19. SAM

“James, are you better now?”

The soft-spoken question lifted me from my slumber. Sam was still lying on my chest, looking utterly wiped out. Her mouth was open, a tiny streak of dried drool having crept out at some point during the night. Beth was beside me, an arm weaved between Sam’s to hold my hand, her eyes reflecting the flickering bit of light creeping into the room.

“Sorry. Your alarm’s going to go off in ten minutes, and I could feel that you were near the surface there. I wasn’t sure if you were still planning on going to the gym after last night. Wasn’t sure how you felt and wanted to turn it off before it woke us all up if you wanted me to. I already messaged Zoey and let her know you might not be feeling it.”

“No, I’m going to go. I feel a lot better than I did, and a workout will help. I appreciate you offering that, though.”

She gave me a halfhearted smile.

“I also appreciate you trying to comfort me last night. With the mood I was in, I didn’t want to be helped. So, even if it didn’t work, I really appreciate that you tried.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” she responded forlornly. “Sam did.”

“She did something she was trained professionally to do, something that literally runs in her family. You tried to help, too. Look, if you promise not to beat yourself up for not being effective, then I won’t spend all morning apologizing for acting like that in the first place.”

She smirked and responded, “Okay. Deal.”

Sam shifted on my body, raising one hand and sliding it up my chest. She placed her palm over my face and tapped me clumsily several times, grumbling out, “I’m trying to sleep, you oaf. Stop rumbling underneath me.”

I licked my thumb and tried to forget what I had done yesterday as I rubbed it on Sam’s face, cleaning off her dried drool.

“I need to get up. A bat needs to teach me how to fly. But, after what you did last night, I think you should stay home and have a lay about this morning.”

She sighed and stretched without sitting up at all, unrolling herself like a cat all over my torso. “Thank God. I wasn’t going to say it, but that was a lot. Think I used more yesterday than the rest of my life combined.”

“I also do want to actually take you out today, so you need to be all rested up and ready to go out later.”

“I know. Sorry for wiping myself out two days in a row. Any hints on what to wear?”

“Casual and comfortable. Workout clothes aren’t required, but they wouldn’t be out of place. Well, Beth’s would be. Yours would be fine.”

I kissed Sam’s forehead, then Beth’s, as I climbed off the mattress. “Keep her in bed, Beth. Make sure she’s rested for me.” She giggled, Sam pulled the covers back over her head, and I went to the gym.

Zoey worked me hard. She didn’t come right out and say she was looking to push me to failure, but the squat sets of eight became fives and then threes and then singles. By the time I was up to individual reps, she wasn’t even working in anymore; the weight she had loaded beyond her own capabilities. After the fifth single, a grinder that took everything I had to give, I tapped out. I told her I wasn’t comfortable doing any more.

It wasn’t just the weights. I had questions rolling through my mind about what I was even doing with my life now, why I had been made a public leader here without any consultation and yet hadn’t been given any training or introduction to that role. My dragon half was on edge, unnerved by last night's contact with the other thing. Speaking of, the other thing was resting and withdrawn, seemingly worn out just from talking to me for a moment. Maybe that contributed to my lack of ambition and hunger to get after the workout this morning.

“I thought so. That one was hard for you — a much slower bar speed, and you fully braced and held your upper back tension. I wasn’t going to let you do any more, but keep in mind, the only way to get comfortable with them is to do them. Not regularly — well, not regularly for us mortals, maybe you’re different — but you have to lift heavy to get comfortable lifting heavy,” she told me while stripping the bar.

We moved on to more accessory hip, calf, and glute work, where Zoey alternated with me again. Then, I spent some more time on a different piece of cardio equipment: a skier, this time, which I felt quite uncoordinated using at the start.

Mallory showed up while I was fumbling with the skier. She hung out for the final few minutes of the workout, talking with Zoey as I burned out my lungs. It was definitely a strange sensation when I stopped, going from panting and wheezing to perfectly fine in just a handful of seconds. My workouts no longer burned and lingered like they had just a month ago, and it was painfully obvious when I did cardio, even when I was fatigued from the resistance training.

Before heading down towards the pool, Zoey anxiously asked again for confirmation that we were still on for tomorrow. I gently affirmed, trying not to show my amusement at her nerves. I didn’t want to tease her over it, and I understood why she was nervous, but seeing her acting so strangely was still jarring. Even Kyle never got anxious — flustered, occasionally — but this was the first time I had ever seen anyone in their family show their nerves.

In the reserved and abandoned pool locker room, I quickly ditched my clothes and wrapped a towel around my waist. Mallory was already waiting for me in the water when I walked out onto the deck, and it was pretty clear how she had been so much faster than I was — her clothes were strewn recklessly around the lifeguard station. She hadn’t bothered using the locker room, just stripping down here. Which, since we were the only ones and would both be getting completely undressed, started seeming less and less weird the more I thought about it.

I set my towel with hers and slipped into the water but remained leaning against the wall. I had a question to ask her, and I wanted to do it before we started.

“Hey, Mal? I know this is going to be completely out of left field, but how serious are you and Sophie?”

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow, the cold, calculating sharpness returning to her brown eyes. “Mr. Steal Yo Girl isn’t a great look on you, lizard-boy. You best not be suggesting what I think you are.”

“Not even a little bit. I was actually asking because you seemed awfully interested in teaching me how to fly. A little over-eager to be around me naked. Seemed like something a partner might not be happy about.”

“Oh, yeah, she knows I strip down for the lessons. Being nude is much less odd for weres, given the whole animal shapeshifting side. It’s either destigmatizing it, or everyone needs to replace clothes every week, or wait a month for self-repairing enchantments to work.”

I shook my head, “I get that. Did you tell her that you really, really enjoy it when I shapeshift, though? I’m sure that’s not in the regular paperwork.”

Mallory exhaled sharply, “Why are you so interested in my girlfriend, James?”

“Because if I was in her shoes, and I wasn’t told that it was going this far, I would probably be upset. Even if we didn’t ever do anything intentionally, we knew it would happen and kept going, you know? If she finds out in six months, she’s probably going to feel pretty rightfully betrayed if she wasn’t informed and never got a chance to say no. She would have a pretty legitimate reason to be upset with me, let alone you.”

“I didn’t tell her. Honestly, I was hoping it was a one-off, and I wouldn’t have to have that conversation. If, I mean, well, when it happens again, I guess I’ll have to.”

“Sorry. I just wanted to get in front of it, and Zoey wouldn’t actually tell me anything about you two, so I wasn’t sure if I even needed to or not.”

She shrugged and moved promptly into her lessons. I shapeshifted, she spent a minute blushing and breathing heavily, and then we got going. She started by having me do the same drills from last time, skulling the water and traversing the length of the pool. This time, she added several laps of doing it sideways and backward, as well. Then I was up on the diving board, lifting myself to the frequency of the board's bounces, feeling the air catch under my wings. Then, I did the different turns and rotations on the board, including spending time lying on my stomach and back. To wrap up this set of drills, she had me hold onto the board's end and dangle from it into the pool.

After a minute of my ankles and legs dangling in the water as I flapped to my own beat, she had me lift them out of the water and wrap them around the board. I was entirely underneath the painted fiberglass board, and I immediately understood why I was doing something so strange when I tried to flap my wings. It turns out that trying to control yourself in the air while upside down is quite counterintuitive, and Mallory spent nearly twenty minutes working with me before I had any semblance of control. Even then, she beat into me that I should always be trying to right myself if I had any choice.

Then, we had jumped flight again. Rather than having me continue with the board, she had me use the starting blocks. I evidently didn’t require the extra lift from the flexible boards and could go directly from the blocks into the air. And I did. The sideways starts, and especially the backward starts, felt fundamentally wrong to me after years of practicing my starting jumps for swimming competitions. But I was able to control myself well enough, my wings catching the air just as well.

For her final instruction, she had me do something I was quite familiar with as a swimmer. I would sink to the bottom of the pool, push off the bottom in a tight streamline, and use the advantage my buoyancy gave me to feel faster than normal until I reached the surface. Normally, that was its own drill, but here, she had me push through the surface and unfurl my wings until I could flap them at the apex of my swimming ascent and lift out of the water. Getting the timing down was an essential part of familiarizing myself with my wings. It only took some twenty attempts before I was tired of the repetition she demanded and flew to touch the ceiling above the pool.

Mallory dismissed me after that, decreeing that I had passed the initial screening and training. While toweling herself off on the deck, she explained that next week, she would be taking me to a different location, and we would be practicing landing. We’d have two weeks of that, assuming everything went well, and then I’d be taken on some planned flights in the countryside to test my endurance.

Her phrasing raised a question in my mind, but it was something for me to bring up with Antonin. There was a feeling that I had been getting for the last week that didn’t sit right with me. But, I had already had one questionable interaction with Mallory today, and it certainly wasn’t her decision if my paranoia was justified. Someone above her was making the decisions, and Antonin would probably be the best way for me to get genuine answers. Besides, I didn’t really want to get into it now. I wanted to be in a good mood for Sam, and I had a phone call and a pit stop at an ATM to make before I went back to find my date.

Sam was waiting patiently for me back at the apartment, wearing jeans and a shoulderless, frilly lavender blouse that would’ve looked adorable on Beth but was devastating on her fuller frame. I stopped momentarily on my way in, frozen in place as I took in the spectacle of the goddess I was involved with. Her eyes met mine, and she reached for Beth’s hand, looking to hold onto something.

“Damn,” she whispered under her breath, “Never going to get used to feeling that.”

Her words broke the spell holding me in stasis, and I asked, “Are you okay?”

She blushed deeply crimson but nodded, “Yeah. So good. Every time you look at me, and I can feel what you’re thinking as you do — Beth told me it was getting more intense day by day, but, damn. Waterfalls, honestly. Might need to borrow your towel.”

I shook my head in confusion, “Wha— Oh. Oh. Oh, damn.”

“So, go get ready, please.”

A quick shower to rinse the lingering chlorine smell from me and a fresh set of clean clothes later, Sam and I walked out of the apartment, her arm wrapped dotingly around mine. We took the train, getting off a few blocks away from my destination. Sam kept her eyes open and looked around at every business ahead of us, curious which one I was going to go into.

She smiled when I opened the door for her, and then we were inside a place with flashing neon lights, matte black surfaces everywhere, and a reverberating bass beat bouncing through the building. She raised an eyebrow at me as we walked towards the desk at the front.

“Hi,” a chipper teenage guy greeted us. “Two for open skate?”

“Yes, please.”

“Renting skates? Sizes, and inline or quad?” he asked.

We rented our skates, stored our things in their day-use lockers, and then made our way down to the rink itself. While not entirely empty, it was sparsely dotted with a handful of other people skating around. A bored-looking employee was absentmindedly doing laps, keeping herself awake by doing them backward and sideways as she watched the patrons and kept herself available if anyone needed her.

“Skating isn’t something I would have predicted, James,” Sam said as she slid on her skates and laced them up. “What’d you do with Beth?”

“Wait, you guys didn’t talk about it?”

“She told me she had a really nice time and that it changed her mind about everything that happened. She didn’t want to share any details without you, though.”

“Oh. Well, we went to a museum.”

Sam did a double take, fumbling and nearly dropping her second skate. “Wait, what?” She asked incredulously. “Why did you do that?”

“Okay, first, it was the Franklin Institute magic section. I wanted something that could get Beth more acclimated to the world we’re now in without overwhelming her since she can’t contribute to the magic lessons besides being a guinea pig for Antonin to play with, and she hasn’t really engaged with his regular lectures. I wanted to look at magic stuff in a different environment and talk to her about how crazy all of it was.”

Sam and I were now in the rink and had joined the procession in going around, although we were both content with moving slowly, holding hands and talking, rather than trying to actually be any good with the skates.

“And, you brought me here — Why?”

“Well, I wanted something we’d both be pretty mediocre at so that we’d be on a level playing field without any stress. I also wanted something not a part of that world, given your complaints and my growing irritation with it. I wanted something where we could talk together but still be doing something new. Something that could be ours if we both liked it and wanted it to be. Not that I want to force this specifically on you, but, with Beth and now Zoey, it would probably be nice to have something that was uniquely ours.”

“Hmm. That’s pretty sensible.”

“I also really wanted to check in with you. I mean, I wanted to do it before last night, but now I want to check in for two separate reasons. So, first, how do you feel about last night? I’m sorry I—”

“Stop right there,” Sam said, flexing her hand around mine to emphasize her point. “You were pretty reasonably upset last night. You didn’t direct it at Beth or me. There’s no reason for you to apologize for having an emotional release.”

I could feel that there was something else Sam wanted to say, but she didn’t. After half a lap, I prompted her when she was still contemplating saying it. “But?”

“No. No ‘but’, James. I wanted to say ‘and’. As in, and it gave me a great opportunity to try out the magic that runs in my family, something I’ve seen Mom do time and time again but I’ve only ever been able to offer cheap imitations of. I still don’t understand how she manages to do it because trying to pull it out of you submerged me in it instead. She almost always stays pretty calm and detached, and I was just pulled along for a ride in the typhoon of emotions you had.”

“You know, I can — okay, smell isn’t the right word, obviously, but that’s what it feels like — emotions. From everyone besides two people, I’ve been able to sense some kind of feeling. Antonin is usually a blank slate, ranging between disinterested and academically animated. Zenya doesn’t have severe magnitudes to the emotions she feels, and I am concerned about why, but that’s a different conversation. Zoey’s been able to clamp down and suppress her emotions pretty hard, but I still get occasional glimpses. The only one who I’ve never gotten much from was your Mom. She’s pretty much entirely a blank slate at all times. Given her expertise with emotional manipulation, I figured she was masking herself from me intentionally somehow.”

Sam shook her head, “I don’t know anything about that, really. If she is, I wouldn’t have been capable of it before you supercharged me. I was taught the basics and struggled with that, so I could just be doing something wrong because I never learned any deeper into the subject.”

“Sam, I really need to thank you. I was really spiraling last night, and I’m not sure where I could’ve ended up without you. Just feeling you trying to throw me a life preserver tempered it somewhat; it made me realize I wasn’t alone and had support.”

“I would kiss you if I wouldn’t fall over trying to do it right now,” she responded. “James, I love you, and I have for years. You get that, right? Supporting you how I can is something that I’ve wanted to do forever. I don’t want to make it sound like I was happy you were drowning in angst last night, but I leapt at the chance to try to help for a reason. You’ll never be alone again.”

Sam had turned her head to look at me while talking, and I returned her gaze. Unfortunately, that meant neither of us were looking where we were going, mostly relying on our mental map of the loop and others looking out for us. Neither of us noticed the teenager coming up quickly beside us nor that we were coming up behind an older couple moving very slowly. The kid swerved in front of Sam to avoid running over the retirees. She snapped her head back forward as the guy passed by and tried to change her path, but while holding my hand and the older pair taking up space on the other side, she simply lost her balance.

Maybe it was just an instinctual reaction, or perhaps it was because we had spent so much time practicing the previous day and so it was still fresh in my mind, but as Sam started to tip over, I used my newfound magic to ensure that she didn’t crash into the ground. I projected some force on her other side, a spot locked into a relative position in the air, and Sam fell onto it. In a split second, she intuitively used it to pull herself back under control, holding on to the conjured invisible bar and my hand to stay upright. It only took her a second or two to return to normal, and I let the magic fizzle out as she looked at me.

Under her breath, she whispered, “Thank you, but you can’t do that in public. Could get us in all sorts of trouble.”

Before I could ask for an explanation, the previously bored-looking staffer flew up alongside us. “Nice save,” she opened with, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Sam responded. “We weren’t quite looking where we were going.”

The employee looked at her for an extra moment, then said, “Alright, if that’s how you feel. Let me know if you need anything.”

After a half-lap of silence, Sam asked, “What was that about?”

“I believe she was hoping you would blame the kid, and then she would have a justification to talk to him. He’s been speeding around the entire time, just on this side of being reckless.”

“Oh. But we really weren’t watching where we were going.”

“We can both be at fault,” I responded with a soft smile.

“Well, you’re definitely at fault for what you did. I mean, I preferred it to falling over, but you can’t do that out in the general public, alright?”

“To be honest, it was pretty much just a reaction. I wasn’t conscious that my perfect girlfriend had lost her balance and might need help; I just flung that up before I knew what was happening.”

She frowned at me, “Don’t try to change the topic on me. Even if you mean that.”

“I was really just trying to get back to the topic we were on before, Sam. If I say I’ll try my best to restrain myself in potentially revealing places, can we go back to talking about more sane things? Things we can actually talk about in public?”

“Of course,” Sam responded cheerily. “So, what safer topic did you want to talk about?”

“Oof. I didn’t say safer. I wanted to ask how you were feeling about us, and about us, the foursome. Because, and I know there were extenuating circumstances that somewhat shaped your feelings, you did end up with me. Just, not with only me, and with a whole lot of extra baggage. I have some, admittedly founded in my own head, concerns that maybe you jumped at the thing you used to want without seriously evaluating how it had changed.”

Sam squeezed my hand tightly, “God, James. You had your life turned upside down, you were forcefully relocated, and just last night, you were breaking down as a result of all of that, and now you’re here trying to make sure I’m okay. If I say that yeah, I’m good, that won’t be enough to allay your fears, will it?”

“Not really.”

“Give me a couple minutes to think about how I want to say this, alright? The short answer is that I’m euphoric right now, but if you want more out of me, I don’t want to fuck the wording up and feed into your need for everything to be perfect.”

We skated silently for nearly ten minutes, just the sound of the other skaters and the upbeat electronic music keeping my thoughts company. I spent most of the time trying to figure out if her final thought had been an insult or not — not that she was wrong. I could absolutely get trapped in looking for perfection instead of accepting good. But, in a brand new relationship that was growing as increasingly complex as mine seemed to be, I didn’t think checking in after a week qualified as overzealous.

“So, you’re not completely unfounded with your fears,” Sam started, increasing the anxious pitter-patter of my heartbeat. “When I dreamed of a future for us in high school, this was not what I had in mind. You were just an unremarkable wizard, and we’d have an apartment in a mid-sized city for five or ten years as we got our feet under us professionally. Then we’d move to the suburbs for the house, white picket fence, and two-point-five children in a good school district dream. Mom would come to visit on the weekends to spoil our kids rotten. That’s what I wanted, right? That’s what I laid awake lusting for every night after ignoring your glances all day and being rude enough to discourage you.

“It’s pretty clear now that I’m not getting what I wanted. You’re special, not just special to me. Something odd happened, something bigger than my old concerns about being lonely, and now you’re more important to the world than anyone I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. Somehow, Beth got dragged into this mess, and then Zoey was roped in, too. I don’t know what’s happening or why the two of them were seemingly assigned to be yours.

“But that’s what it looks like to me. You just happen to run into Beth and accidentally trigger something inside yourself that reveals you to the whole world? Then the first time you see Zoey, despite a thousand previous interactions, she wakes up and realizes you’re her mate? Shit’s fucky, James. Something larger is going on than I want to acknowledge. I didn’t think about it for the first week we were here because I was a bit overwhelmed with being around you again, but it’s clear to me that someone, or perhaps something, orchestrated this. Or you have the world's most suspicious luck.”

Well, she echoed some of my recent feelings. There was a certain amount of convenience to everything that had happened, and it made me uneasy. If Antonin and Aisling weren’t the ones perpetrating it, then they would surely be concerned about it. Or maybe I was lunging at shadows. This whole world made me see things where there wasn’t anything, and it made me much more sympathetic to Zoey’s overreaction — if it was real, my paranoia added.

“But, okay, you asked about how I was feeling. I got you, alright? That’s pretty fucking big. It’s not a silver lining to a cloud; it’s a silver palace that has clouds around its spire. Maybe silver’s not the greatest of analogies right now. Um. Fuck. But not only that, but somehow your mysterious dragon origin cheated and added magic to me, as well. I don’t get how it works but, the analogy would be now that we have a flying space palace, that happens to be passing through some clouds. I’m better than I imagined was possible. Like, if you took the best possible dream scenario I ever concocted, current reality manages to outdo it. That’s pretty fucking wild, James.”

She paused for a moment and, without saying anything further, tugged me over towards the benches. Before we reached them, she twirled in place to face me, her hands grasping the aglets of my sweater as mine wrapped around her.

“But you’re really asking how I feel about Beth and Zoey, right? You’re asking if, because of how long I dreamed of us together, I could stomach not having you to myself.”

She tugged me gently, and we rolled to the bench, where she sat down and began taking off her skates. There were about 15 minutes left in the open skate period before the place closed for a roller derby league event, so we weren’t precisely leaving prematurely. I sat down beside her and started taking off my own skates while waiting for her to finish her thought.

“The answer is that I haven’t even noticed that you’re not only mine yet. I haven’t felt excluded or pushed out; I haven’t felt that Beth wanted time alone with you at my expense. She had her date with you, and I was happy for her and nervously anticipating mine, not jealous or feeling like a third wheel. And, honestly, even if I had, I think I would still be here. Having a part of you is better than having none of you at all.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Well, princess, I hope you never feel like you’re on the outside waiting for your turn.”

“Are you calling me a brat by that?” she questioned with an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

“Uh, no, not in the slightest. I just had the idea that, I mean, Jesus Christ, I have three fiancés now. That does mean I have to be a little creative in pet names; otherwise, I’ll just be ‘honey’-ing all of you.”

“What’d Beth get?”

“I tried out sunshine, and she liked it. She’s the little burst of energy in our family, impulsive and warm and over the top, and her spirit rubs off on us when she’s around.”

Sam nodded approvingly, “Alright. But now you have to explain princess without calling me a spoiled brat.”

I laughed, “That’s pretty simple, actually. You have this energy where you feel like royalty sometimes, and other times, still the angsty teen rebelling against the world you’re forced to live in. You’re picking your own path, but you still have the authority and grace of someone of power. You like the nice things in life, especially when Beth is the comparison, but you want to go out and earn them on your own. You want to be pampered, but you still feel like you need to prove yourself.

“You still have that enviable, youthful sense of justice and duty, too, not yet warped and jaded despite having to interact with the unpleasant parts of both extremes of society. That’s one of the biggest reasons I love you, Sam. I could see it even when you were acting like an angsty teen. You wake up every day and make decisions like you’re going to solve all of the world’s problems yourself personally. Hell, that’s the only reason we reconnected; you came to set me straight. Add in the truth I now know, that you spent your entire childhood largely ostracized by your peers because of who your Mother was. That certainly sounds like the beginning of many fairy tales. Although, usually the knight comes and saves the princess from the dragon in fairy tales, and in your life, the dragon had to wake up in the night to connect with his princess. So, you can’t be the Queen, who’s already established and restricted by the obligation of the crown, but you can be my—”

She smiled, “Princess. Okay. That works with me, James.”

We returned the skates and gathered our belongings from the lockers. Sam held my hand contentedly as we walked back out onto the streets. I had another destination in mind, and I had actually called them earlier in the day to ensure they were still open. They were, but not for many more days.

As I navigated the blocks to our second destination, I picked up the thought I had before Sam caught onto my name for her. “I don’t really understand what you mean by a part of me being better than nothing, Sam. I can sort of understand the logic behind the words, but it absolutely doesn’t connect emotionally for me. I want you, Sam. I want all of you, and I don’t want to share with anyone else.”

“Hmm. Are you sure? What about sharing me with Beth? What if Zoey wants to spend some time with me?”

“I, ahh,” I stammered, unable to articulate a response to her questions.

“I thought so. You really just have an issue with sharing me with another man, right? What if Zenya wanted to have fun with Beth and me? How does that make you feel?”

I made a queasy face, “It’s less offensive than imagining either of you with another guy, but still not something I’m comfortable with.”

She shrugged, “That’s fine, James. I don’t want anyone else but you. I don’t even want to be intimate with Beth or Zoey, really. Girls are nice to look at, but they’re…” She paused, nibbling on her lip and glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. “They’re not you. Whenever I imagine myself doing anything, it’s with you and only you.”

“I get the impression Beth doesn’t quite feel that way.”

Sam shook her head, “No. But, honestly, we’re two sides of the same coin.”

I shook my head incredulously. “Sorry? How do you figure?”

“If we’re going to bed together, I want you and only you. If you and her are going to bed together, she wants you and whatever else you want. Both of us revolve around you in different ways. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

“And you’re not bothered by my hypocrisy?”

“Nope. Not even a little bit. You got over fifteen years of my lies and just said you want me to yourself. You still want me. There are very few dealbreakers I have and—”

She paused as I stepped into the queue leading up to a window. A window belonging to one of the few ice cream parlors still serving as summer faded into fall. The teenager operating one side of the window waved us up to order almost too quickly, as I hadn’t even gotten a glance at the menu, but it ended up not mattering.

“—And when you bring me places like this, I seem to forget all about them. Hi, can we share a large peanut butter sundae with hot fudge as well? Awesome, thank you.”

I paid, handing my recently acquired cash through the window, and just a few minutes later, Sam and I were sitting at one of their picnic tables, having a decadently indulgent sundae with two plastic spoons.

“I’m just saying, James,” Sam said once we sat down and she had had three bites of the massively portioned ice cream, “It doesn’t bother me. You’re not lying to me, and you’re not going around behind my back. I know it’s hypocritical of me to hate dishonesty so fiercely, but I think being forced to do it made me more sensitive to it.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense.”

She sighed forlornly, twirling the spoon to catch a dripping bit of hot fudge. “I was really excited for this a few minutes ago. After the brownies, it’s kind of flat.”

“Really? I thought it was decent. I mean, it’s just soft-serve ice cream, but I’m certainly not disappointed with it.”

“I can feel where it’s lacking. I don’t know what you did to me,” she replied despondently.

“Sam? Are you okay? I’m sorry if I hurt you somehow.”

She looked up from the remainder of the styrofoam bowl, where she had been scraping her spoon along the final few runny, melted spoonfuls, a look of surprise on her face. “Oh, no. Sorry, that didn’t come out right. But, the words are right. I don’t know what you’ve done to me. I can feel all of the types of magic I learned about as a kid — all of the things I knew I would never be able to try because I’d never be strong enough to use anything other than a little emotional resonance — and now they’re just an inch outside my fingertips. If I stretch out a little bit and try things, they just work. That’s not the reality I’m used to.

“And, more than that, I’ve physically changed, too. You can go all gentlemanly on me if you want and deny it to be polite, but I definitely had some extra weight on me. For the past two weeks, I’ve been eating like you have, and for some reason, I’ve lost body fat. Sure, I’ve gone to the gym with Beth, but the half hour on the treadmill and some yoga 101 doesn’t explain why my ass is so much firmer than it was two months ago or why my belly is pretty much gone when I’ve taken on emulating a college athlete’s eating habits.”

“Are you sure the gym and the magic training couldn’t have had that much of an effect?” I asked as she disposed of the dish, and we began walking back to the apartment, agreeing to do so through our bond without interrupting the conversation.

“James, it’s been two weeks. That’s not how bodies are supposed to work.” She pulled her hands to her chest, “I take my bra off to go to sleep at night, and the girls are perkier than when I was sixteen and skinny. No, it’s not just the gym. Maybe it’s the gym and you, but the you part is doing some heavy lifting. We have a perfect counter-example. Beth’s been eating essentially the same stuff as me, except she’s been having smaller portions and fewer treats. She had a brownie; I had six. She had a couple of bites of your calzone; I had a whole dessert one to myself.

“And what’s the result? Somehow, the extra fat I picked up after high school is melting away, while her malnourished frame looks healthy now. I ate more and lost weight; she ate less, worked harder in the gym, and gained weight. You’re a cheat code, James.”

“And, you’re sure it can’t be the magic training making the difference?”

Sam scoffed, “No. Even if we pretended that I wasn’t always drawing energy from you, we’ve only done intense sessions twice. Those make you feel exhausted, or at least they make non-dragon prodigies feel exhausted, but you don’t burn very many physical calories doing it. It’s like seriously playing chess or video games, which is more than just laying in bed, sure, but it’s not an actual workout.

“So, no, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” She concluded, bringing me back to the original comment I had forgotten. “Somehow, you’re giving me the body you see instead of the one I look at in the mirror. Somehow, I can use any school, any speciality of magic I want now. My tone was just off because I was realizing that I was going to have to learn how to cook everything I crave. Suffering from success.”

I rubbed her hand with my thumb as we walked up the stairs back to the apartment. I was caught by surprise when she turned in place in front of the door, stopping to say something before we went inside.

“So, listen, James. I had a great time with you today, and I’m looking forward to seeing you again, but I don’t think I’m ready to invite you inside after just our first date, okay?”

“Uh,” I elegantly stammered, trying to parse what she said. I heard all of the words, but they had come completely out of left field. If that was how she felt, that was how she felt, but hadn’t she practically begged to go further just a few days ago?

Then she giggled, “Gosh, you should see your face. You had no fucking clue how to respond to that. Look, I’ll spell it out clearly for you since I know I just muddied the waters: I want you to kiss me and take me to bed, James.”

I did. I kissed her as I fumbled with my keys and the door. Sam pressed herself against me, then surprised me by bouncing up and wrapping her legs around my waist and arms around my neck without breaking the kiss. I caught her with one arm and kept the door open long enough to carry her through. Then, with both of my hands holding her delightful derriere, I cautiously carried her through the living room and into my bedroom. I saw Beth and Zenya in the kitchen out of the corner of my eye and felt Beth’s smirk as I walked by, but my mouth was busy making wordless promises to Sam.

Straight into the bedroom I carried my lover, softly setting her on the edge of the bed. She lifted her foot up with an impish grin, then blushed deeply when I started taking her shoes off. When I had set both of them down, she asked a question that explained her change in demeanor.

“Soooo, James, you wouldn’t happen to be into feet at all, would you?”

I scratched my head, stupefied by the question. “Not really, Sam. I mean, they’re a part of you, and you’re beautiful as a whole, so I don’t find yours unattractive, but they don’t do anything for me on their own, really. Why? Are you? Were you hoping I was?”

She exhaled in a nervous little giggle and then softly admitted, “Ah, no. But, with going to the gym with Beth, and then skating today and walking around the city, my arches are sore.”

“You could’ve said something, I—”

Sam cut me off pointedly, “Uh, no. After last night? I was in no state to ask for anything, you were in no state to do anything, and I was definitely not going to ask for you to use your saliva for anything else. If I had cut myself this morning, I would’ve gotten a bandaid and forgotten about it. But, if you wanted to give me a foot rub as foreplay now, I wouldn’t say no.” She put on her very best smile and leaned forward on her arms, pushing her shoulders together, playing along as a tongue-in-cheek temptress.

“Sure. Lay down on the pillows and lift your feet up here.”

She slid further onto the bed, lying down right in the center as if she were going to sleep. I crossed my legs and sat exactly where her ankles lay on the bed, pulling one of the spare pillows over and setting it in my lap. Then I placed her feet there and started rubbing them, licking my two thumbs and pressing them against the top of her left foot. She sighed deeply as I massaged along the length of her foot, spreading my healing solution all across her skin and releasing the tension in the delicate bones and small muscles there.

When I switched to circularly kneading the underside, my palm holding her instep as my thumbs danced into the fleshy pad, she groaned out breathily.

“That gets you going? I thought it was a joke.”

Another thumb press. Another airy moan.

“It was supposed to be. I mean — Oh! — you could be reciting Roman senate debate in Latin, and it would get me going. Fuck! Just being around you gets me ready and has for years. This is unreal, though.”

Then I dug my knuckles into her arch, brushing them side to side along her horizontally, and she groaned gutterally before clamping a pillow over her own face. When I dragged my thumbs along her arch, crossing her foot horizontally in opposite directions, she whimpered needily loud enough that I could hear it through the pillow she was burying herself under.

Then I repeated my steps with her other foot, working the top, and then kneading the ball, before using my knuckles—

“Fuck, James. Do the lines on this one. Please, James. Fuck, I love your hands on me.”

It took me a second to understand what she was asking for, and then I started crossing her foot with my thumbs again. On the third one, as my thumbs passed each other in the middle, she groaned a drawn-out, pained “Ohhhhhhh,” her hips lifting off the bed as she shuddered. She pulled her feet away from me a moment later, her hands gripping the pillow for all it was worth for several seconds, and then she collapsed with a soft gasp.

I waited a second and then felt an intense desire to be kissed emanating from her bond, so I slid the tortured pillow aside and pressed my lips to Sam’s. Perhaps because of her eruption, it was soft and slow, and she ran her hand through the hair on the back of my head, applying just enough pressure to keep me close.

When we separated, she left her eyes closed but said, “God damn, James. I just, and all you did was, I mean, but like — Holy shit, that was wild.”

I ran my hands over her body, feeling her chest rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath. “So, your pretty little feet feel better after I took care of them?”

“They’re pretty tingly right now,” she replied. “Ask me again when I can feel them?”

“Hmm,” I offered while sliding my hands down to the button on her jeans, pinching and releasing it. “No, I don’t think I will.”

I surprised Sam when I grabbed hold of her belt buckles and tugged her back to the edge of the bed before unzipping her jeans and lifting her butt from the bed to slide them down her legs. Her black silken panties with red decals came off a lot more mature and confident in herself than I could feel she felt. It was a great look on her, even if I could feel her thinking about how Beth had to talk her into wearing them for the date.

Of course, the now damp, dainty piece of cloth would look just as lovely on the floor of the room as it did on her. I lifted Sam’s hips from the bed again, drawing them down her legs with a lot more care than I had for her jeans. They stuck to her petals for just a moment, a strand of her lubricant stretching between her and the last piece covering her lower half. Sam simply watched me as I undressed her, not actively participating or encouraging me but also accepting what I was doing. She wanted this, too; she just wanted to feel wanted. She didn’t want to feel like she had to strip and throw herself at me again.

She hadn’t correctly predicted what my goals were, though, and acted surprised when I grabbed the pillow that had once been in my lap and set it down on the floor. When I tried to kneel between her legs, she pressed her thighs together and said, “James, you don’t need to do that. You already got me off. Don’t you want to fuck me?”

“I do. I want to do this first, Sam.”

“I’m just not sure if I like it, is all,” she whispered.

I sighed, stroking my fingers on her thigh. “I want to do this for you, Sam, and you certainly didn’t seem to hate it when I did before. When Beth says she doesn’t want this, it’s because she doesn’t like the feeling of control she gets. When you say you don’t want this, it’s because you’re feeling uncomfortable with yourself and questioning whether you deserve it. You absolutely do, Sam, so please relax and let me pamper you. Let me show you what I think you deserve. Let me pleasure my princess, please?”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m really quite confident that I want to do this. If you actually dislike the act, then tell me, but you seemed to enjoy it the other time, and I wanted to do it again. If it’s just you being worried about your body — Sam, you have nothing to worry about. I want you, okay? That includes the parts you might not be happy with right now.”

She slowly relaxed, allowing her hips to rotate and her thighs to spread open for me. She wasn’t sure where to place her legs and just kind of held them in the air nervously. I pulled one over my shoulder to rest along my back as I kissed along the inside of the other, working my way up her soft, pale flesh to my ultimate goal. When I reached there, she got the hint and carefully placed it over my other shoulder, mirroring the first.

I started slowly. I knew Sam didn’t need to be eased into any attention — she was practically back to boiling already — but I wasn’t sure if she would be too sensitive for direct stimulation. I nibbled along the side of her lips, kissing a trail vertically until I was level with her button. It was ready for me, pink and full and engorged and reaching out and practically begging to be let out and played with.

When I tested it by licking alongside, brushing it tangentially with my tongue, Sam’s hand snapped down to my hair, holding me in place. She moaned out my name and then grabbed the pillow she had used with her other hand, smothering herself again as she groaned. Despite the tortured sounds she made, she was giving quite plain signals as to what she wanted.

I kept my lips against her and said, “God, I love the sounds you make for me, Sam.”

“Ungh, what?” she mumbled in confusion.

“Once you get going, you make the most horrible groans.” I added a direct lick to her jewel, drawing one of those grunts out of her.

“Agh, what the fuck does that mean, James, and why are you telling me now?”

I pulled her skin back, exposing the now angrily red little nub, and blew on it gently. She whimpered, wiggling her hips back and forth under the new sensation, pushing her legs against my shoulders to try and lift herself away.

“Because it means you’re finally out of your own head. You would never let yourself make those noises normally, but now you’re so submerged in what we’re doing that you’re no longer letting your insecurities limit you. You’re just responding to me and enjoying what we’re doing, and it’s beautiful. I know it’s not going to happen today, but I’m making it a goal of mine to challenge the little voice in the back of your head telling you that you aren’t perfect.”

“I’m not, J—” I interrupted her by kissing directly on her jewel, my fingers still holding her skin back.

“You don’t have to agree with me now, but I’m going to show you how I feel. And if you’re still arguing when we’re done, I’ll go again.”

I didn’t give her a chance to make a retort, slipping a finger from my other hand inside her as I curled my tongue around the bundle of nerves screaming for attention. Her thighs pulsed around my head as she flinched in response to the new sensations, but the hoarse moan she released and the overwhelming depth of lust I could feel spreading over our bond told me I was on the right track. My finger inside her was joined by a second, and they stroked her gently several times before curling up, creating a two-fronted assault on her body.

The bond was a godsend. It completely nullified any guesswork on my end and removed the need for Sam to overcome any awkwardness in explaining what she wanted. It hadn’t been here the first time, obviously, but now I had a road map, direct from her brain, guiding me to touch where she wanted. When she wanted more pressure on her clit, I had it there in a moment. When my fingernail was too sharp and intense on her insides, I changed the angle of my motion to use more of the fleshy pad. And when she was close and desperate to cross the threshold? I could feel how she wanted the swipes from my tongue, quick and direct, but with a little less intensity than before.

And then she came, her silken sheath clenching down on my fingers. It would have been sudden if I hadn't been listening closely to her overwhelmed mind. Or, perhaps, someone else wouldn’t have been able to notice — if you couldn’t feel the rippling of her insides or feel the pulses as her muscles clenched and released involuntarily, she didn’t present that differently. Her vocalizations sounded the same as they did five minutes ago: hoarse, guttural groans interspersed with breathy whimpers, not at all muted by the pillow held to her face.

I continued my touches and licks, albeit gradually slowing them, as Sam rolled through her release until her mind told me it couldn’t handle any more stimulation. I stopped any active stimulation then, kissing her muff and the tops of her thighs as she steadily returned to earth. It took a minute for her legs to stop tensing around my neck and her breathing to slow, but when it did, she leaned up and slid her legs off of me, pulling me up to kiss her.

As we kissed, she was active, sliding her hands under my shirt and touching every inch of my chest and torso before interrupting our kiss to pull it over my head and off. Then she wiggled out of her own shirt, took an extra second to unclasp the bra that matched the panties I had taken from her earlier, and leaned back on the bed, completely naked.

“Get out of your pants, James,” she said with authority.

I stripped quickly, then joined her in bed. She had lain back on the pillows, opening her hips up to invite me between her. I surprised her, though, sliding alongside her and rotating her onto her side.

“Uh, what—” Sam started to ask.

“Trust me?”

She nodded as I pushed her upper leg forward, sliding my hips down to position myself where I wanted to be. It was good that I was quite a bit taller than her — where that made penetration in the shower challenging, it made this position easier. I pulled her hips against me, rubbing my erection against her sopping slit.

I nibbled on her ear and ran my hands over her body, wrapping her up in an intimate embrace. I kneaded her full breast with one hand while the other traveled down her body, cupping her sex and holding my head to her entrance. Sam moaned as I brushed myself against her, then wiggled her hips to press herself against me.

“Please,” she whispered.

I tenderly nudged myself into her, slowly and carefully spreading her open. Despite being excessively lubricated, the rotation of her hips made her incredibly tight around me. It was also clearly a different sensation for her, intense despite my cautious pace. Her upper leg fell limp to the bed, and her hands wrapped tightly around my forearm as I held her body to mine, tremblingly pinning my arms just under her bust. As I sunk all the way into her, lifting up slightly to get my final inch pressed to her depths, she leaked a moan, slow and quiet and drawn out.

Filling her thoroughly, I brushed away her hair with my left hand, exposing her neck and the side of her face to my attention. She still held my right arm tightly as it wrapped around her, but my hand could wander, and I tilted my wrist back and forth, touching every inch of her chest that I could, just exploring the soft, freckled skin without any particular goal in mind.

Without moving my hips, I wrapped my left arm back around her abdomen, ensuring our bodies were as connected as they could. I kissed her ear, and then behind her ear, and then down her jawline until I could reach no further, my face pressed to the side of hers. She fluttered and pulsed around me with each kiss, my little affections directly stimulating her insides as though I was driving into her.

“Oh, what are you doing to me?” Sam asked airily. “I can’t feel anything but you.”

I flexed my pelvic muscles, twitching and jostling my shaft inside her vice grip. Sam mewled a wordless demand for more stimulation, one of her hands moving to cradle her own temple as she tried to make sense of what she felt. I decided to oblige her, but not the way she expected.

With my mouth beside her ear, I whispered, “I love you, Samantha O’Brien. I loved you when I thought you were an ordinary girl who wasn’t permitted to see boys. I loved you when I thought you were a witch of minor power. I love you now that you’re embracing your new life as the most precise spellcaster in the world. I don’t want you to be top ten in the country when averaged with me. I want you and me to be one and two, exploring the depths of magic together.

“I love how dedicated you are. I love how deeply you commit to something when you decide it needs to be done. I love how principled you are, even if it means that you forgive others too quickly and are too critical of yourself. I love your loyalty, your burning sense of justice, and your intense idealism. You’re my princess, Sam, and you embody the elements wonderfully.

“I love how much you care for Beth — how willing you were to take her under your wing, to guide her into this world as best you could, knowing precisely what it would be like for someone with little personal power; how you embraced sharing your Mom with her, not an ounce of jealousy over their burgeoning relationship. I love how easily you took to trying to learn from her, to ensure she never felt like a lost girl alone with a bunch of strangers. You helped her feel useful and valuable and needed, too, without even thinking about it.

“I love you, Sam. I know you still haven’t forgiven yourself. I want you to try, princess. Look at where we ended up, Sam. Forget what happened in the past; stop holding it in. I love you. I want you. I want to hold you like this when you’re pregnant with our child, Sam. I know how caring and nurturing you’ll be. I know how amazing an aunt you’re going to be for Zoey’s and Beth’s. I want to grow old with you, Sam. I want to see the world, both sides of it, with you at my side and your hand in mine.”

Sam wiggled in my arms, letting go of my limbs to try and turn herself partially around.

“Yes, please, J. I want that. Need it. Kiss — Fucking kiss me, please.”

Although it wasn't quite perfect, I did my best to oblige her. Our slightly misaligned lips connected, completing the intimate loop of our bodies.

Sam came. More than that, she erupted. A harsh whine hissed out of her mouth directly into mine initially before being shouted out into the room as her arms failed her, and she flopped back onto the bed. She curled up into the fetal position, her hands covering her eyes and nestling her forehead as her knees pulled up towards her chest. Her toes curled and flexed in time with the rhythmic clamping of her sheath, her legs wiggling as she squirmed, tensing and turning her body involuntarily.

I let myself fill her. Still fully inserted into her, I flooded her channel, soaking every inch of her insides with my juices, doing my utmost to match hers. Her whine became a piercing shriek as she felt the deluge of boiling fluid pour inside her, carrying with it all of the virility and magic I possessed.

It faded into a gurgling, patchy moan as she panted through the aftershock. I held her close to me the entire time, giving little kisses to her head as she rode my wave, surfing it to oblivion and back.

It took her several minutes of doting nuzzling as her tunnel twitched, fluttered, and wriggled itself out of contractions before she said anything. It was prefaced by a little giggle, “Fine, James. I won’t argue anymore when you say you want to do something for me. I believe you. I mean, jeeze, I tried to tell you I didn’t need you to go down on me. I wanted to cum with you in me. I wanted to feel filled with you. Turns out, doesn’t matter that you already got me off twice in the last half hour. Without even moving inside me, you made me explode so hard I saw stars.”

She tried to pull off of me and turn around, but her limbs weren’t yet responding. I carefully withdrew from her and rotated her hips, then carried her momentum into pulling her onto my chest as I rolled onto my back.

“James, we need to change the sheets. I wasn’t joking when you said you made me explode.”

“It can wait a minute.”

“James, I’m leaking, and my stuff is soaking into the bed. Help me to the bathroom and then strip the sheets so the mattress stays dry, please?”

“As you wish, princess,” I said, eliciting a deep blush from her.

As I helped Sam sit up and began moving toward the side of the bed, I noticed that someone had joined us. I hadn’t heard when, utterly focused on Sam as I was, but it must have been at least five minutes ago based on the evidence I could see.

“Did you tell Beth she could watch you, too?”

Sam nodded, “It’s only fair. I watched her.”

“I think she liked yours a lot more than you liked hers,” I said, nodding towards the desk. Beth was in the chair, straddling it backward to face us. One of her hands was lodged into her shorts, and she was slumped over the back of the chair, seemingly having fallen asleep after sharing in the climax with Sam and me.

“Duh,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “If she only slipped in at the end, what would she have seen?”

“Me nuzzling against you lovingly and whispering into your ear?” I offered as I helped Sam stand, walking gingerly to the bathroom.

“She would’ve seen you pinning me in place, teasing me on the edge. You know, exactly what you talked about doing to her Tuesday?”

“Oh. Shit. I didn’t even realize. I just wanted to be close to you,” I said, helping her sit down on the toilet, her legs trembling as she squatted down and then shooting out from underneath her as she collapsed onto the padded seat.

She looked at me expectantly, before abandoning waiting for me to understand what she wanted, “James, go strip the bed and wake Beth up. Find out what she made for dinner. I love you, and today was perfect, especially the last half hour, but I don’t want to pee with you watching me. That’s one boundary I’m not crossing anytime soon.”

She giggled as the look of realization spread across my face and I abashedly left the bathroom. Beth groaned when I brushed her face on the way into the room but didn’t move at all, so I pulled the sheets off on my own. Sam had been right, as usual — her fluids had spread to nearly a third of the bed. I spent a moment conjuring a little magical fan above the mattress, pinning it in place in my mind so that it would continue oscillating the air throughout the room as I moved on to other things. I pulled open my drawers to grab a pair of shorts, and the noise must’ve connected with Beth because she sat straight up, looking at me with a startled and guilty glance that quickly turned into embarrassment instead as she regained her senses.

As Sam returned on still shaky legs, Beth explained that she hadn’t actually made dinner with Zenya. Given that it seemed none of us had any legitimate dietary requirements to satisfy while Cynthia was out, Beth had worked with our resident vampire to figure out some simple things she might like. Tonight had been a batch of tapioca pudding rather than dinner. Beth had enjoyed the texture of the balls in the bubble tea and thought Evgenia might as well.

Sam was eager to try it. She was so eager, in fact, that she didn’t bother getting completely dressed, simply donning one of my shirts. Where Beth was covered entirely with one of my shirts, the oversized garment draping over her petite frame like a dress, Sam made the impromptu apparel look scandalous. It was still too large for her, so it hung off one shoulder and gave her a plunging neckline, but it only reached her upper thigh. As we walked out into the kitchen, it bounced along with her, offering tantalizing views of her body. When we got to the kitchen, she leaned against the bar counter to face Zenya, drawing it up so that everything was still covered but seemingly just a millimeter out of view. Beth pulled me into the kitchen proper so that I didn’t remain frozen there all night, staring appreciatively at Sam’s backside.

Zenya was prepared for our arrival, having already dished out four bowls of pudding. She hesitantly and quietly joined us on the couch, only responding when Beth or I asked her something directly. Sam barely interacted after complimenting them both for the pudding, spending the rest of the evening draped over my side, smiling and staring at me, then blushing and looking away when I turned to her. Beth managed to get Zenya to talk about the different dishes she would be interested in and how she enjoyed spicy foods, particularly because she still had that sensation even if taste wasn’t something she could perceive.

Eventually, Beth, Sam, and I retired for the evening. As I slid into the bed, I had a bittersweet thought that, much like Zenya, I probably didn’t biologically require sleep anymore. That notion was intentionally tossed aside as my two mates joined me, their presence too enjoyable to relinquish without any pressing need. Sam went to bed in my shirt, wrapped in the crook of my arm as she lay against my chest. Beth claimed my other side, snuggling with her backside against mine, holding onto the arm I wrapped around her. In twenty-four hours, I realized, these arrangements would be tossed into the air as a certain blonde joined us. It was rather comforting to have spent time alone with Beth and Sam already, knowing they were on board with where things were going. It felt right. I was ready to finally welcome Zoey.