“Pick a card, any card,” Miranda says, fanning out our deck of homemade flashcards in front of me.
She’s used that same line so many times that I’m starting to wonder if she’s woven some subtle magic through it, to make this feel like a game instead of a grueling cram session.
We’re sitting in the grass of the north quad at the Western College of Locks and Keys, testing the limits of a limitless pot of coffee and waiting for the bells in the tower above to call us to class.
I pull a card and read it. “Recollection.”
“No problem.” Miranda cracks her knuckles and puts her coffee-warmed hands on either side of my face. “What do you want to remember?”
“Uh….” Coming up with something you’ve forgotten is exactly as frustrating as it sounds. I shrug. “I don’t know. Just show me home again.”
“You already remember what your home looks like,” she says.
“Yeah, but you help me remember better.”
“Fine,” Miranda sighs and leans in close, so that I can feel her breath on my ear as she whispers. “I’m taking you back to your old bedroom. To the bed you used to sleep in. What does it look like?”
I close my eyes, aware for a moment of nothing but the sun on my eyelids and the warmth of her hands, and then do my best to picture that room.
“Well, it’s a twin bed,” I say.
“You’ve snuggled this blanket for hundreds of nights,” Miranda casts the spell on me with her voice, and I can feel the thick orange knit of that blanket pressing down on me. “You’ve stared at these walls. You know your future is outside that window somewhere. You’ve memorized every inch of the view in search of it.”
Magic seeps directly into my skull from Miranda’s hands, searing hot as always, yet comforting, like tea with honey. It coats the blurry broad strokes of my memory, and suddenly the details come into razor-sharp focus. I get up from the bed, put my hands on the chipped paint of the window frame, and look down at the cracks in the street a story below. I can smell the taco stand on the corner, and feel the threadbare carpet under my toes.
The blanket is still wrapped around my shoulders and hooded up over my head. Its weight and warmth mix together with the feeling of Miranda’s hands on me, and the scent of wool blends with her rosemary perfume.
I breathe it in, this room, this moment. I savor what it was like to have college as a bright light in my future, where I was sure to work hard and learn lots and win at everything. Miranda allows me about ten seconds before she pulls her hands away, and drops me back into the quad, where college is my present, the work is real, and so are the chances of failure.
“How was that?” Miranda asks, even though she knows.
“Vivid as always,” I confirm.
She picks up the deck of flashcards and holds it out for me to take my turn.
I glance up at the clocktower, briefly hoping that it will save me, before I remember that today only gets harder from here.
“I should probably stop,” I say. “I don’t want to run dry before the presentation.”
“That’s physically impossible,” says Miranda, playfully tapping my crotch with her elbow.
The enchanted chastity cage that keeps me from draining myself physically dry clinks metallically in agreement with her.
“Tell that to my magic,” I say. “One minute, it’s there, and the next, I’m all out, even though I haven’t cum.”
“Magic is abundant in the places where people connect,” Miranda recites one of the intro class principles of social magic. “What matters is being primed to hold it.”
“Yeah, I understand the theory,” I say. “And yet.”
“You don’t run dry, Nate, you just get stuck in your head,” says Miranda. “That’s what you really need to work on. Come on.”
I shuffle the cards, fan them out, and wait for her to select the next form for my mediocrity to take.
“Uplift,” she reads.
“All right, give me a second.” I stretch my neck to one side, then the other, and breathe in and out in the crisp, sharp way that sometimes helps me focus.
I tuck my hands under Miranda’s, and search for the thread of magic that connects us.
There’s always a thread, no matter who you’re doing magic with. It might be a strand of spiderweb, made of nothing but the faint recognition that exists between any two sentient minds, or it might be a thick steel chain, formed from years of love. Or hate. Any strong emotion, really. Those threads are the essential conductor for every type of energy that can make up part of a relationship. And that energy fuels every kind of magic the College of Locks and Keys teaches.
Miranda and I have been best friends for years, and the thread between us is a sturdy rope of many strands, the kind you’d trust your life to on a mountainside.
“So, uh, the force binding you to the ground is losing its grip,” I form an image of Miranda lifting off the ground, and try to use my words to feed it down that rope and into her. “Mass doesn’t matter. Weight doesn’t exist. There’s a rising wave of joy as you realize that you and the ground are just two objects that, you know, happen to be touching. And with, um, the slightest nudge, you can drift apart.”
I push upward on her palms, and for a split second, I can feel her whole body rise just high enough for the blades of grass under her to unbend.
Then I start thinking about how bad it’s going to hurt her tailbone if I drop her from any higher than this, and she winces as her weight thumps back down.
“You make this so much harder on yourself than you have to,” she sighs.
“I’m open to suggestions,” I mutter, pulling my hands back and casually crushing them with each other, trying to squeeze the anxiety out through my fingertips.
“All right, how about, use that thing between your legs?” Miranda suggests, knocking unabashedly on the front plate of her own chastity belt, through her jeans. “There’s no point in keeping it locked up if you’re not going to let it work for you.”
“Social magic doesn’t have to be horny,” I grumble.
“No, it’s just a lot easier that way.” Miranda rolls her eyes at me. “So, you know, feel free to ignore the entire undergrad program, the core technique that gives the whole school its name, and possibly the most abundantly potent source of energy in the world, and instead do a doctorate-level presentation on the subtle strength of companionship. You can do whatever you want, I’m not your mom. But if you’re having trouble, I suggest trying something more at your level.”
“In other words, objectify you,” I spell it out.
“Lust for me,” Miranda rephrases, exasperated. “You think I wasn’t thinking about pinning you down to that old twin bed of yours and testing out the springs?”
I bury a hot, blushing smile in my hands. Yeah, that seems like the way Miranda would make a Recollection spell work.
“I couldn’t tell,” I say, mostly honestly.
“Yeah, well, subtlety takes practice.” Miranda shrugs. “Would it make you feel better if I showed you the graphic version? So that you’re not the only one going there?”
“No, it’s fine.”
I grab Miranda’s hands again, and pretend to be someone else performing this spell. Someone who’s good at this kind of thing.
“I want you off the ground, now. I want to shove you up against a wall that doesn’t exist.”
I keep the words going, not letting myself think about how weird it is for them to be coming out of my mouth.
“Mass doesn’t matter. Strength doesn’t matter. I don’t give a fuck whether my body can lift yours. I can pin you to whatever point in space I choose, with nothing but how much I want to.”
“Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.” Miranda rises off the grass, still sitting, and I scramble to stand up fast enough to keep holding her hands.
Her legs fall out of their sitting position, and she’s still low enough that her feet drag on the ground.
“Higher,” I order, in that strange imitation of a better wizard’s voice. “I want those legs dangling, helpless, ready to be pulled apart.”
Miranda rises a few more inches, high enough that the toes of her shoes just barely skim the grass, without finding any purchase on the ground.
“Mmmm,” she sighs, tossing her head so that her thick curls catch the breeze, running her hands over the most sensitive available stretches of her own dark skin, along her neck and the inner sides of her muscular, athletic arms. I know that, if Miranda wanted to, she could probably break this spell just by punching my lights right the fuck out, no magic required, but when she leans into it like this, gracefully stretching her limbs out to explore the empty space and her completely unobstructed range of movement, she looks downright delicate.
“Higher?” she asks, with that soft, husky tone she takes on when she’s riding someone else’s magic.
“I don’t know if I can go higher,” I say, taking her powerful legs in my hands and wrapping them around my waist, so that our cages bump against each other.
Mine is getting tight. I can’t lie, this is working for me.
“Try,” Miranda whispers.
“Why would I want you higher?” I ask. “You’re already at the perfect height for me to imagine slipping right into you.” I shift my hands from her legs to her ass to hold us closer together. “You know, if there weren’t two layers of denim and enchanted steel in the way. Raising you any further means I have to rethink the whole fantasy holding you up.”
Miranda rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so literal.”
“I’m not good at non-literal,” I say.
“That’s what practice is for,” Miranda insists. “Getting better at things. Just feel the magic. Feel the hum, the flow, the pressure.” She reaches down between us to grab my cage. I can feel her warmth through the bars. “Think about what you want it to do with it, and push.”
I try. I think about the tightness of the cage, and about moving Miranda upwards, and try to force a nonsensical connection between the two.
She bobs up and down a couple inches in the air.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she teases. “Come on. We didn’t apply to the College of Locks and Keys because we thought it would be easy!”
“I actually did,” I remind her.
“Well, you’ve had plenty of time to realize you were wrong by now!” she says. “And you haven’t quit.”
“I haven’t quit,” I acknowledge.
“So fucking lift me!”
“Fine!”
I thrust upward against her, imagining that I’m thrusting into her, and push all the hunger in my body into that thought.
There’s a little more power in that hunger than I’m counting on.
An explosive burst of energy launches Miranda twenty feet upward and away from me, and before I can think that I should probably try to hang onto the spell, it’s gone, and she’s on her way back down.
“Fuck!” I shout, and take off running to follow her arc across the law.
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I do? A better wizard would have the uplift spell back in place by now. Or they’d give Miranda wings, or bend reality around her to let her roll down a gentle incline instead of smacking into flat ground.
But all of those things are domination magic. Magic cast on someone other than yourself. Practically every spell worth doing seems to be domination magic.
Have I mentioned that I’m fucking weak at domination magic?
And I don’t have time to get better at it right now.
I catch up with Miranda’s trajectory, throw myself flat on my back in front of her, and try the one useful thing I’m good at.
I offer myself up, body and heart. I leave every door open, shove everything I have to the surface, and beg for something to be a part of.
“Miri! Turn me into a-”
Miranda points down at me as she falls. Before I can finish my suggestion, my mouth is gone, and I’m a mattress. It’s a strange sensation, being wide and flat and featureless. My whole body feels like a giant ear full of cotton.
But it works. Miranda lands square in the middle of me and bounces off onto the grass, unhurt.
Not only unhurt, but laughing like a maniac.
“That’s more like it! Nice distance,” she tells me, while I shrink back down to my normal size and shape. “Why did you let go of me?”
“I was startled,” I say, picking my clothes up off the ground.
My cage is enchanted to stay with me through just about any magical misadventure, but everything else popped off one end or the other when I became a limbless, six foot wide torso.
“Startled?” says Miranda.
“More like scared shitless,” I admit. “I thought I was going to break your neck. I almost did.”
“Only because you got ‘startled,’” Miranda points out.
“Still, it happened.” I brush leftover bits of stuffing out of my navel and yank my t-shirt down over my head.
Being naked isn’t particularly taboo or unusual on the WCLK campus, but it still feels weird to have so much of my skin touching the breeze. Every part of me where muscles ought to be is just out there on display for anyone who walks by.
“What the fuck am I going to do if I get assigned something dangerous at the exam today?” I say, stepping into my jeans and fastening them over the chains of my cage.
“There you are in your head again,” says Miranda.
“Yeah, I’m in my head!” I snap. “I’m practicing magic on other people, and if I make a mistake, I could hurt them. What am I supposed to do, just not think about it?”
“Hey, hey, breathe.” Miranda gets up and puts a hand on my shoulder, and I know there’s magic in her voice now. It wraps around the knots in my stomach and my neck, and forces them to soften. I resent how good it feels. “This is what this place is for. To give us a chance to get the hang of things with help nearby. Seriously, what are you so worried about?”
Where to start.
“If I drop the ball in there today, I’ll be dropping Ruby,” I say.
“Hmm, yes, much more important than dropping me,” Miranda muses, tapping her lips with mock seriousness. “I see the problem.”
“You know that’s not it,” I say. “But at least with you, I know what you can take. I know how you feel about risk. I know that even if something goes wrong, you’ll understand it was an accident, and we’ll work it out together.”
“So, we know each other, is what you’re saying,” says Miranda. “You know, it is possible to get to know new people, just like it’s possible to get good at new skills?”
“Don’t start.” I sit back down in the grass so that I can rest my head in my hands. “She’s not just some stranger,” I struggle for words. “She’s… Ruby.”
“Oh, believe me, I know it,” Miranda says, with a mischievous lick of her lips.
“How would you even go on living with yourself if you disappointed her?” I sigh.
“She’s a sweetheart,” Miranda says, matter-of-factly. “And very cute. And an outrageously powerful submission wizard.”
“Don’t remind me,” I say.
It’s no secret that whoever gets to practice their magic on Ruby in class is whoever the teacher feels most sorry for. The magic Ruby can add to someone else’s spell, when she’s on the receiving end, makes my contribution to Miranda’s mattress trick look like a halfhearted pat on the back.
If I can’t cast a spell with Ruby as my partner, I can’t cast it. Which is going to make it all the more humiliating if I whiff this.
Ruby’s also an absolute master of the few submission spells we’ve learned so far. Sharing her thoughts. Making herself almost irresistible to give gifts to. I’m good at those things too, far better than I am at anything in the domination category, but she breaks the curve.
And yes, I know that affects the way I see her. The way I feel about her. The way everyone feels about her. But I’ve never once seen her use her power to hurt anyone. Her spells don’t leave you with that cloying aftertaste of having been used, like they do when someone pushes too hard, or weaves lies into the casting. They finish clean and sweet.
“What I’m saying is, don’t underestimate her,” says Miranda. “Being able to open up like that is not the skill of a fragile person. She can probably take a whole lot more than you think.”
The bell chimes in the tower.
#
When Miranda and I enter the lecture hall, Ruby is already there, kneeling backwards in her usual seat near the front, scanning the crowd as the rest of us file in.
Her strawberry blonde hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail, and instead of her usual flowy blouses and skirts, she’s looking ready for anything in a plain t-shirt and leggings, each with a smattering of holes.
She looks exactly as cute as ever in them.
Her fingers are drumming a little anxiously on the back of the chair, her teeth worrying the edge of her lower lip, but when she sees me, her expression clears, and she waves.
Apparently, even while she was dressing to get set on fire or covered in unexpected substances, the worst thing she could imagine happening today was me not showing up at all.
I raise my hand in return. For whatever it’s worth, I’m here.
Next to me, Miranda exchanges a similar wave with Bernice, her own exam partner, and heads over to sit with her. She gives my shoulder a good luck squeeze as she goes, and I almost forget to return the gesture. After all, what does Miranda need luck for? She’s only here for the exact same graded project that I am.
I have to chase her down for a few steps to get that squeeze in, and she smiles and rolls her eyes at me, like every thought to cross my mind in the past ten seconds is already old news to her.
Then she’s out of reach again, and Ruby is still looking at me from the second row with an empty seat next to her, and there’s really nothing for me to do but go over there and take it.
“Hey,” she says, turning and sinking down into her seat.
I can’t hear her over the sudden ringing in my ears, but I can read the shape of the word on her incredibly soft-looking lips.
“Hey,” I say, and hope that the sound is coming out at a reasonable volume.
“You ready?” she asks.
My hearing is still muffled, but I’m pretty sure I caught that.
I shrug. “As ready as I can be without knowing what we’re going to be doing up there.”
Then I remember that I’m supposed to be projecting an aura of trustworthy confidence.
“I mean, yeah, I’ve practiced everything from the sample list,” I say. “Whatever happens, I’m sure I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” says Ruby, so convinced that she almost has me believing I was convincing.
She picks at a hole in the knee of her leggings for a moment.
“I just want to say—”
She stops, because my mouth just opened at the same time as hers. I have only the vaguest idea what I was trying to say, probably some babble about how I’m not going to let anything happen to her. It’s sure to come out wrong anyway, so I just say, “You go ahead.”
“No, you.”
“It wasn’t important, seriously.”
She hesitates, then says, “Okay. Well, I realized I haven’t had the chance to say, I’m glad it’s you.”
“Why?” I blurt out before I can think it through, and then try to cover it asking, “I mean, uh, for which part?”
“Both parts,” says Ruby. “I mean, obviously, I’m grateful to get to work with someone who can give me a leg up when it’s my turn to lead.”
The remaining noise in my ears fades out, and something in my stomach settles down a little.
I’ve been so worried about today’s half of the exam, my half, that I’ve barely given any thought to the second round, next week, when we switch roles. It’s easy to forget, with the way magic seems to crackle with extra power in her presence, but domination magic isn’t Ruby’s strongest suit either. And since she can’t partner with herself, I’m probably the second-best choice of an easy receiver.
“But for the other part too…” Ruby goes on, raising her shoulders in thought for a moment, and then dropping them. “I don’t know why I’m glad. I just am.”
She smiles. I smile.
There’s still time for me to say something. I don’t.
Behind us, a clip-clop of hooves announces Professor Chicory’s arrival. Students pull legs and backpacks out of the aisle to give her room to maneuver her broad Centaur torso down to the teacher’s desk.
She has her attendance clipboard in the crook of her arm, and her lips move as she walks through the crowd, checking off our names.
“Magic is not mandatory,” she proclaims, dropping her clipboard onto the desk with a clack.
It’s actually two desks stacked on top of each other, so that she can reach the upper writing surface without having to bend over to the level of her equine knees.
“It’s not mandatory, and it’s not for everyone,” she continues, removing her thick reading glasses to look at us with tired eyes. “That’s an easy thing to forget, especially in a place like this. Here, you can’t help but measure yourselves against a cohort of classmates all pursuing magical prowess as if their very lives depend on it. And many of my colleagues are only too happy to confirm for you that our chosen path in life is conveniently the only one that really matters. The one true answer to every question, every problem. Frankly, most of us don’t get off campus nearly often enough.”
There are a few nervous laughs from farther in the back.
My fingers are a vice around the hinge of my seat’s fold-out writing surface. I like Professor Chicory well enough, but come on, it’s an exam day. Who can focus on a lecture right now? Can’t we just get started, so that this can all be over with sooner?
“I’m seeing a lot of nervous faces,” she says. “Nervous is good. Nervous means you care. But I’m also seeing more than a few terrified faces, so I think now is a good time to remind you what the stakes really are.”
It’s thirty percent of our grade. We know that.
“Ninety percent of all people in the world get by without any magic at all,” says Professor Chicory. “They work, they love, they play, and when they want to heat up a cold cup of coffee, they walk ten steps to the kitchen and use a microwave. And the ten percent of us who can wield magic? Half of us report using it less often than we thought we would, and mainly for things we could do without it. Most of you will not find yourselves in pitched magical combat on a daily basis. Most of you will have no reason to summon a flock of spectral doves, outside of the occasional wedding. For most of the routine tasks you’ll face in life, the microwave option will do fine.”
Sure, but where’s the drama in it? And what about the tasks that aren’t so routine? What about the moment when someone walks into the grocery store with a gun? What about the moment when you stand on the threshold of losing someone you love, unless you can manage to understand them, and have them understand you?
It only takes one of those moments, in a whole lifetime, for magic to fucking matter.
“Still have your heart set on casting spells?” Professor Chicory asks the class, and I feel sure she’s asking me, personally. “Well, I’m in no position to tell you you’re wrong.” She gives a self-deprecating little chuckle, and a few people chuckle nervously along. “I’m one of those people who found a way to immerse myself in magic full time. But even for hopeless cases like us, there’s more than one path to holding the forces of the cosmos in your hands. You can join the Monks of Pirmage, and learn to draw power from tranquility and nonattachment. You can pray under the Norithi tree to be empowered as a guardian of nature. You can sign up for a pilgrimage to the Shadow Earth….”
I don’t need this right now. I’ve already done my time poring over the options, for sleepless night after sleepless night, before I applied.
I read up on all twenty-three magical colleges and vocational programs in Luya City, and quite a few others from around the world. All of them offer their own benefits, and demand their own sacrifices. And strange as it may seem to some people, the College of Locks and Keys was the best deal for me.
No oaths of fealty, no ridiculously narrow domains governing what my magic can and can’t affect, no tampering around with the fabric of my soul. Just a little training cage over my dick, with a scheduled “free play” day every two weeks. That’s only a little less often than I was used to masturbating anyway.
Yeah, I underestimated how challenging it would actually be. I didn’t realize that my below-average sex drive — the very reason I thought the program would be easy for me — also means less raw power at my fingertips.
The whole Locks and Keys discipline is basically about building dams and waterwheels to harness the flow of natural chemistry and desire between people. And where everyone else seems to own the mouth of their very own river, I’ve got a quaint little brook.
I also didn’t realize that my low drive was connected with… a lack of imagination, I guess? I don’t fantasize about people all that much. Or at least, I didn’t used to. I never developed the habit of casting them in sexual fantasies in my head. But when I happen to witness someone in a sexually charged scenario, suddenly, I get it. While it’s right in front of me, I get the appeal. And that’s half of what we do here, play out sexually charged scenarios.
So now here I am, hornier than I’ve been in my life, horny enough to finally understand what everyone else is always complaining about, and it’s still not enough to rival the horny power of a more average person who dares to walk this path.
Yeah, it’s not exactly what I imagined. But whose college experience is? And as much as exam days make me pine for the cakewalk I expected, as Miranda pointed out, I’m still here.
Because I love magic. I love this kind of magic.
I want to do this.
I have to do this.
“You don’t have to do this,” Professor Chicory is telling the class. “Any of it. Any of you. Ever.”
Come on, let’s get on with it.
“You might succeed. You might fail and quit. You might succeed and quit. You might fail and learn from it and come back with a vengeance to discuss your make-up options with me. You might even get hurt and patched up in the clinic. But you will not die. You will not be confined to a pillory and flogged.”
More nervous laughs.
“You will not lose your inherent value as a sentient being of the Earth.”
Great, yeah, I’ll be sure to comfort myself with that incredibly low bar.
“I know it’s hard to hear this, and even harder to convince your nervous systems of it.” Professor Chicory is gripping the edges of her upper desk. “There is no outcome of this test that constitutes the end of your world.”
She takes one more look around the room, searching for understanding of her point.
Less than satisfied, she sighs, and lifts the upper desk off of the lower one. She leans down to place it on the floor a few paces away, picks up her clipboard, and backs her haunches up into one of the aisles to make room.
“Nathan and Ruby, you’re up first,” she says, and reaches a hand into the pocket of her blazer, which rustles with slips of paper. “Nathan, you’re casting from the dominant position today?”
Now that she’s said my name, I almost want to ask if I can switch and go second. Or if there’s anything else she’d like to lecture about first. But no, no, getting it over with is better.
Ruby and I both nod as we make our way to the very front of the room, and the two desks.
“Feel free to use the space and furniture however you like,” Professor Chicory tells us, and finally pulls the fateful slip out of her pocket. “Your spell is: Sleep.”
Well. That could be worse, I guess.
We nod again, and then Ruby’s looking at me, with a trusting, expectant smile.
How the fuck do you live up to a smile like that?
I close my eyes for a moment, and search for that thread of magic that connects me to her. The one between Ruby and me is the width of my little finger, and made of golden light. Or at least, that’s how it appears in my mind.
I breathe deep down into my diaphragm, searching for that whole “trustworthy confidence” thing. In my experience, confidence isn’t inherently trustworthy. But whatever. I breathe anyway, and open my eyes.
“Um, lie down on the desk, please,” I instruct Ruby, nodding to the heavier, more solid of the two teacher’s desks.
Ruby climbs up awkwardly, and I think to offer her my hand a little too late, after she’s already hopped her hips up onto the elevated wooden surface. She takes my hand anyway, doing her best to make me look useful as she adjusts herself and lies down on her back.
When she’s settled, she keeps hold of my hand, and tugs on it.
I take the hint, and climb up with her. She spreads her legs apart to give me a place to kneel, and tugs again until I’m hovering over her, face to face, chest to chest. Only then does she give me my hand back, to hold myself up with.
In theory, all I have to do to make this spell work is form a fantasy of Ruby asleep, and push it down the thread into her. In practice, it’s incredibly difficult to get over how much I’d rather keep her awake and looking up at me like this.
“You’re so tired,” I recite one of the most common variations on the spell. “You can’t keep your eyes open any longer.”
Ruby closes her eyes compliantly, but they don’t flutter heavily shut like they would if my magic were already affecting her.
I’m going to have to do better than this.
“You’re safe,” I tell her, brushing a stray strand of hair away from her eyelids. “Safe from harm, and safe from annoyance. There’s no alarm waiting to ambush you, no obligations closing in. There’s just you and me, in a big, soft bed, where we can stay as long as we want. Resting is your only job today, and anyone who has anything else to ask of you can take it up with me.”
Ruby smiles in her not-yet-sleep, and pats my arm.
“I expect you to take that job seriously, though,” I say. “And give it your undivided attention.”
She nods.
“I’m going to help you relax your body,” I say. “Wherever I touch you, you check that place for tension, and release it.”
She nods again.
Where am I getting this? Oh, just from the elaborate rituals I’ve developed from a lifetime of insomnia, to make myself sleep. Hey, I’m happy to share the wealth.
I run my fingers lightly from Ruby’s forehead down to her chin, watching her face slacken in response, and then work my way around her neck and shoulders and down farther.
“When I’m nervous, I carry a lot of tension right… here.” I rest my hand on the hard front panel of her chastity belt, outlined clearly by her tight leggings. “In the pelvic floor. What about you?”
“Oh… yeah…” Ruby answers with a dreamy giggle. “I’m… wow, I’m actually clenching really hard.”
“Stop,” I say.
Her eyebrows pull together. “I just tried, and it worked for a second, but then I tensed up again.”
“Let me,” I say, running my fingers up and down over the hard, cloth-covered surface. The magic string that connects us has settled into place right here.
I know she can’t feel my touch directly, and the enchantments on the steel don’t allow me to send stimulating magical sensations through, but I can send warmth, and comfort, and calm.
Ruby sighs and shudders slightly, like someone slipping into a warm bath. The calms seeps outward from her pelvis, smoothing the tension right out of her thigh muscles.
“I would relax your pussy differently, if I could,” I whisper to her, getting a broad smile that somehow doesn’t restore any tension to her face. “I would give it a pounding impact massage, until it’s too tired and happy to bother you for hours.”
The string between us feels thicker.
I would feel thicker myself right now, if that were physically possible in my own cage.
The air in the room feels like it does before a lightning strike. There’s more than enough power at hand, if I can just manage to drive it home.
“But this is what you get today,” I whisper. “You get to rest.”
I picture her sound asleep, like a fairytale princess, but real.
Beneath me, her breathing slows and deepens slightly, but I can’t take all the credit.
I can feel her lending me her own strength for the spell. Each of her exhales sharpens the romantic image of sleep in my head.
Professor Chicory is whispering to the class like the announcer for some precision sport or high-stakes card game, making a show of not disturbing us, but I can hear every word when I make the mistake of listening.
“Putting someone to sleep quickly is an incredibly useful skill to bring forward into your daily lives. Helping someone rest up for a new day is one of the most common requests you’ll get from your loved ones. And it’s one of the safest, most effective methods of nonlethal self-defense for a variety of situations.”
“Let go, slide deeper,” I’m murmuring to Ruby, pushing the image into her a little more firmly. “Everything else can wait. I’ll be right here.”
“Of course, like most forms of domination magic, sleeping spells can be easily abused,” Professor Chicory whispers her lecture. “Remember, in a contentious situation, a good wizard uses only the minimum force necessary to protect the innocent. And in a friendly exchange like this one, we must always, always calibrate our force according to what the recipient is willing to take.”
The reminder that this reminder is necessary stalls the magic inside me. My mind jolts back into its race through everything that could possibly, or impossibly, go wrong.
What if I accidentally embarrass Ruby, by making her snore or drool in front of everyone?
What if I push her down into a nightmare and hold her there, missing all the signs that she’s trying to wake up?
What if I somehow push her so deep that she never wakes up at all?
Am I pushing too hard right now? Is Professor Chicory trying to give me a subtle warning? Or is she not talking about me at all? Maybe she’s addressing anyone hiding out there among my classmates who might want to force someone asleep for nefarious purposes. If so, that’s the last thing I want to think about right now.
Suddenly, I feel gross all over. I sit up on my knees and stop pushing completely. The fantasy crumbles, and the spell along with it.
Ruby stays motionless, except for the slow rise and fall of her chest, but I know she’s only trying to make me look good. I can feel that she’s awake, and still trying to put her own energy into bolstering my absent efforts.
She’s fine. I know. And she’s fine with taking my spell. I know that too, but I just can’t reckon with why.
Fuck me, it’s scary enough going to a college of magic as a man. Amazing, but scary. A prank here can leave you dangling from an invisible tree by your shoelaces, or plucking feathers out of your skin for the next two weeks. But you always hear about how much more dangerous it is for women. Like any college.
How is she so serene about this? Doesn’t lying helpless under me remind her of uncomfortable worries? Why would she offer up the use of her body, so that some guy she’s barely acquainted with can learn a skill that could someday be used against her, for all she knows?
What did I ever do to earn that kind of trust?
“Nathan?” Ruby asks, finally giving up the act and blinking up at me. “Are you okay?”
Great, she wants to know if I’m okay. Of course she does, because she’s a sweet person, and I’m giving off not okay vibes.
Yeah, this isn’t happening for me today.
“Sorry,” I say, to her, to Professor Chicory, to the rest of the class. “Maybe I didn’t save up enough power.”
Professor Chicory looks doubtful, but mercifully doesn’t pick apart my self-diagnosis in class. “All right, see me during office hours for a make-up assignment,” she nods and rifles through her notes for the names of the next pair.
#
Miranda wows everyone, of course, by turning Bernice into a violin and playing a tune on her that sounds like ecstatic, melodic gasps of foreplay. Everyone in the room is awed and quivering by the end, Bernice most of all, when she rematerializes as herself among her cast-off clothing.
No one else can match that display, but by the end of class, I’m still the only one who dropped the ball completely.
I try to slip away quietly, but the notebook I’ve been using to look busy won’t fit into my backpack fast enough, and Ruby follows me out the door.
“Hey,” she calls after me. “Did I do something wrong?”
I don’t want to turn around and face her, but if I don’t, the mental image of her standing there in the hall, calling out and not getting a response, will haunt me.
“No,” I tell her, turning halfway, so that I can look more at the wall than at her. “I’m just… I don’t feel so good. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
She doesn’t believe me. I try to leave anyway, but that knowledge roots my feet to the floor.
“Can I ask you something?” asks Ruby.
“Of course,” I answer instantly, far faster than my brain can move.
“Well.” Ruby leans against the wall of the corridor and looks down to watch her sneakers shuffle back and forth under her. “I was wondering if you had plans for this Saturday, yet? Because if you don’t, I thought maybe we could get together and prep for my exam. I think I’d feel a lot better about it if we ran through some of the possibilities together. And we could go over anything you want to too, of course. If it would help with whatever you have to do for a make-up?”
#
“She asked you to hang out this Saturday?!” Miranda sums up this interaction when I recount it over lunch. “As in, free play day? As in, come over and fuck me day?”
“She didn’t specifically mention free play day,” I note. “Maybe she forgot when it is.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s a thing that happens,” Miranda scoffs. “And you said yes?”
I put my head down on the cafeteria table and cross my arms over it.
“Yes…?” I answer in a groan. “It’s kind of a blur. Yeah. Yeah, I said yes. I mean, if that’s okay?”
“You’re asking me?” Miranda raises an eyebrow. “Because I’m not going to start asking your permission when I want to mess around with someone else.”
“No, of course not,” I correct myself.
I’m used to Miranda helping me get off at the end of each fortnight, and doing the same for her when she doesn’t have someone more interesting lined up. But it’s strictly a friendly arrangement, not in any way exclusive.
Miranda lets out a low whistle. “Still, you and Ruby, on free play day….”
“What am I going to do?” I whisper, looking up at her with my fingers carving channels through my hair, as the reality of this sinks in.
“Have an unforgettable time, probably,” she says.
“Yeah, a scarringly unforgettable time,” I moan. “Here comes a moment I’m going to regret for the rest of my life. I can see it coming, and I’m still not sure I can get out of the way.”
“Why would you regret…?” Miranda’s looking at me like I’ve lost my senses, but then she corrects herself and puts on her most open-minded expression instead. “Do you not want to—”
“Of course I want to fuck Ruby!” I shout, and then press my hands over my mouth, like it might blurt out something even more crass than it just did.
Miranda and I both check over our shoulders, but the cafeteria is so noisy that hardly any heads have turned in our direction. I wait for them to lose interest, and then peel my hands away.
“I want to,” I whisper, “but that doesn’t mean I can. I’m going to get there, alone with her, no cages, and I’m going to fall to pieces like I did onstage today.”
“Yeah, what was that about?” Miranda asks, pointing a carrot stick at me, before biting into it.
“I got stuck in my head, just like you said!” I give her the shortest, truest answer. “I’m going to get stuck in my head again, like I always do, and she’s going to think it’s something wrong with her. Oh fuck, I have to tell her I’m sick.”
“You’re talking about the worst-case scenario,” says Miranda.
“I’m talking about the only case scenario!” I insist.
“You won’t be in an exam,” says Miranda. “There won’t be an audience.”
“There’ll be Ruby.”
“You don’t even need to do any magic. And you’ll be freshly uncaged after two weeks locked. That’s enough to put anyone in the moment—”
“Not me.” I’m desperate to make her understand.
I’ve never in my life been able to cum with another person who didn’t have strong domination magic, or at least the kind of presence that goes with it.
Even when I’m alone, it’s hit or miss. I’ve spent entire free play days rubbing myself raw, trying to recapture moments from class when I felt ready to burst, and getting nowhere before the time comes to lock myself back up. Then I end up waking to a slimy mess in the middle of the night a few days later, because apparently, it’s not really my body that’s broken. It works just fine when my mind isn’t here to get in the way.
With how well Miranda knows me, it’s infuriating that she doesn’t know this. But then, it’s not exactly something I brag about. And the only version of me Miranda knows is the version that exists when she’s in the room.
She has no idea how dependent I am on the authority of her voice to get me to the point of release twice a month.
I like Ruby, so much, but I can’t expect her to be able to do that for me. It wouldn’t be fair.
“You have to help me,” I realize the solution out loud, and reach across the table for Miranda’s hands.
“How’s that?” she asks.
“Telepathy,” I say.
Miranda snorts. “What?”
“I need you to be the voice in my head while I’m with her. Just tell me what to do, and what I’m not supposed to do, and tell all the other voices to shut up when they get in the way.”
She laughs again, but it dies out quickly, because she knows I’m serious.
“You know, for a guy who’s usually so concerned about respecting women’s boundaries, you jumped scary fast to basically taking a spy camera on a date.”
“No, no, nothing like that!” I explain. “You wouldn’t be looking through my eyes or listening through my ears. I’d just be able to talk to you and ask for advice and encouragement and stuff. There’s nothing wrong with just talking to a friend about your dating life.”
“Yeah, between dates,” says Miranda. “Maybe during a bathroom break.”
“So just think of it as a bunch of little breaks!”
Miranda chews her next carrot stick slowly, thinking. “I was planning on spending this free play with Zeke.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I swear, clasping my hands together on the table. “Please, I’m begging you, Miri, I need this. It’s the only way I can see her.”
“That seems like an unfair pressure to lay on me,” Miranda complains.
I sink down off my bench and kneel on the floor under the table. I’m probably turning a few more heads now, but I don’t care.
“Pleeeease,” I beg, with my head between Miranda’s knees. “Please, please, please.”
“Fine!” she says, exasperated. “Just to get you out of your own way. But if you make it weird, I’m out.”
#
I head over to the library first thing Saturday. There’s a line to check in, like there always is on free play day, but Ruby’s already near the front, and waves me over to join her.
She’s here. Can you still hear me? I double-check with Miranda in my head.
I hear you, she answers, and I can hear the implied eyeroll. Have fun out there, stud.
Wait, why does that sound like a sign-off? I ask her. Like what you’d say before hanging up on me?
Relax, I’m right here. The implied eyeroll gets louder. Now stop talking to me and start talking to her.
Miranda telling me to do this suddenly makes it possible.
I walk over to Ruby, holding Miranda’s suggested care package of croissants, coffee, flashcards, and condoms in front of me like a shield.
Ruby’s eyes flick over the contents of the box, and she smiles up at me. “Thanks for coming.”
I relay all of this information verbally to Miranda as best I can, and ask, Was that a pun?
Probably not, she decides, after a moment.
Ruby and I get our study pod assignment, and for a few minutes, we’re able to cover the silence between us with our footsteps, as we make our way up to the third floor and find the right door.
The pod is just barely big enough to levitate an average person a foot off the ground before they’ll bump their head on the ceiling. There’s a desk, a power outlet, and a couch covered in plastic.
I set the box down on the desk and sit down on the incredibly noisy couch.
“So…” I start.
“So…” Ruby agrees, glancing between me and the one other feature of the room: a clock mounted to the wall.
As she’s looking, the time ticks over to eight o’clock A.M, and I feel the hip chains that hold my cage in place detach and hang slack under my jeans.
Ruby takes in a little breath and blushes, as she presumably feels the same thing.
Oh fuck, we’re free, I say to Miranda.
Yeah, I know, she says. I hope you appreciate the restraint I’m exercising right now, keeping myself mentally available to you.
Miri! What do I do? I ask, too scared to show her proper sympathy.
For fuck’s sake, Nate, ask her what she wants to do.
“So, um, was there anything you wanted to work on in particular?” I ask.
“Oh, uh,” Ruby rubs her arm. “Whatever you want, really. I mean, practicing any kind of magic with someone is supposed to make every kind easier with them, right?”
I repeat this cryptic answer for Miranda.
Sounds like exam prep is a hundred percent code, she offers her analysis. She’s here for dick.
Great… how do I transition from here to there?
Kiss her, Miranda proposes.
I look at Ruby, who’s looking down at her lap now.
“Ruby?”
“Yeah?” She looks up at me and bites her lower lip again, like she’s still waiting for me to really arrive.
I lean forward. And then to the side, to grab a cup of coffee out of the box like a fucking coward.
What if I’m wrong? I ask Miranda. What if there was a sign I didn’t pick up on to tell you about, and it means she actually does care about exam prep?
Doubtful, Miranda answers.
But what if?
Then it’ll be awkward, she says. And you’re going to have to apologize for the misunderstanding.
I hate that risk so much, I tell her.
Then you’ll have to ask her outright, says Miranda. Look her in the eye and ask why she really brought you here.
What if that makes her feel attacked? I ask. What if it’s like I’m accusing her of something, or forcing her to be blunt when she prefers to be delicate?
Those are the options, Nate, Miranda sighs. Guess or ask. Or leave.
She leaves me with that impossible choice.
I take in a breath, let it out hard, and start with a fact. A concrete fact we all know.
“It’s free play day,” I say out loud.
There’s a pause.
“…Yes,” Ruby acknowledges.
“Is that why you picked this morning?”
A longer pause.
“…Yes,” she whispers.
I set down the coffee and grip the back of the couch to keep myself on course as I lean toward her again.
I’m moving slowly, and now Ruby is talking fast.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “If I should be sorry? We can reschedule, if you want to stay more focused on the test, or if you had something else you wanted to do today, I understand if you….”
She keeps talking, but doesn’t move away, until I’m close enough to feel her breath on my face. Then her eyes settle on me, and she leans forward the last two millimeters to touch our lips together.
Kissing now, I inform Miranda, but this is the first update that I keep quick and perfunctory.
The taste of Ruby, the softness, the inhumanly gentle way she runs her knuckles down the side of my jaw to my neck, momentarily take up all of my attention.
The kiss goes on, and on, and on, and I don’t want to be the one to break it. But after the twentieth time the tip of Ruby’s tongue traces the inside of my upper lip, I get the sense that she’s waiting for something.
I tell Miranda.
Get those clothes off, she advises.
I reach for the buttons of Ruby’s floral blouse, and fumble around for several seconds before realizing that they’re purely decorative.
Ruby realizes at about the same time what I’m trying to do, grabs the blouse by the hem, and yanks it up and off, breaking the kiss only for the split second necessary to get it over her head.
From there, it’s like the relaxation game I played with her in class. I touch a part of her, and she removes the obstacle there. When she pulls down her navy blue skirt and the pair of shorts underneath, her cage comes off with them and clatters on the ground, and suddenly I’m holding a completely naked Ruby on this crinkly plastic couch with me.
I’m not sure where to put my hands, and I feel like I have her at an accidental disadvantage.
She fixes that last part herself, by touching my shirt with that same relaxing pressure. After a few seconds, I get the hint and undress myself in time with her silent directions.
When we get past my jeans and as far as my unlocked cage, she takes hold of it and helps ease the constrictive tube of tight steel bars down off my cock.
Her hand hovers nearby, after the cage is on the floor, stroking my pubic hair. I can guess without Miranda’s help that she’s waiting for a formal invitation to touch me, but I’m not ready to give her one.
I’d like there to be something there for her to feel, first.
I close my eyes and will my body to send the blood where I need it. You’d think it would be easy, with how literally excited I am right now. My pulse is going like a hummingbird. If I didn’t have kissing Ruby to put my energy into, I’d be pacing around and bouncing off the walls.
I should be able to get hard as a rock in ten seconds flat right now.
But the way I feel around Ruby has always been more of a full-body experience. She’s a lightness in my head, a smoky thickness in my chest, a lifting in my stomach like at the top of a roller coaster. She’s a sweaty buzzing in every inch of my skin.
Even with plenty of space to stretch out, my cock is taking its sweet time to get with the program.
After a diplomatically long pause, Ruby pulls back from the kiss to look at me.
“Is everything okay?” she asks. “Are you comfortable enough?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, you?” I ask, while bombarding Miranda with updates and pleas for help.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Ruby asks.
So far so good, as far as dates go, Miranda says. What do you want to happen next?
You know what I want, Miri, I scream in my head. You know what I need. Please!
Miranda’s voice sighs, then shifts and hardens.
Give me your body, she says, as she’s said to me on so many other free play days. Give it all, give it now. Give it to someone who knows what the fuck to do with it.
She doesn’t know how utterly right she is. But she knows the most reliable way to get my motor running.
It’s already working.
The rush of blood tingles as the erection starts.
Thank you, I tell Miranda. Thank you, thank you, please don’t stop.
Shut up, she continues, and I obey. Grab that beautiful woman next to you, and pin her to the couch for me, would you?
It makes sense, in Miranda’s voice, and I don’t overwork it in my head. Ruby picked this location, and she showed me in class that she likes to feel me on top of her.
I pull her hips toward my end of the couch, making room for me to push her onto her back without bumping her head. Her face lights up as I lean over her, lower and heavier than on Professor Chicory’s desk.
Repeat after me, Miranda instructs, and I do. I say exactly what she tells me to.
“I’m going to take care of you, now,” I tell Ruby. “The way I told you I would, if I had my way. Does that sound good to you?”
Ruby blushes brilliantly pink, and nods. “Yeah, but, um…” She looks away, because it makes it easier to speak. I know because I’ve done it a million times. “It might not be that easy. I can’t… well, I can finish, in, you know, this position. And it’s great. But it takes a while. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to wait for me, after you’ve already been waiting two weeks. So, you know, don’t worry if it happens quicker for you. I can always wrap things up afterward….”
She starts to reach a hand down between us to touch herself in demonstration. With a second’s lag for communication with Miranda, I catch both of Ruby’s wrists and pin them by her sides.
I back my way up down her body, breathing on one long stripe of her skin, leading down to her pussy. She takes in a sharp gasp as the red-brown hair there flutters under my breath, and a sharper one when I kiss the outer lips, right over where her clit is buried.
Lower down, moisture drips down from her slit onto the plastic of the couch.
“Take all the time you want,” I parrot Miranda’s words to her. “And let me worry about the rest.”
“Okay,” Ruby says vaguely.
“Promise me,” I say, crawling back up to face her.
“I promise to take all the time I want,” she says.
“Good.”
Still following instructions, I rest the underside of my now fully hardened cock in the valley of Ruby’s pussy and grind it up and forward, brushing back the hood of her clit, touching our densest nerves together.
“Do you want me to get one of those condoms now?” I ask her, imitating the steady, penetrative cadence of Miranda’s voice. “Because I really want to get one of those condoms now.”
Ruby nods vigorously.
I stretch over to the desk to grab the condom box, and toss most of it on the floor in my rush to separate one of the individual packages and roll its contents into place. Finally, I’ve got it.
Improvising now, I repeat that head-to-clit grind, through the condom, and then line myself up with her opening.
I wait for a moment in silence. Well, silence other than Ruby’s ragged little breaths of anticipation. Then I ask in my head, May I?
There’s a chuckle as well as an eyeroll in the answer I get. Miranda’s enjoying herself too.
Go on.
I slide my way into Ruby in slow, careful measures, giving myself time to adjust as much as her. After a term in the cage, the pleasant kind of tightness always takes some getting used to.
Ruby moans and reaches out with her hands, for me, for the couch, for some kind of purchase, but then settles on pressing them back to her sides.
“Oh gods,” she sighs. “I know I’m sensitive, but you feel so good.”
Go on, Miranda repeats. Give her that ‘impact massage’ you promised.
I give Ruby a thrust, and she cries out and flails her arms again, this time clamping them around my shoulders for dear life.
I thrust in again, and again.
That’s it, says Miranda. Fuck her like the insufferably lucky loser you are.
Tell me about it, I say, meaning it entirely literally. Miranda understands.
If you could muster the confidence to cast one measly spell on someone who’s literally begging you to do it, you wouldn’t be partnered with Ruby at all. Someone else would have been handed the excuse of doing “exam prep” with her. Someone who wouldn’t need a telepathic handholding to show her a good time. It could have been anyone. It could have been me. But no, you just had to fail forward, right on top of her. No, don’t stop now, Nate. Don’t you fucking dare waste this moment.
I don’t stop. I don’t waste it. I keep up the rhythm, trying every angle until I find the one that makes Ruby dig her nails into my back the hardest. She likes me low, with my face next to hers, in perfect range to suck and bite at the soft skin of her neck and shoulder.
How are you doing? Miranda asks me, long after I’ve lost track of time. Feeling like you deserve to cum in her?
Not even a little, I answer, and can’t keep an edge of mischief out of my mental voice. Miranda’s the only person who has ever managed to make me feel mischievous. But I really, really want to.
Her eyeroll is so loud.
I’ll allow it, says Miranda. After you get her there first.
Of course, I agree vehemently.
Ruby does take a while, I guess, but I like it. She gives me time to savor this rare, exceptional treat, and time to feel like my own slow, finicky body serves a purpose.
After a while, she starts apologizing again, almost like an unconscious reflex.
I tell her to stop. I cover her mouth with mine. I tease and pinch her nipples until she has no choice but to give up the word “sorry” in favor of more moans.
Her breath shortens, her moans get higher, and in those last few steps before the finish line, I wonder for the first time if I’m going to make it.
The answer is, just barely.
She shrieks and wraps shaking legs around me, and before her orgasm is over, mine is already starting.
I realize how little sound I’ve been letting out myself, when I hear the involuntary grunting leave my lips and get lost in hers.
“All right?” I ask Ruby breathlessly, of my own volition, brushing hair out of her eyes.
“Oh gods, oh fuck,” she pants against my shoulder. “Where did that come from?” she asks.
I try not to look too guilty.
“Seriously, don’t take this wrong,” says Ruby, “but I would never have known you had that in you.”
Miranda is silent.
I brush a lock of hair behind Ruby’s ear, like it’s easy, and shrug.
“I guess I just got inspired.”
***
Thanks for reading! If you had a good time, follow me for more, and show me some love with your comments and favorites! And please let me know if you’d like to see more of Nathan, Ruby, Miranda, and the Western College of Locks and Keys in general. I know I’d love to make this one a series.
