SWORD ACADEMY (censored)

My watch alarm is screaming like a siren. It shows Ainsley’s location in the corridor between the Registry and the Oculus. It’s so close, but it feels like a million leagues away from her. What if I’m too trawling late?

Keira, Maverick, and Aspen are in pace behind me, but I still have a fair lead when I come swashing through the double doors leading out of the Registry. Esha has Ainsley pinned to the wall. More than pinned. She’s ice bound her, and like the shady skank fighter is, she’s choking her while she’s restrained.

I raise my hands as I continue to run, a swell of water pooling in my palms. When enough has gathered, I release two streams directly toward that oozing flapper. One crashes into her side where she’s turned from me while the other nails her in the thigh. The force of the contact spreads out the water, washing her away from Ainsley like a wave being pulled back out to sea.

Ainsley’s unconscious and falls slack against her restraints. Esha’s getting to her feet, and coming toward us again, just as Keira, Maverick, and Aspen erupt through the double doors. Keira’s seeing red and builds fireballs the size of baseballs in each palm, hurling them at Esha with perfect precision. Esha blocks one by smacking it away with her hand coated in ice, but she can’t deflect the second one. It connects with her snatch, incinerating her pants and starting a blazing bush fire that sizzles off her public hair and singes the skin underneath.

“Enough!” I billow, trying with one hand to hold Ainsley up while using the other to chip at the ice still holding her. “I need all hands on deck.”

Being of the water element isn’t doing me any darn favours. My light wielding is no help. Best I can do is warm the temperature in my own water and work to remove the cuff on her right hand. Maverick takes my place holding Ainsley so I can work faster. He’s unhelpful as all heck too. He can’t dispel anything with his dark wielding except earth sparks. Keira takes over the left side to work on her other hand.

“Don’t burn her,” I whirlpool.

She gives me a look telling me I’d better shut up. I do.

“What the dark happened?” Aspen vogs, standing guard between us and Esha.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Esha clogs. “She blocked me.”

Now I get really, really nervous, this time for myself. I’m a junkie for her water spark. The withdrawal is going to sting like a jellyfish. But it’s worse than that. If she can block me, she isn’t going to let me in, even when she truly needs me. I’ll have to just sit back and watch those feral monsters eat her from the inside out.

I should’ve tried harder to stop things with her, to stop myself from getting so swept up in her hurricane. I’m drowning in that unruly rip current. I’ve been stalling her advances for a month, and that does little to abate the constant swell of my feelings for her. I’m wholly dependent on her, crave her in ways I didn’t even know were possible. And it isn’t just my darn rudder steering me to her.

My head.

My heart.

My spark.

She’s saturated every single part of me.

Esha comes up behind me and places her hand on my bare shoulder as I’m working the cuff off Ainsley’s right foot. I ignore the invasive feeling of her water spark repelling mine while I finish the work, then I stand and grab her hand, twisting it until she squeals in pain.

“You found yourself a little pet, did you?” She takes a step back, sneering at me. “You never minded me touching you before. In fact, you used to beg me to.”

Maverick hauls Ainsley into his arms. “Should we take her to the Ward?”

“Big blitzing no,” Ainsley reports, finally coming around. “I just need to give my pillow some head.”

“What were you thinking, Esha?!” I whitecap.

“I was just trying to see what all the fuss was about,” she plunges. “You can’t keep her for yourself, Luke.”

“She isn’t mine to keep,” I breakwater.

But as Maverick passes by us, Ainsley reaches out for me and wraps her arms around my neck. Maverick hands her over the rest of the way, and I slide my arms under her to support her weight.

“Please take me to bed.” Her voice is strained, her throat clearly sore from Esha’s chokehold.

For a minute, I guess it’s because she thinks it might further piss Esha off, but as I start walking her down the corridor back toward the Registry, she reaches her hand up to my cheek and leaves it there, pushing her water spark into me. I want to drown in the feel of it flowing freely into me, so pure and unsullied compared to when I take it myself. I near slosh my pants as the force of her tsunami crashes into me. She hasn’t shut me out. She still wants me, and that relief alone splinters the frosty remnants holding my heart captive, weakening their resolve.

“We’ll get her some breakfast, Boss.” Aspen moves in the opposite direction to the Oculus as I push through the double doors to the Registry.

Ainsley doesn’t say another word, but I can feel her beautiful darn eyes on me the whole way. Even though she never talks directly to me, I still gather every single scrap she shares with anyone else, holding onto those morsels like they’re the only sustenance that can abate the hunger she draws in me.

When we finally dock, I push aside the curtain she’s affixed to the entrance of my bed. We definitely don’t need it, despite her trying progressively harder to make that the case. I might be able to control her water spark, but there are three more sparks waiting to be unleashed inside her. Do I want an audience to rate my performance? Yeah, no. I have zero interest in three backseat wielders taking a joy ride with us for the sake of boarding her.

I slide her into bed and move to step away, but she grabs my hand, pulling me toward her. Her throat is fiercely red. The sight of it does something to me. My racing heart is still pounding furiously in my chest except for a different reason than the fear having drawn me to her. She’s safe. She’s in my bed. She wants to be here. And she wants me. My self-control buoy crashes right into my rock hard rudder.

I climb in beside her. Before I even have time to consider the consequences, she’s pressed her lips to mine. It’s a tidal wave washing through me, a warm swell crashing against every nerve ending in my body. She straddles me on the bed, deepening the kiss with a sweep of her tongue through my mouth. My hands grab her hips for support when her tsunami crashes against my rudder. I’m about to fall right overboard.

Then it happens as I thought it might. Her air spark slips free to meet my frenzied waves. A hurricane of desire pushes back into me. It doesn’t hurt, and part of me wants to ignore it, craving that raging storm with every fibre of my being. Except, it doesn’t just stop with air. The fire isn’t far behind. It lights inside me, scorching a path like razors slicing through my veins. I tighten my hands on her hips to still her body where she’s grinding mercilessly against me.

She pulls her lips from mine. Just barely. “I know you want me. I can feel you want me. Let me have you. I can control it.”

I turn my head when she leans in to kiss me again. “This needs to stop.”

The more I resist her, the unrulier she becomes. Part of me selfishly likes that because it shows how much she wants me. I feel that with everything in me. Barnacle, do I ever want her too. More than anything. I’ve wanted her since she came aboard me in the Spark Chamber.

“Just stop,” I seiche, maintaining my hold on her hips with such force she can’t move them.

She roars in defiance, tightens her thighs around me, and lurches forward. I can’t turn my head away fast enough this time. Her lips meet mine again, and it isn’t my rudder that feels the impact. There’s a geyser of emotion spurting out from my once frozen heart, a boiling flood that instantly thaws every last inch. Her fire spark rises to meet that heat, and I gasp into her mouth as it torches me where it lands.

Someone’s going to be seriously hurt. She can’t handle herself, and if my stopping this scuttlefest, even if it’s everything I want, means saving her from herself, I can’t be selfish. I won’t do that to her. I jerk upright, flipping her around on the bed so she’s pinned under me.

I hold her in place with my mouth beside her ear. “This is too dangerous. It has to stop.”

She lifts her hips so she’s grinding her trigger on my swollen rudder. “You want me.”

“I do,” I spume.

“I want you too,” she slamfires.

“You want me? Lift that anchor,” I spray. “Then you can have me.”

She groans so loud in my ear I’m not sure she hasn’t burst my eardrum, but she isn’t just going to groan and leave it at that. She’s going to show me what happens when someone tells her what to do. I’ve been trying to help her understand. I want her to know how I feel, even though it doesn’t change anything for now. Until she tames her sparks, this is too dangerous. Her sparks will accost us both, then devour everyone else in proximity.

She punches at my back where her arms are wrapped around me, drives her heels into my stern, and proceeds to have an epic meltdown while I continue to hold her captive under me.

I lean in close to her ear again. I need her to understand it isn’t that I don’t want her. “I promise I’m going to board you, Ainsley. It won’t be sweet, and it won’t be easy. It’ll be just like us. A. Glorious. Chaos. Storm. I’ll board you so darn hard you won’t be able to sit down for a week without feeling like my plank is still on deck. But first you have to lift that anchor.”

She bucks like a bronco, finally forcing me off her, and she just completely loses it on me, hitting and punching and kicking like a wild thing, landing stray hits left and right until I push her out of the bed to protect myself from her unbridled fury. She lands on her butt and sits there for a solid minute before rising to her feet. I raise my hands in front of my face in case she comes at me again, but she doesn’t. She turns on her heels and storms out of the room instead, leaving me staring after her like a stunned scut.

“What did you bloody do now?” Keira spews, placing a tray of food on Ainsley’s bed.

What did I do? My eye ripples. Ainsley threw a magnificent tantrum because I wouldn’t board her, regardless of my reasoning being absolutely logical. I told her I wanted her, told her she could have me if she lifted the anchor, and I know she wanted me too. She made that crystal clear, yet she still came unglued at being denied instant gratification.

There’s only one simple way to explain this to Keira. “I wouldn’t put out.”