“So you manipulate fire,” Sagely guessed. “No air witches?”
“Not enough room in the truck,” Quill said. “We have a couple. It’s pretty epic when the four of us work together.”
“And now five, once you learn to master yours,” Raina said, her eyes lighting with excitement. “We’ve never had a fifth. This will be so rad.”
“I wonder what it will be like,” Shaneesha mused.
Sagely turned to Raina again. “Thanks. You know, for saving me from Fox.”
Quill cleared his throat and glanced at her like he was about to speak, but he shut his mouth and shook his head instead. She could feel their bond, though. She wasn’t the only one struggling with jealousy.
“Like you said, you’re one of us now,” Raina said with a shrug, looking out the window. “Whether I like it or not.”
“Well, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”
“We take care of our sisters, even if we don’t like them.”
“At least you’re honest,” Sagely muttered, turning back around as the truck chugged into the drive leading to the cinderblock cabin.
“You’re a good fighter,” Raina said grudgingly. “It’s not your fault you’re part faerie.”
She said the last word like it was something dirty. Before Sagely could answer, Quill stopped the truck and they all climbed out. Eli ran out, trailed by a group of young witches and warlocks. They started unloading the boxes while Sagely held Muffy, who was just waking up after missing all the excitement.
Twenty-Two
After letting Muffy wander and do her business, Sagely looked around for Quill, hoping he’d give her some direction of what came next, but he had disappeared inside with the others. She found him in his room. He was wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist, and it was all she could do to keep breathing. She seemed to have forgotten how.
His chest was so sculpted, his shoulders so muscular, his abs flat and strong as a washboard. When at last she tore her eyes away, he was grinning at her, with one eyebrow cocked.
“Ready for the mud baths?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said, biting back her own smile.
A few minutes later, they were standing at a tiny room off the cavern that smells like eggs. Now she knew why. This room smelled like sulfur so strongly that she was surprised she couldn’t see clouds of green gas in the air like a cartoon movie. The bubbling, green mud looked like something out of a cartoon movie, too—something like a swamp. Or maybe a cauldron of cartoon witch’s brew.
“Come on in, the mud’s great,” Quill said, sliding into the side of the pool one leg at a time. When he was seated, it almost looked like he was sitting in a hot tub. Taking a deep breath, Sagely stepped in, sliding down across from Quill. The pit was shaped like a hot tub underneath the mud, and the mud itself was divine. It felt like she was submerged in liquid velvet. The warm mud coated her skin, and she had to hold back the urge to just moan with the pleasure of it.
“Why didn’t you make me do this earlier?” she asked, leaning her head back against the edge of the bath.
“I tried,” he said with a grin. “I guess this is one of our rain checks.”
Suddenly she was not sure she wanted them to be called rain checks. All she could think about when he said that was Raina. She pushed the jealousy away and said, “I guess so.”
“Why are you sitting so far away?” he asked. “Don’t be scared. You can come over here.”
She realized then that maybe she had thought he was still mad at her. But she could tell by the huge grin on his face and his gesture with his mud coated hand for her to join him that everything was okay between them. She slid across the hot tub, relieved.
“How about those other rain checks?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“What other rain checks?” she asked with a mischievous smile.
“This one,” he said, sliding his hands behind her neck. He pulled her in, his gorgeous, gorgeous lips covering hers. She melted into him, the combination of the relaxing atmosphere around them and the magic vibrating through her body making her forget everything for a moment.
She was sunk in pleasure, wallowing in it. His lips moved over hers, caressing them, nibbling them, needing them. At last his tongue slid into her mouth, hot and thirsty. His warm hand slid against her neck, coating her skin with mud. She didn’t care. She just wanted him to keep touching her.
But after a moment, it was all too overwhelming.
Her attraction to him, the magic, the heat in the room and between them. She pulled back, breathing hard. Quill’s eyes swam with desire.
“Sagely…” he said, but he didn’t add anything else.
She drew back from him a little, back from the intimacy of the moment. “So how do we get this stuff off?” she asked, examining her green-coated hands.
“We wash very…” He trailed a finger down her skin under the surface of the mud. A tingle shimmied from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, making her toes curl. “Very… Thoroughly.”
For a moment, she didn’t answer. She was thinking of things she’d rather not think about, things that had happened when she was a kid. Things that, for some insane reason, she was about to tell someone after keeping it hidden for all these years.
“What’s wrong?” Quill asked, a frown forming between his eyebrows. His eyes searched hers, their green a deeper shade than usual. She shook her head, not sure she could go through with this.
What would it get to her? There was no point.
She was telling herself all the things she’d told herself all those years, but this time, it wasn’t working.
“I can tell when something’s wrong,” Quill said quielty. “Tell me what it is. You’re all dark now. And be careful if you use magic right now, because it will be dark.”
“I don’t think you want to know this,” she said slowly, but she didn’t think he was going to give in.
“I do, though,” he said, stroking the frown off her forehead with his thumb. “Tell me. I want to know you, Sagely. Everything about you. Every part of you. Even the dark parts.”
She let out her breath in a rush. “I’ve never told anyone this, and if you tell anyone or use it against me in any way, or throw it in my face, I will kill you. I’m not saying that lightly. I will freaking explode your head.”
“Okay okay,” he said. “I’d think you would trust me after today.” He looked at her hard.
“I can’t believe you did that, by the way,” she said. “I can’t believe you stood up for me against your coven.”
“You’re important to me,” he said. His face went serious, his eyes locked on hers. “You’re important.”
“Thank you.” She wasn’t sure what else to say. He was definitely not like commoner guys, and that was definitely a good thing. She didn’t know if anyone had ever told her she was important, not in so many words. Her parents had made her feel important. But since then, no one had made her feel that way.
“That was a nice change of topic,” Quill said with a small smile. “But I want to know what you were going to say.”
Again, she hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to gain from this revelation. She hadn’t told anyone since right after it happened. For the first time in her life, she suddenly wanted to, and not just because she was afraid of what power it had to turn her magic into darkness. This was something even scarier. It meant she was thinking about a future with him.
A future where it might affect their relationship, where he might need to know this. Maybe it was a defense tactic to drive him away, the way she’d driven away other men. She swallowed hard and opened her mouth to speak. “After my parents died, and I was sent to a foster home, I was abused.”
Quill’s hand pulsed around hers, and his face darkened like a deadly storm. His eyebrows drew close, the frown on his forehead murderous. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “A foster brother. I tried to tell my foster parents, but t
hey just shut me down. I was there for two years. After I told them, they must have asked him, because it got worse. When I left, I got a great family. They were everything a foster kid dreams of. I was lucky to have that experience. A lot of foster kids don’t get the good family after the bad one. My family loved me, they lived comfortably. They just wanted a child. They gave me everything I asked for that they could afford. And what I asked for was Tae Kwon Do. I wanted to be able to defend myself, to take care of myself if anything ever happened like that again.”
When she stopped speaking at last, Quill’s hand was like steel around hers, squeezing it so hard she was losing feeling in her fingers. What was it with witches and the death grip?
For a minute, he didn’t speak, and her heart began to pound. She’d never told anyone this before, so she had nothing to compare his reaction to. When at last he turned to her, his jaw was clenched, the muscle jumping as he swallowed. His green eyes glowed, almost ultraviolet in their intensity.
“It’s not your fault,” he said fiercely.
Sagely pried her fingers loose. “I know it’s not my fault,” she snapped. “What the hell kind of thing is that to say? I was eight.”
“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his voice tense with barely suppressed rage.
“Nothing,” she said, standing. Thick, warm mud clung to her entire body. “I’m going to go shower. This is making me claustrophobic.”
In truth, she wasn’t claustrophobic. She just needed to get away for a minute, to breathe. To put away those memories where she’d stored them for years, where they belonged. Far, far from her mouth, from the ears of people who would never understand.
By the time she was scrubbed clean in the shower, she already felt stupid. What did she expect him to say?
When she stepped out of the bathroom, into the tunnel, she collided with a hot, mud-covered marble statue. That’s how hard his body felt, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Quill said. She wasn’t sure what he was talking about, if it would be awkward now that she’d acted like a complete psycho and showed him how totally screwed up she was.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I was ready for that,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you.”
“If that’s what you call a blow-up, this will be smooth sailing,” he said, smiling down at her.
“So you’re not mad at me?” she asked, giving him a coy smile and trailing her fingers from his chest, down his stomach, sliding slowly in the mud.
His eyes stayed serious for a moment, as if he were contemplating whether to play along. But when she traced a finger along the top of his shorts, he smiled. “You’d better let me go shower off before I lose all control, seeing you in that towel for so long.”
“Make it a cold one,” she teased.
“Oh, I will,” he said, his eyes lingering on her body. “Trust me.”
“Well, you did get mud all over me again, too,” she said. “Maybe I’ll join you.”
“What happened to taking it slow?”
“We’re just showering,” she said. “Totally innocent.”
“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”
“Not even a little,” she said, ducking back into the bathroom.
Twenty-Three
Thirty minutes later, they emerged. True to his word, Quill was a perfect gentleman. Mostly.
Just as they stepped out of the bathroom into the corridor, Raina stepped through her door. She stopped short, her mouth falling open. It would’ve been funny if Sagely hadn’t caught the wave of pure pain rolling off her.
Raina recovered quickly, though, the flicker of hurt covered by her usual poise. “I was just coming to apologize for the way I acted today,” she said. “But I guess it’s not necessary. It seems like you’re feeling all better on your own.” With that, she zipped her finger across another constellation and stepped through the wall. Sagely had the feeling if she tried to enter that room, she’d run smack into solid granite.
Quill called after Raina, but she was already gone. Sagely turned to him, a flare of jealousy rising inside her. But he avoided her eyes, looking uncomfortable.
“Ex-girlfriend?” she asked, though by now it was obvious. She just wanted him to say it.
“Yeah,” he said, glancing off down the corridor, distracted.
“Well, feel free to go comfort her,” she said. “I’ll be going.”
She turned and made her way down to the Corona constellation on her door before turning back. “But you might want to get dressed before you go visit your ex in her bedroom.”
To her annoyance, she caught a hint of a smile forming on his delicious lips before she slipped into her room.
*
After dressing, Sagely joined the students in the cavern for dinner. As usual, she found the normality of their food comforting. Tonight, they had spaghetti with freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top and salad on the side. It was a meal she could make at home, and often had. But she felt no sense of nostalgia for home now that she had Muffy with her. Her cat was the only thing in the world she had a real attachment to.
When she walked in wearing her own clothes, skin-tight jeans and a t-shirt knotted at one hip, along with her ever-present red boots, she noticed a couple of the girls glancing her way and then turning to whisper together. Great. She’d avoided being one of the freaks in high school, but apparently high school never ended.
Just then, the comforting warmth of Quill’s magic washed over her as he entered the cavern. She almost melted with relief, until she remembered their shower earlier. Her face warmed. Now she was melting for other reasons. His hand grazed her lower back as he passed, and she shivered at the pleasure of it.
“Don’t mind them,” Quill said, leaning close to speak into her ear. A warm shiver curled down her spine at the closeness of those lips. “They’ve just never been around someone quite like you. I can’t say I have, either.”
When she was seated at a table which was not there the last times she’d been in the cavern, Quill insisted on going to get her plates. Sagely smiled as she watched him scooping food onto their plates. Maybe she could get used to having a man around who liked taking care of her, even if she was used to doing it all herself.
Just as she was feeling smug about him, a tiny girl floated up to the table beside him. After a second, she recognized her as the gorgeous witch from her magic test, the one who’d left her so distracted she had to look away to win. The girl smiled up at Quill adoringly, then reached for his neck, her fingertips skimming over his skin. He bent in her direction, and she hooked her finger in the neck of his t-shirt and pulled it away from his neck. Rage boiled inside Sagely.
She clutched the edge of the table, wishing she could hurl the huge slab of stone at her. What was this chick doing, touching her man?
The thought gave her pause. She didn’t know when she’d started thinking of Quill as her man. But she definitely did. And she definitely didn’t want that hot girl’s hands on him, even if Sagely hadn’t claimed him officially.
The girl’s fingers traced the faerie bite on his neck, and her perfect lips parted slightly as a look of concern creased her forehead.
While Sagely had been distracted, a girl with a waterfall of long dark hair broke away from the pack of girls at their table. She approached Sagely, smiling excitedly. Sagely remembered her from the magic test, too. She was right in the middle, power-wise. She’d chatted nervously during the test. Her name was Ingrid. Now, she sat opposite Sagely and tossed a heap of hair back over one shoulder.
Sagely knew that gesture. The bitch flip.
Ingrid was there to tell her off, or lure her into some trap where she could make fun of her. Although she wasn’t sure how witches made fun of each other.
“Is it true?” Ingrid asked, her eyes bugging.
“What?” Sagely asked, guarded.
“You know,” Ingrid whispered, leaning forward. “Is it true that you made a reverse shield?”
&n
bsp; “Considering that I don’t know what that is, I have no idea,” Sagely admitted. Instantly, she regretted exposing her naïveté. Of course she should’ve acted superior, like she knew all about it, and flicked her hair back, too. Like it was everyday stuff, and she did it on a daily basis.
“Oh wow,” Ingrid said leaning back. She looked at Sagely with big eyes and placed a closed fist over her heart. “I’m Ingrid.”
“I know,” Sagely said, placing a fist over her heart, too, although she felt clumsy with the new gesture.
“I’ve seen someone do a shield before,” Ingrid said. “But I’ve never seen someone do a reverse shield where someone was trapped in a bubble.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward again, giving Sagely a conspiratorial smile as she glanced over at the other girls. “I wish it had been Raina, and I’d been there to see it.”
Sagely couldn’t help but grin back at this girl who was blessed with ordinary magic but obviously a sense of humor to make up for any lack. They were still sitting there grinning their heads off at each other when Quill plopped down beside Sagely and pushed a plate of spaghetti her way. She decided to suck up her jealousy and be an adult about it. If she had multiple husbands down the road, he’d have plenty of time to feel what she was feeling now.
“I guess you two are getting along famously,” he said, arching an eyebrow at Ingrid.
While Quill was busy twirling noodles around his fork, Ingrid gave Sagely a grin that was so transparent it might as well have been spoken out loud. Oh my God! He talked to me.
Immediately, she looked guilty and cleared her throat, attempting to erase the giddy grin from her face.
Sagely shrugged and shook her head, gesturing that it was okay to crush on her boyfriend. But she wasn’t so sure. Ingrid wasn’t exceptional, but she was pretty, with wavy black hair past her shoulders, fair skin, and curves for days. Sagely had to respect the witches, though. They were so transparent—even the mean girls, the ones who didn’t like her, didn’t play games.
And Ingrid was the one who’d broken rank to come talk to Sagely, to make her feel welcome and forget about the other girls whispering about her. She owed Ingrid for that, even if Ingrid didn’t know it.
Magic of the Void: A Reverse Harem Witch Series (Winslow Witch Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
