I breathed in deeply; he smelled delicious. If I leaned forward, could I take his lip between mine and swipe a taste of his coco and almond sweetness? Just one…?
Bask arched his back, teasing his hand still lower. He skirted his prick, however, which was straining hard against him, instead touching between his thighs. With a sigh, he opened his legs.
His eyes became half-lidded.
Wait, was I about to gain the first point in the Wank Count…?
Then Bask’s heel nudged against a huge crocodile plushie. Witching heavens, the prehistoric-looking toy was ugly. Blushing, Bask kicked it by the snout under the pillows.
“Nile, did you have to ruin the mood?” Bask’s voice was gentle and Irish.
His crimson eyes were framed with longer lashes than I’d ever seen and gleamed with something so broken that I struggled to escape the portrait.
Inch by fizzing inch, my fingers broke free, glowing magenta.
Let me reach him…
“I don’t want to be alone,” Bask whispered like a confession. Then he stared up at me, as if he knew that I was there or was desperate for me…needed me. “It’s already the weekend before the start of term. What if I can’t protect Slippy from the Princes, the professors, or himself?” He sighed. “But then, Slippy thinks that I’m crazy.” He darted a glance up at me. “Here’s the thing of it, I know that you’re there.” His voice shook with longing. My temples throbbed, but I forced myself further out of the painting. Bask was in danger, if he gave his love so easily. It shook me to the bones to see the way that he watched me with such veneration. Who’d protect him from the predators who’d take advantage of such capacity for love? “I crave you. Let me please and love you.”
Bask ran both his hands up his thighs, letting his thighs splay wide open. His prick throbbed. His chest rose and fell rapidly, as one gloved hand cupped his balls, and the other clasped the base of his prick, before slowly running up its length.
My skin felt too tight, and I flushed. I’d never witnessed a man engaged in pleasuring himself before. Especially when I knew that he was imagining that it was I touching him in such intimate places. At each throb of his prick, my magic throbbed more powerfully like it was being fed. Yet even more so was the emotion: Bask never dropped his gaze from mine in the portrait like every moan, as he twisted his hand over his prick or slid his thumb lightly over the slit in its head, was in worship of me.
His pleasure was his sacrifice.
In an academy where the delinquents never knew whether it’d be their last day alive, it transformed the Rebels into reckless, passionate thrill seekers.
Could I harness the energy of all that high emotion and sexual need and desire?
I watched with darkening gaze, as Bask’s breathing deepened.
He threw back his head, revealing the snow-white line of his throat. “Pet me,” he pleaded.
My magic exploded around my hands that flamed like they were being burned once again. I burst from the portrait, hovering over Bask: his spirit lover. Then I pressed my fizzing lips to his. I couldn’t touch him, yet my magic still sparked into him. He groaned, jolting like I was magnifying his pleasure and forcing it back into him, until he was sweating and panting.
His eyes flew wide open. His hands grasped the sheets, and his knuckles whitened. Then a pearly stream erupted from his prick, marking his stomach, as he shuddered.
“Voyeur Ghost,” he screamed in equal submission and ownership.
Excuse me…what? I blinked.
I’d just given him the best orgasm of his incubus life and he didn’t even know my name…? I had to admit that Voyeur Ghost had a brutal truth to it.
Cherished Ghost? Desired Ghost? Bouncy Bosoms Ghost (that was one of Flair’s favorites)? Any of those would’ve been preferable.
Bask grinned sleepily, stretching. Then he glanced at me almost like he could see me. He pushed himself to his knees, before starting to pull off one of his gloves.
I paled. He intended to touch my portrait…? Would he be able to read my desires?
Then Bask howled, falling backwards, as freezing water dowsed him in a waterfall stream. He curled into himself, shivering.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
I shot back into the portrait. What in the witching heavens was going on?
At last, the icy water magically shut off, leaving Bask in a puddle on the soaked bed. His skin was blue, and his breathing too rapid.
I’d heard Henrietta talk of Ice Water Punishments, but I hadn’t realized how cruel they were until now. What would they feel like to an incubus whose sense of touch was so many times more intense than a humans’, especially after the throes of pleasure?
“I take it that would be sorry for your attempt to go skin to skin without permission?” The educated American voice wound from the shadows of the archway; it was sultry and promised chaos and darkness.
I pouted. Why couldn’t I sound like that? Believe you and me, I’d attempted to sound more wicked witch and less like the sugar force-feeding nanny who couldn’t even afford a broomstick and instead, had to fly by umbrella. Echo was always singing about her: oh yes, Mary bloody Poppins.
“A-as you w-wish, Professor B-bacchus,” Bask chattered, forcing his shaking hand back into his glove.
“Oh, you didn’t try anything so dumb, darling, or I’d have to report you, and that would entail far too many dull consequences. Let’s say your punishment was for making predictably wasteful use of your free time.” The professor stepped further into the room and waved her hand.
Instantly, Bask and the bed was dry again as if they’d never been dowsed in water. Bask scrambled to cover himself with the sheet, and I’d have shielded him apart from the awfully frustrating fact that I was invisible.
List of Reasons that I Hated Being a Ghost: 92
Bacchus arched her brow with a smirk. “Why, so modest.”
When Bask flushed, I wished that I could touch but this time so I could slap the smirk off the witch’s face. All right, her beautiful face. Disgruntled, I couldn’t help staring at her.
Flair had told me that Professor Bacchus, the Immortal’s Tutor in the West Wing, was the most daring and brilliant witch currently in America, who’d been persuaded to travel to Oxford to teach, but that she was more than a witch: she was an immortal.
Bacchus glowed with a fervor that sang wild dances even to me but with such a predatory danger in her purple floor length toga, which was pinned at the shoulder with a moth brooch, that my skin prickled. Her amber necklace glinted in the light from the fire, which flared in warning and her midnight black hair tumbled to her waist. Her eyes were large, hazel, and cat-like. In fact, they matched those of the actual black cat who she hugged to her chest.
I snickered. The most daring American witch was also into witchy role play it appeared, complete with black cat familiar. The cat’s fur was so sleek that it gleamed. A pentacle collar clinked around the cat’s neck, as it turned its head to study me with narrowed eyes. Sometimes, life called for the unladylike. I gave a shrill whistle, and the cat leaped back, puffing up its fur and sinking its claws into the professor’s chest.
I grinned, as Bacchus winced.
Familiars could sometimes sense ghosts, as if the trauma of their death and resurrection from Fallen angel into familiar had granted them the skill. I didn’t imagine that it was much compensation for becoming a witch’s slave.