthday,” he murmured, and I shivered in response, feeling his fingers knead the tender flesh with hard, demanding motions.

  “I’m not saying that,” I whispered back as Air grinned and sat up, moving around behind me. I tried to turn to face him, but he reached out and put a hand on my lower back, bare palm skimming my spine.

  “Try it like this?” Air asked, sliding his right hand under my skirt and across the curve of my ass. I looked at him over my shoulder for a moment, cheeks flaming. Pretty sure both sets of cheeks were red actually which didn’t bode well for me since I thought Air might be able to tell from back there.

  “Don’t think you’re getting special treatment just because you’re dead,” I mumbled, but I sc
ooted further onto the bed anyway. Having sex in my school uniform? Kind of scandalous right? “Besides, my birthday’s coming up, too, so …”

  “Trust me, Brynn of Haversey, this is a birthday present we’ll both enjoy.”

  I rolled my eyes, but scooted onto the bed and slipped out of my jacket anyway, sitting back on my heels so Air could reach the straps of my bra. Instead, he slid his hands around my waist, palms against my lower belly and held me close against him.

  “I’m sorry that it took a catastrophe for me to finally stop being an asshole,” he whispered against my ear, and I folded my wings back around him, penning him in between the feathered appendages.

  “Let’s not talk about tragedy anymore,” I said, curling my fingers around his and closing my eyes. “In fact … let’s not talk much at all.”

  Air grinned against the side of my neck and kissed me on the edge of my jaw.

  “Deal.”

  Sliding the jacket off my shoulders, the prince chucked it onto the floor and left me feeling more exposed than I’d ever felt before in my life. It wasn’t just my skin that was showing; it was everything. My heart, my spirit …

  Fingers slid along my ribs and around to my back, brushing against the feathers on the underside of my wings. When Air found my bra, he unhooked it with a single flick of his fingers and then slowly, carefully, slid it down my arms, tossing it aside and taking my bare breasts in both hands. Dropping my head back, I groaned, lids fluttering as Airmienan pressed his mouth to my neck, sucking on my skin and sending wave after wave of pleasure through me. It started at my throat, pulsed in the hardened peaks of my nipples, and collected at the apex of my thighs. I was hot and wet and empty, desperate to be filled.

  “Goddess help me,” I breathed as Air pulled back and kissed his way down my spine, releasing my breasts and then carefully placing a hand between my wings to push my chest into the bed. I bit my lower lip as my fingers curled into the blankets. “Where are you going?” I asked and felt Air smile against my lower back.

  “To give you your half of the birthday present,” he whispered, pushing my pleated skirt up around my hips. His fingers curled under the waistband of my panties and carefully dragged them over my ass and down. I let Air maneuver my legs until the underwear were no more, tossed on the floor to join the matching bra. Before I could even prepare myself for what I knew was going to happen, his hand was curling around the swollen heat between my thighs and cupping it tightly, making me groan and writhe in response. Slipping his thumb into my waiting heat, Air tested me to see how wet I was at the same time he rubbed my clit.

  “You’re killing me,” I choked out, squeezing my eyes shut tight against the surge of both pleasure and emotion. I was feeling … all kinds of things right now. Regret, joy, happiness, fear. There were so many competing emotions that I decided to give into my body, give myself over to the physical pleasure. Because ghost or not, it felt good to be touched like this.

  “Don’t die yet,” Air whispered, removing his hand. He grabbed a few pillows, propped one under my hips, and then took the other for himself, settling between my legs and putting his face to my cunt. With a sharp flick of his tongue, the prince sent violent spirals of pleasure shuddering through me. He licked along the length of me, making me writhe as he explored every spot between my thighs with his mouth. No stone was left unturned.

  And it felt good.

  Like, really flubbing good.

  Air kissed, licked, and caressed me with his mouth until I started to whimper, my body turning into a pliant mess. And then he slipped two fingers in and kept going, teasing my greedy pulsing insides as he swirled his tongue around my clit and then sucked it into his mouth.

  My body bucked and my hips thrust back into his hand as a low, guttural groan slipped out of me, barely muffled by the blankets I was now biting down on. Air kept sucking, moving his fingers in and out of me as my muscles fluttered and then clamped around him, a warmth exploding from my core and making my fingers tingle. It took everything I had in me to not fight that orgasm, thrash and tear myself away from him; the pleasure was almost too intense.

  And as if that weren’t enough, Air slid his fingers from my heat, gripped the curve of my hip with his left hand and used his right to fit us together. The head of his cock bumped against my wet and extremely ready opening.

  “My turn,” he whispered as he pushed inside of me, fighting the tightness of my muscles as I struggled to recover from my previous climax. Before I was even finished, he drove in all the way, slamming his pelvis against my ass and teasing me in ways I’d never been teased before.

  Eh, like I said, I wasn’t very sexually experienced …

  This position was … new to me.

  And I liked it.

  I loved it.

  Air held me tight and moved inside of me with fiercely tender, but possessive strokes. Each one sent new sensations travelling to my limbs, making my fingers curl in the blankets, my toes curl in my boots. I pushed back into him, rising up onto all fours and curling my wings back to embrace Air’s body the same way I was doing to his cock. Peeling the fingers off one of my hips, Airmienan grabbed my wing at the joint and squeezed it, making me groan as he took a fistful of feathers and yanked just hard enough to steal a groan from my lips.

  His other hand came up and tangled in my ridiculously long hair until he had a tight hold on my scalp and my wing. Pumping his hips, Air filled me with the thickness of his shaft, drove into me until I felt like there was nowhere else to go.

  Moans perfumed the darkness of my bedroom as he worked my body to the edge of insanity, and then with one, last violent thrust, pushed me right off the cliff.

  Throwing my head back, I let out a dramatic sort of sound as Air grunted and came hard, his climax making echoes of magick shiver through the room in hot, pulsing waves. It mimicked the tight clenching of my own body around his cock just before I collapsed into the pillows … drooling.

  Ugh. It really wasn’t the prettiest sight, I was sure.

  Rolling off of me with a groan, Air landed on his back on the bed, still corporeal, still beautiful, panting as if he were still alive. Lying there next to him, it wasn’t so hard to imagine that as a possibility.

  “Happy birthday,” I grumbled and then turned my face into the pillows to hide the redness of my cheeks.

  “Happy birthday to you, too,” he breathed, and then he was leaning over and kissing me on the temple, a soft sensual brush of lips that made everything seem like it was going to be okay.

  Whether it was or not was a different story altogether.

  Vexer met us at the market the next afternoon, dressed in a sleeveless royal blue tunic that made the tattoos on his hands and forearms seem that much brighter, his gray eyes catching on mine through the crowd, stealing my breath away.

  “Part of me hates him a little bit,” Elijah whispered in my ear, standing on my right and watching the big griffin man weave his way toward us.

  “Agreed,” Airmienan growled from behind me, but I ignored him. He needed to stay invisible and out of sight, and if a spirit whisperer came anywhere near him with the second sight, we all needed to run like hell.

  “He seems like a nice guy to me,” Talon said, sighing as he squinted up at the burning brightness of the sun. The open air market was bustling today as students prepared for the upcoming move-in and orientation at the Royal College. “The perfect compeer.”

  “Would you all stop saying compeer?” I choked out as Jasinda tossed me a look over her shoulder. She was browsing through a stall of dried flowers, most of them imported from other countries, some of them from other continents even. But they didn’t have the one we needed. Of course they didn’t. That would be too easy, right? “Nobody here is anyone else’s compeer for Haversey’s sake. The only person I’m even dating right now is Air.”

  Swear on the Goddess’ tits, I felt him smirking behind me.

  “You’re not dating the master of the Travelers’ Guild?” Talon aske
d skeptically as Jasinda bartered with the stall owner and Matz scribbled notes on a sheet of parchment attached to a clipboard. The cost the merchant was quoting for a single bunch of the ever-dark flowers was astronomical. Of course, once my handler produced the royal crest the queen had given to Matz, his price decreased dramatically. “Well, I have a feeling that’d be news to him.”

  Vex approached us, a mountain of a man with wings just a tad bigger than mine. Blergh. I was cursed to topple over for the rest of eternity. And also, I was a tad sore between the thighs, shifting uncomfortably as Vexer paused just inches from me, his muscular form casting a shadow across me that gave a welcome relief from the sun.

  “Good morning, Brynn of Haversey,” he said, his silver eyes sparkling as he took me in from head to toe, clearly very appreciative of the sleeveless red tunic, black leather pants—why did I wear leather in the hot sun?!—and white boots. He didn’t let his eyes linger on my breasts, and he didn’t leer at me, but I could still feel the wild heat in his gaze.

  Crap.

  A feather popped off and drifted in the breeze.

  Oh, come on, Haversey!

  But seriously, Talon was right: Vexer really did look at me like he thought we were a thing.

  When did that happen?!

  Why did I care?!

  Vexer was … honestly, pretty flubbing amazing.

  “You smell like grass,” I blurted and he blinked at me, eyes crinkling at the edges before the big man leaned down … and kissed me.

  Air made a growling sound behind me that Vex obviously couldn’t hear, but holy ship. He tasted like sunshine and lemonade, and he smelled like grass and wildflowers. Alive. He smelled and tasted and felt alive, heart pounding against his broad chest as I pressed my palm flat against it.