Page 18 of Faeheart
Elias
Istood in the shower, letting the hot water run down my body. Thankfully, this new magical bond allowed me to leave the room once in a while without any extreme consequences. Here in the shower, I could barely feel the other two, even though they were only fifty or so feet away. It gave me some much needed peace, a break from the constant input of their emotions, magic, and thoughts.
I closed my eyes, feeling the water drum against my shoulders as I tried to sort through the chaotic tangle of emotions that weren’t entirely my own. Four days of being magically bound to Wild and Caden had left me constantly on edge, unable to find even a moment’s peace except for these brief escapes to the bathroom.
Wild’s presence was particularly overwhelming, a constant surge of chaotic energy and unfiltered desire that crashed against my carefully constructed walls like waves against a cliff. Every time I thought I’d built my defenses high enough, another wave of his emotions would sweep through me, leaving me disoriented and... aroused.
That was the part I couldn’t admit to anyone, not even myself. The way my body responded to him was unprecedentedand terrifying. I’d never felt such intense attraction before, certainly not to another man, and definitely not to someone as reckless and inappropriate as Wild.
My hand drifted down my stomach of its own accord, fingers wrapping around my hardening cock. I bit my lip to stifle a groan as I began to stroke myself, images of Wild’s smirking face flashing behind my closed eyelids. The memory of his kiss in the quad, of his body below me when I’d saved him from magical burnout, sent heat spiraling through my core.
“Fuck,” I whispered, my strokes becoming more urgent. I could feel him even now, his presence in the back of my mind like background music that occasionally surged to the forefront. Was he aware of what I was doing? Could he feel my desire the way I sometimes felt his?
The thought should have horrified me, should have made me stop immediately. Instead, it only intensified my arousal. I leaned against the tile wall, water cascading down my chest as I worked myself faster, imagining Wild’s hands on me instead of my own.
Wild had a reputation on campus, of being an insatiable slut. And thanks to his constant practice in the fae realm, I had a feeling he was exceptionally good at it. I got lost thinking about all the ways he could pleasure me and all the ways he knew that I couldn’t even fathom. The fantasy was vibrant, and I could almost feel his hands on me, his mouth around my cock, and the sweet tightness of his ass as he bounced on my cock in my mind’s eye.
When I came, it was with his name caught between my teeth, my body shuddering with an intensity that left me gasping. Shame followed almost immediately, crashing over me harder than any wave of Wild’s emotions ever had.
What was wrong with me? I’d never had time to think about attraction, much less sex. Sure, I’d taken time to jerk off hereand there when I was alone, imagining some unknown stranger who wanted to please me. But this was different. I’d never been this out of control, this desperate. It had to be the magic manipulating my desires, making me want things I shouldn’t want.
But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. The binding might have amplified everything, but it couldn’t create feelings from nothing. Which meant these desires had been inside me all along, buried beneath layers of expectation and propriety. I wanted chaos, sex, and freedom. I justcouldn’thave it.
I quickly rinsed off, desperate to escape my own thoughts. As I stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel, I felt a sudden surge of amusement that wasn’t my own. Wild. He was laughing about something, the sensation bubbling through our connection like champagne.
“Get out of my head,” I muttered, wrapping the towel around my waist with more force than necessary.
But I knew he wasn’t doing it intentionally. The connection worked both ways, after all. Just as I felt his emotions bleeding into mine, he likely caught fragments of my thoughts and feelings. The idea that he might have sensed what I’d just been doing in the shower made my stomach clench with mortification.
I dressed quickly, pulling on a clean shirt and pants with sharp, efficient movements. When I opened the dorm room door, I found Wild lounging on his bed, flipping through a book and looking bored. He looked up as I entered, and I caught a flash of something in his green eyes before he masked it with his usual smirk.
“Feel better?” he asked, his tone carefully neutral.
“Fine,” I replied stiffly, moving toward my bed in the corner. Caden was nowhere to be seen, probably off with that werewolfAtlas again on the roof. It was the closest place they could get privacy. Lucky bastard got to escape this suffocating tension.
Wild set his book aside and stretched, the movement causing his shirt to ride up and expose a strip of pale skin above his jeans. I forced myself to look away, but not before noticing the way his muscles moved beneath the fabric. I really wished he would stop being so hot. It was annoying.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “the bond goes both ways.”
My blood turned to ice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to face me. “It means I can feel what you’re feeling sometimes. Especially when the emotions are...intense.”
Heat flooded my face, and my cock twitched in my pants despite my recent orgasm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” Wild stood, moving closer with that fluid grace that seemed effortless. “But just so you know, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re all dealing with some pretty overwhelming urges thanks to this thing.” He gestured vaguely at the pendant beneath his shirt.
“It’s the magic,” I said quickly, desperate to maintain some semblance of dignity. “It’s affecting our judgment, making us feel things that aren’t real.”
Wild stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could smell his skin, warm and slightly wild like summer rain. “Is that what you tell yourself?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Bullshit.” His voice was soft but certain. “Magic can amplify what’s already there, but it can’t create something from nothing. If you’re feeling it, some part of it was real to begin with.”
I wanted to argue, to deny what he was saying, but the words stuck in my throat. Because deep down, I knew he was right. Theattraction, the curiosity, the desperate longing for something beyond my carefully controlled existence. It had all been there before the binding, buried so deep I’d almost convinced myself it didn’t exist.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered.
