46
Teaching a Thunderheart
Melody
I follow the stream of students pouring into the classroom after Ryder, who’s still in his wolf form after running with his pack.
When he found me doing a morning run, he joined me for a while, and I watched him with joy and a little bit of envy as he flitted with breathtaking speed through the woods, his white fur flashing here and there amid the greenery like a bolt of lightning.
How easy it was for him to become part of nature, of the forest. To give himself over to his instincts.
Seeing him like that, and the way the wolves play with each other, makes a strange kind of longing bloom in my chest.
He returns to have breakfast with me, and we walk to class together. I weave my hand through his silky fur as we enter. His soft fur makes me think of the potion I still have to brew in order to pass Evanalora’s class. Damn.
I tried twice again and failed.
Riven’s eyes immediately shoot to me when I enter the classroom. I offer him the barest hint of a smile before taking a seat beside Shay and Cassius.
“Shift back, Mr. Atilla. I suppose you can neither wield nor defend yourself in this body,” Riven orders coolly, his tone sharp, and I wonder whether it’s because he dislikes Ryder in general or if it’s something else.
Ryder lets out a quiet howl but shifts—and the entire classroom bursts into laughter when he ends up standing there, butt-naked.
“Yewwww.” I laugh and pull my hand back.
Riven just looks bored, but he’s still watching me intently as Ryder passes me. As if he wants to see whether I would look at Ryder at all. Is he serious? Is he jealous?
Cassius throws Ryder a set of spare clothes he must have been carrying for him since morning classes, and Ryder quickly shrugs them on before he slumps down, running his hand through his wild, shoulder-length hair.
Riven steps forward. “Today, I want you to learn how to dose your magic. It’s nice to have a full conflagration on hand.
But you don’t always want to burn everything down.
Neither do you want to burn through your magic too quickly.
Learning how to control the flow of your power is the most essential part in combat.
If I want to kill you, I want to make you drain your magic quickly.
And then I strike. Team up in twos and fight each other, summoning only a tiny portion of your magic, while the other shields with as little magic as possible.
This gets harder when you do it out of reflex to defend yourself.
The instinct of your magic is to protect you, so it surges. Learn to control it.”
People start to team up with their usual teammates. Riven comes strolling over to me . I get up from my seat too.
“Not you.” He points at me. “You train with me ,” he snaps when Cassius approaches me.
Cassius backs off, almost falling on his butt when Riven shows his teeth. “Sorry, my lord,” he mumbles.
I look up at Riven. “A little dramatic,” I tease, so quiet only he can hear.
“So you decided to come at last,” he says back.
I gasp as I look into his face. The perfect angles of his high cheekbones, dusted with silver. His remarkable eyes rimmed with dark charcoal, bringing out the burning lilac of them even more.
And—I really try hard not to think about his glorious body and how it looks sweat-slicked.
“Yes,” I breathe, blushing because I damn well fail at not thinking about that when I catch a glimpse of his muscled chest as my eyes travel down. I quickly cross my arms and look away toward my classmates. Some have conjured bubbles around themselves, others shields of thorns and vines.
“You look…better,” he says finally, but I read the question in his face. What did Caryan do to you? How brutal was he?
“I am feeling better,” I admit, again offering him a smile I hope says that it was bearable.
And it was. I try hard not to think about Caryan and me though. And what almost happened the other night. I don’t want to think about it, and I managed pretty well avoiding it all morning.
Riven stares languidly down at me, with his absurd, perfect, aristocratic face. A face that is so deceptively young, only his eyes aren’t. “Well, then, would you like me to teach you?”
He holds out his elegant hand, and I stare at it, at the rings glimmering on his long, strong fingers. I would have to call my magic. But that magic…it didn’t kill those people. It did what I asked it to do. It saved me. It’s not my enemy.
I take a shuddering breath and take Riven’s hand.
“I would like to try to teach you how to separate the magic Caryan gave you from your inherent magic,” Riven says quietly, stepping closer to me.
My heart does funny things when his fingers trace small circles on my palm, meant to soothe me. Funnily enough, he does the very opposite to me.
“I’ll be holding your hand throughout. I’ll try to guide you with my magic, but you’ll have to let those walls down,” he says quietly.
I feel hot all of a sudden. He’s standing so close, and all I can really think of is his enticing scent, so alluring I’d like to step up and lick it from his skin. I bite down on my lip instead, hard, to keep me focused, damn it.
“What walls?” I ask stupidly.
But he just looks at me, serene and stern, his fingers never stopping their movements, making my blood heat and my breath come ragged.
“Your inner magical walls. We fae can join our magic. I could just push in, violently tear down that barrier, but I don’t want to.” His voice gets a little rough, and he breaks my gaze quickly. “It’s easier if you let me in and focus on my magic. It’s an intimate thing though—sharing magic.”
“Oh, okay.” I think about the time when I held the hand of Blair’s beautiful mother.
When I glance around me, I find all the students watching us. A second later, a high ring of dark flames surrounds us, shielding us from view and the rest of the world.
“Ready?” Riven asks.
I feel his gaze on my lips, trailing down my body. I just nod, and a moment later, his magic runs from his hand into mine. It pushes slightly against my walls, like a question, and I let them down.
I gasp as his magic fills me slowly, inch by aching inch. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before and the need for more tightens low and sharp inside me—sweet, unbearable.
Riven’s fire slides along my inner walls, slow and deliberate, setting me alight from the inside out. I try to brace against it, but the ache only deepens, turning molten and insistent. My magic rises to meet his, curious and wanting.
And then it yields. Makes room.
It lets him in—and he floods me all at once, a rush of heady, overwhelming ecstasy that steals my breath and nearly sends me stumbling into him as my knees threaten to buckle.
By all the doomed, star-cursed gods—this feels good.
When I glance up at his face, I find his gaze burning into me.
“Now focus.” Hells, that voice. It’s rough, guttural, and edged with a breathlessness that makes my pulse stutter.
A sound that travels right between my legs.
My wild mind betrays me, conjuring a dark bedroom, moonlight, and a honed, sweat-slicked body moving over mine.
A body that just happens to stand close enough to be burned by the heat I must be shedding.
He, of course, seems entirely unaffected. “Try to locate the silvery light in you. Call it.”
I do. I close my eyes, trying really hard to focus on the two kinds of magic within me. Well, three, if you count Riven’s that’s currently throbbing somewhere deep inside me in a very intimate way.
“Focus on mine. Let your light weave around my magic instead,” he orders and, Abyss, he’s stepped even closer. Pure, undiluted desire coils tight and hot inside me, threatening to scorch me alive.
My eyelids flutter when he lets go of my hand, but he never breaks contact with my body. His fingers trail along my arm and glide over my shoulder. I suppress a moan when he’s suddenly behind me, his magic in me following this trail, dancing under my skin and sending every nerve ending on fire.
“Focus, Melody,” he mumbles into my neck.
And hells, I swear if his lips touched me right now, I’d burst out in flames and lightning and burn and burn and burn.
“Focus on that silvery light.”
I do, feeling how his magic brushes up against mine again and again and again, as if to coax it. And I let it. Command those silvery threads to mingle with his magic instead. I arch my back as our two magics start to dance with each other.
“Now let it flow into me while more of mine flows into you.”
I’m pressing up against him, feeling him stone-hard against my butt. I stifle a moan at the contact, because it causes his magic to surge right to the area between my legs, but the sound gets muffled and swallowed by Riven’s flames.
“Easy,” he mumbles, amused, and his hands start to draw circles on my shoulders.
Gods, I wish he would do the same to my breasts—which have become aching and heavy—circle my nipples with the same focus he fought Ronin.
I still have my eyes closed while I concentrate on letting my magic flow into him. He groans against my ear as he lets me in, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps at the sound. My flesh feels too hot, too tight. Feverish.
“Good girl,” Riven breathes and hisses when I press myself against the remarkable hard length of him.
Hells, how would he feel inside me if his magic feels this good?
“Riven,” I breathe when more and more of him fills me up.
I turn to look over my shoulder and find his amethyst eyes lined with silver streaks from my magic and, Abyss, if that’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
His eyes shining with the very essence of me.
I wonder how my eyes look. Whether they are as dark as his shadowfire prowling through my veins and rubbing up against my insides in an almost unbearable, languid gentleness.
I forget everything else. I forget that we’re in a classroom. That somewhere around this wall of flames, my classmates are standing.