Ipulled on a pair of nice jeans and a semi-sheer sweater. There was no point in dressing up too much since the clothes would be on the floor in less than an hour anyway, as long as I could convince Gabe that fucking was better than a movie at home. When he called yesterday to ask me out, that’s more what I had in mind, but had agreed to dinner and a movie anyway.

I locked the door to my dorm room and glanced around, hoping that no prying eyes followed me. The whole building was co-ed, and more than half of the residents were witches. Female witches were the norm and made up the entirety of the Dominion, the governing body of magic. I had the misfortune to be the only male on campus studying magic, but since I was the last living witch in the Rou line—my mother was the regional director of the Midwest Dominion branch—I had to break the boundaries or my mom would kill me.

The girls tried to drive me out through pranks and teasing, just to prove that guys couldn’t be witches. History proved that men just weren’t as powerful as females when it came to magic—most men. I wasn’t most men. It was why I had a single room to myself: no one wanted to bunk with the pariah of the whole campus.

So far all the pranks had been minor. Nasty notes slipped under my door, people tripping me in the hall or pushing me whenever they passed, lots of name-calling and reporting me to teachers for things I hadn’t done. I could handle it. It was all kid stuff.

“Hey, Seiran.”

I turned around, expecting someone to throw something or curse my existence. Ryan Federoff—one of the offensive linemen for the football team—lingered in the hall. He was in my math class but had never said more than two words to me. In fact, he hung with some of the witches who spent a lot of time tormenting me, like Rose Pewette, who was the Pillar of earth. She seemed to take the “mean girl” concept to a whole new level.

“Hi,” I said carefully as I waited for the punch line and hoped it wasn’t my face.

He smiled and his face lit up, easing some of my anxiety. “Going out?”

“Just for a while. Meeting a friend.” I tried to be casual. Ryan was cute in that rugged sports-star sort of way. Long face with lots of angles and a bulky body—probably from steroids—but he wasn’t unattractive. He was sort of considered a catch by most of the Dominion girls since he came from a Dominion family. Good bloodlines and all that crap. Sometimes I wondered if they were breeding horses with the way everyone talked about who should mate with who to beget what. It was a relief to be gay and not have to worry about the baby gig. Life was enough stress without all that hassle.

Ryan crossed the hall as I headed for the door. He fell in step with me. “A date? Is it serious?”

Was he hitting on me? The guys at school rarely spoke to me. Ryan couldn’t have known me well enough to know that I didn’t date seriously, but I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was easy either.

I gave him a wide, but fake, smile. “Just meeting a friend.”

“Call me sometime and we can get a drink.” He touched my arm and ran his fingers down the edge of my sweater’s soft fabric until they reached my wrist—like he was going to take my hand. It was an odd move. Did he think ’cause I looked like a girl that he had to treat me like one? My long hair did not mean I liked flowers and long walks on the beach—long fucks on the beach maybe…

“Sure.” I didn’t mention to him that I wasn’t old enough to legally drink in public, but he wasn’t really looking for conversation over alcohol anyway. His body language said sex in a thousand different ways. He’d do for a one-off some night I didn’t want to leave campus. It was college after all. The time to explore the world and our sexuality. Maybe he’d never been with another guy. I wasn’t really good at breaking in firsts, but I’d give it the old college try. But not tonight. I’d already made a promise.

He gave me his number and walked me to my car, seeming very gentleman-like for a jock. “Later,” he said.

“Later,” I told him and watched him head off down the path leading to some of the other dorms. I felt like someone was watching me. It was a heavy apprehension weighing at my shoulders. I tried to shrug it off, but the unease that tingled a warning down my spine had become a way of life. I’d have to hit the books harder to see if there was a spell that could tell me if I was paranoid or really being stalked by someone. I preferred the former.

I unlocked my car, sighing at its broken-down exterior. My meager savings from mowing the neighbors’ lawns and walking pets had paid for the car. My mother gave me enough money for food and gas each month. It was at her insistence that I studied magic. Her coercion had been the kind I couldn’t say no to since she could be very demanding. Living on campus had been my only chance to escape her constant supervision, but I’d traded one prison for another. Some days I wondered if there would ever be an end.

Only two things really helped me find peace: sex and shifting into my lynx form to run free on the new moon. The second was illegal by Dominion law. Witches were not allowed to shift, since—unlike lycanthropes—they had a tendency to not want to return to human form. But sex could be easily procured, as I planned to do tonight. Gabe was always a pretty sure thing, ever since I became legal. And if Gabe wasn’t up for play, apparently I had a backup plan in Ryan Federoff.

Unlike on campus, I’d be safe from scathing glances at Gabe’s. He was a two-thousand-year-old vampire. Anyone who messed with him deserved to have their throat torn out.

I drove to Gabe’s and parked in the lot of his condo, beneath the light, and hurried to the door. Somehow the unease had followed me, at least until I rode the elevator up to his loft. The door was cracked open for me—he could do that because he lived in a secure building on the good side of St. Paul.

His place was all wooden floors, granite counters, and endless windows that overlooked the city skyline. Beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. As an earth witch, I preferred trees, but who was I to tell a vampire how to live?

The first thing that hit me when I entered was the breeze from the open balcony door. We rarely went outside at this height, and because it was late October, the wind was a little more than cold. Usually we retired quickly to the loft above, where his king-sized bed would be turned down for the night. Or he’d fuck me into the wall beside the door or sometimes even on the kitchen counter. Wherever was fine with me so long as we got on with it.

He’d been my only repeat, the only guy I ever came to more than once. I didn’t know if it was because of his pretty words, his firm round ass and amazingly sculpted shoulders, or the lack of fear I had when in his arms. Either way, my body seemed to really like everything he did, and my commitment-phobic head didn’t gripe too much. As long as he didn’t mention the L word.

“Hey,” Gabe said, his slightly accented voice coming from the balcony doorway. He stood in a casual, cover-model pose with strong arms crossed over his chest. And he looked like a model with his blond hair in an array of curls and green eyes glowing with a light of happiness that I only got to see on rare occasions.

“We’re watching a movie on the balcony?” I crossed the room, stripping off my shirt as I moved, showing off my flat stomach and ever-ready nipples. Maybe I’d get them pierced, attract more attention to them. No one ever touched them as much as I’d like. I’d never have a six-pack, just didn’t have the right body type for it, but I could work with what I had.

I reached him and stretched up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips lightly. He pulled me in closer, pressing a hand at the back of my neck, weaving his fingers through my long black hair, and slipping his tongue into my mouth to duel with mine.

“Hmm,” I sighed happily into his lips.

He pulled away and stroked my cheek, looking so serious for a minute it brought on a sense of panic. If he said the words, I’d be out the door. But he knew that. It had happened before. So he just said, “You look great.”

I rubbed my erection against his thigh to remind him that I felt great too. “Can we skip the movie?”

“I made you dinner.” He pulled away and headed out onto the covered balcony where a small table sat decked out like one from some sort of fancy restaurant. White tablecloth, red roses, fancy plates, and a cart beside it that was sure to be filled with gourmet cuisine.

The whole sight made me cold. “What is this?”

“Just dinner.” He motioned toward the chair. I hesitantly took a seat and watched as he served the meal. After he returned to his seat, I picked up my fork and dug in to the yummy-looking dinner. The salmon was moist and flaky in a rich cheese sauce with steamed vegetables and a flavorful couscous mix. Gabe poured wine for both of us, a soft white that tickled my palate nicely with the taste of the food.

I dug in while he studied me. He sipped at his own glass of wine, swirling it occasionally, and tapped his fingers lightly on the table. Gabe wasn’t usually so physically animated. He was more of a talker. His silence was beginning to make me nervous.

Finally I put my fork down and stared at him. “What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“So what’s the deal with the romantic dinner, then?”

“No deal. I just wanted to spend a nice evening with you. One that didn’t just revolve around sex.” He got up and went to the cart. “Ready for dessert?”

Dessert was simple. Fresh vanilla ice cream with strawberries and chocolate poured over the top. He set the dish in front of me and returned to his chair. Instead of putting my spoon in and going to town on the sweet treat, I picked it up and moved to his side of the table. He slid back enough to let me plop into his lap, then held my dessert bowl for me. I dipped my spoon into the concoction, hoping to get this evening moving in a more familiar direction.

I sucked on the spoon, swirled the cream around in my mouth before swallowing, and pressed my lips to his. Gabe didn’t hesitate to let me in and then deepened the kiss. His normal flavor tinted with wine made me smile into his mouth. He cupped my ass with his free hand, and I massaged his neck and cheek with mine. He offered me the bowl, encouraging me to take another sugary spoonful, and I did, lapping and sucking at the spoon, playing with it to find every drop. Our eyes were locked to each other’s—mine probably as lust-filled as his. His erection ground into my thigh, and mine begged to be touched.

The chilly Minnesota air made me shiver. “Let’s take this inside,” I said, slipping off his lap and tugging him away from the table. He left the bowl there and followed me, pressing kisses to my hair as we went.

We only made it as far as the stairs to the loft before he shoved me against them, unbuttoned my pants, and slipped his hands inside. I sighed as his warm grip enveloped me.

“Heavy on the QuickLife tonight, eh?” I said, meeting his endless kisses. The bottled synthetic blood staved off his hunger and kept his temperature up and ready even when I wasn’t feeding him.

“Always prepared for you,” he breathed against my skin. He bathed my neck and chest in kisses. When he finally reached my aching nipples and sucked one into his mouth, I arched against him, throwing my head back in ecstasy.

When he moved to the other nipple, I reached up to run my hands through his hair. I hated the smell of his stinky herbal shampoo, but it was so him I couldn’t complain much about it. As he bowed his head to reach my nipple, something across the room caught my eye.

A wall calendar pinned up beside the door had big red Xs marked over each day of the month until today, which was circled. Gabe kissed down my stomach. I tugged gently at his hair. “What’s today?”

“Hmm?” he answered. “October twenty-sixth.”

“I know the date. But why do you have it circled on your calendar?”

He sat down on the stair beside me, still rubbing my lower abdomen. “Older vamps like me have a hard time keeping up with dates. So I have to write things down.”

That still wasn’t an answer. He tried to kiss me again, but I pushed him away and crossed the room to look at the calendar. Did he have something important today that he didn’t tell me about? Why did he insist we go out tonight, on a Tuesday of all nights, if he had other things going on? Written in the big red bubble was Anniversary.

My heart jumped faster in my chest, and my mind raced to recall the dates, but all I remembered about that Halloween party was that it had been on a new moon two years ago, when I was sixteen. Panic took hold of me as Gabe wrapped his arms around me from behind. “It’s nothing, Sei. Let’s go to bed.”

“What anniversary?”

His silence was answer enough.

I tore myself out of his arms and grabbed my shirt. “The anniversary of when we first met?”

“Why is that a bad thing, Sei?”

I shrugged the shirt over my head and rubbed my eyes. “Anniversaries are for couples.”

“They’re for friends too. We are friends, aren’t we?”

“Friends who fuck. Not friends who celebrate the day they met. What’s next, the celebration of the first time you did me?” My lungs tightened and I could almost feel the world closing in around me. Relationships and I did not work. Gabe deserved better anyway. There was so much about me that he didn’t know. It was better if he just thought of me as an indiscriminant slut.

“Don’t make this more than it needs to be, Sei. I just wanted to spend the night with you⁠—”

“You’re the one who made it more than it needed to be. Fancy dinners, flowers, what else were you planning? Asking for a domestic partnership during the afterglow?” The idea nearly brought me to my knees. Didn’t he realize that he’d get tired of me if I stuck around?

I couldn’t stay. The hope in his eyes made my heart break. When he learned who I really was, he’d hate me, and I couldn’t bear that. I wouldn’t expose him to my fucked-up head.

I stomped to the door. “Don’t call me.”

“Sei….”

“Find someone else to play house with you, Gabe. I’m going to find someone to fuck me.” I slammed the door, feeling childish, but couldn’t help it. I wouldn’t really find someone else, since my heart was racing and I needed some time to calm down, but he just made me so mad sometimes.

My whole body shook as I made my way down to my car. The tremors had started after my mom got the promise from me that I’d attend the university and study magic. It was getting worse all the time. I wondered how much longer I could hide it. The world seemed to be falling apart around me. People hated me at school, I couldn’t go home to my mother, and now I didn’t even have Gabe to rely on for occasional, comforting, uncomplicated sex.

I started the car and took off for the dorm. Once there, I went in only to grab a book, then headed out on foot toward the all-night café near the library. At least this late at night, I could probably find a nice hidden corner to relax for a while.

When I was halfway to the café, someone stepped onto the path, and I ran right into a broad chest. He grabbed my arm to steady me. “Sorry,” he said.

“S’okay,” I told him. He was a big guy, probably over six feet tall, with long blond hair, and he wore a heavy jacket. He smelled of strong deodorant and a spicy aftershave. I had to rub my nose to keep from sneezing. Stupid oversensitive sense of smell.

“Can I walk you somewhere? It’s pretty late.”

I moved around him and headed toward the café. “I’m fine, thanks.” When he didn’t follow, I let out a heavy sigh of relief. Why had I become so jumpy? I had sex with vampires, lycanthropes, and humans. Any one of the batch could easily hurt a small guy like me, but instead it was the dark that made me afraid. Where was the logic in that?

The café was a welcoming light in the distance. When I finally reached the door and went inside, I felt safe again. I ordered a cup of hot cocoa and found a nice little corner table. The barista knew me well enough to come over and wipe down the table for me.

I gave her a strained smile and opened my book to get lost in a hot romance with man-on-man action. The main character was lavishing attention on his lover’s silken, turgid rod and playing with the puckered skin of his love hole, when the chair across from me screeched and someone dropped into it. I glanced up, blinking to focus on the bigger picture of the room.

Ryan sat across from me. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Meeting your friend here?”

“No. Saw him earlier. That’s over.” I looked back down to my book, not really in the mood for sex anymore. Maybe another night. Hopefully Ryan would get the point.

“It’s almost 1:00 a.m.”

“Yeah. It’s late.”

“Can I walk you home?”

I stifled a sigh. Why did everyone think I needed to be walked home? Was he that hot for me? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who had to beg. I shrugged. “Sure.” I bookmarked my page, got up, and pushed in my chair.

He motioned for me to go ahead of him and waited for me to toss my trash before opening the door for me. The door-holding thing really annoyed me, but I kept my mouth shut. He had no need to court me, I didn’t do long-term. And Ryan wasn’t the kind of guy I’d keep even if I could. No, that would have been Gabe, but I couldn’t let Gabe’s sentimental crap bleed all over my night.

We walked side by side down the path, neither of us saying anything. But halfway to my dorm, he did grab my hand and lace his fingers through mine. The intimacy of the act made me push closer to him, having read him right, bumping hips. My body was waking up and thinking a little play wouldn’t be so bad tonight after all. As long as he hadn’t shrunk his dick, maybe he could wear me out enough to sleep for a few hours.

“You’re pretty hot, Seiran Rou,” Ryan said as he tugged me off the path and toward a big tree. He flipped us around so my back was to the tree and pressed up against me, all heat and man.

The flattery wasn’t something I needed or enjoyed. Also, I tended to be pretty blunt. “So you know this a one-time gig, right?”

He touched my face, brushing my cheek with callused fingers. “I hear you don’t let anyone double dip.”

Not many even got to single dip—a hand job or a blow job were okay—but I let him kiss me anyway. He tasted of alcohol and cigarettes, neither a flavor I liked. He stepped back, smiling at me in an odd way. And then he smashed his fist into my face.

The blow knocked my head against the tree. I saw the flashing stars of consciousness trying to leak out of me as my legs gave out. I slid down the trunk of the tree. He kicked me in the stomach, doubling me up and making me heave cocoa all over. Ryan’s laugh sounded far away. He began pounding me, just not the way I would have liked. My ears rung, eyesight faded in and out—probably my eyes swelling shut—but the hits kept coming to my head, stomach, arms, and hips. I rolled into a ball to protect myself.

The ground beneath me pulsed in reminder that it waited for my command. I took a moment to focus my power and breathed a calming flow of air before kicking out and nailing Ryan in the knee. I heard a satisfying pop and a cry. All I could think was “Wrong venue, asshole” as I pulled strength from the earth to help heal. The earth rolled through me, mending and giving strength but hurting and draining me as it went. It was a cycle. If I wanted the earth to help, I had to give it something in return.

Ryan leaned against a nearby tree, babying his left leg. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Rou. Fucking freak. Look what you did to me.” He moved toward me, hopping and putting very little pressure on his injured leg.

I touched the ground, directing the magic toward him. A tree root broke up through the ground suddenly enough to trip him. He went sprawling, landing only a few feet from me, screaming the whole way down. I scrambled up and backed away.

“What the hell was that?” Ryan tried to get up, but his left leg was now turned at an unnatural angle. “You broke my leg.”

“How did it feel to kiss a freak, asshole?” I asked him, resisting the urge to kick him in return for the beating he’d given me. “Maybe next time you’ll fuck with someone who can’t kick your ass!” It had to be the adrenaline talking, because I couldn’t believe what I had said. I was so sure he’d hop up any second and beat the shit out of me. I turned and ran, heading for the dorms.

“Rou!” Ryan’s voice screamed behind me. I didn’t stop. My heart hammered and lungs burned. The pain pushed me to the edge of darkness several times, and only fear kept me moving. I got to the main door of the dorm and stopped to suck in deep, painful breaths. My ribs were broken for sure, at least one on each side of my chest, and flashes of pain and light kept bouncing around my head, so maybe a concussion too. If it weren’t for the power of the earth coursing through me, I probably wouldn’t have made it at all.

“Sei?” a soft voice whispered from a few feet away.

I staggered, trying to make out the towering figure and praying that one of Ryan’s friends hadn’t somehow followed me. There was probably more than one bastard out tonight.

When strong arms reached me and kept me from falling, I had to swallow the panic. The concrete beneath my feet wouldn’t interfere with my magic, and I could take on anybody so long as I was in contact with the earth. But if I did something crazy, my mom would know. She’d realize I was faking not having much power. She might even kill me for using it.

“Sei? You’re bleeding pretty badly, and I think you have a collapsed lung. I need to take you to the hospital.” The figure sounded worried and somewhat angry; his touch was strong, but darkness ate at the edge of my vision. Something hot and annoying ran down my face. Blinking didn’t help. It wasn’t until the towering figure picked me up and carried me toward the parking lot that I realized it was blood on my face and Gabe carried me—I smelled his stinky shampoo.

“Gabe?” I asked.

“I got you. Let me help for once, please.”

“Okay.” I rested my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes, letting the pain take over as the earth recalled its power and I lost the fight against unconsciousness.

The trip to the emergency room was a first for me. I had three broken ribs, a concussion, a nasty cut on the side of my head, and a dislocated right wrist. My left lung had taken some damage, but wasn’t collapsed, and so long as I breathed slow, normal breaths, it didn’t ache all that much. Gabe stayed while the doctors patched me up and gave me pain meds.

A cop came by to ask about the attack and told us that Ryan had come in with a broken leg, but was claiming he’d fallen trying to get away from me. Said I tried to hex him or something, which I denied. The officer sounded angry when he talked to the doctors about me before he entered the room. I heard him grumble, “Letting a male witch enroll was just asking for trouble. Now we have one of our best offensive linemen out with a broken leg.”

It wasn’t until he walked in that the rage fell from his face and turned to pity. I guess a cop was a cop. I didn’t need that from anyone, especially a judgmental asshole like him, so I answered his questions as quickly as I could and waited for him to leave.

When I was finally released, it was almost dawn, but Gabe was still at my side. He drove me back to the dorms and even walked me to my door inside the building. “You should go,” I told him. The sun and vampires didn’t mix. The fading night trickled through my window when I opened the door to my room.

“Your door has locks, right?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

He leaned into me, giving me a soft hug before kissing my head on the undamaged side. “I’m sorry for scaring you last night.”

A hoarse laugh escaped me. He scared me? I scared me. I’d pulled the roots out of the ground with a thought and broke a man’s leg. I hadn’t been able to do that two years ago. What was wrong with me? “I’m sorry you had to rescue me.”

“Not your fault. Call me, okay?”

I nodded, and he left. I watched him through the window as he headed toward his car, and prayed he would get home in time. The first edges of light were beginning to brighten the sky in the east. When he vanished from sight, I closed the door, locked it, and crawled into bed.

What a horrible night. If only I weren’t a terrified idiot, I would have been at Gabe’s all night. Instead I’d gotten my ass handed to me by some brainless jock, then gone to the hospital to have eleven stitches in my forehead and a million bandages. I’d seen enough of my reflection at the hospital to know my face was black and blue. How unattractive for anyone, especially someone as beautiful as Gabe.

I dozed for a few minutes before startling myself awake by thinking I heard the door. By the light coming from the window, I saw it was still locked up tight. I reached for the phone and dialed a familiar number. Gabe answered on the third ring.

“Hey. You feeling all right?” Gabe’s voice was soft and sleepy. The sun always made him that way.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“Mhmm. Me too.”

“How’d you find me?” It didn’t worry me so much that he followed me. I didn’t want to think about what might’ve happened if he hadn’t.

“You ran into a friend of mine on campus, and he called to tell me that you looked distressed and distracted. So I drove out. Wanted to make sure you were okay. It’s my fault you were out of it.”

I let that settle for a minute, trying to decide if it bothered me, but it didn’t. “Can we watch a movie tonight? At your place?” Maybe cuddle on the couch in front of his theater-size TV with a bowl of popcorn and a warm protective body under a soft fleece blanket. If I’d been more awake, I might not have asked, and that would have been a tribute to the shame I already felt just for calling him. I’d need a few days to heal before I’d be up to anything strenuous again.

“Sure. Want me to pick you up after dark?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“And Gabe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Always.”