Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword (26 page)

“Okay. Anything else I need to know?”

She thought for a moment. “There are three crucial moments in this ritual. One is the moment of penetration, one is when she comes, and one is when you come. Without getting too technical, though, you can actually make it five moments. The penetration counts for two, because you’re both virgins, her first orgasm would be number three, and if you can come simultaneously with her when she comes a second time, that would be four and five. But I don’t want to put too much pressure on your first time. The most important thing is that she comes first, because if you come first and she hasn’t yet, and you go soft...”

Kyle took a deep breath, too absorbed in the details of the ritual magic to be embarrassed. “Got it. What if she comes before I even penetrate her?”

Master Brandish smiled. “Good thinking, but in this case, it doesn’t get you anything magically and might actually disperse some of her energy. Make sure you’re inside her when she comes. The rest you can leave to us.”

“All right.” Kyle took a step toward Jess.

“Oh, and Kyle,” Master Brandish added. “If you’re shy about what we see...I suggest you leave her dress on and put her on top.”

He watched Jess blush a deep red at that.

Master Brandish was cutting some symbols into the carpet with the sword as he put his arm around Jess and led her into the small bedroom.

* * * *

The first thing Jess said once they were alone was, “I’m sorry.”

“Shh, you already said that.” Kyle kissed her hair. “I’ve spent six months trying to get you to figure out I’m the one, but if I’m not, then I’m not. It’s really okay.”

“Fate is a funny old thing,” she said, quoting Alex. “He fell for me Halloween night. We’ve been friends since then,
but until tonight I hadn’t realized...” She broke off there, then said, “I’m just sorry for hurting you. I really do care a lot about you, you know.”

“I know. But let’s not think about me being hurt right now, all right?” He brushed stray hairs back from her cheek, tucking them behind her ear. “We’re about to do a really beautiful thing. A really noble thing. I think we can count ourselves lucky to have the chance, don’t you?”

She nodded, a smile spreading across her face. “And I really, really am glad that it’s you. Oh, Kyle.” She pulled him down into a kiss and he hugged her tightly against him.

He felt slightly amazed that the events of the evening hadn’t diminished his desire for her at all. Even as his mind and his heart were preparing to let her go, his body responded the way he would have expected it to had she just accepted the proposal he never got to make. It felt like it took only seconds for him to get hard, pressing against her. To think he would finally be inside her—his cock twitched in his tights, throbbing with anticipation.

For one last time, she was his, and would be truly his. He lifted her up and lay her on the bed, her skirts spreading around her like a giant flower. “Jess...” The dress had laces and boning and crinolines and things, but under it all she was wearing the same panties she always wore. He slipped them from her legs and parted her lips gently, placing a kiss on her clit before snaking his tongue out to lick her.

Her cries resounded in the small room as he teased her, flicking his tongue lightly over the nub for a while and then soothing it with long, wet strokes. He lifted his head. “She told me not to let you come until after I’m in you, you know.”

“Ahh! You tease! Get over here then and take some of your own medicine.”

“No, no, no, I have to hold out until after you come, you know. I’m hard as a rock already, Jess. If you tease me, I might not last past slipping inside you.” He did move to lie next to her, though, his hand toying with her laces. He kissed her. “That happens to some guys, doesn’t it? Where it’s so incredible that they just come right away? Or is that only in books?”

“No idea,” she said, wriggling a little as the dress fell open. So much for the idea of leaving it on. Kyle didn’t think it was a good idea to let Jess be on top anyway, since he truly was going to be challenged to last long enough. “But I do think you should do like you usually do. You’ve always lasted fine like that.” She pulled open the front button on his breeches.

In short order, all their finery was on the floor and Kyle was atop her, rutting gently against her hip while looking into her eyes. “What position do you think we should use?”

“I think just like this.” Her voice was breathy. “Only, you know.”

“Inside.”

“Yes.”

“Think it’ll be okay if I kiss your neck like this?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm. And suckle your nipples like this?”

“Yes!”

Kyle slipped his cock between her legs, and found she was so slick that he was quickly coated. “Wait a second.”

“What?”

“What about safe sex?”

“You really don’t know anything about sex magic, do you?”

“Not a thing.”

“Don’t worry. The energy we’re raising won’t go into conception. And any STDs you have, I would have already gotten,” she teased.

He chuckled. “All right. If you say so. I’m sure I can do this,” he thrust a bit harder, teasing her back with his cock, “but I don’t think I could have put a condom on with Dean Bell watching.”

She wrapped her hands around his buttocks with a small grunt. “Maybe we ought to get out there.”

He nodded and kissed her one more time.

They held hands as they rounded Dean Bell’s desk to find the carpet in the sitting area had been transformed into a ritual circle, ringed with candles and symbols. Frost was still on the couch, Candlin in a chair on the other side of the circle from him, and Dean Bell standing between them. Meanwhile the two women were sitting crosslegged inside the circle and Marjory was fanning the smoke from an incense burner with a leaf of some kind. They were both still dressed but barefoot, and Marjory’s skirt had been replaced by a pair of shorts.

Dean Bell stepped forward with a bowl in his hand. “So like Adam and Eve,“ he said, and Kyle had a feeling he was holding back a laugh. But he dipped his fingers in the bowl and painted something on Kyle’s forehead, then on Jess’s. He painted another symbol on Kyle’s chest, then stepped back. “You may enter the circle.”

Kyle kept hold of Jess’s hand as they stepped over the line, and suddenly he could smell the incense.

“Just ignore us,” Marjory said in a low voice.

Jess giggled at that. “Yeah, right.” But she sat at the center of the circle, then lay back, holding her arms out toward Kyle.

She was as beautiful as ever, eyes shining in the candlelight, her skin perfect and her hair still bound up with some strings of pearls. With the incense filling his head, Kyle could almost imagine they were back in her room after the Masque,
finally consummating their commitment to each other. He knelt between her legs and then stretched out on top of her, keeping his upper body propped up with one arm as he adjusted the angle of his cock between her legs.

He thrust a few times the old way, the hard length of him along her clit, then settled a bit lower.

“Go on,” Jess said.

“Shhh.” He kissed her and rocked his hips, shuddering as the head of his cock slid through silk wetness, not into her yet, but close. He kept rocking his hips slowly, feeling for the right spot, the right angle. He didn’t want to reach down with his hand. He had his elbows under her arms and he nibbled at her neck. He didn’t want to reach down, he wanted to—

She cried out as he plunged into her and he realized that other sound he heard was his own voice. He’d tried before to imagine something that felt better than rubbing off on her, and now he’d found it. He rocked his hips again, and pushed deeper, and she clung to him, the sound she was making not a bad sound at all.

He rocked his hips once more, partway out of her and back in, and realized he could see a kind of glowing ball above her head, floating there. It was like a ball of mist, with two different colors of smoke roiling around inside it. He couldn’t quite say what the colors were, only that they were distinct.

But the glowing ball didn’t hold his attention nearly so much as Jess under him.
Around
him. His hips seemed to be moving of their own accord, and he leaned over to nibble at her ear and whisper, “I’m in you.”

“I know,” she whispered back.

“Let’s see if you can come now,” he added, trying to slip his thumb between them to her clit, but she pulled his hand back, shaking her head.

“Just keep on like that,” she said, wrapping her legs around his thighs and grinding upward against him. “Just. Like. That...”

“I can do that.” He was very aroused, but not yet close, and the pace of her grinding was slower than the one he would have picked to make himself come. Her neck tasted of salt and flowers and he sucked at the tender place there that had always made her writhe before. She cried out and squeezed him harder, both with her arms and the muscles inside her, a new cry ringing out on every thrust, and a dozen or so thrusts later she went suddenly limp.

“Wow,” she breathed. Kyle could see a third color had joined the two entwining in the ball.

“Good?” he asked with a grin.

“Don’t fish for compliments,” she warned, grinning back. “Think we can get it right? Come together?”

“I hope so,” he said, picking up the pace a little.

Her eyes widened and she gripped him urgently. “I might...I might be closer to a second one than...than usual.”

He slowed, kissing her softly. “You always go off pretty fast the second time.”

“Kyle...”

“Be right there,” he promised, and began to fuck her in earnest, his hips snapping as he bent one of her legs toward her chest. Yes, that was the angle his cock wanted, that feeling like he was getting as deep into her as he could, into the tightest, hottest place. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, she tightened still more around him, her eyes pleading with him.

There was no denying the demand of her body, though, and he began to come quite suddenly, making an audible sound of surprise just a moment before she began to cry out again. Each thrust felt like it was just adding fuel to the explosion, and Kyle wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sprouted wings or the carpet had caught fire or any number of things.

What actually happened was two more streams of color flooded into the glowing ball, and Jess reached up and grasped it with both hands as if it were solid, then let it go. Kyle looked up as Dean Bell, now standing over Frost’s inert form, waved a wand. The ball flew straight at Frost’s chest and disappeared. Only a moment later, Frost clutched at his chest and sat bolt upright, eyes wild.

Michael jumped to his feet. “Tim!”

But Frost screamed and clutched onto Dean Bell, hiding his face in his robes. Brandish moved to block the siren from moving toward them.

Kyle kissed Jess, who had been watching it all upside down. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she answered, almost shyly. But she pulled him down for another kiss and his soft cock slipped free. “Looks like we did it.”

“Yeah.” They kissed one last time, then set about disentangling their limbs and sitting up.

It wasn’t until she stepped out of the circle that her absence hit him like a wave of cold water. Candlin had burst into tears again, and he suspected Frost was crying in Bell’s arms, too. Was that why his own cheeks felt so wet?

Then someone was there with a blanket, wrapping it around his shoulders. Marjory. She held him and stroked his hair and said “I know,” and even though he had no idea what it was she knew, it felt good to hear it.

When he looked up again, after losing track of time, he and Marjory were alone in the room, still sitting in the circle surrounded by candles that were no longer lit. His eyes burned from leftover incense and crying. “There wasn’t time to warn you how...ripped apart you might feel,” she said in a quiet voice. “I mean, even without all the stuff about her and the other guy...”

Kyle shook his head. “I knew. She told me.” He could almost hear Jess saying, like she had that one time,
Sex makes you vulnerable, you know. It opens your heart, in all ways.

And Kyle had answered with a lie.
I don’t want to cry over someone I don’t care about anymore,
he’d said. But if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have been crying. And the same was true now.

“The rest of them are raiding the kitchen at Gladius House,” Marjory said, then, reaching for her glasses and putting them back on. “Do you want to join them?”

He sat back and looked around at the ruined carpet and sighed. “Honestly, I think I’d rather just get a pizza and sleep for a week.”

She smiled at him. “Can you make it to Camella House? Or should I get it delivered here?”

He smiled back. Someone had piled all his party clothes near them, as well as a bathrobe. He pulled on the robe. “Camella House isn’t far. Let’s go.”

“What I don’t understand is how he makes it taste the way you think flowers should taste, except that they don’t.” Kyle stared at the vial in his hand as the wind blew his hair into his eyes. He hadn’t had it cut all year, not since last September right before he’d arrived at Harvard. At Veritas.