Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gideon
“You do?” Dafni asked, her eyebrows furrowed above her nose.
It was the freckles on her nose I loved to stare at.
No one at the Academy had them. Everyone had been here, underground, away from the sun, for far too long.
Dafni had them, though, proof that there was life above the surface, a sun that didn’t shine from only the pentagon window at the top of the dome.
The rest of us down here in the dark were rotting, slowly deteriorating, becoming disfigured. I’d had the black mask around my eyes since I could remember, but the veins falling down my cheeks were new. Further proof that this place was killing us.
The only sunlight I ever saw was from that damn window at the top of the dome. That was what made Dafni’s freckles so intriguing. She’d been to the surface, experienced life outside of the Academy. The rest of us couldn’t say the same.
“I do,” I said.
Dafni paused for a moment before continuing to ladle the excess potion into a second flask she’d found.
I shouldn’t have teased her like that, drank her love potion antidote.
I didn’t think it would do anything…not that she hadn’t made it right, just that the way I felt wasn’t going to be suppressed by a potion.
“What is it?” she asked, as though she wasn’t interested in my answer. Like the answer wasn’t what every water elemental witch wanted.
“It’s rage,” I whispered. “They want you to make a potion that creates one of the strongest emotions.”
“And you don’t think I can do it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure even the seasoned witches at the Coven can do it,” I said.
She glared at me.
“You can do whatever you want here at the Academy, right?” Dafni talked down at her cauldron instead of turning to face me. She was mad. Irritated with me. Her cheeks flamed red, and she scooped the potion with such vigor that it caused me to take a step away for fear of being splashed.
I chewed on my tongue, remembering the words that’d left my mouth earlier. They were true. I could do whatever I wanted at the Academy. There were no rules except that I was forced to stay here.
“If you can do whatever you want, then why don’t you just leave?” Dafni asked.
“And how do you think I can do that?” I asked.
“Find a door. Use your legs.” Dafni turned back to the workbench, pulling a clean cauldron from the shelf below.
“It doesn’t work like that. The Coven has scouts.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “They’d find me. I’d lose the freedom I have here.”
Dafni paused. “You call this freedom?” She shook her head. “Before I came, I used to think that maybe I’d like it here. Maybe I’d want to stay a while. But now? Now I want to get out, to help everyone here escape.”
My nonexistent rebuttal got caught in my throat. I hadn’t expected her to say that. Did she truly want that? To help? If I had an ally in this…a partner that wanted the same things I did…
“What are you staring at, Gideon?” The sound of her voice stopped the thoughts racing through my brain. The cauldron clanked against the stove as she put it down.
Had she caught me staring? The real question was, staring at what?
I’d been observing everything that was Dafni.
The way her skirt moved back and forth, riding up her hips, showing off just a tiny bit of her ass as she walked.
The way her white button-up shirt was thin, doing nothing to disguise what lay underneath.
Her perked nipples had almost been the death of me in her room as I buttoned up her sweater.
But there was something else I was entirely captivated with that had nothing to do with how she looked.
She was brave and pushed for what she wanted.
Dafni wasn’t afraid of standing up and speaking.
She might’ve been timid when she’d first arrived, but I saw a fire in her that had nothing to do with the flaming color of her hair.
I watched her neck twitch before she grabbed hold of a flask and went over to the sink, filling it with filtered tap water. They filtered everything that came into the potion room. The Coven didn’t mess around with impurities.
Dafni quickly glanced at me before turning off the faucet.
After pouring the water into the cauldron, she again pulled open a nearby drawer, looking for matches.
Maybe she was more flustered than she let on.
Just like before, there weren’t any matches.
I stalked up behind her, noticing the goose bumps that appeared as I bent over her shoulder, making sure my breath hit her neck.
“Let me help, kitten,” I whispered. I put a hand on her lower back, enjoying the shiver that traveled from her neck down to my hand. Summoning my fire magic, I pointed my index and middle fingers to the burner, adjusting the gas knob so I didn’t light her curls ablaze.
Dafni wiggled out of my hand, setting up another burner.
“Why do you need two burners, kitten?”
She grabbed another empty cauldron and set it onto an unlit burner. “You said I needed to practice, right?”
Color me amused. “You can do whatever you want, Dafni.”
“Can I?” She pulled the drawer open again, this time not bothering to look for the matches. Stubborn witchling. Like I hadn’t just lit her previous burner with my magic. She refused to ask for help.
“The fumes are going to your head,” I whispered. Reaching around Dafni, I caged her in with both of my arms. She wiggled between them, her hair tickling my chin. I pointed my fingers at the burner, lighting the flame and adjusting the knob to a steady blaze.
She turned around to face me, the freckles on her face standing out against her pale skin. My eyes moved around her face, trying to connect the dots, like it would solve the puzzle that was Dafni.
Her hands met my chest, pushing me away from the bench. “I know my red hair and pale skin make me look different from everyone else here, but didn’t anyone at the Academy teach you it’s rude to stare?”
“I’m not staring, kitten. I’m admiring.”
Dafni snorted. “Well, go admire some shelves and find me wild carrot, red rosinweed, and a small jar of asafoetida.” She spun around in a huff, her skirt lifting with the movement, teasing me again.
Water ran in the sink as Dafni began filling another pitcher. “You’re admiring again…”
I turned to face the nearest shelf, pulling my eyes away from her. “Only admiring the shelves, kitten.”
“Mm-hmm. Find me those ingredients, Gideon.”
I dragged my finger along the rows of glass jars, glancing at the labels before they twirled under the press of my fingertip.
Wild Carrot. I pulled the jar off the shelf.
I’d never paid attention to how many jars were in this room.
Shelves and shelves of ingredients. Dafni was weaving around the room, grabbing jars off of shelves without even reading the labels.
She could do the job she’d given me in a third the time.
But she didn’t want me to stare at her. Like she didn’t know that she was mesmerizing to look at.
That all I wanted to do was sit on the stool and watch her work.
I couldn’t help but wonder if she had anyone else staring at her like I did.
White Rosinweed, I read. Where the hell was the red kind?
Dafni let her collection of jars fall from her arms and clatter on the table. She got to work, setting them up, labels facing her in a line along the workbench.
I turned around. “So, you know this guy, Luke, personally?”
Red Rosinweed. Finally. The glass jars clinked together as I held them in the crook of my arm.
“I don’t pry into your personal life, Gideon, and you shouldn’t be prying into mine.”
Not the answer I wanted.
Dafni paused for a moment before corking a jar she’d just finished scooping out of. “I know him well enough to trust him.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. I turned around, scouring the shelves for the last jar. “He saved my life,” Dafni whispered so quietly, I almost missed it.
“Luke saved your life?”
She spun around, holding a dripping wooden spoon in her hand.
She walked toward me, her eyes squinted and focused, like maybe she’d hit me on the side of the head with the spoon in her hands.
Her freckles became more and more pronounced as she closed in.
I had nowhere to go, my back to a shelf.
Keeping the wooden spoon close to my ear, she reached around the other side of my head with her free hand, grabbing a small jar off the shelf behind me.
“Asafoetida,” she said before turning around and walking back to the bench, setting the jar down with the others. I let a breath out of my nose before I walked over to the bench, setting the two jars I’d collected on the tabletop.
“What a good helper you are, Gideon. It must feel good to do something useful for once.” Dafni’s hands didn’t stop moving as she spoke, now working two cauldrons, adding different ingredients to each.
Something didn’t sit right with me about Luke. The way she said she trusted him instead of me. There was something deep inside me that yelled—no, screamed at me to stake my claim.
Pressing my chest into her back, I put my mouth next to her ear, keeping my voice low.
“What else can I help you with, kitten? I love to be of use.” I felt her breath catch for a moment, watched her mouth opening before closing again.
Good. I was having the same effect on her she always had on me.
“Maybe I could help you with this?” I put my hand over the top of hers as she stirred a cauldron, the warm steam from the liquid brushing our wrists.
She had tiny freckles on her fingers too. How had I not noticed that before?
Dafni gripped the rounded handle of the spoon tighter, trying to shrink away from my touch. Something about the way she gripped the handle made my cock stir in my pants. Images in my head of her freckled fingers wrapped around me, pumping me slowly…
“Should I help you with that?” I gestured to the glass jar I’d collected, the red rosinweed. She’d already uncorked it and set it next to the cauldron.
“Sprinkle some in that cauldron,” Dafni said.
I picked up the jar, shaking it back and forth gently until a sprinkle of red powder floated down into the boiling cauldron nearest my hand.
“That’s enough,” she said, grabbing my wrist. Her breath caught after she realized she was touching me, wrapping her soft fingers around me. I pulled my pelvis away from her so she wouldn’t feel my cock twitch in my pants.
Dafni let go of my wrist quickly, grabbing a clean wooden spoon and stirring the red rosinweed into the boiling water. I let go of the hand I’d been helping stir, letting her work. She was a wonder in the potion room.
Both of her hands were busy stirring separate cauldrons, the movements of her arms making her shoulders rotate, which made her ass circle round and round.
I hadn’t pulled myself far enough away to account for the way her hips would move when she stirred.
We both stilled when I felt her ass press against the hard bulge in my pants.
“Kitten…” I groaned. The soft plush of her ass against the hardness in my pants made the tip of my cock weep, begging to be pushed through her cheeks, where I knew it would be warm and as wet as the potions she was stirring.
“Gideon, I…” Her legs squeezed together, moving back and forth as she flexed her feet in her boots, rubbing her skirt against me, making it ride up higher on her waist.
I slipped my hands beneath her skirt, placing them on her hips.
“Steady, kitten.” Her hands stopped stirring the cauldrons in front of her.
I hadn’t felt her take a breath against my chest since she’d felt me hard behind her.
“Breathe, Dafni.” Using her name instead of the nickname I’d given her seemed to snap her out of whatever headspace she was in.
She looked behind her shoulder at me, her green eyes wide, her mouth puckered open, her flushed rose lips making an O.
“What are you doing to me?” Dafni whispered, her eyes bouncing around my face.
“What do you mean, kitten?”
She looked down at my hands, hidden beneath her skirt. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Like what?”
“Like I can’t control my body. It’s like my body’s been taken over and my brain doesn’t even have a say in what it does.”
I bent over, bringing my face close to hers. I could feel her pants of hot breath against my cheek. “Doesn’t it feel good?”
She thought for a moment before looking back up at me. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t you let me keep making you feel good?”
One cauldron overflowed, the liquid hissing as it hit the flames of the burner.
“Dang it!” Dafni turned back to the workbench, stirring the cauldrons vigorously to quell the bubbles. It did nothing to appease my cock, her rocking hips causing a groan to leave my lips. “I have to keep stirring these, Gideon.”
Her hands were busy, her mind partially occupied.
“Let me help you, kitten.”