Strength of Desire (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #2)

4. Cory

4

CORY

I t was harder to relax tonight, with everything that had happened, and Romero had to remind me multiple times to let my weight settle onto the couch, to release the tension in my muscles. To remember that I could pick up my worries again later, that they didn’t need to be solved now.

It was actually that comment that finally put me under. I’d been thinking about the large wall of windows behind the sofa and wondering what would happen if a moragh came crashing through them while I slept, before remembering that Romero’s rooms were on the third floor.

Could moraghin climb? Their claws certainly looked sharp enough to gouge into Vesperwood’s brick walls. I supposed that even if they couldn’t do it unassisted, they could use ropes and picks and so on. But then I wondered if they’d have the presence of mind to do so. Could a mindless magical zombie stop long enough to properly tie a climbing rope?

My last thought was about how odd a moragh in a climbing harness would look, before I was pulled under.

Once more, I was swimming in the starry sea, my head still above water for now. Each lesson, I’d had to force myself to go under, to follow the tugging in my core. The swirling lights below the surface beckoned. I knew I would be fine, once I was under. But going under brought the inevitable one step closer.

I might as well give in, though. Like I’d said to Romero, all my other options were worse. I sighed, closed my eyes, and dove down. I kept my eyes closed until I felt my lungs run out of air, until my chest was bursting with the desire to breathe. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I opened my eyes and sucked in a breath, letting the water that wasn’t water wash through my lungs that were no longer lungs.

It was so beautiful. I still hadn’t gotten used to it. The twirling galaxy of colored stars spiralled out around me. I ached to touch each of them, to feel their colored warmth drift over my skin.

Each one was unique, no two shades of pink or chartreuse or royal purple quite the same. And the textures…this one a swirl of snowflakes, that one an eddy of autumn leaves, still another a twirl of electric blue and mint green music notes.

One that was two inches from my not-elbow looked like a spiral of soap bubbles emanating from an impenetrably glowing center. I wanted to run my fingers through it, to feel that center for myself, but instead I kicked backwards, away from it.

Geoff , I reminded myself. You need to find Geoff.

But how ? I had no idea. I spun around lazily, the stars swishing by in a slow circle, and came to a stop facing in a new direction. Should I go that way? Or do the opposite? There were no signposts down here. His star could be right next to me, or miles away. How would I ever know?

Did the stars around me belong to the people physically closest to me? Romero had no more idea than I did. All I knew was that I had to pick someone, because time passed differently here, and Romero would have to wake me up by the end of fifth hour, whether I’d dreamt or not.

I sighed and closed my eyes again, but this time I tried to center myself. Geoff. Geoff from Duluth. That’s who I’m looking for, and when I open my eyes, I’ll know where to go. I’ll find Geoff from Duluth .

I opened my eyes, and the soap bubble star was floating in front of me. Had it moved? Had I moved? I looked around, but I couldn’t remember which other stars had been near it before.

Was this the star I was supposed to find? I had no idea, and there was only one way to find out.

I brushed my invisible fingers across the star. It was soft and warm, sending tingles up my arm. And that lightest of touches was still enough to wake it up, or bring it to life, or whatever happened when I brushed against a star. It grew and grew, swirling around me, expanding to fill my entire field of vision. It enveloped me, sending me tumbling down, down, until—

“Cory? You looked like you wanted to say something about Jim’s proposal.”

I was in an office conference room, wearing a suit and tie. I was sitting in a rolling chair, pulled up to a shiny wooden table, around which sat four men and two women. A fifth man was standing at the front of the room, next to a screen displaying a slide with a bar graph for regional sales numbers across the past five years.

“Cory?”

The voice came from an older man sitting at the head of the table, a leather-bound writing pad in front of him. He had a crisply trimmed gray beard and eyes that looked like they didn’t suffer fools gladly. I stared at him, utterly baffled as to what his name was. And then he flickered.

What ? I blinked, staring harder. People didn’t flicker. It had to be a trick of the light. Or my eyes. I did feel kind of tired.

“I, uh—” I cleared my throat. Why was I sitting here? What were we talking about? Why couldn’t I remember what had happened two seconds ago? “I just…thought it was really interesting,” I finished lamely.

What the hell was going on?

“Me too,” said the man sitting next to me. His voice was warmer, and the smile he gave me was downright pleasant.

Hasan , I thought, putting a name to the face. That was Hasan. The other summer intern. And that was Jim up at the projector, our direct supervisor. Hasan and I had helped put this presentation together. Of course. I remembered now.

My mind flashed back to long evenings spent with Hasan in the office, the two of us double-checking sales numbers and isolating target demographics. Hasan with his head bent low over his macroeconomics textbook in a free moment—we were getting college credit for this internship, but we still had our summer courses to complete too.

I flushed, remembering two nights ago, when Hasan had caught me staring at him.

‘ What, do I have food on my face ?’ he’d asked.

He actually did have a bit of mustard at the corner of his lip, but I was too flustered to tell him. Too busy staring at his soft lips, his strong jaw, his gorgeous brown eyes.

“Just… spaced out for a minute,” I managed, finally.

“Well now you’ve hurt my feelings,” he said. “Here I was thinking you were staring at my handsome visage, and it turns out I might as well have been a cardboard box.”

“What, exactly, did you think was interesting?” asked one of the women on the other side of the table, bringing me mentally back to the present.

Had Hasan been flirting with me that night? It almost felt like he was, but maybe that was just wishful—

“Cory?” prompted Jim from the front of the room.

God, my mind really was spacey these days.

“Just that women make up a bigger share of the monster truck rally audience than we thought,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “The whole point of this project has been to figure out how to pull more women in, and whether we need to shift our advertising approach. But if they’re already attending in greater numbers than we thought, we might be asking the wrong question. Before we ask how to get more of them to buy tickets, we probably want to find out why the current ones already do.”

“Hmm,” said the woman across from me. Nancy. Her name was Nancy. I knew that. So why did I feel like I’d never seen her before? “You might have a point there.”

She turned to the man at the head of the table—Rupert, I remembered now—and as they began discussing the company’s next shareholder meeting, my eyes shot wide open. There was something on my left thigh. And it was moving.

Fuck, wasn’t something , it was a hand, and it was moving towards my crotch under the table. And it wasn’t one of my hands, because they were both right in front of me on the conference table, fiddling with my pens. Which meant—

I inhaled sharply as I looked to my left. Hasan sat there, looking enthralled by Nancy and Rupert’s conversation, but his hand was sliding along my thigh.

Guess I wasn’t imagining the flirting , I thought.

Not that his flirting, or lack thereof, was the most important thing to be thinking about right now. No, the most important thing was that Hasan’s hand had reached my crotch. His fingers slid on top of my cock and squeezed it through my pants. My stomach turned a somersault. What the hell was Hasan doing?

And why, God, why was my body responding to it?

Under Hasan’s teasing touch, my cock had grown steadily harder, and was now tenting up in my pants as he stroked it through the thin wool fabric. Fuck, that felt good.

I shot him a look that was half anger, half helplessness. Hasan didn’t even look at me, but I thought he must have seen me from the corner of his eye, because his lips curled up in the beginnings of a smile.

My heart pounded. Any second now, Rupert or Nancy, or Eileen, Pete, or Gregor were going to notice what was happening. That Hasan’s hand was stretched out just a little too far—or that I looked like I was about to faint. Or, Jim would come sit down on my other side. There’d be no keeping it from him then.

Why was this happening now? I’d been lusting over Hasan in secret for weeks. It felt impossible that he could like me back. But what was he trying to do? Get us both fired?

Just move away, I told myself. Move away or clear your throat or cross your legs—do something to make him stop.

It was that simple. Instead, I bit my lip and dug my fingernails into my palms to keep from showing the pleasure on my face. And against my better judgement, I shifted towards Hasan, spreading my legs for easier access.

No doubt about it this time—he was smiling.

“What do you think, Hasan?”

The question came from Gregor, on the other side of the table, and all eyes in the room shifted to Hasan.

His smile went from self-satisfied to eager-to-please in an instant. He brought his hand away from my lap and set it on the table casually, as if he had all the time in the world. I swallowed hard and forced myself not to move, not to draw any attention to myself.

I was grateful for the reprieve—or was I? All I knew was that my cock was desperate for his touch again.

“I think it could go either way,” Hasan offered, spreading his hands before him. “Shareholders might spook, if you follow Eileen’s suggestion. But visionary moves are often seen as dangerous in the short run. It’s not until the next quarter or next few years, even, that they come to be seen as genius.”

I’d completely lost the thread of what we were talking about, but Hasan’s answer seemed to satisfy Gregor and the rest of the group for now. They went back to discussing the upcoming shareholder meeting intensely, and no one seemed to notice when Hasan’s right hand pushed my left off the tabletop.

Under the table, he grabbed my hand, his fingers soft but firm. My heart fluttered—it fucking fluttered —as he drew my hand to his own thigh, before returning to stroke my cock again.

I could barely breathe. Even a casual glance in our direction would reveal what was going on. Our arms were crossed in front of each other, each one clearly leading to the other’s lap. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t anyone said anything yet?

Just stop it , my brain suggested. Just move your own hand back. At least then it won’t be so clear what you’re both doing .

But I didn’t move my hand. Or, rather, I did, but only to slide it over until I could feel the bulge of Hasan’s cock against the fine wool of his trousers. God, he wasn’t even hard yet, but I could tell he was big. And when he was hard, his cock was probably fat and thick and just right for sliding into my—

“Unnnghhh.” The groan escaped my lips against my will, as Hasan’s fingers slid up and down my cock over my pants. His hand moved away in a flash, as the room turned to look at me.

“S-sorry,” I said, moving my left hand to press against my abdomen. I grimaced—it wasn’t even fake. “I think my stomach’s just a little hungry for lunch.”

“Aren’t we all,” Eileen said with an absent smile, before turning back to Pete. “The issue isn’t whether it’s unprecedented, the issue is whether we can convince them that it’s worth backing—”

My attention was drawn away as Hasan’s hand drifted back into my lap. This time, his nimble fingers moved to the button at my waist, flicking it loose with ease. They made quick work of my zipper too, and I bit my tongue to stifle another moan as his hand slid beneath my boxers and tugged my cock free.

I could hardly breathe. My cock was now out, in the middle of a work meeting. Forget getting fired. If anyone else in the room noticed, I would be lucky not to end up in jail.

And yet, I didn’t pull away, or push Hasan’s hand off me, or say a word in protest. Instead, I luxuriated in the feel of his skin on mine, as my own hand struggled to undo the button at his waist.

My fingers weren’t quite so agile, so he helped me with his other hand, though he left me to pull his thick cock free of his boxer-briefs. God, it looked good. I ached to get down on my knees and take him in my mouth, and damn what anybody else in the room thought.

He looks even better than Sean, and at least he’s nice to you. You could do worse for a second ever blow job.

I blinked. Sean ? Who the hell was Sean? I didn’t know any Seans. And what was I thinking, second ever blow job? I’d never even given a first.

My brain felt fuzzy in a way I couldn’t place. It was a familiar feeling, but I had no idea why. It was like full-body deja vu .

I glanced around the room. The others were embroiled in a tense discussion, their bodies stiff, like they were in a war room. But any second now, somebody was going to notice us. I needed to—

Fuck . Hasan’s fingers swirled around the head of my cock. I was leaking precum and he used it to slick up my shaft, his hand gliding up and down confidently. I gripped the edge of the table with my right hand, just trying to keep myself from coming on the spot.

How was he so calm during all of this? And how was he so good at it? Had he given loads of furtive office hand-jobs in his life?

All I knew was that I was melting under Hasan’s touch. And that I wanted to give as good as I was getting.

You could make him come even faster if you let him stick his cock in your mouth . You know you like it when someone uses you .

What ? I shook my head. The words sounded like they were coming from the same little voice in the back of my mind, but they didn’t make any sense. What the hell did it mean, ‘ you like it when someone uses you ?’ When had I ever done anything other than ache and pine for guys who didn’t know I existed?

I took my hand off Hasan’s cock and pretended to cough, using it as cover to spit in my palm. When I brought it back down, it glided along the smooth skin of his cock. I smiled as he bit his lip. When he looked over at me, I licked my lips and gave his cock a significant look. A shudder ran through his body, and I felt a surge of confidence.

This was insane. What we were doing was objectively nuts. But Hasan wanted me. He wanted me , out of anybody in the world. And he liked what I could do for him.

“Jim, we could use your input,” Rupert said, waving to Jim, still standing at the front of the room.

I’d completely forgotten about Jim. My heart thumped as he walked towards Hasan and me. His eyes were glued to Rupert for now, but any second, he would look down and see us.

He pulled out a chair on my right and sat, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table. “Do you think we could get their support? Because I’d feel much more comfortable moving forward with their backing.”

I still had no idea what they were talking about, but it didn’t matter. Hasan’s fingers were teasing me mercilessly, leaving me desperate for more. I was so fucking close. I did my best to keep up my own efforts on his cock, hot and hard in my hand. It wasn’t fair that all I could give him was a hand job. I wanted to do so much more.

“Hhhngh.” Another moan escaped me as Hasan’s fingers twirled around the head of my cock. No one on the other side of the table seemed to notice, but Jim turned and looked at my face, flushed with embarrassment, and then looked down.

His eyes widened, flicking back up to meet mine. My cheeks burned, and I knew they must be bright red. He could see my cock, leaking into Hasan’s hand. Could he see my hand on Hasan’s cock too?

Jim’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again, like he wanted to say something. But no sound came out. I looked at Hasan, panicked, but he was smiling openly now. He didn’t seem to care that Jim was staring. If anything, it made him bolder.

And Jim’s eyes were glued to my cock. This was mortifying. I wanted to run, to sink through the floor, or maybe to die on the spot. But my cock was throbbing, and Jim’s attention only made it worse.

“Cory?” Jim finally managed to say, his voice strangled. “What are you—what the fuck?”

That got everyone’s attention. All eyes turned to me, and for the first time, the rest of the meeting noticed what was going on in my lap.

Oh God, I was so close to coming. And Hasan’s cock was so perfect, so tempting in my hand.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Cory?” Rupert demanded, outraged.

“I—I—” I stuttered, my muscles tensing as my orgasm built. I needed to apologize, do something to absolve myself.

Instead, I slid out of my seat and onto my knees, turning to face Hasan. Then I leaned in and took his gorgeous cock right into my mouth. It was hot and hard, and tangy with precum. I lapped it up, then swirled my tongue around the head while stroking my own cock furiously.

“Cory, don’t be disgusting,” Jim said.

“This is sick. Perverted,” someone else muttered on the far side of the table.

“What is wrong with you, young man?” Rupert thundered.

I came, every cell in my body lighting up as I spilled into my hand and onto the industrial conference room carpet. At the same time, I felt Hasan’s hand move to the back of my head, pushing me farther down onto his cock as it throbbed in my mouth. And then I felt it, his salty cum pouring into my mouth and down my throat.

I looked up, loving the pleasure and abandon I saw on Hasan’s face. He loved this, loved me servicing him, kneeling at his feet. Something desperately sweet swelled in my chest. He’d come because of me. Because I’d done a good job.

It could only be better if it were Noah instead.

I blinked, my mouth still filled with Hasan’s cock. Noah ? Who was Noah?

I’d barely finished the thought when a vision filled my mind. A different man. Hard and gruff. Brown hair and deep hazel eyes, with stubble over an axe of a jaw. The kind of face that didn’t care if it was handsome or not, which only made my desire flare harder.

The vision felt real. Not a figment of my imagination, not something I’d dreamt up. Noah . That was who the man in my mind was. Even if I had no idea how I knew him.

I pictured Noah looking down at me, and the angry slash of his mouth curled into a smile as he saw me sucking Hasan’s cock.

“Good boy,” he said, his voice like honey over hot embers.

If I could have come again so soon, I would have. Instead, I just melted internally. All around me, people were saying my name, telling me I was wrong, messed up, disgusting. But I didn’t care. I just held onto the vision in my mind, feeling that warmth, feeling that—

No, wait. Where was it going? The picture in my mind was disappearing, but so was everything else. What was happening?

I reached a hand up, trying to steady myself on the conference table, but it felt misty and insubstantial. I looked around the room, but it was filling with fog, Jim and Rupert and even Hasan fading into the gray.

Hasan? Who was Hasan? And where was I? I suddenly couldn’t remember anything, but the room felt like it was spinning.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold still, and when I opened them again, I was lying on a sofa in a dimly lit room, an older man sitting across from me in an armchair.

Professor Romero. I took a deep breath. The man was Professor Romero, and I was back in his rooms. Everything with Hasan, everything that had happened in that conference room, had been a dream.

Everything was crystal clear now. I could remember events with ease. But even though I now knew it had all been a dream, I still felt slightly disoriented. I wondered if I would ever get used to transitioning between the dreamworld and the waking one.

“How was it, this time?” Romero asked. “Did you find Geoff?”

I shook my head. “No. I still have no idea how to do that. It’s all just so…”

I trailed off. I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I remembered the way I’d closed my eyes and willed myself to find Geoff’s dream. How hopeful I’d been that it would work.

“I tried a different way of finding him tonight, but it didn’t make a difference.”

That soap bubble star had belonged to Hasan, I supposed. Whoever he was, he apparently had a thing for public sex.

Or maybe you do , whispered the little voice. Remember the dream with Chad, too ?

I shoved the thought away.

“Did you feel in more control this time?” Romero pressed. “Any awareness that you were dreaming, while you were in it?”

“No,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. The tugging in my middle was gone, but I was just so tired. So tired of doing this every two nights, so tired of facing parts of myself I didn’t want to acknowledge. “No, I still had no idea what was…”

But I trailed off again, remembering something. I hadn’t had any idea that I was dreaming, but I had retained a little bit of my memories from the waking world.

Sean. I’d remembered him, even though I hadn’t known why. And Noah, at the end. I definitely knew who he was.

Shivers rolled over my body. I’d had such a realistic vision of Noah, it almost felt like he’d been in the dream with me. I’d wanted him. Even there. Even in the middle of someone else’s dream.

For all the good that had done me.

“It’ll get easier,” Romero said, his voice reassuring.

I wondered if he really believed that, or if he was just saying it to make me feel better. It wasn’t working, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him, so I nodded.

“Yeah. I know.”

I barely remembered the walk back to my room that night. I still felt dazed from the dream, from wondering what it all meant. The bell tolled the end of fifth hour two minutes after I reached my room. We’d cut it close tonight.

I was so tired, I just collapsed into bed without bothering to change out of my clothes. I’d deal with them in the morning. For now, I just wanted to sleep—regular sleep, with regular dreams. Or, if I was lucky, no dreams at all.

And I was lucky, or so it seemed at first. When I awoke early the next morning, the sky still filled with the pearly gray light of the pre-dawn hours, I felt surprisingly refreshed. But the great bell that tolled out the hours at Vesperwood hadn’t rung its first peal of the day yet. So what had woken me up?

Then I heard it—a tap, tap, tap against my window—and I realized that was the sound that had pulled me from sleep. I sat there dumbly, just listening for a moment, before realizing that if I wanted to know what it was, I’d have to get out of bed and see for myself.

Tap, tap, tap.

The sound clacked into the room as I threw back the covers and stood, my clothes wrinkled from being slept in. I stretched and padded to the window, then stopped and stared.

The raven was sitting on the little ledge outside, tapping its beak against the glass. I just watched it for a minute, goggle-eyed. It watched me back, clearly expecting something.

After a moment, I stretched out a hand and opened the window. The raven fluttered into the air as the glass panes moved outwards, then flapped inside and landed on my pillow.

“Hello, again,” I said to it, cold air streaming in from the window. I felt silly, talking to a bird, but it was so early that nothing felt quite real yet. Besides, it seemed to be listening to me. “You turn up at the oddest times, you know that. Am I about to get attacked by another monster? Or are you here to give me more inscrutable messages?”

The raven tilted its head to one side, opened its beak, and croaked.

“ Noah .”