by Ana Calin
“And what choice does she have?” I bite angrily. “If she loses her virginity to a man, any man, she becomes a weapon of Hell.”
Silence falls over the study, as heavy as the Lord Protector’s Grim Reaper shadow.
CHAPTER III
Lucy
“That bastard Zillard Dark hasn’t taken his eyes off of you all day.” Giselle leans toward me over the table at the cafeteria, a place that looks more like a gothic ballroom than a meal hall. “Or yesterday, or the past few weeks. I thought he’d get bored eventually, if you just ignored him, but he’s growing more intense by the day.”
“Yeah, I don’t even know how I’ve survived his attention so far.” I glance at him, trying to fight the chills I get every time I meet his stony black eyes. I’m not even sure I have ever seen him blink.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, namely focus on learning, your books, your gadgets. It’s worked so far. Head down in your work, like you don’t even notice the hostility. He’ll have to get over it at some point.”
I have to smile every time she mentions the ‘gadgets’, because she doesn’t mean tablets, or smart-phones or smart watches like those in the mortal world, but magic crystals, magic books, amulets, charms, rings and other enchanted jewelry. Items that can channel one’s magic in ways that make my skin prickle in wonder every time I use it.
I’ve never enjoyed anything in my life like I enjoy working with magic. I’ve never experienced anything like the fascination of learning all this stuff, the thirst for knowledge that drives me every day. I’d gladly put up with an entire army of Zillard Darks in order to stay at the Academy.
It helps that I get to see Silas in secret at the well. It gives me a sense of security and enhances the feeling of belonging, but I also take relief in seeing Maverick every day. He passes behind me just now, and I can’t help but glance at him, the corner of my mouth twitching.
I tried to cling to my resentment, I even tried to hate him, but I couldn’t. There’s no resisting those intense dark eyes when he sets them on me. I watch his bulky muscular frame in leather moving around as he teaches Potions and Dark Arts, and every time I can’t help but remember how I rode his face. There was a time when I felt guilty for my dirty thoughts, but now I’ve come to embrace them. There’s no fighting them, and truth is, it feels so good, imagining what it would be like to take pleasure from him again.
But that’s not all. Sometimes, at night, I dream quite vividly about the Lord Protector as well. Ramses Delacroix, my outrageous desire. The Grim Reaper. I know that he can divide himself into a multitude of shadows that reap souls, I even studied that in the Academy library in between classes. Surprisingly, I started to understand how that works. I associate it with how Dracula spread out into a flock of ravens in movies.
The finest hairs stand on the back of my neck as I become aware of Zillard Dark and his minions watching me again. His girlfriend, the hot Latina beauty Pandora is standing by the entrance, talking to her sister, Professor Vanessa Morgan. They barely have anything in common, the elegant, cold beauty Vanessa, with her rich bun of shiny black hair, with her almond eyes and red lips, and the bronze-skinned Latina Pandora. But the wickedness with which they glare at me is the same.
“They would have finished me on day one, if it weren’t for you,” I tell Giselle as I fork through my mashed potatoes.
“They’ll still try to do it, rest assured. One more reason to keep your nose in your studies, make sure you don’t open portals to Hell and stuff.” She leans closer. “In order to be even safer, it might be a good idea to stop seeing your Silas in secret at night.”
My fingers clench around the fork. “I can’t imagine not seeing him. He is the best thing in my life, Giselle, he keeps my heart alive.” I look down at my plate, feeling a bit ashamed. “I wish he would just give in to our love, and just.... I wish he would, you know.”
“You wish he would make love to you,” she whispers, a romantic look in her soft brown eyes.
I nod, tears stinging my eyes. It happens every time I sense true sympathy from someone, it’s like a trigger for my self-pity. “Yes. But he said that would never happen between us. He barely even kisses me anymore, and sometimes I get the feeling he’d gladly break up with me, but he feels some kind of obligation to stay in this relationship, if that’s what it is.”
Giselle reaches over the table and puts her hand over mine as I stab at my mashed potatoes with the fork.
“If it’s any help, I do believe he is very much in love with you. Otherwise he wouldn’t be risking everything to come and meet you.”
“But I can’t imagine never having him. I crave him so much it hurts here.” I take my fist to my lower belly.
Giselle looks left and right as if ensuring no one is eavesdropping, then she says, “There are ways to stimulate his desire for sex. Potions that would make him crave you so much he’d lose all self control.”
“Are you suggesting that I mess with his libido?”
“At least to break the ice. After he’s had you once, he’s surely gonna want you again.”
I consider the possibility. I wouldn’t normally take into account messing with my lover’s choices, with his free will, but I desire him so much that it hurts. Besides, if he claims my body, then maybe my hormones will calm down, and I’ll stop masturbating in the bathroom thinking not only of him, but also of Maverick and the Lord Protector. God, I’ve sunk so low.
“Tell me more about those potions,” I whisper to Giselle. “Because I doubt Professor Jones will.”
Zillard
Believe it or not, the Red Witch has found a way to keep me at bay. I don’t have many avenues to attack if she doesn’t even look at me. She ignores me by abandoning herself to her studies.
Which, in secret, impresses me, and I think it impresses the Headmaster, too. In only a few weeks she has become a fantastic student; not even Vanessa can give her bad grades. And she’s surprisingly resilient to bullying. It’s admirable, all the pressure she can take.
Not to mention that my guys and I aren’t the only ones stalking her. Half of the Academy is, and their interest is understandable. We’re all magical creatures, with a magical past. Even the mortals here have known magic their entire lives. None of them have been suddenly hit in the head with it at nineteen, on Halloween night, like Lucia Reid.
I’ve been looking for an opportunity to step up my game, but with her keeping to class, the library, labs and her room, there wasn’t much for me to stalk. The boys kept watch on her dorm, but with Giselle Midwinter’s complaint to the Headmaster about our barging in, we got ourselves an interdiction to do it again. He would have never done that for Lucia Reid, but Giselle is the fae’s Rouen Midwinter’s goddaughter, so he didn’t have a choice. Rouen is too well connected both within the Board and even within the Council of the Arcane.
I started to dig deeper into the lore of the Red Witch and the Red Queen, but I need more personal contact with her to really understand what she is. What we know so far, if we believe the Headmaster, is that, when she loses grip on her emotions, she can open portals to Hell—just like she did on the test night, when the Lord Protector took the blame. So she’s ignoring me in order to avoid distress that would be too much to handle. She’s getting good at it, too. I have to do something, which is why I keep my eyes on her all the time.
It helps that we’re in the same year, and that we go to every class together. Though watching her like this has its drawbacks—I can’t ignore how delicious she is. Focused on her, I’ve been even ignoring Pandora’s touch, which drove her to seek satisfaction not only in my brother’s arms, but also with other men.
“You know I’m not a one man woman,” she tells me with a pout, raking the back of my hand with her long black fingernails. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you.”
“I really don’t mind if you see other people for the time being,” I say coolly, withdrawing my hand from the table, and grabbing my tray. “Or you could hel
p me with the Red Witch, so we both have the same focus. You haven’t done much more than bad mouth her, and left all the dirty work to me.”
“I had to bad mouth her. I saw lust in your eyes once or twice, and for that I’ll gladly be the one to take her out when the time comes.” She follows me with her tray to the return racks, while Viggo follows her with his like a heavy troll.
“Since when does my lust for other women bother you?”
“It’s not that it bothers me,” she says casually. “But your job is to expose her as a summoner of demons, and then as the Red Queen, the one woman with the power to sentence people to immediate death in the pit. And it’s not an easy job, you need to keep your focus all the time. Remember she has protectors so powerful they snatched the Book of Prophecies from you while you were travelling through the portal. You need to keep a cool head, lover, you can’t catch feelings for her, not even lust. Actually, it might help to hate her.”
“You need to stop telling me what to do, sweetheart.” I turn around and give her the bad boy smile that I know turns her on. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you use this time without me to ensnare your not-so-secret crush, Professor Jones.” I bend and whisper in her ear. “By the way you eye him, you’d fuck him like a banshee.”
I caress the side of her face coldly, my fingers running over the sharp contour of her high cheekbones. My eyes drop to her large lips with which she gives fantastic blow-jobs. I’d like to push her to her knees right now, push it inside her mouth, and direct my gaze to Lucia Reid. Imagining her in Pandora’s place, my hands knotting in the rich fiery locks of her hair as her sweet plump mouth wraps around my cock.
But I bet her sucking my dick would feel very different from Pandora doing it. Lucia Reid is like a sexy nun that men are forbidden to lust after, which makes them even crazier about her. If she sucks a man’s cock, of her own will, then she surely does it with emotion, with genuine passion even if not with a lot of skill. She’d do it with love even. I imagine what it would be like for her to drop to her knees and stare up at me, her mysterious blue eyes filled with desire. The wide crest of my cock would barely fit in her small plump mouth, but she would still take as much of me as she could.
“Oh, what do we have here,” Pandora says lasciviously, waking me from my reverie. She bites her large lower lip as she looks down at the erection pushing through my pants, taking a step closer to me so that her tits touch my abs. This way she can grab my dick without anybody noticing.
“Let’s go to a stall, I’ll get you off,” she breathes against my neck, her voice lowering to a sexy depth. “And I’ll do it really dirty, just the way you like it.”
With a last glance at Lucia, I take Pandora’s hand, and let her lead the way.
Lucy
I GRIP THE POTION TOO tightly in my hands. I feel like a scared mouse, my heart hammering inside my chest. How am I going to give it to Silas? He’ll know what I’m doing, and he’ll be furious.
I wait for him by the well, where we have been meeting in secret at midnight. I hold the potion close to my lips as I face the well, mouthing the spell again and again, more to calm my nerves than to imbue it with more power. I followed the instructions in Giselle’s book exactly, I know the potion works. The book has helped Giselle get all the lovers she wanted for months—she has particular preferences, like them not remembering having slept with her, so they don’t spread the word all around the Academy, making her look like a slut.
Fine stardust floats around me, settling like colorful snowflakes on my frozen hands and the stone edge of the well. The light breeze of Silas’ presence blows gently through my hair.
“My love,” I whisper, closing my eyes and clenching my hands around the bottle, holding them to my mouth like in a prayer.
He touches my shoulders with his big hands, without resting their weight on me. He kisses the top of my head, his hot breath reaching my scalp. This is it. Tonight, I’m going to have him.
“I’m thirsty for you, my love,” I breathe. He embraces me from behind, pressing my back to his strong chest.
“You know it can’t be, Lucy. We can’t be together, not in body.”
I turn around in his hold, and look up into his beautiful face. “Why? At least tell me the reason, the real one.”
He cups my face with his hands, making me feel small and delicate in his power. He comes down and presses his hot mouth to mine, stirring cravings deep in my core.
“Look what you’re doing to me,” I whisper as he breaks the kiss and rests his forehead against mine. His scent of wild forests makes me want him even more. “You light me up only to push me away.”
“Lucy, taking your virginity would be like sentencing you to death.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“Just trust me on this, will you.” He kisses my face. It’s hard for him to control himself, I can tell he wants me as much as I want him. I make the decision—this is true love; no price is too high for being together. I pop the cork cap off the small bottle, and when the first fumes reach Silas’ nostrils, I know it works.
He leans his head back to look at me better, and I can see the fumes working. His nostrils flare as he takes in the scent of the potion. Blood floods his chiseled angel cheeks.
“Lucy, what have you done,” he whispers, pulling me to him, his long fingers splaying over my back. My pulse surges, blood racing through my veins. This is it, Silas won’t be able to restrain himself, he won’t beat the desire. He presses my body to his, crushing my breasts against his broad chest. With only my flimsy black silk blouse between us, and his shirt, our bodies heat up against each other.
He cups my head with his hand, and tugs lightly on my hair to make me lean back, allowing him to stare deeply into my eyes. His amber irises glow in the night like the eyes of an animal in the bushes. My desire leaks into my panties, creaming them. The scent reaches Silas immediately, pairing with the potion and making him groan deeply, his chest vibrating against mine. My core clenches, craving him, demanding that I open my legs for him right now.
“Lucy, you have no idea what you started,” he growls.
“I don’t care if the world ends after this,” I declare, passion in my voice.
His strong fingers curl into my shirt on my back, tearing the fabric slowly as he fights his own cravings.
“You started a catastrophe, that’s what you did. For reasons that only a teenager with a crush would ever take seriously.”
That goes like a spear through me. I lean away from him. “You mean you don’t take our love seriously?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But I was ready to be with you for eternity without claiming your body, ready to give you pleasure any other way but by entering you, but that wasn’t enough, was it? You had to do this, force this desire on me, so that we both give in to lowly lust, and take the world down in flames.”
I try to take distance now, both offended and a bit scared of him, but it’s too late. Silas tugs on my hair, exposing my mouth, and taking it in a deep kiss. He kisses me so deeply that it takes my breath away, and soon I feel the entire world fade around us.
The air leaves my body, and I know I’m fainting. My hands relax, and the potion bottle slips from my fingers. I barely realize it until I hear a small splashing sound. Silas breaks the kiss and, as we stare at each other, I panic.
“The potion,” I shriek, leaning over the well with my palms on the stone edge. “It fell into the water!”
I want to jump after it, but Silas stops me. “It’s too late,” he says. “It already contaminated the water. The process has already started, this well will become a well of lust in a matter of seconds. Oh, Lucy, it’s true, what they said about you—you are the Red Queen, and you will bring destruction to the world. No matter what we do, or how we try to avoid it, bad things keep happening.”
I’m desperate for a solution, but Silas is no longer a reasonable man that I can talk to. Now a slave to his cravings, he picks me up and sets me o
n the edge of the well, holding me safely with his big hands on my loins, and placing himself between my legs. I’m wearing jeans, but we both know he could rip them to shreds with only two fingers, if he wanted to.
And he does want to. He moans in my mouth as he kisses me desperately, and the world spins around me as I realize my mistake.
Now, in my lover’s arms that hold me so tightly I can barely breathe, I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I’d thought of more than just myself. I wish I would have trusted Silas when he told me he couldn’t take my virginity, and enjoyed his dedicated kisses and his loving touch, which felt heavenly. Now, with his mighty erection pushing against my folds through my jeans, sending my soaked panties sliding over my crack, I’m torn between the need to feel him between my walls, and the wish something would happen to quench this fire that threatens to consume us both.
“Stop,” a gravelly voice reaches us from the darkness. Silas peels his hot lips off of mine, and turns to face the intruder. I gasp when I recognize Maverick walking towards us from the forest.
“Back off,” Silas warns, the muscles in his broad back tightening under his shirt.
“Get a grip, Silas,” Maverick says, holding a hand up. “I’m not here to fight you, but I will if I have to.” He approaches slowly, like a negotiator talking to a highly dangerous criminal. And, if I’m honest, that’s how Silas looks right now. The finely chiseled features of his face have taken on the sharpness of a godless man. I can see him as I slide slowly off the well edge and walk by him, ready to step between the two men in case the spirits heat up.
But when I get a good look at Maverick, I stop in my tracks. The hard mud cracks under his boots as he walks closer, his dark eyes focused on Silas from under his black eyebrows. Damn, he’s sexy with his intense gaze of a bad boy, his body bulky and powerful under the leather and buckles covering him.
