Magery

Concordium 33 – Magery Chapter 1

Sebastian's Tale

This storyline deals with the mages in the College Magic Cycle and their stories. This first chapter deals with Sebastian Trent and his year at Severan College so far. It covers everything from before the beginning of the year to the formation of the Advisory Committee and acts in some ways as a summary of events to date.

Sebastian

When the plans for this year had first been laid, I didn't anticipate the problems we would face. I'd expected a different set of problems. Last year, I'd been one of Professor Thorne's assistants. She'd told us what to do and we'd enacted her plans. But Clarissa and I had convinced her to give us greater power this following year. In addition to our regular duties as Residential Advisors, we were given separate tasks. Mine was as liaison with the administration to make sure nothing interfered with our agenda, but I'd also been asked to liaise with the other magical communities, especially the versipelles since I was already friends with the pack leader, Drew Janowski. Clarissa oversaw magical training for newly identified mages.

At the end of last year, I'd been given a list of the new students who had been tagged by the Conclave Education Committee as ‘Magically Sensitive’. We had reports from the Academy on those who'd studied there, but I had to scry the newcomers to see what kind of people they were. I had to look for previously unidentified mages, who we also called orphan mages.  It was especially important to catch the rogue mages, the ones who could sometimes do magic without learning spells ahead of time. They could be a danger to themselves and everyone around them.

All the new male supernatural students staying on campus would be assigned to my floor in the dorm. Some of the older mages would be on the fifth floor with Dezi Devereaux. He was my counterpart up there. There were too many male mages for one floor, but not enough for two. I was going to pull the LGBTQ students in to round out my numbers. That way I could look out for two groups of students who often faced difficulties in college.

We found enough unidentified mages this year that only a few spots needed to be filled by mundane students. I knew that Drew Janowski would be helping me to keep an eye on the skinchangers, so I concerned myself mostly with the mages. Early in the summer I identified a few rogue mages and some others I couldn't classify with certainty. I scried them over the summer so I could monitor both their physical and numinous forms and made my list for housing assignments.

Before school started I sat down with Mr. Aaron Blackwell, the Residence Director, to discuss the lists Clarissa and I had drawn up. His office was in the new administration building that had been uncomfortably squeezed between the Ambrose Library (named after a maternal great great uncle of mine who had paid for it) and the Student Union. From the outside, it matched the older buildings on campus, red brick colonial style with ivy growing up the sides, but the interior was modern. It was the only building on campus to have been built with wi-fi fully incorporated into its infrastructure. His office had an ultramodern look that would have been at home in a mundane office back home in Manhattan. I had more books in my dorm room than he had in his office.

Of course, I knew he wasn't really concerned with hearing my input, his interest lay in what was hiding beneath my jeans. He could barely keep his eyes off my dick or my butt. He wasn't a good-looking guy, but he wasn't repulsive either. He was in his forties, with a little bit of a dad gut, but otherwise he seemed in good shape. He had most of his hair, except for a bald patch on the crown of his head, and it was mostly dark brown with some silvery gray around the temples.

I’d been warned about him by Professor Thorne. She’d called me into her office and said, “I want you to consider the fact that Aaron Blackwell is notoriously fascinated by hard young bodies. If no other opportunity presents itself, are you willing to use that to our advantage?”

My brain skipped a beat as I realized she was asking me if I were willing to use my body to entice him to do what we needed. I was ambitious, but was I that ambitious? There was a heavy silence between us that hung in the air. Finally I asked, “Are you saying that he may be difficult to persuade through reason?”

I got the impression that she found the subject distasteful herself. She pursed her lips, then sighed. “What I’m saying is that it may take more firm control than simple persuasion.”

She made the uncharacteristically warm gesture of putting a hand on my wrist. “I know that you’re a young man of good character, but you told me that you would like more responsibility. Unfortunately, we - and by we, I mean agents of the Conclave - sometimes have to be willing to…” she paused for a moment and then shook her head. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. Sometimes we have to put binding enchantments on mundanes in positions of power. By magical law, it’s legal so long as the target isn’t a mage, but it is ethically gray. If you work for the Conclave, this is something you’ll probably be called upon to do.”

She flipped through my file and said, “I see that you did certify magus dignissimus in enchantments, so I assume you know a binding enchantment that will work.”

I made up my mind to what was demanded. “Ita vero, domina.”

And that’s how I came to be prepared for the binding I needed.I let him take the lead. If there was going to be any impropriety, he was going to start it, not me. I let him "seduce" me. Despite the pictures of his wife and kids on his desk, he came over to the small sofa in his office and sat next to me, putting one arm over the back of the couch, and letting the other rest against my thigh. As we went over my recommendations, he let his hand move up my leg toward my dick. I pretended not to notice and spread my legs a little farther apart. When his fingers brushed against my cock, I looked over at him and gave him a little smile, setting my paperwork down on the table and spreading my legs even farther.

Seeing that I wasn't resisting, Mr. Blackwell pressed harder against my cock. He may not have been someone I would have chosen to date, but he was eager. "Stand up," he said.

When I did, he unfastened the button at the waistband and unzipped my jeans. Then he buried his face in my crotch and started mouthing my cock through my briefs. I was hard in an instant. And that seemed to be the signal he was waiting for. He pulled my jeans down, along with my underwear, and my hard cock flopped out. I was bigger than average, at six and half inches, but not big in an absolute sense. He wasted no time in wrapping his lips around the head.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" I said, my voice rising in pitch with each exclamation. "You are amazingly good at that, Mr. Blackwell."

He wasn’t really very good. Like a lot of married men who sucked cock on the downlow, he showed more enthusiasm than skill. He pulled off for a minute to say, "The advantage to being with an older man is that we have a lot more experience than the young guys." I allowed a small moan to escape my lips. I had to admit he was better than I expected.

I put my hands on his shoulders to support myself so I wouldn't fall over. He was surprisingly sturdy, not the sculpted musculature of a guy who spent a lot of time at the gym, but the kind of sturdiness that came from maturity.

I wasn't a lightweight; I was five foot ten inches tall and 155 pounds. He was an inch taller than me and probably weighed 180 pounds, but when he pulled his mouth off my dick, he picked me up and laid me down on the carpet. Then he pulled my shoes off and ran my foot along his face, inhaling deeply. He pulled my socks off and licked the sole of each foot and thrust it between my toes. It tickled, but it also made my dick twitch. He sighed and shook his head. With a tinge of regret in his voice, he said, “You have amazingly odor free feet my boy.”

“I’m sorry, I guess?”

He laughed and replied, “That’s okay, but try wearing the same socks for a couple of days before you come next time. A young man should smell like a young man.”

I’d never thought about my Serapis Medallion working against my goals before. It kept me free from bacteria, including the bacteria that caused foot odor. It’s why I always thought mundanes smelled and tasted a little nasty. Don’t get me wrong; it didn’t turn me off. Sometimes it even excited me a little.

Mr. Blackwell moved his strong hand up my thighs and grabbed my butt firmly. “You are a fit young man, Sebastian. I like seeing you naked very much.”

He pulled my legs up so my ankles were resting on his shoulders. With a grin on his face, he bent down to kiss my lightly haired calf. He kissed his way quickly up my calves, but he slowed down when he reached my inner thighs. And then licked the area where legs met my groin.  “Mm. That’s better. Here, in this spot I can really taste you.”

I ran my hands through his thinner hair as he slowly moved to my balls. He sucked them one at a time into his warm wet mouth. I couldn’t stop myself from calling out, “Oh my God that’s amazing!”

Maybe I wasn’t that adventurous, but no one had ever sucked my balls before it was the best feeling ever. I thought I could have cum just from that feeling alone.

"Are you ready to cum, my young stud?" he asked, sinking to the ground between my legs and swallowing me again.

"Yes, sir!" I panted. "You suck cock better than any of my friends." Although I was trying to butter him up, that wasn’t actually a total lie.

He hummed on my cock, and I exploded in his warm mouth. He sucked and licked the head of my cock while I was cumming, and I gasped, "Oh gods! You're the best fucking cocksucker in the world."

My shaft was pumping a steady stream of cum into his eager mouth and he was swallowing it all. When I finished, he licked the head of my cock some more then stood up and handed me my pants. "It seems we're out of time today. If you can meet me tomorrow, I can fit you in at the same time. Then we can talk some more."

I pulled my briefs and pants back on, then picked up my papers. He rubbed my now soft cock with his hand and patted my butt. Then he kissed me on the lips, and I opened my mouth to welcome his tongue. I tasted my own cum in his mouth.  I knew what he was doing. He was going to lead me on while he got what he wanted, but he had no intention of making any of the changes I wanted.

The next day I did show up at the same time. I'd spent last night preparing a spell for today. If he was going to use his position to get what he wanted from me, I was going to use my talents to get what I wanted from him.

We had barely begun talking when he walked over to the door and flipped the lock. I hadn't seen him do that yesterday, but I was pretty sure he had. Then he walked over to me and took my papers, setting them on his desk. He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me. I was wearing a tweed jacket, which he pulled off and threw onto the couch. Then he loosened my tie and unbuttoned my shirt. He leaned in and licked one of my nipples. I'll give Mr. Blackwell this, he knew what he was doing.

"Let's roleplay a little," he said as he undid my pants. "I'll call you son, and you call me dad."

"Sure, Dad," I said, kicking my shoes off my feet.

Mr. Blackwell pulled my jeans down and said, "Step out of your jeans, Son. Daddy wants to see how much you've grown since Christmas."

I stepped out of my jeans and Mr. Blackwell began to fondle my dick through my briefs. I was surprised that I was getting aroused from this scenario of his. But I’d watched enough porn with this sort of fantasy so I guess it wasn’t such a revelation. "You're becoming a handsome young man, Nathan," he whispered as he kissed his way down my neck and then across my chest to my right nipple. He gave it a sharp nip with his teeth.

"That hurts, Daddy," I said, running my hands through his hair. I was wondering who Nathan was.

"I forget how sensitive young men are," he said, sinking to his knees.

I'd come prepared today in sexier briefs, the kind I usually wore on a date, with the wide waistband and the pouch to display my package. He repeated the mouthing of my cock through the underwear for a few minutes. He clearly had a routine.  I said, "You always make me feel so good, Daddy. Not every dad does this for his son. I feel special knowing that you love me so much more than other daddies love their sons."

"That's right, Son," he said. "Don't let anyone know about this, especially your mother."

"No, Dad," I said. "This will be just our secret."

I glanced over at the picture of his family on the table. His wife seemed nice enough, but my eyes were drawn to the boy with light brown hair and the brown eyes in the picture, the one who was only a few years younger than me. Damn! I thought. Mr. Blackwell was perving on his own son! I looked on the wall behind his desk and I saw the same young man, a few years older in an army uniform. I wondered if his son was the same age as me? The memory came upon me slowly. Mr. Blackwell had told me. His name was… Nathan, and he had another son named James.

Mr. Blackwell pulled my briefs down and off me, leaving me naked. And then he started to suck my dick in earnest. I began to concentrate on the ring on my finger as a focus instead of my wand. A wand would have been very hard to conceal while naked, and this ring with the pentacle and the incised Eta-Tau symbol of Hermes Trismegistos worked well for me, so long as I wore it on my right ring finger. I didn’t understand the significance myself, but magical implements interacted differently with each mage’s personal numina field. Using the arcane circuitry of the ring, and then allowing the magical energy to resonate with the crystals in its setting, took me more time than using a wand. However, I'd mastered this implement just for this purpose.

I stroked the ring with my thumb and chanted, "Semen meum incantamentum obsignet et animus tuus animo meo cohaereat. Semen meum incantamentum obsignet et animus tuus mihi serviat. Semen meum incantamentum obsignet et desideria mea sententias tuas superent. Semen meum incantamentum obsignet et vires meae vires tuas constringant. Semen meum incantamentum obsignet et ego dominus sim tui servo."

He didn't once stop his expert sucking of my cock as I chanted. I'd kept it low and he may not have understood any of my words. I felt my shaft filling with cum. I continued to repeat "semen meum incantamentum obsignet" until my cock contracted and shot my seed deep into his throat. He continued sucking until he'd drawn the last drops out of my cock.

"You taste so good, Son," he said.

"And no one sucks a cock better than you, Dad," I replied.

I would let him keep playing his fantasy. It didn't matter to me. Now he was my willing servant, and he would serve my needs above his own. "Let's go over those changes to the residency lists now," I said.

"I have a meeting in a few minutes," he said. "I can tell them I can't make it, if we need to…?"

"That's okay," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Stop by my room before you go home tonight, and I'll tell you what changes you have to make."

I pointed to the pictures on his table and on the wall. "Are these your family members?" I asked.

"This is my wife Jeanette," he said, pointing to the woman. "And these are my sons, Nathan and James." He pointed to the one in the army uniform, and then at a smaller, slighter boy with dark hair and pale skin. He looked like a goth boy.

"Are you having sex with the boys?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"But you want to, don't you?" I pushed on.

"I've always fantasized about having sex with Nathan," he admitted, incapable of refusing me anything now. "He's masculine like you. James is a handsome young man, but he's too soft and... well, he's too gay."

"How old are they?" I asked, getting curious now.

"Nathan is twenty-four this year, and James is 18," he said. "Nathan is in the Middle East, and James will be coming here next year." I was right about Nathan. He was a year older than me. But James was more my type. He was five years younger than me, and I liked them to be a little softer.

"Is James out of the closet yet?" I asked.

He shook his head. "His mother is in denial, but I figured it out when he was in middle school. His best friend Zack knows."

I was done with Mr. Blackwell then, so I left. The spell I'd put on him made him my willing servant, and he'd continue to be so unless he went more than a month without tasting my seed. I'd have to make sure that never happened. I needed him and his resources to do my job properly.

That summer, right after graduation, I stayed in the dorm. I'd gotten Mr. Blackwell to use my building as one of the summer dorms so I could stay there between academic years. With no one around but Clarissa and I, and a bunch of summer students, there were plenty of opportunities to carry out my scrying duties on the new students I would be responsible for. I touched on the known quantities: Micah Blume, Cameron Campbell, Oliver Rankin, Jason Lee, and the others from the Academy. Then I scried those like Simon Carter who had no magical talent but came from magical families. I checked them all, but, despite my efforts, I found myself focusing on the cute boys. Before moving to select the gay boys to round out the numbers, I checked the enigmas. The two enigmas that stood out were Alonzo Ramos and Kieran Morgan. Alonzo was a Mexican American gay boy from El Paso. His aura looked strange, like a light hidden under a thick blanket. I tried watching him for a while, but he was staying with a relative whose house was warded against scrying. Kieran was just as enigmatic. Sometimes his aura looked magically active, and other times it didn't. And it never did when I looked at it head on it.

I spent a lot of time looking at these two. I tried calling it work, but it was mostly for my own enjoyment. I watched Kieran hunker down emotionally inside himself every time someone else was in the room. It was almost like he was disappearing. It was at those times that I was almost sure I saw a flicker of magical energy in his aura. I saw him watching his friends out of the corner of his eye and looking away whenever they looked at him. A lesser seer wouldn't have been able to do it, but I had scored a certificatum expertum right out of the Academy, and I’d tested Expertissimus two years later.

I did a deeper examination of his aura over the hundreds of miles that lay between us. I saw how gay he was and how submissive, and that he kept all of that on the inside. I couldn't see any evidence that his aura was interacting with the background numinous web in a consistent way. I did watch him masturbating a lot. Which often meant I ended up masturbating equally as often. But I am not one to complain about the grueling work I do for the Conclave. He was never with another guy, although I began to suspect that both his cousin Dylan and his friend Steve would have loved to be with him. And his younger, chunkier cousin Tommy spent a lot of time watching him as well.

In the end I decided to keep him on my floor. I'd treat him as a sweet little gay boy until I could figure him out. Since he was super submissive, I was going to put him in Jason's room. They should get along well. I'd heard about Jason from my cousin, Adrian, who'd been at the Academy with him. Jason had been extremely dominant in his relationships. My cousin would have been a perfect match for him if Adrian weren't mostly into women. Instead, he'd fallen hard for Jason’s Aunt, Professor Dicanzio, and was now part of her male harem.

Alonzo was the one whom I watched the most. I couldn't see him naked in his bedroom, due to the magical guards on the house, but I loved watching him dance down the street, and I could watch him on his aunt's deck behind her house, lounging on a patio recliner. One day when she was out he had a visitor come over, a sexy guy in his mid-twenties with a priest's collar. They were chatting about the church. It appeared that Alonzo's aunt wasn't taking him to church since he'd come to live with her.

"The choir misses you, Alonzo," the young priest said. Then he put his hand on Alonzo's cheek and added, "And I miss you in my office after practice."

Alonzo rubbed his face against the priest's hand, and the priest ran his fingers along Alonzo's lips. The boy opened his mouth and licked the priest's fingers with his tongue. Breathing heavily, the priest slipped three fingers inside the boy's mouth. I should have stopped scrying at that point, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I let my hand slide down to my dick and started to rub it again.

Alonzo's hands moved over to the priest's belt and opened it. "Does little Lonnie need his pacifier?" the priest asked, pulling his fingers out of the boy's mouth.

"Yes, Father Mendez," he said, batting his long eyelashes. "I need it bad."

The priest opened his pants and let them drop, then he slid his boxers down to his ankles. An erection of respectable length popped out and Alonzo opened his mouth wide and swallowed it down. "Chupa me la pinga," the priest said as he slowly stroked Alonzo's face. "Bebe mi leche a traves de mi verga, mi guapito."

The priest whispered in English, "Show me your sweet little body, baby."

Alonzo didn't stop sucking the priest's cock, but he unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulders, leaving his hairless chest exposed. Then he undid his belt and slid his pants down over his rounded butt and kicked his legs until his pants came off, leaving him completely naked.

As Alonzo sucked Father Mendez's cock, I felt myself getting stiffer. I opened my pants so I could fully stroke myself. Alonzo was moaning with pleasure and the priest was gasping in ecstasy. I was getting close myself.

"You are such a sexy little bitch, Alonzo," the priest said. "You're like a work of art... and you've got me so close I can't hold it anymore."

Alonzo doubled his enthusiasm and grabbed the priest's scrotum with one hand and gently massaged his testicles. His other arm slid around Father Mendez’s waist and pulled him closer. The priest's body tensed, and his face turned red. "I'm cumming, boy!" he yelled. "I'm going to shoot my seed right down your throat."

He spasmed a little and he pulled Alonzo's face against his groin. He gasped in pleasure. When he'd sucked the last of the priest's seed out of his cock, he lay back and sighed. His pretty tongue licked the last drop of cum off his lips then he batted his eyelashes and bit his lip, the very image of seductive innocence.

I was so close that I was going to cum at any minute. I needed just one more thing to push me over the edge. Then he did it. Alonzo looked at the priest with that sexy smile of his and lifted his tiny, hairless cock. "Bless me father, for I have sinned. I've been a bad, bad boy."

I shot my load at the look on his face. I barely heard the priest try not to laugh as he said, "I told you not to do that Alonzo. Don't degrade the sacraments."

But he knelt beside the recliner and took Alonzo's cock in his mouth. As the priest groaned in pleasure, Alonzo whispered, "This is our sacrament."

I watched him a lot after that, but I never saw him having sex again. It was just him dancing in public, singing along with some street buskers in the park and interacting with people in town. He never stopped smiling and laughing, and everyone seemed to like him, even the guys I thought would be put off by his open exuberance. He seemed to love life so much, and to never lose his joy. It may have been watching Alonzo so much that made me miss important details, like Kyle Mason's violent streak.

**********

It took me all summer to make decisions about room assignments. There was a summer program sponsored by a church group that taught young college students how to avoid the temptations of liberal brainwashing while attending college. They used the empty rooms in our dorm for the two weeks they were in session. Kieran Morgan was attending the program, so I put him in a room by himself, the same room that I would put Jason Lee in when he got here. The insider information on him I had (from my cousin Adrian) was that he was intelligent, serious, and talented. And he was very confident in his sexuality. Maybe he could help Kieran come out of the closet.

And that's how I wasted my time most of the summer, trying to match up the gay boys with people I thought they'd get along with. Clarissa told me that I was spending too much time playing matchmaker, and that she refused to do it for the girls. If I'd looked closer at Kyle, I may have seen the danger signs. He was clearly a closeted boy with a lot to deal with at home. His father was distant and his older brother was a bully.

But I didn’t look too closely. Kyle didn’t bring anyone home with him, boy or girl and I only witnessed a few lackluster dates where he half-heartedly had sex with a girl. I wasn’t enjoying it any more than he was, so I tuned out.

I did spend some time watching Simon Carter and his two moms. HIs house was also warded against scrying. I should have checked him out more closely. Someone in the house was a mage, but it wasn’t him. I never saw him near the Lakeside Lodge, the mage’s claustrum in Chicago. I did see enough of him at that fancy LGBTQIA school he attended to know that the boy was crazy about jocks. I hoped that he and Kyle would be a good fit. Did I ever miss the mark on that one!

It was mid-June when I finally met James Blackwell. He'd come to spend the day on campus. I didn't make his acquaintance until my morning meeting with his father. James looked smaller than he was because he was so thin. He was actually two inches taller than me but must have weighed no more than 140 pounds. He was dressed in a black long-sleeved t-shirt, with the name of a band I didn't know, and tight black skinny jeans. His hair was dark brown, but he dyed it black. His skin wasn't pale, it just looked pale compared to his black hair. His nose was a little too long and he wore a lot of black eyeliner, which matched his black lipstick. His ears were pierced with thick gauges and three smaller rings through the cartilage. He had another piercing in his left eyebrow, one in his right nostril, a small stud through his lower lip and a bar through his tongue. He'd changed a lot since that picture in his dad's office. Given what I knew of his brother, maybe it had fallen to James to be the rebellious one.

I shouldn't have found him attractive, but I found his appearance interesting. Maybe I was fancying a little strange and James was about as strange as I'd seen – and I'd been to a fey party in Central Park. When I offered to show James around campus, Mr. Blackwell had to encourage him to go with me. The spell made him always work to my desires. James seemed perpetually unimpressed with everything, like it was a lifestyle choice. I showed him the Student Union, and the Old Severan House, a stone building that dated from the college's founding back in the early 19th century. Originally, it was the entire college, but these days it was an art gallery and held the fanciest dining establishment on campus. I showed him the art collection and the gardens in the back, but I didn't show him the secret room in the basement that held the oldest teleportation circle west of the Appalachians, predating the one in Los Angeles by six years.

He didn't seem the type to enjoy a walk in the woods, so I took him to see my dorm building. It wasn't that impressive, but I wanted to show him the types of rooms we had. I kept looking for something that interested him that I could use to start a conversation so I could get closer to him. Nothing seemed to work. I invited him back to my room for a drink, and that's when he surprised me.

"So, the campus is cool and all, but I have to ask whether Dad's fucking you or just sucking your dick," he said. "Don't look surprised. Nathan was too naive to catch on, but Dad sucked off a lot of my brother's friends. He's got some sort of evil dad moves because he'd usually end up fucking them too. I was impressed, despite myself, both with his persistence and his ability to keep Mom in the dark."

I didn't know what to say at first, then I shrugged. "He sucks my dick. I'm not sure if I'll let him fuck me. I prefer to top, but I can be versatile."

"Good," he said, kicking off his shoes. "I like to fuck, especially straightedge guys like you. And this nerdy professor thing you've got going on, it's working for me."

"This is moving pretty fast," I said, surprised by the turn of events.

"Dude, you've been looking at me since we met," he said. "Are we going to fuck, or what?"

"Sure," I said. "What do you want to do?"

He pulled off his shirt, showing his skinny chest. It was shaved smooth, and he had tattoos and piercings. His arms had fully detailed sleeves and his chest was dominated by a winged serpent in brilliant colors. His nipples were pierced by shiny bars. "First things first," he said. "We get naked, then I fuck your ass. I'm flexible, so I'll suck your cock - if I can’t fuck the cum right out of you."

It was strangely arousing to have this skinny nineteen-year-old bossing me around. He was only five years younger than me, but it seemed odd to have him taking charge. I started stripping my clothes off, figuring why not. I'd planned on fucking him, and I assumed I could still make that happen. Then he pulled his skinny jeans down. He wasn't wearing underwear, and his cock was huge, at least nine inches and thicker than you'd expect on a guy that thin. And it was covered in a tattoo that made it look like a snake. He kept his pubic area shaved as well, probably to show off the tattoos. Above the snake there was a line of stars.

He saw me staring and laughed. "Yeah. You aren't alone. Every guy who sees it wants to feel it. You can touch it, but only once you're naked."

I felt compelled to touch it. The compulsion was so strong that I shifted my vision so I could perceive magical auras. There were no active spells I could see. He was just charismatic when he turned it on, and that oversized dick of his was attractive in its own right. I pulled my clothes off as fast as I could, and he came up to me and said, "Touch it. You know you want to."

I'd never considered myself one of those guys who goes crazy over big cocks, but there was something about that big dick on James's slender frame that seemed incongruous to me. I took it in my hand, and it stirred to life. I felt James's hands on my shoulders, pushing me down. I didn't resist; I dropped to my knees and stroked his cock until it swelled to full size and stiffness.

"Kiss it," James said, with a smirk. "Kiss it to show it how much you want it inside you."

I kissed the head of his dick, and it jumped a little in my hand. I licked the head and opened my mouth to swallow it. Even stretching my lips, it wasn't easy to get the whole thing inside my mouth. I felt James's hands running through my hair and playing with my ears. I managed to get about half his cock inside my mouth before I began coughing up thick phlegm.

He pulled out. "I don't want to get too slippery for the condom to stay on."

I didn't worry about condoms, not because I was careless, but because the Serapis medallion I wore protected me from mundane diseases and poisons. Most mages received one as a gift shortly after being born and wore it from then on. Only a few diseases and poisons of a magical nature could get through the protection of the amulet. I had a sudden flash of memory; Judith Primrose and Melissa Hawthorn had gotten into a feud over some nasty rumors that had gotten stirred up at the Academy. I didn’t even remember what had caused it, but someone slipped a vial of somnus perniculosus into the bottle of wine Judith wasn’t supposed to have in the dorms. If it hadn’t been for Magistra DiCanzio, the alchemy master, she could have slept for a month.

He pulled a condom out of his wallet, and I took the chance to go to the bathroom. I used my ring to focus my spell because my wand was with my pants, and I chanted a quick cleansing spell I knew. It was designed to be altered on the fly to include specifics. I made sure to both clean and lubricate my butt. Then I came back into the room as James was finished rolling the condom down his nine-inch cock.

"Are you ready to feel the snake inside you?" he asked, waving his cock around.

"I'm ready to try," I said. "It's bigger than anything I've ever had in me, so it may not be so easy."

He motioned me over to the bed and put me on my back. "You do kind of look like my brother, Nathan," he said. "This is going to be hot as fuck."

His fingers found their way to my ass and slid inside. "Good thing you got lubed up because this viper is going to stretch you out. Damn! You're as tight as Nate was."

Now I was intrigued. Mr. Blackwell had the hots for his older son, but it sounded like the younger son had actually fucked him. "Did you do this with your brother?" I asked as his fingers worked their way into my butt and found my prostate.

He pressed gently on my prostate with his long fingers, making my cock jump and spurt. "My brother Nate looks like the All-American boy, but when no one was looking he turned into a total slut for my cock. I fucked him every day for the last three years. I had to gag him with my underwear to keep him from moaning so loud our parents came to see what was up. You know why he didn't come here to school, despite the discount on tuition from Dad's job? It's because he wanted to be able to get fucked a second time in the afternoon when I got out of high school. He's in the Middle East right now, and he's probably getting fucked by all his men. I did that to him. I was the first one to fuck him and he turned into a moaning bottom bitch the first time he felt my fifteen-year-old cock slide inside him."

Merlin's wand! He was getting me hot talking about fucking his older brother. He and his dad both seemed to think that I looked like Nathan Blackwell. Did that make what we were doing incest by proxy?

All my musings ceased when he pulled his fingers out of my ass and lifted my hips to shove a pillow under them. I felt the head of his cock pressing on my ring. I breathed deeply and recited a relaxation mantra in my head. Sphintria mea laxeatur; sphintria mea ungatur. Then I felt him pushing inside.

"That is blasted huge!" I shouted.

"There's more to come," he said, laughing. He grabbed his underwear and shoved the pouch into my mouth. "Now you look even more like Nate, and none of your neighbors will know that I'm fucking you like a bitch in here."

I could taste him in the pouch of his underwear. It made me feel ... subservient, passive, submissive. It wasn't a feeling I was used to. I held a top rating in enchantment as well as divination, so I was, if anything, too domineering, too used to exerting my own charisma on others. It felt refreshing to let it go and just do what this nineteen-year-old wanted.

He pushed in slowly but relentlessly. I had relaxed the muscles, so it didn't really hurt; but my ass felt fuller than it had ever felt before. Soon he was pressing against my inner sphincter, and I hoped that my relaxation chant had affected this one too. I was lucky. I felt the pressure, then felt him slide past it into my lower colon.

"Damn! You're a good fuck," James said. "Your ass isn't fighting me at all, but it's still keeping tight."

I tried to say something in return, but my mouth was full of musky cotton. Once his groin was pressed firmly against my ass, he started to fuck me for real. He'd used his fingers to locate my prostate before we started and now he was hitting it every time. He really knew what he was doing. I was impressed. My cock was leaking all over my abdomen. It was clearly as impressed as I was. I went to touch it, but he pulled my hands away.

"No need to touch your little bitch-clit," he said with a low voice. “I can hold back my orgasm for hours, so I'm going to fuck you until you cum. Have you ever cum just from having your ass fucked before?"

I shook my head and tried to murmur "no" around the underwear in my mouth. He looked down at me and said, "You look like you're going to blow any minute. Don't worry. I'm still going to suck your cock, but I want to see if you can cum from getting your ass pounded first."

It didn't take long. The feeling of his big cock pressing against my prostate combined with his dirty talk and the feelings of submission I'd never felt before combined to push me over the edge. My shaft filled with cum and my balls pulled tight against my body, then I spewed all over myself. His cock was big compared to anything I'd ever had in my ass before. The intensity was concentrated mostly in my sphincter and I could feel the ring clamping down hard on his cock, like it was trying to hold on for dear life. He joined me in orgasm, dropping his load deep inside me.

When he'd finished, he pulled out and began to lick the cum off my abdomen and chest, then he swallowed my whole sensitive cock into his mouth. His mouth was as talented as his cock. He sucked and massaged me with his tongue. He went from licking the head to swallowing me down his throat without a single gag or choke. My spent cock came back to life, and he sucked me to a second orgasm. This load he swallowed down his throat.

He pulled the condom of his cock, tied it off and tossed it in the trash. Then I took it in my mouth to clean it as best I could. I disliked the taste the condom had left on his cock, but I could still detect his salty creaminess underneath that. I had to clean the shaft by licking it, since I couldn't get the whole thing in my mouth and still have enough room to lick it clean.

That was the only time I had sex with James Blackwell. Even when he came back as a freshman at the end of August, I seldom saw him and when I did, he just waved at me and let his hand slide across his cock. I will say that James's description of his brother's behavior made me check up on him a few times. I needed a silver mirror to scry him on the other side of the world, but I had one in my room. He did look a lot like me, except he was a lot more muscular, and his hair was shorter. He was a lieutenant in the US Army, and he was stationed somewhere in Afghanistan. I saw no evidence of the behavior his younger brother had mentioned, although he did seem to be friendly with the men under his command.

It took me a while to realize that there was something strange about some of the scenes I was scrying. I would lose the image from time to time. It happened frequently enough that I knew it wasn't a fluke. Multiple times during each day and often at night as well, I would lose his image. It wasn't that something was ending my scrying spell. It was that the images went dark and cloudy. I knew what that meant. He was spending a lot of time around someone who was shielded from scrying. And when he was interacting with them, he was shielded too. This was someone he was working with during the day but was also seeing outside of work.

The most interesting scene from my perspective was the time when I was watching him get ready for bed. He'd washed himself thoroughly, even going so far as to use two soap covered fingers to clean himself out, like he was expecting company. He put on a jock and lay down on his bed. He was putting lube on his fingers and working them into his hole when there was a knock. He told whoever it was to come in, and then the image went cloudy. It wasn't my business who was fucking him, but I was curious. It was probably a mage, or maybe a face dancer.

The first week of school was mind-blowingly overwhelming. I was kept busy running from crisis to crisis. In one night, I had to deal with Kyle Mason attempting to rape Kieran Morgan and then beating the crap out of his roommate. If I'd watched him closer, I would have seen that he was a self-hating homophobe, but I had been too distracted by all the cute gay boys I had been scrying that summer. I had to switch Simon and Nico's room assignments so that Nico could get control over Kyle, and then I had to convince Jason Lee not to kill Kyle or do anything permanent to him.

But that wasn't all. Little Alonzo Ramos turned out to be, not just an orphan mage, but a powerful rogue mage as well. Clarissa told me that he'd taken a ritual circle away from her and drawn power from some other source to cast a powerful spell she couldn't identify. From that moment on, the boy shone like a beacon to my aura sight. It was only a few days later I discovered that Alonzo had cast a formidable enchantment that trapped himself and his roommate into a pattern based on a hardcore pornography eBook with extreme sadism and torture. I never would have pegged little Alonzo as someone who fantasized about that kind of stuff from looking at him, but then I remembered his interaction with the priest…

We were still working through these crises when I found out that Nico had magically enslaved Kyle with a necklace of compliance. He'd built the powerful trinket as a senior project back in the Academy, and I'd been so distracted that I let him wriggle his way out of his oaths. He had sworn to not prey on foolish students while he was at Severan College. He managed to get around me and secured a claim on Kyle as his legitimate target through the Conclave, leaving me with no way to interfere.

I had known Nico all my life, and I did love him like a brother, but he could be so damnably fey sometimes that he was hard to deal with. Most people never got beneath that strange exterior. But he and I had history. Whenever the stress of being immersed in the stuffy mage culture of Manhattan got to me, I could run off to the park and Nico would show me a different side to the city. The dances under the moonlight, the so-called “goblin market”, where he was always there to watch my back, even the raves held by the younger mages who weren’t part of my grandmother’s social circle.

But it didn't end there. A group of hunters had come onto campus and kidnapped one of our semi-mundane students and used him to lure the versipelles of the Severan Pack into an ambush. The skinchangers beat them and then killed them. Luckily for me, they disposed of the bodies where they'd never be found. But unluckily for all of us, they turned the semi-mundane student because he'd witnessed one of their sacred rituals. Now he was one of them.

The newly fledged member of the Severan Pack was none other than Simon Carter. He was semi-mundane, meaning he had no magical power, but he grew up around those who did. The name Carter didn't ring any alarm bells for me because the mageborn Carters were a family from South Carolina aligned with the most conservative mages in the Conclave, and they would barely acknowledge any mundane relatives. (They called them regressives or degenerates).

But he wasn't part of that family. His mother Chrissy Carter had married Tina Wu of the Chicago Wu family, one of the most influential mageborn families in America, the first ethnically Chinese family in America to become members of the Conclave. They'd held a seat on the directorate council since 1882. Tina Wu was a member of that family.

Still, no one had told Tina Wu that her son (the biological son of her wife Chrissy Carter) had been turned by a versipellis. I was probably going to have to be the one to do it, and I wasn't looking forward to it. Most mages looked at versipelles as inferior, and the fact that it could be transmitted made it too closely resemble a disease.

I tried to interfere with Nico's handling of Kyle Mason, but it didn't go over very well. He told me that I needed to check into his past before saying anything more, so I did. Scrying the past is easier done with the person there, however I had no choice but to attempt it from my dorm room, alone. Thankfully, Nico gave me some of Kyle's hair to make the job easier. What I saw sickened me. There was no way I could have caught it on a simple scrying, but Kyle had a history of abusing gay guys and getting off on it. He hadn't crossed over into rape until he came to school, but he deserved to be punished for all the things he'd done.

Even before any of these crises could be resolved, Drew told me that we had a face dancer on campus. He gave me the information I needed to find him. The thing about face dancers was that they were hard to scry, and it was even harder to read their mind. I lay in wait for him outside of his English class. His special telepathic senses wouldn't work on me either because I'd put a spell of mental shielding up before going to look for him. Since he didn't have any prescience that I was coming, I was able to put my hand on his shoulder and say, "I need to talk to you, Oscar Quinlan. Will you come with me?"

He looked at me with a little apprehension on his face and looked like he was going to try and get away. I pulled my wand out and made a gesture around the two of us and said, "Oculi turbam nobis advertant!"

People seldom saw mages at work. Thanks to the velamen arcanum, their minds would substitute something they could comprehend. They may have seen me waving the wand around, but if questioned they would have sworn that it was a pencil, or something else innocuous. The spell I'd cast used the latent power of the velamen to affect the mundanes around us. Their eyes automatically turned away from us. It wasn't that they didn't see us, but they paid us no attention.

Oscar seemed to collapse in on himself. "It's not like I have a choice," he sighed.

I didn't want to risk a scene crossing campus. Since we were covered by the ocular aversion spell, I held him tightly and chanted the words to a teleport spell. I had an arcane circle woven into a carpet in my room for just such occasions. We disappeared from the lobby of the Language Building and reappeared on my carpet.

"Have a seat, Oscar," I said. "We need to talk."

He sat down and held his backpack on his lap like a shield. He kept his human disguise on while seated. He looked like a handsome young man with pale skin and dark curly hair. "I'm not going to hurt you, Oscar," I said. "I just need to talk with you a little so I can get some information."

He didn't look like he believed me, but he nodded his head in agreement. I tried to put him at ease right up front. "You have a right to attend this college, you know. No one is trying to throw you out."

I looked up his records in the system. I had admin access thanks to another minion of mine in the Bursar's Office. "Have you always used the name Oscar Quinlan, or is there another Oscar Quinlan somewhere?"

He sighed. "What you want to know is whether I killed Oscar Quinlan and took his place. The answer is no. I didn't. I've been Oscar Quinlan since I was five years old. The real Oscar Quinlan died because of an automobile accident. His mother had been driving drunk and wrapped the car around a telephone pole, killing herself and her son. They survived long enough to get to the emergency room. They had no chance of survival, so my mother arranged for us to replace them. It was painful taking the form of someone wounded so bad and my mother had to lock me in that form to keep me from shifting out of it.

"We both gradually `healed’ from our injuries. Everyone was amazed at our complete recovery. Anyway, I've lived as Oscar Quinlan since that time, and I've never killed anyone. I was accepted to this school because I earned very good grades and earned enough scholarships to pay the tuition. I earned my place here."

I nodded while he was talking. I had no way to tell if he was being honest with me. Truth spells were useless against face dancers because of their powerful mind shields. I would have to trust my instincts and hope he wasn't too good a liar. "The proper procedure would have been to check in with the mage authorities on campus to let us know you were here. The fey courts have signed the Concordium and have agreed to these rules. Does Domenic Chase know you're here?"

He shrugged. "My family doesn't pay much attention to the fey courts, so I didn't know I had to let anyone know. And Domenic is an elf. They don't much like our people. I'm not sure I would be safe if he knew I was here."

"Nico wouldn't hurt you. He's different from most elves, but if he makes you uncomfortable, I need you to come to me," I assured him.

"Yes, sir," he said. "My mother and all her siblings say that we can't trust anyone outside our own tribe, but I do need to be able to talk to someone sometimes. I'm always being so careful not to reveal anything to anyone. I'll try to talk to you."

His voice said “yes” and so did his facial expressions, but he was a face dancer, one of the more dangerous fey. They weren’t physically or magically powerful like redcaps or elves, but they were insidious. And they spent their entire lives living through deception. I was powerless to do anything but hope that he was being honest with me. I’d have to check with Nico to see what tricks and protections he knew.

"That's a good first step," I said. "Would you like to change dorms so that you can be near other supernatural students? It’s also a safe place for LGBT students."

"Maybe," he replied, still sounding a little skeptical. "I'm half afraid that the versipelles are going to hunt me down because I almost drained too much energy from Simon, and we all know what they do to those who hurt their own. And then there's the vampire who prowls the campus at night."

Now he had my attention. "The pack isn't going after you," I replied. "I already spoke to Drew about it after he told me you were here. They don't count you as an enemy because Simon wasn't hurt, and he doesn't feel threatened by you. But I need to ask you about the vampire."

Oscar perked up a little. "He comes onto campus at night and looks for those who are out late. I've avoided him because a vampire's mind is different from a human's. They're too hard to read. I've never seen him feed because I go the other way when I see him."

"You're sure that it's a vampire and not the lennan sidhe who lives in town, the one who does his prowling at night but can still be out during the day?" I asked.

He gave a look that told me how little he thought of that idea. "I know the difference between the undead and a member of the fey courts," he said. "Besides, Conley McAoidh spends most of his time in town. His prey comes to him."

I took all that in and filed it away for later. I gave him my best and most sincere smile. "Okay I'm going to change your room assignment. I'll put you with a mundane or a mage. It’ll be good for you and I think everyone will benefit from getting to know you better. No pressure, you understand. You just share what you’re comfortable sharing.”

He nodded and said, “Thank you for that.”

“No problem. It’s what I’m here for, but I really do want to learn more about you and your people.”

“Most mages don’t care,” he said.

“I’m not most mages,” I replied. “And now for the hard part. I’m also the RA and I’m responsible to Professor Thorne for the behavior of all the male supes on campus. I’m going to have to make sure that you can follow some rules. First, you can't drain someone down to dangerous levels. Second, if you make a mistake and someone gets hurt, you need to find me and let me know so I can take care of it. Third, you need to report to me occasionally so we can chat, unless you want to start reporting to Nico."

"I'll talk to you, sir," he said. "I don't want any trouble. I just want to get myself a good degree and then go live my life in peace."

"Then we won't have any trouble, Oscar," I said. "I'll contact you about the move soon."

As he was leaving, I heaved a sigh. I tried to keep any hint of prejudice out of my thinking, but face dancers were among the trickiest of the fey. I couldn't tell for sure if he was lying, but he seemed honest enough. I’d forgotten that his kind were intuitive empaths. He let his true face show for just a moment. It was a show of trust and vulnerability that really meant something to me. His fair skin had changed to a light gray and his hair became pure white. It looked good on him. His blue eyes darkened to a shade of unrelieved midnight blackness. His features were handsome, but completely different from before.

 

Face Dancers were a type of psychic vampire who drained energy during sex, but they weren't undead any more than a lennan sidhe was. They assumed a form pleasing to their target and then seduced them. Oscar had already done it at least once in the last week. Nico wasn't going to like his presence. Face dancers were deceitful by nature and the elves considered truthfulness to be a virtue. When an elf tricked someone, they could rightfully say that the target should have seen it coming. Face dancers tricked people every day. The fey were a most fractious lot, even more so than mages.

 

At least I'd had a chance to examine his aura while we talked. I'd noticed a few things that seemed to indicate his true nature before he changed his face. If he weren't tricking me while we were talking, I may have seen some things to let me recognize face dancers, even while shifted, so long as I could see their aura. I filed that away for future study. Unlike most fey, face dancers didn’t clothe themselves in glamor, they actually changed their forms.

**********

Then Thursday rolled around, and things got hectic… as if they were calm before. Alonzo had promised me more than once that he would stop doing magic without training. I'd warned him that he could hurt himself. But as much as I loved that beautiful little twink, I wanted to strangle him. He cast three reality warping spells in rapid succession and almost killed himself. I had to push myself to the limit by scrying and teleporting at the same time, then casting a minor reality warping spell myself, a synchronicity spell that removed all obstacles from our path so we could get him back to the healers. We spent a long night transferring numinous energy into his depleted body. And all the time, all I could think of was how much I wanted to make him mine, but the more I talked to his roommate Erik, the more I realized that was never going to happen. They loved one another.

I was up almost all night, barely sleeping in an uncomfortable chair in Marvin's room. Then, come morning, I had to see Erik and Alonzo cuddling and making eyes at each other. It was almost a relief that Drew stopped by my room shortly after I got there and told me he was bringing me a problem, another unidentified student. He'd shown him to Xav first, and the spirit talker had said that the boy was part air spirit. I had tremendous respect for Xav, but I was going to have to investigate it first. I didn't like overusing magic to take the place of sleep or food, but I had no choice today. I took the refection potion Jason had prepared for me and I immediately felt invigorated.

When Drew showed up again he had the cutest little blond boy with him. He was about five and half feet tall with beautiful sandy hair and deep blue eyes. He was dressed in Simon's clothes. I could tell from the style. He looked sad and lost, and all I wanted to do was hug him.

I stood up and caught sight of myself in the mirror. I waved my wand and said, "Curo cutemque capillumque barbamque vestimentaque." I punctuated each que with a flick of the wand. Suddenly my face was cleaned, my hair was styled, my beard disappeared, and my clothes were freshened.

Ethan was staring in amazement. He was so cute and boyish that I chuckled and said, "You are familiar with versipelles and hunters, but you've never seen magic before?"

Ethan shook his head. "No. I haven't."

"Sit down," I said, gesturing to a desk chair. "Would you care for tea, coffee or juice this morning?"

"I'll have coffee if you have some ready," Drew said.

"Coffee," Ethan said, "if you have sugar and milk."

I decided to show off now that I could see the arcanum in his aura. I waved my wand and cups flew around the room. Carafes poured coffee and tea. A slice of lemon squeezed itself into the tea and settled before me just as a sugar cube flew into the cup. A french press pot poured a full cup of black coffee, then the cup slid in front of Drew. The pot then filled another cup to the two-thirds mark and a small pitcher of cream topped it up. I felt like Mary Poppins.

"Just say how many cubes," I said to Ethan, as he was sitting wide-eyed. His cup of creamy coffee slid in front of him and I heard an awed whisper, “three please,” and sugar cubes jumped in, one at a time.

"That's enough!" the boy said, clearly beyond excited, as the third cube joined the cup.

I said, "Now, Ethan, Drew has told me about you, at least what Xav was able to determine. I trust him, but I want to have Marvin examine you later to get his professional opinion. It sounds like you are what we mages call a sultator fulmineus or a fulminator. The first means "storm dancer" and the second "lightning thrower". It's a rare talent, but not unknown. Most likely, it means that you have an air spirit in your ancestry, possibly even as a parent. But it also means that you possess arcanum, or magical talent. It could have remained hidden all your life and you would never have known, but it's begun to manifest. This means that you'll need training.

"I'll probably get in trouble with my own superiors for telling you this, but there are two choices available to you for training here at this college. You can train with Xav. I'll be honest. He knows more about spirits and spirit-based magic than anyone I know. Or you can train with the magelings here on campus. Clarissa is a certified mage-educator, and she runs a class for beginners that meets twice a week. She can teach you how to work magic like you saw me doing a moment ago. Xav's magic would focus entirely on spirits, while our training wouldn't touch on it all."

"What if I don't want training?" he asked. "What if I want it all to go away?"

"That's not happening, Ethan," I replied. "Once awakened, your talent must be trained, or it can manifest from your subconscious and that would be bad."

"I don't know enough about any of this to make a decision," he said. “Can I do both?”

I took his hand in my own and said, "Unfortunately, that’s not possible. The entire approach to magic is different between our traditions. They’re not really compatible. But you don't have to decide anything right now. I want you to meet with Xav tonight and with Clarissa tomorrow. Then you can make up your mind."

Ethan seemed relieved. I was giving him his options, but I felt his place was among us mages. He may have what it takes to become a spirit talker, but he'd be living with versipelles, always an outsider and never one of them because he wouldn't be able to take on a wolf spirit if he already has a storm spirit inside him.

"I was going to take him up to his room so he could get some clothes. He’d be staying with me and Simon for a while," Drew said. "I told you that he was targeted because he's seen Cromwell around."

I shook my head and said, "That won't be necessary. I'm going to put him in a room with Micah Blume. He needs to be on this floor. I'll take him to get his things after we finish here."

He hadn’t been on my list, so that meant that the conclave had somehow missed him. I wasn’t sure how. And if they’d missed him, who else could they have missed? He was in the right dorm, but on the wrong floor. The fifth floor was for mage upperclassmen. There shouldn’t have been any freshmen up there. It was just another thing that I had to add to my list. But maybe I could put Dezi on it. He was always asking if he could help with the workload.

When Drew left, I took Ethan with me to get his stuff and I used magic to translocate it to his room. When we got back down to his new room, it was cleaner than it had been, and Micah Blume was waiting to talk to him. I wasn’t sure Ethan had been left off the list of incoming mages.

 

Ethan

My life had turned upside down from the moment Uncle Joe made me start spying on the other students. Then that other Joe, the student Joe, had come with a message from Uncle Joe to distract Simon in the library because he had to test whether he was a werewolf. I didn't expect him to be so sexy and confident. I had a bad feeling from the moment two of Uncle Joe's friends grabbed hold of him and gave him a shot.

I had run off and hidden in my room after they had dragged him into the elevator. I was overcome by feelings of guilt. They’d used me, all of them, including my uncle. I sat on the bed with my knees drawn up and my arms wrapped around them. I even broke down and cried for a while, feeling like a terrible person. Luckily I had it under control before Joey came back to the room.

I'd spent Tuesday and Wednesday avoiding him and whatever werewolves may have figured out that I was working with the hunters. And I was hoping they didn’t take it out on my roommate when they couldn't find me. Joe hadn’t done anything to deserve their attention. He was… dead sexy was the word. He had dark hair and green eyes that looked almost like crystal gemstones. And everytime I caught sight of his muscular body in his tighty whities, I sprang an instant boner. I didn’t want to see him get attacked by werewolves.

Of course, Joe was involved with the hunters, just like me. After the meetings, he would sometimes sit with me and help me feel better after all their homophobic jokes. I thought it probably bothered Joe too. It seemed like he was seeing this older student named Taylor who’d come to one of our meetings. One time, Taylor had helped Joe into the room when he was drunk and he asked me to help him get Joe out of his clothes. I definitely beat my meat that night, watching Joe sleeping in his tight white briefs.

I'd had no word from Uncle Joe either. He was a jerk and he'd always made me feel bad, telling me not to be a fag. And making jokes about gays loudly in my hearing, like he knew that he was talking about me. But he was the only parent I'd known for the last eight years, ever since mom and dad were killed by Cromwell. It was Uncle Joe who'd convinced me to come to this school, so far from the ocean and the beach. He'd used me as bait and then left me alone to deal with the consequences.The feelings of abandonment I’d been repressing for so long kept washing over me again and again. I felt like I was drowning in it. Why did everyone in my life seem to just… leave?

When Simon found me, I was at my wits end. I'd felt that I was being followed, but I didn't know that it was those three werewolves Simon had tried to face down. He'd been ridiculously brave. And he'd taken me to see Drew, who wasn't at all like I believed werewolves would be. He was nice and when I freaked out last night, he held me in his arms until I calmed down and went to sleep, even after I'd shocked him so badly.

Now I didn't know what to think. That Xav guy this morning had made me feel funny. His touch excited me. Not just my dick, but my whole body, and especially where those strange marks were, which had started glowing. He was so calm that it was hard to be afraid around Xav. And I couldn't get mad at him, even when he tried to tell me that my mother had been kept prisoner by my father and had abandoned me after the werewolf attack. I still didn't believe him. My mother wouldn't have done that to me.

And then I met Sebastian. He was nerdy, but in a totally cool way. When he waved that wand around and things just magically happened, it felt like my body was vibrating with excitement. And he was good looking. He didn't look like a model or anything like that, but his face was nice, and he looked fit under his nerdy professor clothes. I had to admit to myself that I found him more attractive than any of the other guys I'd met here at school, even Joe in his tight white briefs.

After Drew left, Sebastian waved his wand and said, "Tergantur omnia et componantur!" And all the dishes became clean and then put themselves away. He gave me a look and a wink, and I couldn't help but smile back at him.

He put an arm around my shoulders and then said, "Let's get your room changed."

I barely paid attention to his words. I just moved automatically. He probably just thought of me like a younger brother, but my dick got hard every time he touched me. Whether it was an arm around me or  the regular, affectionate squeezes on my shoulder.

He walked me across the hall, next to Drew's room, and knocked loudly on the door. Someone called out for us to wait a minute and then the door opened and a good-looking guy, a little shorter than me, with a dark olive skin tone and black hair opened the door. He was wearing a robe. Another guy was in his shorts, trying to pull his t-shirt over his head quickly. He had fair skin and red hair. It looked like they'd been in the middle of something.

Sebastian said, "I'm here to introduce your new roommate."

He led me into the room. He squeezed my shoulder again and pushed me forward just a few inches. "This is Ethan Lowry.” Then he pointed to the dark-haired boy. "And this is Micah Blume, and the half-dressed redhead is Cameron Campbell. Micah is your roommate. Cameron is... a friend of Micah's."

The way he’d hesitated, and the way Cameron had been struggling to get dressed quickly when we came in, made it pretty clear that they were more than just friends. I’d met a lot of gay guys since I’d come here. It wasn’t like that back on Long Island. Not that people were hateful or anything, just that there were so many more queer people here than back home - or maybe they were just more open about it.

Sebastian looked around at the general state of messiness in the room. He waved his wand and chanted several phrases that I didn't understand. He gestured with his wand at every pause. The bedclothes flew off one of the beds. A mess of soda cans and pizza boxes flew off one of the desks and landed on the other bed. The contents of the desk drawers and the drawers in one of the chests also flew off to join the rest of the mess. The clothes in the closet slid to one side.

"If Oliver is already in class, you two will have to clean this mess up yourselves," he told the two boys. "And if I find either of your rooms in this state again, you will report to me for a cleaning session every day."

Then he pointed to the empty bed, desk, and chest. "These will be yours," he said. "And you and Micah will be sharing the bathroom with Drew. He doesn't like messes any more than I do. Did you have a maid at home or magical servants?"

"No sir, nothing like that," I replied.

"Then you may have to show Micah how to clean," he said.

"Um," Micah said when Sebastian paused, "who are you?"

"I'm Ethan Lowry," I said, a little confused because Sebastian had already told him my name.

"No. I'm sorry," he said, holding out his hand and shaking mine. "I meant what are you?"

Before I could answer, Sebastian said, "Ethan's not a werewolf, if that's what you're worried about. He holds an arcanum, so I hope he's going to be one of us."

The boy seemed relieved. "I'm glad to hear that."

Sebastian touched the dresser with his wand and muttered "signum unum", then he touched the desktop and said "signum secundum", then touched the bed and said "signum tertium" and finally the closet and said "signum quartum". "Now let's go to your old room," he said.

I saw Micah and Cameron scrambling around to clean up the mess. I wondered if they were going to miss breakfast. Since Sebastian was so nice to me and seemed annoyed with them, I assumed that he'd talked to them about the mess in their rooms before today. We took the stairs up two levels and went to my room. Two of the guys who were following me yesterday were standing in the hallway watching my room.

Sebastian said, "Edgar Kraus, Gordy Hooper, it's strange to see you up here. I'll be sure to let Drew know you've been lurking around where you aren't supposed to be – unless you want me to take care of it instead."

His hand slid to his wand and the two shifters looked each other in the eye and decided that the better part of valor would be to go away, while they still could. As they were leaving, I saw Sebastian flick his wand, whisper something almost inaudible. He tapped his head and then his phone. I saw it light up and words streamed across the screen faster than I could read them, then the phone screen went dark.

Sebastian had me open the room and show him what was mine. Everything was put away or sitting on the desk except for the laundry hamper. He walked around the room tapping the bed, the desk, the chest of drawers and the closet. "Omnia locum proprium inveniantur," he said. The bedding disappeared from the bed; the clothes in my half of the closet disappeared; the stuff in and on the desk disappeared; and the stuff in the chest of drawers disappeared.

He handed me a key and said, "And that's that. All your stuff will be waiting for you when you go back to your room. Now I have some things I must do, so you're going to be on your own. But I don't want you going anywhere by yourself until I make sure you're safe. Do you have any friends you can go to class and meals with?"

"Not really sir," Ethan replied.

"Then I'm going to have someone walk you where you need to go," Sebastian said. "Simon will take you to the library for your study session and then I’ll come and meet you there to walk you to your lab."

As we were leaving, I stopped and said, “Wait! I want to leave a note for my roommate.”

I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote:

Joey,

The RAs have changed my room assignment. I’m moving down to the freshman floor, room 315. I hope to see you again sometime.

Ethan

I left the note on Joe’s desk, propped up against his textbooks. He studied a lot, so he would be sure to see it.

Sebastian was mighty protective of me. He kept his hand on my back the whole time we walked back to my new room. My new roommate Micah was there but his friend was gone. We got to know each other a little bit better.

“It’s good to get a chance to talk to you, Ethan. Let’s see, what can I say about myself? Wait a minute, Sebastian said that you have an arcanum so that means that it’s safe to talk to you, I mean to really talk to you without trying to hide things.”

I held my hand up to get his attention. When he stopped talking, I asked, “What’s an arcanum?”

He paused and looked at me quizzically. “You can see supernatural things, right?”

“Like werewolves?” I asked.

“Yeah. There are a lot of them around here. They seem okay, but you probably shouldn’t be alone with them. Sometimes they get pushy or violent. Cameron’s older brother - he graduated last year - told us stories about one lupopellis named Barton who was in the dorms last year. He used to push people around and… well, according to Al - that’s Alastair, Cameron’s brother I was telling you about - according to Al, he would sometimes… um… sometimes touch you when you didn’t want to be touched, especially on the full moon.”

I replied, “Then the answer is yes. I’ve seen a lot of werewolves and I saw Sebastian casting spells.”

Micah batted his long eyelashes at me and touched my arm lightly with both hands. “Okay then, arcanum is a magical gift. Most people just use the word to refer to mage talent, but Sebastian said you had an arcanum. In English, that means that you have a special mage talent.”

“Let me guess, you mages have your own secret language?”

Micah nodded. “Sure. Mages use Latin, well technically it’s Modern Mage Latin but if you speak one, you can probably understand the other. In Latin, he would have said that you habes arcanum, you ‘have an arcanum’. If he meant just normal mage talent he’d say es arcanius or even es magus, ‘you’re arcane’ or ‘you’re a mage’. But we use magus the way we use the word ‘mister’ or ‘sir’ in English.”

“Do I have to learn to speak Latin as well as read it?” I asked. I was taking Latin to help with my studies, but the teacher had stressed that it wasn’t a spoken language anymore. Wouldn’t she be surprised?

“Sure. Most mages speak just enough not to sound like mundanes, but some families - like the Trents, Sebastian’s family - use it a lot at home. Mom says that’s how mages tell who the riffraff are.”

I tentatively asked, “Is your mom prejudiced against non-mages… um… mundanes?”

Micah laughed at me and said, “Not a chance. She’s a Moderate politically, but allied with the Liberals. If anything she’s taking our own culture down a peg. With sarcasm. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not a Progressive. She thinks newbloods should assimilate to mage culture, not the other way around, but she doesn’t believe in being snobbish about it.”

My brain was awash with questions about mages politics and mage culture. Micah answered many of them. I found out that newblood mages (novimagi) were mages with no mage ancestors. Micah was an oldblood (vestustus) because his family have been mages for generations and he was also a member of the fifty families (quinquagintia) on his mother’s side. Apparently these families were like magical aristocrats. They basically ran the magical government.

My brain was spinning with all the new information when Simon came to walk me to the library to meet my study group. Fittingly, they were my Latin study group. As a history and classics major, I’d chosen to take Latin as my foreign language.

 

Sebastian

I’d decided to leave Ethan with Micah for a while so they could get acquainted. I went to meet with Clarissa and fill her in on what had happened. Luckily I finished in enough time to get to the library in time to walk Ethan to his lab. I had some homework of my own, so I finished it in the lobby of the Science Building while the boy was working. When he came out, I took him back upstairs to drop his stuff off, and then I took him to get some lunch before meeting up with Drew.

I couldn't tell if Drew was impressed with my car or trying to make fun of it, but it was a gift from my Uncle Gideon. It was last year's VW ID4, but it was numina powered. It didn't take much enchantment but a device to recharge the batteries from the background numina field. All the electrical parts would work like normal. It didn't matter what Drew thought. I had a nice car that never needed recharging.

I'd been to Xav's house before. It was a nice place on the edge of town, with a fenced in backyard. Xav must have wanted Drew to clean something up in the house before I could see it, so he took me and Ethan out into the back yard to show us around.

"Thank you for letting me watch the ritual tonight," I said. "I have no experience with summoning rituals."

"Thank you for asking first," he replied. "I don't mind so long as we're not doing anything sacred, but I appreciate the call."

He showed us the plants in the garden, mostly magical herbs he was growing. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew some of them had healing properties and others were concentration aids for rituals. “It looks like you have quite a collection. Do you ever sell them, or trade them?”

Xav replied, “Sometimes, but not in large quantities. I’m not doing it for retail, mostly just for my own use.” He pointed out all the herbs and what they were for.

Then he piled wood in the brazier and started a fire. When Drew came back out, Xav got the ritual ready, and Drew and I took seats in lawn chairs to watch. Xav was good with Ethan. Despite being freaked out by everything that had happened to him, he was relaxed around the spirit talker. I was having trouble hearing Xav, who was busy whispering at the front of the fire, so I quickly chanted a spell under my breath to enhance my hearing.

I was watching through my mage sight, so I caught the full effect when Xav began his spell. His wolf spirit partially manifested, surrounding him in an aura of power. At that moment I was almost as overwhelmed as when I'd viewed Alonzo working the reality warping spells that nearly killed him. Xav's wolf spirit was powerful, extremely powerful, and when he worked the ritual it was like his human spirit and his wolf spirit had become one entity with two minds. I could see that the human spirit was calling across the spirit realm, calling for a specific air spirit that was connected to Ethan, while the wolf spirit was watching for any other powerful spirits that could be drawn to the ritual, ready to pounce in case of mischief or danger. In that moment I realized why the spirit mages were able to perform rituals by themselves, which hermetic mages, like myself, would need backup to perform.

I also realized that Xav's bound air spirits weren't visible at all. I assumed they were locked in the spirit binding vessels he carried, waiting to be freed for the ritual. Except that his bound fire spirits were hovering around his head, which Xav had previously told me were alert for any energy-based threats. They were still mostly in the spirit plane, so any viewers without mage sight would be lucky to see more than a halo effect. And his water elementals were dancing along the ground at the periphery of the firelight, guarding against psychic attacks. Even his earth elementals were visible, moving beneath the soil, attentive to physical threats. Why no air elementals on display?

Then the spirit came. As I expected, she was a sylph. When she manifested on the material plane, she took the form of a human woman floating above the ground, her golden hair flowing around her head as if blown in a constant breeze. She was naked, save for a long shawl of glimmering material that rested on her shoulders and draped across her front. According to legend, if you could take that shawl from her, you could bind her to your will, but they were hard to get hold of, especially since she hadn't come alone. In the air above her, I could see through my mage sight other sylphs and the more violent venti, air spirits who usually manifested as male. They were in their nebulous storm horse form. It looked like enough of them to create a powerful tornado should they be angered.

And that explained my question. Xav had probably hidden his air elementals somewhere they wouldn’t be discovered. The venti swirling in the air above looked dangerous. Maybe he was afraid of making them mad enough to rage at the sight of their brethren held captive.

The one who'd been called spoke to Ethan. Even with the spell that enhanced my hearing, I had trouble understanding all of the words over the roar of the winds.

Ethan: "... left me mom."

Sylph: "Only for a moment sweet boy... never stopped hearing the call of the storm... my brothers and sisters."

Ethan: "Eight years! ... missed you... thought you were dead... killed by Cromwell."

Sylph: "Not killed! Freed! ... released in exchange for information on the hunters... your father wasn't a good man... slaughtered pups and all, even the old and weak... enslaved me... sorry to leave you, but now I'm free..."

Ethan: "I still miss you."

Sylph: "I love you but it's too painful being solid all of the time... bear the mark of storm... call me when you can, and I will come... never stop loving you."

There was something more that I missed entirely, and then she was gone. Ethan was crying and the marks I'd heard about, but hadn’t yet seen, were visible even above his muscle shirt, glowing silver. When the spirits were gone and his sigils had faded somewhat, I got up and walked over to him and took him in my arms. He was crying.

Xav was calm as ever. He put a hand on Ethan's back and said, "I know that it's painful, but she doesn't know how much you're hurting. Spirits aren't like us. She didn't even know that eight years had gone by. Time holds little meaning on the spirit plane. But you will learn to call her when you master your powers."

Then Xav looked at me. "You need to get him trained. I would love to take him as an apprentice, but he could never fit in here. No one can be a wolf and a ventus at the same time. But when he's mastered his arcanum, bring him back to me and I will teach him to call his mother's spirit. He has the power within him."

He let his fingers trace the silvery lines on Ethan's chest. "If he can't control it, his power will consume him. It's not that he holds a second spirit, like we do. If that were the case, he would be better off with me. His own spirit is half human and half ventus. The ventus half is trying to escape, to become pure air, but it wouldn't be able to do so yet, and it would kill him, then discorporate."

Seeing Ethan standing there crying, like his nakedness was a metaphor for his vulnerability, made me want to comfort him. I wanted to hug him like a little brother. I held the crying boy and kissed his forehead. "I'll take care of him now," I said. "We have another boy who needs to learn to control his innate powers. Luckily, we know what to do with them."

I could smell the scent of the air after a storm. It seemed to be coming from his hair. I let my thumb rub against his neck and I felt a sharp jolt of electricity when I brushed against the rapidly fading sigil.

 

Ethan

The ritual had been an eye opening experience. Sebastian had shown me some magic earlier, but this was different. I wasn’t witnessing magic, I was at the heart of it. Getting naked and dancing around the fire had been fun, especially knowing that both Drew and Sebastian were watching. If I could, I’d be naked all the time. My mom had always called me her little nudist. There was something about the feeling of the air on my skin that just felt right to me.

I knew from the way Drew and Sebastian looked at me that they liked what they saw, so I decided to give them something to look at. Besides, it seemed to me that Xav was doing the same thing. Maybe we both had that in common. We liked to be looked at by sexy guys. Xav was so handsome, but I didn’t want him; I wanted to be like him.

When Xav summoned the air spirits, it touched something inside me. At first it felt good. I felt kinship with those spirits swarming overhead. I could feel them raging, not because of anger, but because raging was their nature. Something inside myself responded on a primal level. I wished that I could just leave my solid body behind and join them up there, dancing in the storm.

Lightning played in the air and it resonated in my body. I could feel it running along the marks on my body. It was painful, but exciting at the same time. However, the real pain hit me when my mother appeared. I knew it was her when I saw her. In many ways she looked just as I remembered her. But there was equally a strangeness to her that I couldn’t reach. Feeling these two things at once made me confused and angry, fuelled by the rage coming from the spirits above me.

I couldn’t help myself. I called out, “You left me, Mom!”

She gave me a serene smile. "Only for a moment sweet boy. It was the storm. I heard the storm and I had to dance through the air again. I’d never stopped hearing the storm you see. Echoes of it came to me on every breeze, my brothers and sisters calling me."

"Eight years! That’s how long it was. I missed you. I thought you were dead. I saw Dad killed by Cromwell. I thought you’d been killed too!"

"Not killed! Freed! Your father trapped me. He stole my soul chlamys and kept me captive, a prisoner for eleven years! The werewolf wasn’t my killer; he was my savior. He released me in exchange for information on the hunters.”

“You sold my Dad out to killers!” I screamed.

She shook her head sadly. “Your father wasn't a good man, Ethan. He and his friends slaughtered pups and all, even the old and weak. He had no compassion and he enslaved me. I am so sorry to have left you, but now I'm free, free to fly and to dance through the air.“

"I still miss you, Mom." Then I let my voice trail off. “I’m still a kid.”

She caressed my cheek."I love you, dear boy, but it's too painful being solid all of the time. You bear the mark of storm. It’s a part of you. Call me when you can, and I will come. I will never stop loving you."

I went to hug her but she stepped back and dissolved before I could touch her. Tears came to my eyes. Xav touched my shoulder and said, “It’s all she can give you. She’s fae. Worse than that, she’s an air spirit.”

He said some other very nice things that were supposed to ease the pain. But I didn’t really feel better until Sebastian put his arm around me. He held onto me and kissed my forehead. It felt nice. And even though it wasn’t the way I wanted him to kiss me, it would do for the moment.

He said, "I'll take care of him now. We have another boy who needs to learn to control his innate powers. Luckily, we know what to do with them."

Sebastian waved his wand and my clothes flew onto my body. I was too busy crying to see exactly what he’d done, but one minute I was naked and the next minute I was fully clothed. I had no idea how that had happened when Xav had his hand on my arm and Sebastian had his arm around me.

Sebastian rubbed my neck. It felt so good. My dick got hard then it began to tingle. I could feel sparks moving along my flesh and then I heard a sharp crack and I felt the spark jump from my neck to Sebastian’s hand. He didn’t pull away, though; he held me tighter, and I leaned into him.

 

Sebastian

I had firmly wrapped my arm around the boy as we’d said our goodbyes. Drew seemed reluctant to let him go, but Xav put his hand on Drew's shoulder and assured him that it was okay. I led Ethan to my car. He said he wasn't hungry, but I knew that it was just shock and grief speaking. I told him he had to eat and asked him what he wanted,"Pizza,” he replied, “but you can't get good pizza here."

His sadness pulled at my heart, and he wasn't wrong about not being able to find real pizza here. We were both from New York, so our standards were a little higher than the locals. I drove him back to the dorms and then we went up to my room. I pulled him over to the carpet to stand in the middle of the circle. The spell I needed worked better from one circle to another. I put one arm against him and pulled him to my chest. I didn't have to tell him. He wrapped his arms around my waist. It felt so natural there, like he just fit there in my embrace. I pulled out my wand and began to chant, "Ex hoc circlo ad circlum in animo meo trans milia passuum transferamus."

We disappeared from my room and reappeared in a different room, with a stone floor and no windows. An arcane circle was inscribed into the floor. The only door was heavy stone. "Where are we?" Ethan asked.

"This is my family's brownstone, just west of Central Park," I replied. "You've got me wanting good pizza too, and we don't live too far from Francesco's here."

"We're in New York?" he asked.

"Manhattan, Upper West Side," I replied. "We're between Central Park West and Columbus, on 69th."

"Your family must be rich," Ethan said with a touch of awe in his voice.

"Almost all the old mage families have money," I said, "and the Trent's are among the oldest mage families in America. The old blood families think of themselves as a natural aristocracy, but for the most part they're just as greedy as mundane families. If we run into any of my relatives here, try and ignore them if they say anything rude. They can't help themselves because they have toxic privilege and arrogance."

He was smiling at me as I raised my ring to touch the sigil on the door so that it would open. I put my arms around his shoulder and led him to the stairs. I didn't want to meet any of the family tonight, so we stopped before we reached the top and peeked into the foyer. The only one present was Tully, the butler, so I brought Ethan up with me. Tully wasn't a mage or a mundane; he was a magical construct, woven from raw magical energy and given solid form, but my grandmother was a very talented mage, and her constructs were very lifelike.

"Mister Sebastian," he said. "Are you staying or just passing through?"

"This is my guest, Ethan Lowry," I replied. "We're just passing through to get some pizza, then we'll have to come back through in order to return to college."

"Should I tell your parents, or your grandmother, that you're here?" he asked.

I replied, a little too quickly, "That's not necessary, Tully. We don't really have time to socialize today."

"Very well, sir," he said.

I hustled Ethan out the front door and down the short flight of steps to the sidewalk. My family lived in a beautiful part of the city, not far from the park, but we were headed in the other direction right now. It was early evening, about 7:00 p.m., so we were in the dinner rush. Francesco's wasn't just a pizza place. (Usually, I preferred Joe's or John's if I just wanted pizza, but I didn't want to walk that far tonight, not with so much happening on campus.) They also had an extensive Italian menu as well, but we'd come for pizza, big slices of traditional New York style pizza, or what we New Yorkers called pizza, no qualifier needed. I had mushrooms on mine and Ethan liked plain cheese. During dinner I got him to talk about the trauma he was feeling from the encounter with his mom.

"The worst part," he said, "was that she told me that she set Dad up to be killed by Cromwell in exchange for him retrieving her shawl. I blamed all versipelles for killing my parents, but my mom hadn't been killed at all, and my dad had been killed because my mom set him up and because he was a kidnapping son of a biscuit it turns out. I feel like a piece of crap because I've hated versipelles for so long and I set them up to be killed, even Simon."

"Hey now," I said. "Don't go blaming yourself for that now. You only knew what you'd been told. And I'm not trying to turn you against your new friends, but not all versipelles are good people. Some of them probably are trying to get to you. You can trust Drew, Xav, Simon, Dawn, and Darren, but don't let the others get too close unless Drew or Darren says they're safe. When we get you back to college, I'm going to find some protectors to make sure you're safe. Cromwell's people may still be after you, although they shouldn't be since you've already informed Drew of his presence."

We finished our pizza and then walked back down 68th street to the park. I wanted to take him on a carriage ride because his arms around my waist were beginning to make this excursion look and feel like a date. Once we got in the carriage, I put my arm around his shoulder, and he let his rest on my leg. "I only got to the city a few times when I was a kid," he said. "We lived all the way out in Riverhead and it's nothing like the city."

"I know," I said, pulling him closer to me and kissing the top of his head. "My Mom and Dad have a house in Oyster Bay, and I spent a lot of time out there as a kid. The house in town belongs to my grandmother, but my parents and I have rooms there as well. If it weren't for my grandmother, I'd like living there. My dad's almost as bad as his mother, but my mom's alright. She's an Ambrose, and they're friendlier than the Trents."

He snuggled into my side and moved his hand further up my thigh. I couldn't tell if he was innocent or crafty at this point, but I didn't care. My dick was swelling and if he touched it, I was going to assume he wanted to go further.

"I don't know anything about mage families," he said, letting his fingers brush against my dick. "I don't know anything about the magical world."

I turned his head so that he was facing the trees. "Do you see the little gnomes in the trees over there?"

He sat up straight and stared until he saw them. "I see them!" he said. And he watched them until we passed them by, craning his neck around to seem them after we'd driven past.

When he looked back in my direction I put my hands on the sides of his head and pulled him in for a kiss. He parted his lips and let my tongue slide inside. Sparks literally flew between us. They weren’t painless, but I could handle it. He smelled like the air after a storm, with only the faintest hint of boyish BO. We spent most of the carriage ride kissing. Ethan climbed onto my lap, and I held him tight.

"When I first saw you, I wanted you to kiss me," Ethan said. "You looked so hot dressed like a young professor."

"And I wanted to kiss you," I admitted, "but I thought you were one of those underage students we get through here from time to time, and I felt like a dirty old man, even though I'm only twenty-four."

"Well, I am young for my grade," he said. "I turn eighteen on September 30th, the last possible day I could have been born and not have to wait a year to start school."

I laughed at him and said, "Then I am a dirty old man. On September 30th, you'll be one year too young for me according to the standard formula of half my age plus seven years."

"You can be my dirty old man, Sebastian," he said as he kissed my lips. "Are you going to... you know... um... put your cock in me tonight?"

I kissed his eyes and then his neck. "Are you a virgin?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Simon sucked me off earlier today, so I'm not a virgin anymore."

I slid my hand down the back of his shorts and rubbed his little hole with my index finger. He whimpered and held tighter to my chest. "Not tonight," I said. "I want to do it so bad, but I want to make sure that you really want me to make love to you, that you're not just running on fear and adrenaline, which I think you are right now."

He gave me a sad look and rubbed his head against my chest. "But I do want it," he said. "I want it so bad. I want to be… loved."

I sat him upright on my lap and kissed him on the lips again. "Let's make a deal," I said. "We'll start dating and hanging around together. We'll slowly build our relationship, and if you still want to make love after a few more dates, then I'll…how did you phrase it so elegantly…? Ah, yes, put my cock in you, on your birthday, when you turn eighteen. I'll make it special, because it should always be special the first time a man takes you."

"Was it special for you, Sebastian?" he asked me.

I thought back to that week I spent in Paris with Aronus Melis after the International Conference of Young Mages. He was twenty-eight years old, nine years older than me. He took me to the best restaurants, and we saw all the sights, and he used magic to take me to the top platform of the Eiffel Tower at midnight where we made love under the stars.

"It was," I said. "It was beautiful. And I promise you that after we make love I won't ignore you and not call you again. If you're with me, I won't make you a notch on my bedpost. We may be together forever, or we may not, but I won't do it with you unless both you and I both want it for the right reasons."

He hugged me tighter, and I held him close until we got back to the start of the carriage route. I didn't want to talk to the family. Today had been too good. So, I pulled him into a public bathroom and straight into a stall where I teleported us back to the circle in Grandmother's basement. I touched my ring to a different sigil to let them know I was just passing through, then I did the long ritual to take us back to my room.

 

Ethan

That was a date! A real date. A handsome man had taken me to New York with a whisk of his wand. He took me to a fancy restaurant that served the best pizza I ever tasted. And then we walked in the park. He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me tight against him. I put my hand around his waist. There were so many couples walking around, most of them were boy-girl couples, but no one said anything or looked at us funny. For the first time in my life, I was walking around arm in arm with a guy, a handsome older guy, okay not that much older, but… I had to stop for a moment and think about that. The idea that Sebastian was older than me did make it more exciting. Walking around like this in public, nobody could doubt that we were on a date and I found that thought completely liberating. I wasn’t hiding who I was and nobody was expecting me to hide it. I could just be… me.

When I was still a child, we made one trip to the city as a family. It was before I had to move in with Uncle Joe. We’d come to the park and we kids wanted to ride in one of the carriages, but the adults said no, that it was too expensive. But Sebastian saw me looking at them and he hadn’t hesitated. He’d taken my hand and led me quickly over to one of them. He’d whipped out a hundred dollar bill and paid the man. He’d done that at the restaurant, too. When he’d gotten the bill, he’d opened his wallet and pulled out a hundred. I couldn’t help but notice that he had a lot more of them in there. It felt so impressive, and yet Sebastian didn’t make a big deal out of it.

I knew he had money. He lived simply enough at school, but his family house was one of those big brownstones, like you see in the magazines. It was on the west side of Central Park and it had five stories. It even had a butler. And, of course, his whole family were mages, so I guessed it was normal for them to have a magic circle in the basement for teleporting.

When we got in the carriage and took a ride, it was even better than it would have been as a kid. I sat cuddled up next to him while we discussed our childhood. How cool was it that we were both from Long Island? We had a lot in common even though he was seven years older than me. I didn’t realize at first that I was playing with his thigh. I didn’t realize it until I felt his body tense. I froze too. It felt so natural to touch him that way. I hadn’t thought about it; I’d just done it. But now I had a choice. I could just apologize and back off or maybe he was about to pull away or… Wait. I knew Sebastian liked me in more ways than just friends, right? But how much? Was I only interesting to him because I was the new boy? I realized that I’d just have to see what his reaction was and go from there. I nervously moved my hand up to rub his dick through his jeans, holding my breath. He was hard. When he didn’t push it away, I was finally able to breathe again. He spread his legs slightly to make it easier for me.

He tried to distract me by pointing out the gnomes in the treeline. Which absolutely worked. Magic was so new to me; I wanted to see everything there was to see and I wanted Sebastian to show it to me. When I turned back toward him, he put his strong hands on the sides of my head and then he kissed me. It was a real kiss, with tongue and everything, And when our lips touched, there were sparks. And I do mean that in every sense!

He wanted me as badly as I wanted him, that I could tell for sure. I climbed up onto his lap so that his hard dick was resting under my butt. I was scared of my feelings, scared of going too far, scared he’d suddenly decide he wanted nothing to do with a skinny boy like me, scared… of being abandoned again.

I knew that I wanted him, but I had to make myself admit that he liked me too. Especially when I told him that I was only seventeen and sort of froze. But, it was only going to be a few weeks before I was an adult. It just about killed me when he told me I had to wait, but then he slid his hand into my pants and rubbed my butt. He even used a finger to rub against my hole while he promised to make love to me on my birthday. I did not want to wait, but it looked like I wasn’t going to have a choice in the matter. My head was full of plans to hold him to his word.

 

Sebastian

I was tired from the casting of two powerful spells on top of yesterday's work, so I escorted Ethan to his room and kissed him goodnight. I went back to make all my preparations for bed and then scried the campus quickly looking for any of the magical traps I'd placed to show me any signs of hostile magic crossing the borders.

I had already showered and put on a pair of sleeping shorts, and I was enjoying a last cup of mineral water before bed when there was a timid knock on my door. It was Ethan.

"Micah has gone to his friends' room, and I don't want to be alone right now," he said. "Can I sleep here? I'll sleep on the carpet if you want, but I..."

I took him into my arms and said, "You can sleep with me, but I'm not changing my mind about us waiting until you turn eighteen. If you can agree to those terms, we can sleep together."

"If that's what you want," he said.

When he took off his robe, he was wearing only a pair of light blue briefs. I got into the bed and gestured for him to join me. He slid next to me under the blankets, and pressed back against me, making me the big spoon to his little spoon. I promised myself that I wouldn't hurt him. He was too young and too vulnerable right now, but I felt that I was the one most likely to get hurt. I didn't know if what he felt for me was real or not. Maybe he was just looking for a protector, a father figure now that his uncle was missing, and his mother had abandoned him.

I seldom got into relationships with other mages. Mundanes were easier because they could be molded to fit my desires. I wouldn't do that to another mage, especially not to someone for whom I had real feelings. This was new to me as well. Aronus had seemed perfect to me, older and more experienced. I'd loved him, and yet he'd never really loved me. I also didn't trust mages because they were harder to read without them knowing I was doing it. I was putting my own feelings at risk here because I was going to try it again. Being vulnerable with someone from the magical community was not in my comfort zone one bit.

I kissed his neck and pressed my hard cock against his little butt. He was asleep, but he pressed back against me anyway. I was exhausted and magically depleted; it took only a few minutes for me to fall asleep.

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You can read each story in The Concordium Cycle independently, or you can follow the author's preferred reading order that will blend the stories together. The next chapter in the author's preferred reading order is Elf Master 6.

Special Thanks to my editor [email protected].