Arcane Tangle ch. 1 [MF] [fantasy] [magic university] [long] [plot] [very illegal magic]

In the dark of the cellar of the women’s dorm, floating in the air soundless and unseen, the Being waited.

Presently the door above the stairs opened, and in the darkness a dozen copper washtubs answered the glow of a paraffin lamp.

The Being observed.

Down the stairs, the lamp in one hand and a laundry bag in the other, came Karoline. Only the dorm’s domestic servants usually went down here, but her black velvet uniform announced that Karoline was a student. So much was on her mind lately that she’d forgotten all about the laundry day – so now here she was at this late hour, obliged to do it all by herself.

Perhaps if she’d had less on her mind, she would have noticed out of the corner of her eye a hint of something silvery, something spectral, lurking by the stone wall. She did not. She plodded on, right to the end of the room, to one of the smaller basins.

The tap she turned on spluttered, gurgled, and an inelegant, irregular stream started filling the tub. Karoline sighed, placed the lamp on the counter, and reached for the buttons of her jacket.

Very, very slowly, thirty feet behind her, something stirred, and inched towards the light.

She shook off the jacket and the skirt; she stood only in her underwear and a thin, sleeveless undershirt, against whose white fabric her long black hair cascaded. She pawed at the water, and found it too cool. She scowled, and worked up a thermal spell. Hesitantly, thin wisps of steam arose from the water’s surface. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Damn, she was tired.

She turned the tap off. She reached for soap, but found none. She turned around—

Alicia was coming back from the library. She was in the ground floor corridor and just about to climb the stairs leading up to her bedroom when her attention was hijacked by: a high-pitched scream; a bright flash of orange light coming from the half-open doorway to the laundry room; a loud crash like a sonic boom; a faint stench of burning.

In the ensuing silence Alicia stood still, looking at that door just a few feet away.

“Huh,” she said.

She lay down on the steps her books, advanced, and swung the door fully open.

Down below in the far end of the room, clearly visible in a pool of lamp light, her classmate Karoline was standing, in her underwear, with her left hand stretched out, breathing heavily, eyes wide open.

“Karoline? What are you doing?”

Bewildered, the other girl looked up. “A leech-wraith!”

“What?”

“A leech-wraith! Right here! I’m looking for soap and I turn around, and there’s this… writhing mass…”

Alicia reached for her pocket and produced a satchel, from which she took a pinch of pale blue powder. She blew it up in the air. There was a quiet crackle, and the particles lit up, filling the room with stark white light.

Clearly visible now was a scorched path on the wooden floor that led from Karoline all the way to a large scorch mark on the wall right by the stairs.

“Karoline. Did you fireball it?”

“Well, yeah!”

“You fireballed an incorporeal being?”

“Look, I panicked, okay? Kind of worked too, it buggered off somewhere—”

“This is extremely unprofessional, Karoline. You’re lucky they haven’t installed gas lighting down here yet.”

“Well— how would you react if you suddenly saw a heap of phantom tendrils standing right next to you—”

“They aren’t even that dangerous. Them stealing your life force hits no worse than a flu.”

“Wow, fantastic!”

There were now footsteps closing in behind Alicia, wardens or servants coming to check what all the noise was.

“Well, justified or not, you’re definitely getting fined for this.”

Karoline’s gaze miserably followed the scorch mark on the floor. Next to Alicia, the old bald caretaker, the cranky one, popped up in the doorway, and surveyed the damage with wordless dismay. Karoline closed her eyes, and rubbed her forehead.

“Fuck my life,” she muttered.

*

Crossing Vallnord Academy’s inner park in the early morning in spring, when the mellow sun lights up the trees’ fresh leaves in that lavish shade of green, is certainly pleasant and dawdle-worthy. It was one reason why Diane was a little late to the Thaumaturgy class.

She closed the door behind her as quietly as the ancient iron hinges would let her. Fortunately, Professor Fink was not a stern type. A small, elderly man in a sagging shirt, he was already chatting up the thirty or so seated students, a droopy smile on his face. Behind him was a vast and many-tiered blackboard, which was in imminent danger of getting entirely filled with graphs and diagrams. Next to him stood a wooden tripod, on top of which was placed what appeared to be a large, clear quartz crystal.

Niko must have come a little late too, because he was seated alone, a little in the back, and still fishing for his notebook in his leather bag.

What a coincidence. Yes.

Softly she took the seat next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the contrast of the blond hair and the black uniform. He gave her a small, indifferent nod, and she returned in kind. Exactly as you’d expect from two distantly acquainted classmates.

“Okay, we keep digging into thermothaumaturgy today,” Professor Fink’s goatlike voice continued. “But before we get into that, first I need to make a little detour, and talk to you on how to handle a focus.”

Diane opened her notebook and ran her fingers down its middle fold. Niko shoved hair away from his eyes and leaned to her, and was apparently about to say something when he noticed that one other student across the room was looking vaguely in their direction; and so he cleared his throat, and looked at the Professor.

“Now, focuses have of course been a big deal historically. If you try to imagine a medieval mage, say, you always picture someone with a staff, right? Because they always used to channel through a focus embedded in the staff head. Even when I was a student, well… fifty years ago…” He gave the class a resigned little shrug. “It was still common then to wear rings and stuff, and channel through those. But then came the Bargard School of Metaphysics, and one of its foundations of course is using natural magical currents rather than redirecting them, and so focus use lessened a lot.”

Professor Fink had this gift of being easy to listen to. All the students’ attention was now fixed on him. All, except possibly for two.

“Did you do your homework?” Diane whispered, not taking her eyes off the lecturer.

“Yep,” Niko answered.

“Report, please.” Whenever he blushed, his skin tone complemented his brown hair in an especially cute way, she thought, catching a sideways glance.

“So, focuses got pulled out of syllabuses. Which is fine and good, except this particular class will require it, so now it is up to me to cover this material which you’d normally have learned from the intro courses.” Another helpless shrug, a smile, a wink. “Poor us.” A round of chuckles.

“I made sure I was alone in the changing room after the practice…” Niko’s whisper lowered to barely audible. “I got completely naked, and started stroking myself…”

“Very good. Go on.” As usual, her face betrayed nothing but a hint of a smile.

“And I got really close, I could feel the orgasm coming right up…”

“Were you making cute noises?”

He shot her a stern glare. “I do not make cute noises.”

“Any object with a clear enough magical potency can be a focus. Artificial, natural, doesn’t really matter. But the most tried and true are crystalline structures.” Professor Fink tapped the quartz on the tripod.

“What happened then, Niko?”

“Just like you told me to, I had to keep going for fifteen minutes. If I ever felt I was close, I let go and waited…”

“Were you afraid of getting caught?”

“Couple of times I shoved the clothes over my lap because I thought someone was coming.”

“But you did finish?”

“Oh yes. Made a huge mess on the floor.”

“Did you say my name then?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Crystals are neat because their geometry not only focuses well, but also makes for an easy get-away. Remember, the number one danger when using a focus is that your magical capacity actually gets channelled through it, and if you’re not careful, it might get stuck there! If that happens, and, say, you get separated from the focus, well – then you’re in a pickle.” Professor Fink raised his finger and looked up to the ceiling. “You’re in a hell of a pickle. It’s almost impossible for you to do magic. That’s why you need to be careful never to get too involved in your focus!” He looked back at his students with a smile of gentle admonition.

Diane reached over to Niko’s notebook, and made a little check mark.

“Very good. High marks.”

“Alright, Diane. Let’s hear your report.”

She inhaled and stalled for a moment, before starting in an even, calm whisper.

“Last night after we turned off the lights, I waited. My roommate tossed in her bed for a few minutes, but she’s a fast sleeper. I slithered out of my nightclothes and was naked under the sheets. I thought of your naked body, of the fun times we’ve been having… And that was all I needed to get nice and wet. When I pushed these inside myself…” she extended the middle fingers of her left hand, “they just glided right in.” The two fingers reached and gently stroked Niko’s wrist. He swallowed.

“So, it’s not like focuses are obsolete or anything. There’s just a very specific set of circumstances where using them will actually benefit you. And there’s an entire course on that, you can take it, I think, in your third or fourth year, we won’t be getting into that. They will, objectively, allow you to shift more energy to a more specific aim. But there are trade-offs. It all depends on the conceptual links that you can work into your spellmaking.”

“And then, with Yolanda just a few feet away from me, maybe asleep or maybe not, I pictured you on top of me, and I touched myself, and touched, and touched… and I wanted to moan and mewl, but I had to be very, very quiet.”

“And you came quietly?”

“Almost. When it hit me, I kind of made this little whine. It was rather obvious. I really do hope that Yolanda was asleep.”

He smirked. “Your description is a little vague. Can you reproduce the sound, for closer appreciation?”

He was joking, of course; and it was to his enormous horror that she twisted her eyebrows, closed her eyes, and let out a quiet moan, warm and very unmistakable. He straightened up and looked around; but she timed her display with Professor Fink dragging the tripod noisily across the floor, and it remained unnoticed. He breathed out and looked at her; she was following the lecturer with perfectly undisturbed interest, and just a slight twinkle in her eye.

“Alright.” He reached out and checked her notebook in return. “Very good. Have you thought of a new assignment yet?”

Eyes still on the professor, she leaned back. “I’ve got something better.”

“Oh?”

“Did you hear they found a leech-wraith haunting our cellar? Tomorrow at twelve a team will come in to banish it.”

Niko inclined his head. A leech-wraith? These things tend to be attracted to misery, regrets, unfulfilled potentials. Kind of weird to find one in a place bustling with activity, such as one of the country’s most prestigious magic universities. But to be honest, Vallnord did have some amazingly hauntable cellars.

“Okay, so what about it?”

“A banishing ritual is kind of a nuisance, so the entire building will be evacuated for two hours or so. Also, the team is external, so they’ll have to disable the intruder alarm. Which brings me to my point.” Her fingers played with her steel fountain pen. “How would you like to get into my actual bed?”

It was so like her, casually drop a question like this and pretend she didn’t know that it was the hottest thing he’d ever heard in his life.

Professor Fink placed a large bar of lead on a robust ceramic plate on the desk by the wall.

Vallnord took excellent care of its students’ moral well-being. While co-education was pretty much a necessary evil, mandated by centuries of magical tradition, many watchful eyes always strived to ensure that the contacts between male and female students remain purely intellectual. Powerful wards were placed on both the men’s and women’s dorms to immediately alarm of anyone entering them that wasn’t allowed inside. Though many students would sometimes look wistfully to the windows of the opposite gender’s dorms, Niko’d never heard of any actually getting there.

But Vallnord was clearly no match for Diane’s practicality.

“So,” she looked at Niko, and finally cracked a little smile. “Would you like that?”

“Take a guess, Diane. Take a guess if I’d like that.”

Professor Fink cleared his throat, and squinted at the quartz. The air between the crystal and the lead bar blurred, and there was a low hum; and the bar bent down, half-melted. Professor Fink broke the magic off and licked his lips, barely even winded. There was a lot of impressed muttering.

“Oh, wow.” Niko whispered. That was really a lot of energy shifted with very little effort. Any other day, it would have really awed him.

*

Diane slung her bag over her shoulder.

“Alright, I’m off. See you in the afternoon.”

Yolanda nodded from her desk. “What time is it? Do I have to flee yet?”

“It’s only eleven. You still got an hour.”

Chances are, at some point in your life you had to banish a spectre from some dark nook in your house. In that case you know the basics of this ritual, which are really the same for every kind of apparition – you light some incense, you chant a bit, you disengage the presence from the space it’s occupying. This is roughly what was going to happen today – except a leech-wraith is no house imp, and the cellars under the Vallnord women’s dorm are no ordinary cellars. This was going to be an industrial-scale job, with whole sackfuls of a vile concoction based on sal ammoniac burnt in gigantic iron censers, and a whole squad of enchanters drawling ominously in a chorus.

The fumes are awful and make your eyes sting. You could, of course, prepare a ritual of air purification with a handful of wild sage, some sea salt, and a very simple atmospheric catalyst – that would definitely keep the air fresh within a single room. But it would take about an hour to prepare, so why’d anyone bother?

Diane reached the triangular stairway that climbed through the middle of the building. She glanced over her shoulder, and headed upwards.

There was an attic above the third floor. It was a large, sunlit space, divided by partition walls into several large rooms. It was currently being used as a common storage area, and not much more besides. Unused furniture, crates, chests and worn leather valises, aged textbooks with margins scribbled on by students long graduated, various useless trinkets of students present which got relegated from the rooms, rugs, dusty red muslin window drapes which were last in use a decade and a half ago, all these things and more were stacked haphazardly all around the place. There was nobody around when Diane entered, blew dust off a desk by a window, and took out of her bag her portable burner, a small tin pot, a water bottle, a handful of wild sage, and a pouch full of sea salt.

*

Niko stepped out of his dorm. The women’s dorm was directly across the inner park, its reddish walls surreal behind the yews and the plane trees. It was so off-bounds that, deep inside, he didn’t really believe that the plan was going to work. Something was going to fail on the way, and in the evening he’d masturbate in the shower, thinking of what could have been.

Nonetheless, he didn’t go for the lecture hall in the new wing as he’d normally do. He passed by the Clock Tower and went into the Entrance Hall, and then out of the Academy’s grand front doorway. He was carrying with him a stick – and if anybody’d been paying attention, they’d find the way he carried it rather strange. It was flung over his shoulder and balanced with his hand, as if it were a good deal heavier than it should have been.

The Academy had grown gradually, each century adding its own architecture to its make-up. The elaborate iron-and-glass latticework of the Great Conservatory, a true pride of modern engineering, was therefore united in a single building with the well-worn original castle. Niko often wondered at how all of this somehow seamlessly fit together.

And this grand, stately complex stood… kind of in the middle of nowhere, really. The Vallnord Town itself was several miles down the road. There was a new, small train station a ten minutes’ walk away. Several villages surrounded the Academy, and some woodland, and behind it rose the low mountain, on whose peak, in the crevices, damp dirty snow would still lurk even in late May.

Well, medieval places of magical learning were always close to nature. And so by inertia, half a millennium later, a grand piece of cityscape was now lost absurdly in the countryside. Yet there was another purpose to this. Remember: students of magic are a potentially dangerous breed. If they stayed in the cities, like those good-for-nothings that studied law and medicine and the natural sciences and loitered around cafes shouting politically subversive slogans at each other… well, let’s just say that a student demonstration is easier to deal with if nobody in it knows how to launch a half-decent fireball. Let the young mages remain cloistered safely away, and think of their studies and their country.

Neither his studies nor his country were on Niko’s mind as he circled the Academy through its front lawn, speckled with picnicking students and faculty. He turned the corner of the medieval wall at his left-hand side, which after a minute or two suddenly merged into a newer, neater building with large windows. By comparison, its architects had clearly been more concerned with comfort, and far less concerned with trebuchets.

This was the outer wall of the women’s dorm.

There was nobody here, in the shade. Downslope, several houses were clustered in a sort of a small village – mostly inhabited by the faculty’s families. It was quiet, and obscured by trees.

He pondered the wall. A powerful enough mage might be able to just walk right through it. Actually, this seemed like exactly the kind of magic where a focus would help. Niko smiled. Professor Fink would have no problem getting into his girl’s bed.

Alas, Niko was a mere first-year student, and to reach *his* girl’s bed, he’d have to resort to a simpler trick.

He crouched under a juniper, took off his black uniform jacket, swatted a mosquito, and waited.

*

“Right, watch it, this thing is expensive!” The two enchanters unloading the massive iron censer from the handcart indicated with their rolling eyes that yes, they knew that.

The lead of the banishing team was a young woman in short black curls, who seemed to be exactly as cranky as the old bald caretaker. The two were standing in front of the women’s dorm, and had been trying to outlecture each other for the past ten minutes. It was very difficult for the enchanters to cleave their way into the conversation and ask if the alarm was down yet.

“Yes, we’ve suspended that, go on right in.”

The lead, who was wearing a thick leatherlike suit, now put on a helmet – a round brass thing with two circular windows in the front surrounded with screw caps and with a beaklike protrusion between them. It made her look like an unholy child of a diver and a plague doctor.

“We’re lighting the censers as soon as they’re in place. I trust we’re all clear.”

The caretaker looked at the half-dozen servants waiting behind him.

“Make a final round, will you.”

The servants went inside and spilled into the hallways, knocking at every door and barking final warnings. Some last stragglers emerged from their rooms and scuttled down towards the exit.

The longest serving of these servants was a stern, square woman with an intimidating tight bun. She made her round through the third floor and then, as an afterthought, climbed the stairs to the attic.

“Anyone here?” she hooted from the doorway. She briefly scanned the place. No, she didn’t expect so.

When the door closed after her, there was a minute of silence; and then Diane emerged from behind a cupboard, a tin pot in hand. Soon afterwards, the empty halls sneaked through, she was back in her own room. She placed the pot on her nightstand and whispered a short incantation. The room’s air seemed to shift a little, and then settle back.

She took a quick look around. She’d lived here now for a better part of a year, and she definitely grew to think of the place as her own – her trinkets defined her side of the room, from the small landscape paintings that she brought from back home, to her personal, not magic-related books on the shelf, to that terrible brass toad-shaped paperweight she remembered always having and which she was irrationally fond of, down to the mundane stuff like pens and notebooks that she had carefully selected herself from a Vallnord bookshop. The Academy certainly shaped her, cladding her in its uniform and insisting on certain ways of thinking. But to this little corner of the Academy, it was her that was doing the shaping.

It looked presentable enough to receive guests.

She patted her bed. The bluish sheets also looked presentable enough to receive a guest.

Diane rather liked the perpetually collected poise that she displayed to other people. She was therefore grateful that nobody heard the excited, giggly yelp that she gave before she turned on her heel and rushed out of the door.

*

Niko was already convinced that all he was getting from this scheme was a short stroll around the grounds when suddenly he heard a distinct clank – and then a window about ten feet above ground opened, and a moment later Diane swung herself seated onto the windowsill.

“Excuse me, mister, are you lost? This is the women’s dorm.”

Heartbeat kickstarted, Niko grabbed his stick and approached.

“I’m very lost. Was hoping for some hospitality.”

From the inside, the window was low in a landing of the staircase. It could not be seen from downstairs, where the banishing team were shouting among themselves and moving their equipment around. She raised her eyebrows, placed her feet on the windowsill, and wrapped her arms around her knees; she pretended not to be aware how this made her skirt fall down to her waist, revealing her knee-high socks and her bare thighs.

“You do look thirsty,” she said in a low voice. “Come on in, we’ll see what we can do about this.”

He checked again if nobody was watching. He jabbed the stick forcefully into the ground, and steadied it with his shaking hands. Then he focused on it, and released it.

He tried not to flinch as it vibrated and suddenly shot up to three times its original length, reaching just below Diane’s window. One more mental nudge and it sprouted from its sides two rows of horizontal bars. A perfectly reasonable ladder, if you were willing to ignore the general wobbliness.

She reached out and caressed its end. “Why, mister. Aren’t you an impressive grower.”

It took him a little while to reach her. The thing would have been difficult enough to climb even without an erection.

“So,” he said, cautiously placing his hands on the windowsill, “are you sure that the alarm is off?”

She’d remained completely motionless throughout, just watching him with her mild smile; now she shrugged. “One way to find out.”

He hesitated for a moment, then lugged his weight over. The tip of his shoe touched the floor of the landing, and nothing happened.

“This is going better than I’d expected…” he muttered.

“Is it?”

He grabbed the ladder, and squirmed as it shrunk in his hands, back into a stick.

“I swear, this thing will give me splint–”

And with no warning, he found himself grabbed by the collar, and savagely kissed. They lost their balance, keeled over, and fell with a thud one foot down onto the landing (which was by far the better of the two alternatives). When he opened his eyes again, he found them mostly obscured by blond locks, and the blue of her irises twinkled close above his face.

“Come on,” she said, getting up. “I will show you around.”

She took him by the hand, and treading lightly she guided him up the stairs. She could positively feel his excitement through his grip, and wondered if hers was showing too. This was such complete betrayal that she was committing: bringing a boy to this safeguarded shelter, timbred voice and chest muscles and an actual cock and everything, all this male stuff violating the sanctity of the Vallnord Academy’s Women’s Dorm. But she wanted him here, and she liked that he was here, so she guessed that the dorm just had to deal with it.

Her hand felt warm and soft in his. Her light blond hair tied up in a billowing ponytail was right in front of him, bobbing confidently to her stride. So here he was again, caught in another insane ploy of hers. This was great. He loved her insane ploys. He’d follow that ponytail to the end of the world.

The wrought iron banister at his side ducked sideways and they reached the hallway. He wondered if this is what explorers felt when sailing into an uncharted ocean. The women’s dorm had a layout very similar to the men’s dorm, though some differences were obvious. Where the hallway floors at his place were worn, bare hardwood, over here they were covered with a mellow-red carpet; the creamy wallpapers of broad, vertical stripes also seemed fresher and less shabby.

“How come girls get a nicer dorm? This is some bullshit.”

She glanced back at him, and the corner of her lips quivered. “Maybe we’re just less slobby? Have you considered that?”

He rolled his eyes. “More boring, like.” A nail dug into his wrist.

“I’d watch my words, if I were you. You’re in the lion’s den.”

At this, a sound filled the air, low and reverberating, like the call of an anguished moose.

“The chanters,” she said. “This will be an interesting background music to our… aah.”

They both blinked, eyes watering. A strong chemical smell hit their nostrils.

“Quick,” she stopped by a door and turned the key. “In!”

They tumbled in and breathed with relief. He rubbed his eyes and took a few steps forward – and then behind him, he heard the sound of the turning lock. He instantly forgot the stinging, caught by the thrill of that sound – the promise-laden sound of someone locking their bedroom door behind you.

“Tea? Coffee?” she asked.

“I’m good, thanks.” (The biological imperative of making small talk when first visiting someone’s place is mighty).

The room was similar to his: two beds, two desks, a window, two bookshelves, a wardrobe, a tiled stove the colour of sand going up the entire height of the wall. But the small differences – a different rug, a different wallpaper, a different scent – it all made this so utterly alien and strange. In the window, across the park and way off in the distance, he could see the men’s dorm, like one could see a different planet in the night sky.

“It’s nice,” he said. A brass frog eyeballed him from the desk. “These are yours?” He gestured to the paintings over the nearer bed.

“Yep. Brought them from home.” She waved her hand vaguely. “I brought a lot of stuff from home. I think they make it cosier.”

“Mhm.”

“You know what,” she raised her index finger and gave the room one long, thoughtful look, “there’s one thing that I always wanted here, that would really make this place look fantastic. But it’s kind of hard to get.”

“Oh? What is that?”

“A naked boy.” Her thoughtful expression remained completely intact. “Say, leaning against this.” She nodded at the stove. “Would really go well with the decor, don’t you think?”

No good reply came to his mind, the blood having already flowed to organs more essential than the brain; so he just sighed, tossed his jacket onto a chair, and stepped towards the stove.

She let him take off the shoes and the trousers, but when he tried to unbutton his shirt, he suddenly found her upon him, prying his hands away; she always wanted this pleasure for herself, the slow reveal of his smooth, defined chest, the unveiling of his shoulders from the crisp white fabric, which was then allowed to fall discarded on the floor; and then a chain of kisses, first on the pit of his neck, then down his breastbone, the middle groove of his stomach, his navel, the trail of hair underneath; and when her progress was halted by the fabric of his underwear, she forcefully yanked it down, and suddenly freed, his cock bobbed up and bumped her on the chin; and on its tip she planted the final, longest kiss, and the taste of his precum on her lips set her heart rate soaring.

“Alright,” she said, backtracking towards the door, “let’s see.” He remained standing uncertainly, over a pile of his clothes, like a freshly unpackaged novelty. She squinted, her coolly judging expression at odds with her blush. He smiled a smile that was a little embarrassed, looked sideways, and leaned with his back against the stove. She took him in, the dark hue of his flowing hair, the muscles lying in wait under the nakedness of his skin, the frankness with which his arousal revealed itself in his erection. As far as her tastes went, he was the most beautiful object that had ever graced this room.

“I was right.” She approached him again, dragged her palms across her chest, drawing a soft sigh. “You were what this room was always missing. I just got one thing wrong.”

“Ah?”

She looked him in the eyes. “Mhm. You see, you shouldn’t be standing here. It would be a lot better…” she took him by the shoulders and nudged him sideways, “…if we put you…” she guided him to the side of her bed, “…right here!” With a shove, he fell backwards on the sheets; and before he could collect himself, she was upon him, kissing and caressing and fondling.

And suddenly, caught between a bed and a girl, and rediscovered his initiative. She felt his hands laid on her, and all her buttons, clasps and laces coming unceremoniously undone; very soon she’d been stripped of her skirt, her panties, and one sock, and her breasts were now suspiciously naked through her unbuttoned shirt and over her yanked-down bra. And just as she was biting down on his lip, she felt his leg come between hers, and his arms snake treacherously over her back; and with a little yelp, she was suddenly flipped on her back, and it was her body now that became a free-range kissing ground. She writhed and squirmed under his tickling lips, but couldn’t do much about it; especially not after he impatiently shoved the shirt and the jacket up, and the inside-out sleeves got trapped around her wrists. She was just like this, still imperfectly undressed, when he stopped, kissed her on the forehead, and slowly slipped into her.

Eyes blazing, he groaned softly. She wriggled her hands free, threw them over his neck, and pulled him close, burying his face in her pillow.

And now he was lost. Her pillow smelled exactly like her, some sort of a citrus scent which in his mind was so intimately linked with her that it alone could make his mouth water, like those dogs that scientists rang bells for. He was lost in this room, full of stuff which he’d seen on her as she’d take them to class, but now were found assembled all together in their natural habitat. He was completely lost in Diane, his body sunk in her bed, his cock taken by her body, him whole just dissolved in her.

She ran her fingers down the length of his spine, and nibbled at his earlobe. He gave a small, sulky groan, as if awakened from a pleasant dream. His languid smile arose beside her from the pillow. His eyes found hers, his hips moved, and the springs of the mattress creaked their unmistakable, happy tune.

After weeks and weeks of nomadic fucking – empty classrooms, floors, tabletops – they finally got to do it the proper way. His smile widened into a grin, and she giggled at his expression. Very proper, indeed. Smuggled into a girl’s bed, using a ladder, while watchful guardians were looking the other way – if centuries of poetry, prose, theatre and song are correct, this is in fact *the* proper way to have sex, true and time-honoured.

This approval of the ages inspired him; she saw that dangerous light in his eye, then the intensity of his kisses grew; and something within him demanded that she lose her mind.

He flipped her on her stomach, and she had absolutely no intention of resisting him. His weight pinned her down, her nipples and her clit fell prey to his meddling fingers, his hips clapped against her buttocks as he reached deep into her. His cheek pressed against hers, and their moaning very soon drowned out the distant chanting. Her legs, one still knee-deep in a sock, twisted backwards around his, and when he opened his eyes, he saw her fists clenched hard on handfuls of sheets, and her teeth biting down on the pillow.

Well, that’s how it goes. You invite a guy into your bedroom, all shy smiles and flustered looks, and before you know it – bam, you’re a toy in your own bed, and all your personal space is his playground, and, worst of all, this is the best time you’ve ever had here. Her grin spread all the way to her back teeth. The sheer boyish audacity, for heaven’s sake.

He trapped the hood of her clit between his two fingers, and rubbed the slick skin, relentlessly, intrusively. He held onto her tightly – so when she brimmed over, and announced her climax with a warm, laughing whine, he felt every little tremor, every frenzied throb of her trapped body.

She obviously always lost her composure during sex, but she probably wasn’t aware that she also forgot all about it in the afterglow. She lay with a blissed-out smile and dishevelled hair, a little squished against the pillow. He gently swept her ponytail aside and kissed the skin between her shoulder blades, peachlike downy hair light on his lips. Coolheaded Diane was irresistible, but orgasm-shattered Diane was simply just lovely. Her delighter purr warmed him to the core.

He was about to start thrusting again when she slipped away from him and turned to face him.

“Niko, wait.” She relaxed on her pillow, and ran a fingertip along his upper lip. “There’s no rush for once. Why don’t we draw this out a little?”

“You mean…” She nudged him so that they lay their sides, took him back inside her, and wrapped him tight in her arms.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Just enjoy.”

To his surprise, he didn’t mind postponing his release at all. His heart slowed a little, to a contented upbeat rhythm. He had never been too sure if cuddling and slow kissing was appropriate for their kind of a friends with benefits arrangement or whether it was, like, too much affection or something. But with his cock beating hard inside her, this clearly wasn’t cuddling – this was just plain, honest fucking. He cradled her face and softly nibbled on her lips, and just enjoyed her closeness – her gripping warmth, the way her breasts softly yielded to his chest when he breathed in, her eyelashes tickling his face, the quiet giggling on her breath, her fingers playing with his hair.

With half-closed eyes, she watched sunlight glow on his skin. This was such a neat triumph to add to her list. She’d wanted to study magic at Vallnord, and so she did. She’d wanted to excel here, and excel she did. She fancied some cock served in her own bed, and here it was, a really beautiful one, filling her delightfully in this strictly no-cock place. Yeah, she was good at getting what she wanted from life. And also… she tossed his mousy mane and smiled. She was really glad she could share this whole adventure with him. He was very likeable, cock aside even. Hopefully they’d both look back at this fondly one day…

Now, let’s not spoil a great moment thinking about the future.

For an indeterminate amount of time they basked in each other, the distant throaty chanting a surreal background to their slow caresses. Maybe it was the chanting had a calming effect on them; for when it came to a lull, Niko stirred, and felt that he could hold back no longer.

She read him, gave him a smile, and rubbed his shoulder blades as he rolled on top of her; but when they were about to begin again, all of sudden the door rattled.

They stopped and both looked, confused. It wasn’t someone tapping on it. It sounded more like it shook on its own in… a gust of wind? From the hallway?

She wiggled from under him and carefully approached the door. There was a moment of silence and then, definitively, she heard the air in the corridor move in a breeze, and the door rattled again. And suddenly, Niko realized.

“They’re wrapping up already!” he hissed. “They’re clearing out the fumes!”

“But it’s only been like twenty minutes!” She looked at the clock on the stove. Okay, well, it’s actually been an hour. Still, it was supposed to take at least two…

She scurried over to the window and crouching looked sideways down. At the entrance, the bald caretaker was talking to what appeared to be a bird diver. A pair of students approached them, were waved in, and entered the building. Some others, who only ever made it to the front lawn, were picking their stuff up and showing general signs of going back.

“Shit!” Diane lunged for her clothes on the floor. “Niko we need to get you out, right now!”

*[continued below]*

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ocgqtd/arcane_tangle_ch_1_mf_fantasy_magic_university