Page 17 of Wildfire

Hermes shook his leg, tried to grab his attention with the most absurd things he could think of, but Wilder stubbornly ignored him. Incredible, how single-minded the man could be. The only sign that Hermes was bothering him at all was a furrow between his perfect brows.

By the time Wilder had to go teach, he was doing a better job driving Hermes crazy than the other way around. Obviously, the only path forward was to double down. So when he could’ve waited outside the classroom, maybe even amused himself for a few hours, Hermes followed Wilder right in.

It was a small auditorium, no more than fifty seats with desks spread out on each row, but as Wilder took his place at the teaching station up front, Hermes trailed after him.

“What are you doing?” Wilder asked between his teeth. Students were slowly beginning to filter in, filling the seats in clumps of two or three.

Hermes shrugged, putting his back to the teaching station. He braced his hands on either side of his hips and hopped up to sit on the table with all of Wilder’s tools and papers. “Watching you work, hot stuff.”

The professor’s teeth were clenched so tightly that Hermes swore he could hear them grinding. “You’re going to have to take a real seat.”

A girl in the front row had taken out her notebook, flipped it open, and was staring at her syllabus. “Um, do we have a guest lecturer today?”

Hermes laughed sharply. “Absolutely not,” he cut in. “I’m the prof’s muscle.”

The girl stared at him for a second, then glanced between him and her professor. In every way, Wilder Pratt was a more substantial man than Hermes. He was taller, broader. Hermes had strong arms, lean muscles, and—if he was being modest about it—incredible legs, but Wilder Pratt was bulkier. He looked exquisitely well fed.

And he looked absolutely nothing like he needed Hermes’s protection from anything. Still, if whoever was killing mages was the same thing stealing their souls, Hermes was pretty fucking convinced that was bullshit.

“I can handle myself,” Wilder snapped.

Hermes rolled his eyes, kicking his heel against the wooden lectern. Wilder winced with every deep thud.

“Sure.” Hermes shrugged. “You might think that. You wanna try your hand though?” He asked with a wink and a suggestive wiggle of his brows. He rather liked the man’s hands.

Wilder stared at him, pupils narrowing to little dark pricks in that sea of stormy blue. “What are you talking about?”

Running the tip of his tongue over his teeth, Hermes stared out at the class. Some of the nearest students, who’d caught a whiff of trouble, leaned forward in their seats like sharks catching the scent of blood in the water. When he spoke again, he raised his voice to draw more attention.

“I’m saying if you can lay a single hit on me, I’ll relent. Agree you can take care of yourself. Maybe even let you try it.”

Wilder scoffed. “I’m not lighting the school on fire to prove a point.”

He turned toward the chalkboard behind him and erased what the last instructor had left on the board. The click of his chalk was fast and furious as he scrawled his own notes.

“You telling me you don’t have any kind of training room, teach?” Hermes asked. “Maybe you just don’t want to lose in front of all these elementalists who think you’re the shit.”

He hummed, rocking his head to one side, then the other. “Or maybe you’re just scared.” The last, Hermes practically sang.

The chalk went still, and when he glanced at the professor from the corner of his eyes, the whole of his back was absolutely rigid. Fuck, he knew this wasn’t that kind of party, but what he wouldn’t give for Wilder to toss him on his back over the lectern and just plow into him.

“No reason to be,” Hermes whispered, lowering his voice just for the furious man. “I can protect you. All your students too—no matter what’s hunting them.”

His lips twitched when Wilder pushed back off the chalk tray. Hermes had the distinct impression he’d done the wrong thing, and that was exactly what he wanted.

Going Nuclear

He’d known from the start that this was a terrible idea. He shouldn’t be anywhere near this infuriating asshole, let alone fighting the man for the prize of his own fucking self-respect.

But after that, after being questioned right in front of his fourth-year class, he didn’t have a choice anymore. Hermes didn’t know or care that Wilder was holding onto the edge of sanity by his fucking fingernails, and that he absolutely couldn’t deal with this—with his value as a mage being questioned.

But of course, Hermes was ridiculously fast, so how could Wilder hope to beat him? Any throw he could make, Hermes could dodge.

Well, he’d been trying to drill that lesson into these particular students for almost four years—sometimes you couldn’t beat someone with brute force. Sometimes, you had to be a little more subtle than that.

The students were like a horde of slavering beasts; they couldn’t wait to see a fight. Half of them wanted the violence, and half wanted to see Hermes actually take Wilder down a peg or ten. His attitude didn’t often win him real fans among the students any more than it did among his colleagues, so they’d cheer to see him knocked on his ass.

Marco especially, he thought, since their abilities were so alike. There weren’t a lot of fire specialists out there, and unfortunately, most of them seemed to think it was some kind of competition. Whoever could make the hottest fire, or the biggest, or the fastest, he was the best. And almost everyone had something they were best at—or at least something they thought they were best at.

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