Cauldrons and candles, everyone had their tipping point, didn't they?
It was rather reckless to grab hold of Bask, since I was hexed not to touch him, and that hex was a bitch. It electrocuted both Bask and me, as we fell through the darkness, spinning off course from the study.
I coiled my magic around Bask, until he glowed. Then I wrenched, yanking Bask out of Damelza's hold and away from her dark magic.
The air itself crushed me.
I clung to Bask's hard chest; his sweet scent of coco and almonds cocooned me. I longed to kiss his plush lips and taste him. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, stroking my long blond hair, like he'd never let me go.
Don't. Let. Go.
The hex ripped through me, savaging me. I screamed, and my ears rang. The shock shuddered through both of us together, as we shook like we were dancing.
Hecate, please, please, make it stop...
Perhaps, I needed to have NEVER PRAY TO GODDESSES tattooed somewhere intimate. My crow familiars, Echo and Flair, would’ve voted for my bosoms.
They were certainly ample enough.
Keep concentrating on my jiggling bosoms and not the agony…
I bit my tongue to hold in the pleas: stop the man who I love from being forced into marriage just like I’d almost been to a fae prince, save the mage from death, even if I hadn't been able to save my best friend, and pull me back from the crushing black.
Yet the last time that I'd prayed to Hecate, I'd been burned as a sacrifice. So, I rather thought that this time I'd save myself without divine...anything.
I'd had enough of being witch slapped by either covens or ancient deities. Life had been breathed back into me, and I was just discovering true belonging amongst the living. Yet Damelza had intended to whisk one of those living Immortals who'd introduced me to the sensations, experiences, and love of this new world in the twenty-first century away, and I'd stolen a ride.
It was time to steal him back.
I clutched Bask tighter, as the magic spun out of control, careening us through the veils. My Blessedly Charmed magic pulsed through the castle. The castle's heartbeat thud — thud — thudded in time with my own.
I'd created and cursed Rebel Academy. It was mine.
Its shadows and secret places, which smelled of white sage and forgotten magic, were opened to us. We were inside them.
Don't let us be lost between worlds.
My nerves fried, and my teeth chattered.
Bask and I tore through hidden passageways, chambers, and shrines.
Mage's balls on a stick...make it stop...
There was a darkness like icy blood poisoning the veins of the academy, and it was my own loss and grief. I shook with the realization that only I could heal it.
I might be a wicked witch, but I could bless, as well as curse. My mother and her descendants who ran this academy had their Principal's Motto Book, but I didn't have a rule book.
My stomach lurched, and for a moment, I had the disconcerting sensation that we were hanging upside down. I wasn’t cut out to become a bat, even if my billowing black velvet dress could play the part of wings.
How did I land this magical transportation again?
I concentrated on the academy. I could sense the dragon shifters in the stable, the thrumming power in the Dead Wood, the frozen lake, and the wards that trapped all the Rebels inside the grounds.
My magic reached like pink roots beneath the academy and to the ruins outside the castle. I should...perhaps...have paid more attention to the professor in Strategy and less to Lysander's unfairly tight behind, but wouldn't the ruins make an excellent position to defend my lover? Although, I was certain that Bask would assume that he was defending me.
Vanity, your name is an incubus who looks like he was created to tempt witches to sin.
Suddenly, Damelza's magic snapped against mine with the crack of a whip.
Bask howled, as Damelza tried to haul him away from me and back to her...and the inspection by the Duchess, his old bond.
In the name of Hecate, I wouldn't let that happen.
My magenta burst from me like a firework in an explosion that burned me out. At the same time, it burst us free from Damelza and the secret heart of the academy.
I rather feared that I was no longer in control of this flight.
My pulse raced. Why couldn’t I move? Had I truly used up all my energy? I struggled to scrunch up my nose or wiggle my toes.
Nothing.
Like a robin with broken wings, where I crashed would now be total blind luck.
Not the study...
I screwed shut my eyes, holding my breath. Then it was knocked out of me in an oomph, as Bask and I landed.
Silence, apart from Bask’s heartbeat and my own, which were both wild in our chests.
When my eyes blinked open, I found myself staring straight into Bask’s adoring ruby gaze. I shivered at the wordless way in which his gaze said that I was his world, and he’d die if I looked away. He caged me between his arms, as he lay above me like a sinful emperor.
Bask’s pleasure had summoned me as a ghost, then his love had resurrected me.
I craved to devour him.
Bask’s silky black hair veiled my face, tickling my cheeks. His uniform of pink blazer and tie with black pants was as perfect as if he’d been strolling down a corridor rather than tumbling to possible oblivion.
Only the way that he sank closer to me, before resting one shaky hand, which was encased in a long pink glove because incubi could read your deep, dark desires and control you with them through touch, on my cheek told me that I wasn’t the only one still tremoring with shocks.
Bask stroked the tip of his finger along my jawline, and I shivered. “I’m touching you, and it doesn’t hurt.”
“Why, you’re quite turning my head with your sweet talk.” I smiled, and longed to catch Bask’s lower lip between my teeth. “I’m awfully sorry, you meant that the hex has fried itself out on my magic. In the witching heavens, I never wish to stop touching you again.”
“Pet me,” Bask commanded.
Incubi were only meant to gain power from giving pleasure, but Bask was considered bad because he gained it from receiving pleasure as well. He needed touch to survive and he’d been touch deprived for days.
Hand, why aren’t you rising to pet my incubus? Stop this witchy laziness at once.
“It would be my pleasure,” hand, I must insist that you behave and start petting, “if I could only move more than my head and toes… Give me a second…possibly one more… Look, I’ve conquered my little finger.”
“If it pleases you, much fun can be had even with a wee finger like that.” Bask slunk down me, only to catch my wiggling finger in his mouth.
Even through my gloves, I jumped at the heat and the way that his tongue curled around my finger, as he looked up teasingly from underneath his butterfly lashes.
Why hadn’t I tried this before? And when could I try it again, when I had enough power to vanish my gloves?
Was this why the Rebels sucked each other’s pricks? Sleipnir, my gorgeous god and Loki’s son, had certainly appeared to enjoy it when I’d experimented on his, and I’d loved the power of dragging the same flush to his cheeks and breathy gasps from him that Bask was now dragging from me.