“I’m an open book, Instructor,” said Lee, smiling.
“You said that to me when we first met,” said Harper. “You’ve proven to be anything but. Eldon, I need the truth. The full truth of what happened during your Midterm Trial and afterward.”
Tess coughed awkwardly and raised her hand into Lee’s field of view. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen Harper, and it’s probably tempting to tell her the full truth, but I just want you to know that I think you should still keep some things secret. Namely, um, me. If it’s not too much trouble?”
Harper was staring at him with too much intensity for him to risk a glance in Tess’s direction, but he slowly nodded to them both.
“There’s a lot to tell,” he said. “First off, as I said before, I didn’t fail the Midterm Trial. That’s like a point of pride for me. I studied my ass off and got creative during the test and managed to get through it on my own merits.”
“Duly noted,” said Harper, flashing a small smile.
Lee went on to describe Shannara’s appearance and his undergoing the Cropping. He told her about his time living without his memories as “Eldon,” which seemed to affect her more than he’d expected it to.
“Were you happy?” she asked. “It sounds as though, from what you’ve told me, you’d almost started over. Created a new life for yourself.”
“Happy isn’t the right word for it.” He shrugged. “Content, maybe, aside from the constant sense that there was this grand joke that I wasn’t in on.”
He continued, carefully explaining how he got his memory back in vague terms that didn’t include Tess. Thankfully, Harper’s questions didn’t force the point.
“Interesting,” she said. “So the Cropping can be undone. It’s little wonder that the Order goes through such lengths to rehabilitate and reintegrate those who undergo it. You remembered and recognized your sister afterward, then?”
“Yeah,” he said. “My time among the House of Shadows was interesting.”
Her expression grew serious as Lee told her about his opinion of Mira and Ryoko, and of Katie, who’d been murdered by Genevieve, Harper’s former master. He continued up to describing his arrival at the Independent Gathering, when she finally nodded in satisfaction.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Thank you, Eldon. Your explanation makes sense.”
“Would you have attacked me if it didn’t?” he asked sarcastically.
Harper didn’t smile or laugh. “I’ve learned much of the way some of the independent factions operate over the past few months. The Melting Pack’s infiltration of Primhaven isn’t their only ongoing deception. I would not hold it past our enemies to try to sneak a spy into our ranks by having someone impersonate you.”
“You would have sniffed a fake out right away though, right?”
“Maybe,” said Harper. “Probably. I’ve… missed you, Eldon. In a fashion that has been, at times, rather unbecoming. Seeing you in the midst of the chaos of that battle was almost like something out of a dream. One I’m still half-expecting to wake up from.”
“Nonsense,” said Lee. “I’m right here.”
He reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were still cold, and he gently rubbed them.
“How’s your ankle?” he asked.
“I’ll manage.”
“We have time. Lie down. I’ll take a look at it.”
Harper seemed about to object, but he gave her arm a coaxing pull, and she took a spot on the bed beside him. She stretched out, bare legs sliding across clean sheets. Lee frowned as he looked at her ankle and let his fingers trace over it, eliciting a shiver.
“Your hands are cold,” she said.
“No surprise there.” He rubbed them together and breathed into them. “It definitely looks swollen. On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level?”
“Two,” said Harper. “Maybe a four when I’m walking on it. Not enough to matter in the larger scheme of things.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
He slowly began running his hands around the ball of her ankle. There wasn’t much he could do other than massage, aside from confirming that it was just a sprain and not cracked. Harper winced a few times as he touched the more swollen sections, but was otherwise silent.
He slid his hands up to her calf, gently kneading the muscles that had tensed up in response to the lower injury. Harper let out a small sigh of relief. He slid his hands a bit higher, running up the length of her leg.
She had strong thighs, thick in all the right places, with taut skin. He slid his hands a tad higher, feeling Harper respond as his fingers came within an inch or two of her underwear.
“Eldon,” she said in a soft rebuke.
“Just checking your other leg muscles.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
He grinned, meeting her gaze, noticing the hint of red in her cheeks. “Am I?”
“You’re also still as cocky as ever.”
“I’ve learned from the best,” he said.
He slid his hands even higher, holding her gaze as he let his fingers touch the fabric of her panties and trace along the hem.
“You still have so very much to learn,” whispered Harper.
“Oh?” His grin was almost too wide, now, almost veering off his face entirely. “Is that so?”
She reached down, took his hand in a firm grip, and moved it so his fingers were touching a more central location against her underwear. Lee caressed her through his fabric, using his thumb to trace and press into her womanhood. Harper’s breathing grew uneven, and Lee could see her eyes settling on the fast-growing bulge in his boxers.
He moved forward on the bed, letting his hard-on poke into Harper and slide along the length of her leg. She stopped him as he tried to roll on top of her with a single hand against his chest. Lee’s heart sank for an instant, as he thought she was about to shut him down, but she gently cupped his cheek, ran a finger across his lips, and then kissed him.
“Um,” said Tess, in an awkward voice. “I’ll just wait over here and let you two catch up. I might siphon a bit of her essence, since she’s got plenty to spare. Ahem.”
Lee barely heard her. Harper was still kissing him, her lips moving urgently against his as she pressed her tongue into his mouth. She was the aggressor, and he felt himself responding to her movements, rather than leading the dance.
She pulled her bra off over her head, a sly smile playing across her face as she watched his eyes bulge at the sight of her naked breasts. Her nipples were pale, spread out across the centers of her plump breasts, with small, flowery buds in the middle. Lee took a soft hold of one and almost groaned at how soft and awesome it felt.
Harper ran her hand through his hair and pulled his face down into her bosom. There was something possessive, almost motherly about the gesture, and he felt his face heat up in response to the weird surge of arousal it sent through him. He kissed and then sucked on one of her nipples. She continued stroking his hair and caressing his face.
He slid upward, kissing her lips again and moving to position himself between her thighs. Harper pulled his boxers off and tossed them aside, and then surprised him by aggressively flipping him onto his back with a move right out of one of their old training sessions.
She was so familiar to him as a teacher, friend, and even an adversary, but not like this. In truth, they’d only ever had sex a single time previously, though it was a memory burned into Lee’s mind deeply enough for him to have dreamed of it even in the time after undergoing the Cropping.
He tried to sit up. Harper pinned him to the bed, forearm pressing down against his chest. His cock was rock hard and pointed upward, like a flagpole on a sunny day. She took a firm grip of it in her hand, and even just that was enough to make him gasp.
She slowly stroked him off, blue eyes boring into him, smiling at the effect she was having. It was almost painful, and Lee couldn’t resist reaching a hand down to urge her head in closer to his tool, ea
ger to get the full experience of the lips behind that smile. Harper grinned, resisting for a moment, chastising him with her expression, before finally giving in.
She kissed his hand first, briefly licking and sucking on his index finger in preview of what was to come. She tossed her golden braid over her shoulder, and then, with deliberate, teasing slowness, she brought her mouth within a millimeter of his member. She exhaled breath hot enough to banish the lingering cold from the frozen pond. She licked him.
“Oh, Harper,” moaned Lee. He’d never known how sharp and biting pleasure could be before, a whip crack of opium-infused lewdness. Harper gave his length a second lick, slow and deliberate. Then, she got started in earnest.
There was no gradual buildup, no kissing and no teasing, as was often the case when Tess gave him head. Harper took every inch of his cock into her mouth and throat on the very first downward bob. She continued like that, a punishing rhythm of warm, pleasurable wetness. It was just as she’d said. He still had so very much left to learn, and in sex, as in all things, she was his teacher.
Lee tried, briefly, to get a grip on her braid and take some measure of control back. Harper caught his hand as he reached out, eyes narrowing, lips still curled tightly around his cock. He leaned his head back instead, losing himself in the sensation.
She stopped right as he approached the brink of unloading in her mouth. The pleasure had been enough to stun him, and he came back to reality as she moved to straddle his shaft, lowering herself down on it. He felt his cock pressing into Harper’s womanhood, which was hot and ready, preheated like an oven at the perfect temperature.
“Mmm…” she moaned. “Eldon.”
She said his name so softly, and paradoxically, it made him want to take her hard. A shudder ran through Harper as she sank lower on his shaft, and he saw his opening. He took a firm hold of her hips, seizing his chance to return fire. Harper’s hands gripped his forearms, but for stability, rather than to remove them.
He bounced her up and down on his cock, watching the glorious movements of her plump breasts as they jiggled wildly. She felt so soft against him, despite her muscular build and oftentimes cold demeanor. She let out small moans, slowly increasing in pitch. He tightened his grip on her waist possessively, pulling her down on his shaft hard enough to hear her body slap against his.
He took hold of her buttocks, working her up and down for all she was worth. Harper was breathing heavily. She leaned forward, breasts dangling in her face, hips continuing to buck on his shaft with lewd, eager movements. Lee groped each of them in turn before taking her by the hips again, putting the strength of his arms into eliciting more of her moans. It was in that moment that Harper fluttered over the edge.
“Eldon!” she gasped.
She set her hands on his stomach and convulsed, hips still moving on autopilot, eyes glazing over with the look of a woman drunk on the pleasure of an intense orgasm. Lee wasn’t far behind her. He thrust upward hard and deep, showing his instructor what he’d learned from her intense lesson.
“Oh, Harper,” he groaned.
He shot his load deep inside her, basking in the pleasure like the first rays of sunlight at dawn. Harper collapsed forward onto him, tensing as she seemed to realize something. She quickly rolled off to the side, separating them down below.
“Unfortunately, I am not on the pill,” she sighed.
“A little late to bring that up now.”
“No matter. I can take care of that once we reach the college.”
“Is there a spell or enchantment for that sort of thing?”
She looked at him like he was an idiot.
“Yes, it’s called a morning after pill.”
CHAPTER 29
Don’t fall in love with her. Anyone but her.
Zoe’s warning was inescapable as Lee lay next to Harper in the cabin’s bed, naked and sated. Harper ran a hand across Lee’s chest, gently tracing the shape of his pectoral muscles. The question was on a timer, and eventually it went off.
“What did you and my sister say to each other during the fight at the Independent Gathering?” he asked.
Harper’s fingers stopped moving. She sat up slightly in the bed, pressing her hand down on his chest, as though to hold him where he was. Her naked breasts hung with a soft buoyancy, but Lee’s attention was fixed entirely on her eyes.
“Really?” she said. “That’s what you ask me about? Not my activities of the past month, or my thoughts on our current situation? You want to know about a conversation I had with my ex?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds petty,” he said. “She is my sister, though. It’s complicated between all three of us, not just you and her.”
Harper stared at him for a length, as though testing to see if she could make him back down from the question with her intensity. When he said nothing, she sighed and gave a small shrug.
“She said that I hurt her, and it wasn’t fair. She said it felt like going down a hill in a car with no brakes or seat belts, staring at a busy intersection at the bottom. She said she had dreams about me where she was as likely to kiss me as to kill me.
“And you know what? All I could say back to her… was please. Please what? I don’t even know, myself. Maybe I was asking her to stop. Maybe I wanted her forgiveness. It makes no difference, I think. Do you know what the most important thing she said to me was, Eldon?”
She waited until Lee had shaken his head to continue.
“She said that you were seriously considering joining the House of Shadows,” said Harper.
“Hmm…”
“Were you?”
He should have known at the outset of the conversation that it would swing back in her direction. It wasn’t enough to give Harper an answer. He needed to give her the truth.
“I think I might have been,” he said. “Before the Independent Gathering, at least. I saw their base, Harper. It’s not what you’d imagine. I spoke with Ryoko, the one who stood up for us and helped us get here. I came to understand her perspective. “
“And?”
“They make good points about what’s wrong with the Order,” he said. “The trouble is, it’s not enough to just make good points. You have to practice what you preach.”
“You think they’re hypocrites, then?”
“To be honest…” He shrugged. “No more than we are. The Order acts like a bully when it comes to the way it treats the independent supernatural community. But the House of Shadows and the other factions I saw at that meeting have no standards: neo-Nazis, criminals, the fucking Melting Pack. No, I don’t think there’s any way I would have been able to join them. Not if it meant rubbing shoulders with those types.”
“We can change it, you know.” Harper found his hand with hers and laced their fingers together. “The two of us. Together. I have influence within the Order already, and it’s only set to grow with time.”
There was so much in her expression, in that moment. It felt like a microcosm of who she was, confident and determined, righteous and sensual. Zoe’s warning echoed in his head, and he felt like he understood it more now.
“My sister told me something about you right before we left,” he said.
“Oh?”
Lee hesitated, realizing he couldn’t say it.
“She wanted me to… look after you.”
“That’s funny, since she told me, and I quote, to stay the fuck away from you.”
Lee chuckled. “I assume you don’t plan on taking that advice?”
“She’s my ex for a reason.”
They slept for a few hours, long enough to refresh themselves while they had the opportunity. Their clothes still weren’t completely dry when they left the cabin, but the addition of the winter coats they borrowed from the closet was enough to keep them warm. They traveled on foot, which turned it into a longer journey than Lee remembered, having made it on snowmobile the last time.
Primhaven came into view as a derelict collection of frozen buildings
behind an old, frost-covered wall, an appearance maintained by the illusion veil surrounding the school. There was no guard outside, which spiked his anxiety, though there was nothing particularly unusual about that.
Harper triggered the rune to open the hulking wooden gate. To Lee, stepping through the archway felt like coming home. The abrupt transition from the dry cold to the college’s comfortable, magically maintained interior climate triggered a wealth of emotions. His good memories of Primhaven far outweighed the bad.
The grassy campus was empty, however. Lee’s anxiety redoubled as he craned his head, looking around and not seeing a single student or teacher.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Have you forgotten the date?” asked Harper. “It’s December 20th. The students are given two weeks off, the first of which includes the option of going on the class trip. The only people left on campus will be a few graduate mages and whichever instructors aren’t chaperoning.”
“Hold on.” Lee frowned. “I missed the class trip?”
Harper snorted. “That’s your immediate concern? Not the fact that Mattis’s bonded animals, probably with a number of lycanthropes hidden among them, still prowl the campus? Not the potential safety of your friends, if a trap has been laid for the students elsewhere?”
“Those are also pressing issues,” he said. “Do you know where the initiates went? Was it somewhere warm?”
“That’s what I’ll need to find out first,” said Harper. “Along with which instructors went with which grade levels. If Mattis and Constantine are still on campus, our mission will be much more straightforward.”
“Can we make a detour to my dorm room?” asked Lee. “I want to grab a few things, assuming my stuff is still there.”
“It should be. I don’t believe Toma was assigned a new roommate. How about you head to get what you need while I inform Head Wizard Odarin of the situation?”
“Sounds good. I’ll meet with you in the First Tower once I’m done.”
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