Page 60 of Great Falls Cadet
With a frustrated moan, I clench greedily around the intrusion. The skilled callused fingers tease my channel, forcing my desperation higher still while always stopping a hair short of release no matter how much I try to rock against them.
“Please,” I finally whimper. “I can’t. Tye, please.”
Tye returns his tongue to my bud with a growl, his fingers still sliding back and forth inside me.Flick-thrust, flick-thrust,the duet of tongue and fingers plays me like a tuned violin, plucking a new sensation with each precise touch. My thighs press in, blocked by Tye’s wide shoulders.Flick-thrust. Flick-thrust.
The approaching abyss widens its maw. My whole body shakes.
“Now,” Tye says against my bud. With a self-satisfied growl, the male takes my whole engorged apex between his lips and sucks.
Need explodes in shards of howling bliss, a blaze that tightens every muscle in my body. Again. Again. The spasms come in waves, one crashing atop the next until I can barely draw breath into tightened lungs. The molten heat between my legs spreads through my backside and spine, rolling down the backs of my legs with pleasure so intense, it hurts. My head swims, my core sated down to every tiny crevice, even as my body shudders in the aftershocks.
As the last one subsides, I realize Tye has pulled me off the ledge and now cradles me gently against his chest. The feel of his warm cheek resting atop my head is so perfect that I know I could stay like this forever and be absolutely content.
And yet we both know I can’t.
15
Lera
“In Tye’s defense, he said he wouldn’tbedyou,” says Arisha the following morning, eyes trained pointedly on the sprawl of papers on her desk, a faint pink blush rising up her cheeks. She’s told me that cadets couple up at the Academy all the time, in spite of it being technically against the rules—which doesn’t make it any less scandalous to my by-the-book roommate. “And it sounds like there was no bed in sight. Does this mean you two are—”
“No. We are friends. Possibly friends. Maybe ones who enjoy a tumble in the sheets now and then.” I cringe, thinking of the searing look Katita gave Tye and me from across the cobblestone courtyard when we snuck out of the men’s bathhouse—our sex-glazed eyes damning us as surely as my borrowed-from-the-baths clothing. Was it simply bad fortune that the princess happened upon us as the Academy was bedding down for the night—or something more? The notion that Katita may have been waiting, watching for us, fills me with a new type of dread. I’ve been in the mortal lands for less than a week and have already crossed one of the most powerful people here. For an interloper who is supposed to be keeping her head down, I’m doing a damn poor job of it. I clear my suddenly dry throat. “Anyway, this Tye doesn’t know me well enough to even consider anything else. Now, how do I look?”
Turning about in the center of our narrow dorm room, I display the dress uniform the quartermaster’s courier delivered for the Academy’s monthly parade inspection. The short-cropped red vest sits snugly across my chest, the gold trimming shining between the double rows of buttons. Lower, the pants flare in a bow to feminine sensuality, the material flowing along with each movement. A glorious mix of military discipline and courtly elegance. Neither of which I displayed last night.
“Perfect. It shows off your swollen lip in the best possible light.” Arisha’s head never comes up from the notes and sketches littering her desk. “I don’t for the life of me understand why normally sane and reasonable people lose their wits for a day each month to have the whole Academy turn up in dress uniforms on the courtyard lawn. It literally accomplishes nothing with the exception of seeing whether the pants still bloody fit.”
“There is something to be said for gathering everyone together,” I say, recalling River’s crowning ceremony in Slait a few months back. For all River’s stoic tolerance of Autumn’s elaborate planning, when he finally strode out to the dais to take his vows, the energy of the court hummed so loudly that it made my very blood sing. And not just my blood. I turn quickly, lest Arisha looks up to read too many delicious memories in my face—not the least of them being the sight of River striding back into the antechamber, his epaulettes gleaming with the same molten heat as his eyes.
“There is something to be said for seeing Tyelor in his dress red.” Arisha shuffles her journals. “Let’s return to what happened with you two last night again. For scientific study.”
My eyes narrow. “Are you just seeking gory details, or is this actually helpful in working out the veil problem?”
“Both.” This time, Arisha does flash me a sly grin. “Plus, as I little expect to be bedding anyone—much less the upcoming Prowess champion—any time soon…or ever, I’m entitled to live vicariously through you.” She frowns. “Wait, no. Being you would mean dealing with all four of them, wouldn’t it?—Because I don’t want to spend an extra moment in a room with Coal or River, forget a bed. As for Shade… Well, he was a swoon, but now I can’t look at the healer without remembering the hair his wolf shed onto the clean linen.” She shifts in her chair. “Now that I think on it, I’ve the better end of the bargain.”
“They aren’t as they seem,” I say, weaving a thick braid down the left side of my head. Despite all that happened the previous day, I feel better than I have in some time. Energized. Alive. “For a time there yesterday, Tye and I connected the way we’re meant to. It was the same with Coal. Coupling has always woken a deeper magic between us, even when I was human. It was how I was first able to harness my power.”
“Well, shall I write ‘bed the headmaster early and often’ at the top of our to-do list, or can you recall that one on your own?” Arisha blinks at me innocently, and I throw a shirt at her from my dresser top. It falls short, snagging on her bedpost. Her mischievous grin fades as she seems to realize something, clicking her tongue. “I wonder if we’ve not been going about this the wrong way.”
“I’ve been going about things the wrong way so much that the laws of probability say I should have stumbled into something correct by now,” I mutter. “What are you referring to?”
“What you just said, about the males not being as they seem. Everything I’ve read about the veil amulet and what you’ve told me of yourself contradicts that statement. The veil doesn’t change someone’s essence, only their explanation for it. Both Lera of Lunos and Lera of Osprey had the same childhood emotional experience—just dressed up in different clothes.”
“So?”
“So, instead of waiting until the males regain their memories, maybe you need to accept their personas as they are. Stop calling them ‘not real’ and forge bonds with these males who are here now, frightening as it may be. You five may need each other’s strength long before a magical key drops from the skies to reverse the veil.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Tye is right. I can’t lie to save my life. Everything about Arisha’s theory is bloody reasonable, except the one gap that is so wide, not even Tye’s athletic prowess can leap over it: the males’ new personas have no room for me in their busy lives. The energy I gained last night starts to fizzle.
“You should talk to River,” Arisha says.
I swallow, my gaze searching for somewhere else it needs to be just now. Outside on the swaying branches or maybe the book on my desk in case a strong desire to study should suddenly strike me. My back stiffens in spite of myself, and the smile I force onto my face feels like it’s cracking through dry lips. Stupid. I clear my throat. “Talk to him about what?”
“About the fact that you all know—from that first time you went over the wall—that there are magical threats to the Academy. That you want to be a part of the solution. He can’t tell others about the magic for fear of unwanted attention on the Academy—or worse, prosecution from fae hunters—so it limits his options. Let him invite you—” She stops, her eyes narrowing on my face, on the flush that’s probably rising there. “River intimidates you.”
“I’m not afraid of my own mate.” My jaw tightens, the only defense I have against my pounding heart. “I refuse to be.” I pause. “It’s just that, although River has always been our quint commander, before now, it’s simply meant that he had the final word on our missions, not on what time I need to be in my room.”
Rising from her chair, Arisha wraps her arms around me, her frizzy hair tickling my cheek as her comforting scent of parchment and ink calms my nerves. “Now, you listen to me, Leralynn of…of wherever you’re from,” she says, pulling me away enough to look at me over her round glasses. “River is the best deputy headmaster this Academy has ever had. You don’t know what it was like with only that weasel Sage here. What I’m saying is that River is a good man just as he is a good male. That’s one.”
