5. Quill
Quill
The music inside the frat house was thumping. I stood outside, listening to the bass line bleed through the walls. Was this… Brittany Spears?
Any music was a bit of a rarity on the Widdershins campus without enchanting instruments yourself.
But hearing pop hits from nearly thirty years ago…
that was unheard of. How the hell had they figured out how to get a stereo system to work on campus?
The wards were the magic that messed with technology, making everything except clockwork impossible to use.
And now there were even more wards than ever.
Did someone figure out how to make a clockwork stereo? That seemed… not possible?
All I could do was shrug. I supposed I’d figure it out when I went inside, mostly just to satiate my curiosity. However, I had much more important things to do. Things that involved bringing that asshole dragon down a peg or two.
I took a deep breath and pushed through the front door, the music hitting me like a kick to the sternum.
The bass thrummed through my chest, and I had to squint against the strobing magical lights that had been set up in the main living area.
Bodies pressed against bodies on what I assumed was supposed to be a dance floor, and the air was thick with the smell of alcohol and sweat.
Greg spotted me almost immediately from across the room and waved, a huge grin spreading across his face. I gave him a tight nod but didn’t make my way over. Instead, I scanned the crowd, looking for a set of red scales and an irritating smirk.
It didn’t take long to find him.
Aeron was holding court in the corner of the room like he owned the place, surrounded by a cluster of admiring students who looked absolutely mesmerized by every word coming out of his mouth.
He was recounting some story, his scaled hands gesturing dramatically, and the crowd around him was eating it up.
A few people were actually laughing, their heads thrown back in genuine amusement.
And more than a few had their hands on him, desperate for his attention.
But for now, it looked like he was just stringing them along.
My jaw clenched. I knew he’d be here. And of course he was already the center of attention at a party that had barely started.
I made my way to the kitchen, grabbing a drink from a cooler someone had set up on the counter.
The beer was warm and tasted not great, but I drank it anyway, using the time to formulate a plan.
I couldn’t just walk up to him and start an argument, that would make me look like the aggressor.
But if I could catch him in a moment of weakness, or set up some sort of trap that he would walk right into… that might just do it.
“Quill! You actually came!”
I turned to find Lysander appearing beside me with a grin that I found immediately annoying. He was already flushed from drinking, his blonde hair slightly disheveled. Behind him trailed the werewolf from earlier, looking equally pleased with himself.
“Yeah, well,” I said, taking another sip of my beer. “I reconsidered.”
“Good choice, buddy,” the werewolf said, clapping me on the shoulder hard enough to make me stumble forward slightly. “This is the best party of the year so far. Wait until you see what happens later.”
I didn’t ask what that meant. I was too busy watching Aeron across the room, waiting for an opening. He was laughing now, his head tilted back, completely at ease. The sight of it made my skin prickle with irritation.
“Come dance with us,” Lysander suggested, already pulling at my sleeve. “You’re too tense. You need to loosen up.”
“In a minute,” I said, shaking him off gently. “I want to grab another drink first.”
It was a lie, but Lysander didn’t seem to care. He just shrugged and disappeared back into the crowd with his werewolf companion, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my growing frustration.
I watched as Aeron finally extricated himself from his group of followers. He was heading toward the kitchen. Toward me. Perfect. This was my chance.
I straightened up, making sure I looked casual but not too casual.
I didn’t want him to think I’d been waiting for him.
I took another sip of my beer and pretended to be deeply interested in the label on the bottle, even though there was no label.
My heart was hammering in my chest, but I forced my breathing to stay even.
The moment he walked into the kitchen, the temperature seemed to shift.
It wasn’t anything supernatural, I was just hyper-aware of his presence, the way his scaled form took up more space than should have been possible in the cramped room.
A few people who’d been standing near the cooler quickly moved out of his way, giving him a wide berth.
“Red,” he said without looking up, and I felt my jaw clench at the casual way he said it, like we weren’t complete strangers who’d had exactly one hostile interaction. “Didn’t expect to see you here. You seem too stuck up for this sort of thing.”
I turned to face him slowly, making sure my expression was carefully neutral. Up close, he was even more infuriating than I remembered. His red scales caught the light filtering through from the living room, and there was that same smug smile on his face that had been haunting me all week.
“Turns out I’m allowed to have a life outside of being a good student,” I said, keeping my tone level. “Shocking, I know.”
“Is that what you’re calling this?” He gestured vaguely at my beer. “A life?”
The casual dismissal in his voice lit a fuse inside me. “At least I don’t spend my entire existence trying to convince people I’m important.”
Something flickered across his expression. Good. Maybe I’d gotten under his skin. For a moment, his smug expression faltered, and I felt a small surge of satisfaction.
“No, I suppose you don’t,” he said calmly.
“But at least I’m honest. You, on the other hand, have been staring at me since you got here, trying to catch my eye.
” He took a step closer, his massive horns casting a shadow over me.
“If you want attention, Red, all you have to do is ask. I know you want it.”
I laughed out loud in his face without a second thought.
“Attention? From you?! You’ve got to be kidding.
” His grin faltered slightly. “The last person I want attention from is some overstuffed, pompous piece of shit like you. The only thing you have going for you is your grandfather’s connections. Without him, you’re nobody.”
His expression darkened, and I watched as his claws curled into fists at his sides.
For a moment, I thought he might actually lose his temper, and the prospect sent a thrill through me that I wasn’t entirely prepared for.
But then he did something worse. He laughed.
A low, rumbling sound that came from deep in his chest and made several people in the nearby living room glance over nervously.
“Nobody?” he said, his voice dripping with amusement.
“That’s rich, Red. Especially when you’re so desperate to get a reaction out of me that you came to a party you clearly didn’t want to attend, just hoping you’d run into me.
” He leaned against the counter, his massive frame somehow making the gesture look predatory. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck, but I refused to look away. “I came because my roommate wouldn’t shut up about it. Not because of you.”
“Sure you did,” he said, and there was something in his tone that made me want to punch him.
“You know what I think, Red? I think you’ve been thinking about me all week.
I think that little collision after class has been eating at you, and now you’re here because you can’t stop thinking about me.
” He leaned closer, the heat of him enveloping me.
“I think you want to know what it feels like to get fucked by a dragon just like everyone else, don’t you? ”
“Fuck you,” I spat, turning away from him. Heat rushed to my cheeks as the embarrassment settled in. But I also felt the heat gather in my groin. That was not a reaction I expected.
“That’s my plan,” he called after me as I pushed back toward the living room. “I can’t wait to see those pretty lips of yours in action, Red.”
I wanted to turn around and punch him right in his stupid fucking face. But I knew if I went back, I’d only prove his point and probably injure my hand. So instead, I forced myself to keep walking, to disappear back into the crowd of dancing bodies and pulsing music.
My hands were shaking. Whether from anger or something else, I couldn’t quite tell.
I grabbed another beer from a passing tray, even though I hadn’t finished the first one, and tried to lose myself in the crowd.
But I could feel him watching me from the kitchen, could sense his presence like a weight pressing against my back.
Lysander found me somewhere in the middle of the dance floor, pulling me into a loose circle with him and his muscular werewolf friend.
I let myself be absorbed into the rhythm of the music, let my body move without thinking too hard about it.
It was easier that way, easier to pretend I was just here to have fun like everyone else, and easier to forget about the way Aeron’s words had landed far closer to home than I would’ve liked.
It was easier to ignore the fact that some traitorous part of me had responded to his crude proposition. That I was… curious.
“See?” Lysander shouted over the music, his breath smelling of cheap whiskey. “Isn’t this fun?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The werewolf, I still didn’t know his name, kept trying to get me to dance closer to him, his large hands occasionally brushing my waist. Under normal circumstances, I might have been flattered by the attention.
He was attractive in that oblivious, confident way that came naturally to werewolves.
But my attention kept drifting back toward the kitchen, toward the corner where I could just barely make out Aeron’s silhouette through the crowd and those golden eyes of his glancing my way.
Fuck. This was exactly what he’d wanted. For me to come to this party and think about him all night.
“I’m gonna grab some air,” I told Lysander, already moving away from the dance floor before he could protest.
I made my way toward the back of the frat house, pushing through a sliding glass door that led out onto a small patio.
The cool night air hit my flushed skin like a splash of cold water, and I took a deep breath, trying to center myself.
Campus was quiet tonight, the sounds of the party muffled by the walls behind me.
I could hear the distant hoot of an owl somewhere in the trees beyond the wards.
I leaned against the railing and stared out into the darkness, replaying the conversation over and over in my head. The way he’d looked at me. The confidence in his voice when he’d said those things. The absolute certainty that I wanted him.
The worst part was that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
I hated myself for it. I hated that some primal, stupid part of my brain had lit up at his words, at the proximity of him, at the way his horns had caught the light.
I hated that my body had responded to his crude sexual proposition like I was some kind of lovesick fool.
I was supposed to be here to make him look like an idiot, and instead I’d let him get into my head so thoroughly that I’d basically handed him the ammunition to humiliate me.
The sliding glass door opened behind me, and I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. I could feel him the same way I’d felt him in the kitchen. His presence was too large to ignore.
“Needed some space?” Aeron’s voice was different out here, without the music and the crowd. Softer somehow, though no less infuriating. He was taunting me.
“Go away,” I said flatly, not bothering to look at him.
“Seems like every time we talk, you tell me to leave you alone,” he said, and I could hear the amusement in his tone. “And yet, we keep finding each other. Seems like fate to me.”
“I’m not interested in whatever game you’re trying to play with me,” I said, finally turning to face him. In the moonlight, his scales looked almost silver instead of red. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Is that so?” He moved to stand beside me at the railing, his massive frame somehow not making me feel as trapped as I thought it would.
“Because from where I was standing, it looked like you wanted quite a bit to do with me.” His gaze dipped toward my crotch where my cock was still straining against my jeans, then back to my eyes. “I think you like me.”
“You have an incredible capacity for self-delusion,” I said coldly. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“You’re the first.” He turned to face me, his hip resting against the railing. “So prove me wrong. Prove to me you don’t want me.”
I opened my mouth to do exactly that, to tell him he was full of shit and that I didn’t want anything to do with him, but at that exact moment he leaned down and pressed his lips to mine.
My eyes went wide as he made contact, his tongue grazing my lips almost immediately, looking for a way in.
I hesitated for maybe a second or two, the warmth in my body tripling in an instant.
Then, with a gasp, I stepped back, raised my hand, and slapped the ever living shit out of him.
“Don’t… you… ever,” I growled, my chest heaving. “Touch me again.”
But he didn’t flinch or step back. In fact, he just smiled, his lips pulling up to reveal rows of sharp white teeth.
“I won’t have to,” he said smugly as he leaned closer.
“Because you’re going to beg me for it, Red.
Before the semester’s out, you’ll be on your knees for me of your own free will.
And when that day comes, I’m going to give you exactly what you’ve been craving. ”
And with that, he turned on his heel and headed back toward the frat house.
I turned away from him too, looking out over campus as my breath came in ragged gasps.
I heard the sliding door open and close behind me, the music loud for only a second or two.
I didn’t have to look back to know that he was gone.
My mind raced as I stared down toward the conservatory.
He was wrong. I didn’t want anything to do with him.
And fuck him for kissing me without my permission.
I had half a mind to march straight to the admin building and file a report against him.
That would get his grandfather’s attention and probably ruin his reputation on campus too. The dickhead deserved it.
However, the silent part I didn’t want to acknowledge was the pleasure humming through my system, the ghost of his kiss still warm on my lips, and the ache of my cock straining against my jeans.