I don’t think I’ve ever had such a naughty fantasy, and my desire throbs inside me with the rhythm of the music, making me so wet I can feel slickness soaking my panties and coating my thighs. Thorn’s hands slide behind me, grabbing my ass and pulling me tighter against him. I don’t know if it’s the intended effect, but he parts my ass cheeks, and the length of Rocco’s cock settles between. At the same time, Thorn’s thigh muscle is flexing to the beat, pumping against my swollen clit with each movement.
I loop one arm around Rocco’s neck behind me, and one around Thorn’s. Our eyes stay locked together, and he grinds slowly against me, gripping my ass while Rocco grips my thighs from behind, spreading them for Thorn. Thorn pivots to the center, positioning himself against me, and suddenly, it’s not his thigh grinding against my clit. The heat and hardness of his erection crushes against me, and before I know what’s happening, a wave of pleasure grips my body. My hands tighten on both men, fisting in their hair, as helpless pleasure washes over me. My knees give way, but they support me, their cocks throbbing against me as my core clenches again and again.
Chapter 13
Before I’ve even recovered or absorbed the fact that I just had my first non-magical orgasm, and it was in the middle of a dance floor while sandwiched between two men who I’m not even sure I like, someone grabs Rocco and yanks him back. I expect to see Ryker behind him, but it’s someone I don’t even know. Rocco tries to push him off, but another guy steps in, trying to get behind me. Someone else grabs my elbow, trying to drag me away from Thorn, who throws a punch at the guy.
Suddenly, fists are flying, and people are grabbing me from every side, trying to drag me away. I throw punches along with the rest of them. Anyone who grabs me gets knocked out by my mean left hook. Girls shriek and try to scramble away, and a guy tromps right over another guy on the floor, diving for me.
“What’s happening?” I yell, but everyone is too busy fighting to answer. A pair of hands grabs me from behind, and I turn and slam my fist into his jaw.
“What the fuck?” Ryker asks, grabbing my hands and restraining them.
“Sorry,” I yell. “Touch me, and you get punched.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Jade?” he growls. “You weren’t invited—for a reason.”
A guy dives at us, but Ryker pivots, blocking me with his body. He throws an elbow, and the guy goes down.
“Excluding me for my magic is just as shitty as excluding the dark magic students for theirs,” I yell at Ryker. “What magic we have is not a choice. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
He gives me a look that says I’m full of shit.
“Fine, maybe I have, but Elowen didn’t,” I say. “Either invite everyone, or don’t have the party in the first place.”
Someone grabs me, and my hands are wrenched free of Ryker’s. I fall to the floor with the guy, and Ryker dives onto us, wrestling the guy away. I roll away and jump to my feet, leaping aside when Ryker and the other guy roll toward me.
Suddenly, everything stops. The music stops, leaving only an echo. The voices stop, leaving their echo along with the music. And everyone freezes. Bodies are contorted into fighting pairs and groups. Girls are huddled together in the corner, unmoving, unblinking. Rocco’s fist is pulled back to deliver a punch that never came. Thorn and another guy are eternally choking each other. Ryker has his attacker pinned to the floor, frozen.
A soft scuffing sound echoes through the room as someone moves. I spin around, terror ricocheting through my brain. The room is so shadowy, filled with statues. I can’t tell who moved.
“Who’s there?” I demand, my voice sounding as panicked as I feel.
A man steps from between two others, and my heart nearly explodes with fear. I don’t know this guy, and he seems to be the only person in the bar still alive. And I’m alone with him—the one thing I’ve been warned against.
His posture is tense but not threatening. Almost the opposite. He looks wary, ready for any sudden movement. Is he waiting for me to run? He’s not particularly… Well, anything. He’s not huge like my sorcerer guards, but he’s tall. He has dark hair, not black like Thorn’s, but a deep chestnut color. He’s thirtyish, handsome but not remarkably. The important details aren’t his looks, though. What matters is that I have no protection, and if he froze all these people, or froze time, he must be unimaginably powerful.
And me? I don’t even have my uncooperative gag-gift utensil. It’s in my purse, which is at a table across the bar where a statue of Elowen sits with a drink halfway to her mouth. I’m unarmed, untrained, and trapped.
“What the fuck just happened?” I ask, backing toward the tables, my mind racing. “Did you do this?”
“Not entirely,” he says. “I don’t allow brawling in my bar.”
“You’re Gideon.”
He nods, his face entirely blank, even more so than my guards, who might put on a blank face, but I can tell there’s something under their expressions. He’s not tense like they are, just relaxed and serene and frighteningly calm. I can tell when they’re trying not to show their hand. I have no idea what this guy wants, no idea what he’s thinking.
“Your ride is waiting,” he says, gesturing to the bar. “You need to leave. This won’t last forever.”
“My friends—”
“Are fine,” he interrupts. He gives a firm nod toward the back door, and I edge that way, trying not to look too closely at the deathly still figures around me. The bartender stands pouring a drink, the liquid frozen in midair.
Holy shit. Did Gideon just freeze the world? He said it wasn’t exactly what I thought. Maybe it’s an illusion. Whatever he did, it’s scary as hell. I grab my purse and obey, figuring if he wanted to murder me, he’d have done it already. I scurry through the storage room through which we entered—no sign of Albino Bob this time—up the stairs, and out the back door.
Professor Darius stands outside the door, bouncing on his toes and glancing around as if he expects an ambush.
“Come on,” he says, taking my arm and steering me out the back of the alley, where a familiar black town car sits idling. He opens the door and hurries me in, closing the door behind me before circling the car and sliding into the driver’s seat. He glances in the rearview mirror and then makes his way through the dimly lit parking lot.
“What are you doing here?” I ask at last, feeling like a kid who got caught doing something wrong. Which I suppose I am, but I don’t want him thinking of me like a kid in need of a lecture. Even if he’s a teacher, and nothing can ever happen between us, he’s a hot teacher. Some part of me wants him to admire me, if not as much as I admire him, at least a fraction of that.
“Ryker told me I might find you here,” he says.
The bastard.
“It’s not safe for you to be here, Jade. You must know that by now.”
“I do,” I say. “But isn’t that why I have guards? So I can be a normal student and do what they do? So why can’t I go out and dance like any other girl?”
“In an ideal world, that would be the case,” Darius says with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Jade. You’re not just another girl.”
The way he says those words makes my heart dance. It’s far better than seeing him admire me physically. “Okay,” I say, looking out the window to hide my smile.
“I’ll make sure there’s more for you to do on campus in the future. I hadn’t realized how much you wanted to fit in with your peers.”
My peers. No, no, no. Now he’s lumping me in with everyone else, after telling me I was special. Like he thinks I don’t want to be special, don’t want my magic. Like he thinks I’d rather be normal than a girl who makes him say things like he just said.
“Maybe next time, you can entertain me,” I say lightly, watching his reaction from the corner of my eye.
He swallows and adjusts his hands on the steering wheel. “I know this must be frustrating,” he says. “I don’t think you quite realize the effect you have on men. Al
l men, Jade. Including the three who have been charged with guarding you.”
“And you?” I sneak a peek at him, my heart hammering as I wait for his response.
Finally, after the longest minute of silence of my life, Darius clears his throat. “You’re a student,” he says, pulling into the parking lot of the campus, behind the dorm.
We sit in the car for a minute, silent.
“I am sorry,” he says. “But you saw what happened tonight. Until you’ve really mastered your magic, it’s better to stay on campus where we can look after you.” He opens the door and gets out, then opens my door from the outside.
“That’s what happened?” I ask, stepping out of the car. I feel suddenly awkward as hell. Did my sex magic get loose when I got aroused? I knew my magic was unwieldy, but shit. I didn’t mean to incite a riot.
“From what I heard, yes.”
“When?” I ask. Because all I can think about is how Rocco danced with me without making a single shitty comment, and how stoic Thorn got up and rubbed all up on me. And how they didn’t seem to even care that I was dancing with both of them. Was all that the magic, and not me? The thought somehow hurts, as if my magic betrayed me. In a way, it did. I didn’t know I was releasing it. I thought, for a second, that it was me. That they wanted me.
“I can’t know that,” Darius says gently. “I wasn’t there.”
“Well, that explains it,” I say, turning toward the dorm.
Professor Darius escorts me inside the dorm, which is quiet and deserted. Everyone is still at the party, welcoming the freshmen. “What does it explain?” my teacher asks as we start up the stone steps.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just why the sorcerers forgot they hated me for five minutes.”
“Jade,” he says.
The sympathy in his voice makes my throat tighten painfully. I don’t want his kindness. It’ll break me faster than all the cruelty the others have dished out all year.
“Professor Darius,” I say, stopping to face him at the door to my room.
He rubs his temple. “Your guards don’t hate you,” he says. “They’re trying their best to keep a professional distance, the same way I am. It must be hard for them to be around you so much. If they’re being too harsh, I’ll speak to them.”
“No, it’s fine.” I can just imagine the hell my life will be if I rat them out. “They’re not,” I insist. “I can handle it.”
He gives a small smile. “I’m sure you can. You’ve dealt with a lot. More than someone your age should have to deal with.”
My age. I wince at the words. He might as well be broadcasting it over the loudspeakers: Never gonna happen.
We linger in the hallway, not awkward but… Expectant. As if we’re both waiting for the other to say the magic words.
“Do you…” I break off, swallowing hard. “Do you want to come in?”
“Oh, I—I can’t.” He shakes his head. “That wouldn’t be…”
“Of course,” I say.
“I’ll be out here tonight,” he says. “Guess I should see what it’s like.”
I swallow, my pulse fluttering in my throat. Is he having trouble keeping a professional distance, too?
“Thanks for coming to get me, Professor Darius,” I say, squeezing his forearm.
“Darius is fine,” he says. Our gazes lock, linger, and my heartbeat thrums in my ears.
“Goodnight, Darius,” I say, feeling shy suddenly. I pull back from my touch, and he links his hands behind his back and steps across the hall, leaning against the wall.
“Goodnight, Jade.”
I lie in bed for a long time before sleep comes. Thinking about the professor outside my door. Wondering if he’s thinking about me. Thinking about the three men who have treated me badly, maybe only to keep from getting too close. And wondering if they’re thinking about me, too. Eventually, I hear other students returning from the party. I try not to think about the fact that my guards don’t return to my door that night. I try not to care where they are.
Chapter 14
On the way to my first class, the absurdly early swordsmanship class that kicks my ass every morning, Asher nudges my shoulder and grins. “So, I hear you left with the professor last night. Hot.”
My cheeks turn red as I bump him back. “Stop.”
“Seriously, though,” Asher says. “What’s it like having all those guys all over you? Was it awesome or what?”
I narrow my eyes. “You mean when they started brawling because a little of my magic leaked out? Yeah, that was awesome.”
“Called it,” says a voice from behind us.
I roll my eyes toward Asher. “Called what?” I yell back over my shoulder.
“The whole ‘making an ass of yourself’ thing,” Rocco says, jogging up behind us.
“If I recall, you weren’t exactly keeping your cool, either,” I shoot back.
Asher snickers, then covers his mouth trying to hide it.
“Next time put a little more of your genie in the bottle, Cinderella,” Rocco says with a grin. “You’re giving us all blue balls.”
“You have a hand,” I say, wiggling my fingers at him.
“I bet it’s even worse for you,” Rocco says. “I mean, you’ve got the magic.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, though he’s not kidding when he says it’s gotta be hard for me. Lately, I’ve been just about ready to jump his bones, and I hate him. Sort of, anyway.
“You know, I could help you release some of that tension,” Rocco says. “I’m not picky.”
“Ouch,” Asher mutters.
“Wow, I feel so special,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Does that line actually work for you?”
“I don’t need pickup lines,” Rocco says, crossing his thick arms over his bulging pectorals, flexing them a little for my enjoyment.
“I need brains along with the beauty,” I say.
Asher veers off to go to his weapons class, where he’s mastering his nunchucks, while I continue on toward Ryker’s class.
“You know, you can keep being a tease if that’s your thing,” Rocco says with a shrug. “It’s definitely teaching us a lesson in self-control.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, glaring daggers at him. “I’m no tease. I can’t help what magic I have.”
“You can help what you do with it.”
I start to protest, then remember I said exactly the same thing to Elowen. Is he right? I mean, I definitely wasn’t complaining when he and Thorn were rubbing up against me last night. In fact, I called Thorn over to join us. I wasn’t trying to be a tease. I was just having fun dancing. But now that he’s said it, I can see how it came across that way, especially since I never had any intention of letting it go further than dancing. The sting of what Professor Darius said last night comes back to me. It was my magic attracting them, not me. Now it feels even worse than rejection. It feels like I did something gross, enchanting them against their will.
“I’m sorry,” I say at last. “I just wanted to dance like everyone else. I wasn’t thinking about my magic. I’ll try to be more responsible.”
For once, Rocco looks utterly speechless.
If I’ve managed a truce, it does not extend to his brother. When I arrive at swordsmanship class, Ryker immediately claims me for a demonstration and drags me to the front of the class.
I step up slowly, humiliation already building inside me. The class is small, since only those with various types of swords practice here. But embarrassing myself in front of ten other students still sucks.
“Ready your sword,” Ryker says.
I sigh and hold up my spork.
“I’m an attacker. I’m going to hurt you if you can’t control your weapon,” he growls. “Do it.”
I close my eyes and focus as hard as I can, picturing a sword. And also wishing Professor Darius taught this class, since he wouldn’t do this to me.
A ripple of laughter goes through the students, and I open my eyes. I’m
holding a butter knife.
“Hey, it’s a start,” I say, brandishing it with a grin. “I mean, it’s more sword-like than a spork.”
A couple people laugh, which is better than them making fun of me. I bow dramatically, then hold up my kitchen knife. “Ladies and gentleman, I give you… Excalibur.”
Ryker snatches the knife from my hand, and the giggles immediately cease.
“You think this is funny?” Ryker asks, towering over me. “If this were really happening, you’d be dead right now.”
“Don’t touch my spork,” I growl, snatching it back.
Ryker steps closer, his eyes burning with anger. “Then stop fucking around. You’re wasting everyone’s time.”
“Me? What about her?” I ask, brandishing the silly knife, who I’ve started to think of as female. A stubborn bitch, to be more exact.
“Do you want your magic to control you for the rest of your life?” Ryker asks, his eyes burning into mine. “You own your magic, not the other way around.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not cooperating, as you can see,” I say, stuffing the knife into my waistband and planting my hands on my hips. “So how about you stop wasting my time? You could have given me a real sword to practice with all this time so I could learn something. Or hell, give me a wooden dummy sword to spar with instead of teaching everyone else while I stand around yelling at a stupid spork.”
“Take control of your weapon,” Ryker says, his voice menacing as he raises his sword, pressing the tip of it to my chest.
My face burning with rage, I yank out the kitchen knife and glare down at it, hating him and my stupid magic and this fucking spork with all my energy. It squirms in my hand, and the next second, a shoelace dangles from my hand.
The class laughs.
Ryker drops his sword and grabs me by the throat. “Get out of my class,” he growls through clenched teeth. “Don’t come back until you can take this seriously.”
I jerk away, balling the shoelace in my hand. “Fine,” I say. “This class is a waste of my time, anyway.”
Academy of Sorcery: Term 1: Unleashing Trials Page 11
