Page 14 of Too Many Beds

From the moment Asher Larsen stepped across the ancient, boot-worn threshold of Gannon Academy for the Elemental Arts, the powerful scent of another mage’s aura became his entire world.

The cinnamon-infused trail was thick in the Academy’s courtyard, lingered faintly in Principal Everett’s office as Asher dutifully endured his induction lecture on academic integrity and mage honour, and weaved through the various classrooms and training areas he was shown on the ground floor.

“So that’s the serious stuff out of the way,” chirped Bonnie, the sprightly, auburn-haired student who had been assigned to show Asher around. “We don’t get much free time, and I expect you’ll have even less with being a trimester behind, but when you do , everyone hangs out in the Attic.”

The Attic turned out to be a low ceilinged room on the top floor of the old building. It was an informal space, softly lit, with mismatched lounges and low tables dotted across the floor. Asher couldn’t see any professors amid the thick crowd of gathered Academy students.

The mage cohort groups were indicated by the number of pips on the uncomfortably high, starched collars of their black uniforms. Three for the senior year. Two for the junior. And one for the first-year recruits to which Asher now belonged: raw with magical potential but no formal training.

Although, as Bonnie had reminded him with inexplicable cheer, at least the rest of them had spent their first trimester studying at the Academy. Asher’s attendance had been delayed by the rains coming early to his family’s farm, and judging by the lengthy admonition he’d just received from Principal Everett, helping to plant the crops that would keep his kin alive through the next winter wasn’t an adequate reason for turning up to Gannon late.

Asher, despite the scowl he’d worn throughout the lecture, couldn’t find it in himself to argue. He was dreadfully, hopelessly behind the rest of his cohort, and already despairing at how he’d possibly manage to catch up. He had spent the two-day journey to the Academy wet, miserable, and wondering if it was even worth the attempt.

What if he spent most of a year buried in books and gruelling exams, only to wash out?

Only half of the first-years graduated to the second, and half of them wouldn’t make it to the third. Gannon Academy didn’t give second chances, and a failed, uncertified mage was as good as no mage at all.

He should direct his efforts into woodworking or tanning instead, Asher had been telling himself as he stumbled wearily up the stone steps to the school. Spend the time earning a trade instead of wasting it on a fool’s dream.

But that was when he’d smelled the cinnamon. It was more than a pleasant scent: it was an energy , utterly intoxicating and mesmerisingly magnetic. It overwhelmed his senses even now, making it difficult to concentrate on Bonnie’s chatter and impossible to smell the mug of mead she was waving under his nose.

“Asher. Asher, are you listening?”

The aura was actually stronger here than it had been downstairs. Rich and exhilarating, and making Asher’s mouth water with need. He felt himself being pulled deeper into the room, drifting through the crowd of students and sensing Bonnie’s bemusement as he left her behind.

The cinnamon-tasting aura wrapped itself fondly around him and offered gentle nudges towards the back of the Attic with an insistent compulsion that was impossible to ignore. Eyes watched him pass: the second and third-years with curiosity, and the first-year mages with a wary assessment as they sized up their new competition.

Asher was no competition. He was tired from his journey, overwhelmed and weary, and already feeling woefully inadequate against the confident, competent students who surrounded him.

A man near the far end of the hall glanced up with an irritated expression as he passed, his hand lifting as though to touch Asher, and then aborting the movement just as abruptly. Asher swayed like he’d been hit, the invisible force locking down each of his muscles to prevent him from walking past.

This was the source of all that delicious energy.

He was a first-year around Asher’s own age, with thick dark hair that framed a pale, scowling face. His eyes were piercing and violet, his nose thin, and he was the type of handsome often termed brooding or tortured. His was an aloof beauty, the kind that would be ruined by a smile, but he certainly wasn’t doing anything as soft or human as smiling now.

The man—Asher’s soulmate, the energy in the air between them could be nothing else—looked Asher up and down where he stood frozen in front of him.

Asher waited for the mage to acknowledge him. To greet him, to embrace him, to...kiss him. This stranger had stirred a desperate need within him, one that eclipsed even the necessity of air. And that inexplicable force that had drawn him in, overriding all of his senses and sensibilities and making him yearn for someone he’d never even met… surely he had to feel the same?

But the dark-haired man’s mouth twisted in distaste and he tossed a handful of red sparks in Asher’s direction, making him flinch.

“Fuck off, recruit,” he said disdainfully.

Then he nodded farewell to his companions, pushed past Asher with an unnecessarily vicious shoulder check, and disappeared into the crowds of the Attic.

“Oh,” Bonnie said with a long sigh, appearing at Asher’s side. “Oh, dear.”

H is name was Xem Whitlock, Bonnie told him. She pronounced it ‘Zem’, and it was only much later that Asher realised it was spelt with a X in the exotic way of the other mage’s native icelands. But Asher was more bespelled by the sound of it, and how it wrapped around his tongue in the same way Xem’s aura tangled itself around him in tones of cinnamon spice, heat, and need.

Bonnie also told him Xem was out of his league, by a thousand times, honey . Asher would have been offended, except she’d multiplied the number when cataloguing her own chances with him and pulled a disappointed face when explaining that Xem favoured men. “But even as adorable as you are,” Bonnie had added, eyeing Asher’s pale curls and the biceps that were more pudgy than toned, “neither one of us should expect to warm that particular mage’s bed anytime soon.”

“Why?”

“He barely tolerates anyone but the highest ranked third-year mages. The prick is insanely powerful.”

Asher wasn’t surprised. The sheer strength of the aura that continued to draw him into its thrall was akin to the tornados that would sweep through his family’s farm every couple of years. Capable of rattling doors and hurling livestock and tearing Asher limb from limb.

Disappointingly, there wasn’t a trace of it in the cramped, draughty room he’d been assigned to share with Dawson, another first-year. Clearly Xem had never been in there, and while his scent drifted faintly through a couple of the other student bedrooms, it was strongest behind the door at the furthest end of the corridor to Asher’s own.

“Swap with me,” Asher begged Bonnie at the end of his first week at Gannon, unable to take the desolation any longer. He’d been tossing and turning for hours each night, feeling like a man dying of thirst and knowing all the water he could ever want was sleeping a handful of beds down the corridor. Bonnie might not have been the lucky student who shared Xem’s room but at least she was closer, and getting closer was all Asher could think about.

The addiction had weaved its way into his soul. It gnawed at him, eroding his interest and attention in anything else until his whole world had become Xem .

What time the mage woke each morning. That he shared a room with Pippah Shae, another first-year student. What he liked to eat for breakfast down in the main dining hall and how he always finished his eggs prior to starting on his bacon, each type of food neatly polished off before he began on another. Xem’s impressive mastery over the four elements: not just the fire he’d thrown at Asher that first day in the form of sparks, but also the rich strength of earth, the deceptively gentle caress of air, and the hungry demand of water.

And how his presence made everything…better . Being near Xem was soothing and satisfying and the only time Asher felt he could breathe freely. The distress he suffered whenever they were separated wasn’t painful, exactly, but it was like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. A cough that wouldn’t leave. An urge that wouldn’t ease.

A distracting, agitating need.

“Swap rooms with you?” Bonnie repeated, confused. “Why?”

“I just...”

Asher trailed off. He had no good reason to give her: identifying any objective merit of her room over his would hardly give her the incentive to agree. And while his friend was unhappily aware of his obsession with Xem—she could hardly fail to be, considering how mindless it made him—telling her that being a few yards closer to the other man each night would make him feel better seemed...pathetic.

It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

Yet from the pitying look she was giving him, Bonnie had already figured it out.

“I can’t,” she said. “You know the beds are ranked.”

“What?”

An exasperated sigh was breathed his way. “Asher, have you been paying any attention at all?”

No .

“Yes?” But it came out hesitant, a question he hadn’t meant to ask, and he winced as he said it.

“Our rank within our student cohort grants us proportional entitlements at Gannon,” Bonnie explained with a patience Asher didn’t deserve. “The higher your rank, the fewer shifts you’re assigned to work in the laundry. You’re permitted longer bookings in the training rooms. You get the better bedrooms.”

She waved a hand up the corridor towards the window that overlooked the Academy grounds, where the door to the room Xem shared with Pippah was firmly shut. “Top of the year reside down there: larger rooms, comfier beds, fewer rats trying to gnaw on your toes.”

Then Bonnie rapped her knuckles on Asher’s open door. “Bottom of the year—and new recruits who haven’t yet been ranked,” she added hastily, catching the crestfallen look on his face, “sleep all the way over here. I hope you took my advice about the vermin?”

He’d completely forgotten what she might have told him to do, but coming from a farm, rats didn’t bother Asher.

No, what was concerning was the number of beds between him and the mage who had quickly become his entire focus. The one who hadn’t even bothered to speak to him since that first day, perpetually haughty and unapproachable, and sending Asher into a confusing state of miserable delight. Or delightful misery. The two made an impossible combination: the mere taste of Xem in the air could invigorate Asher in a way he’d never felt before, but not being able to get closer was absolute agony .

T he blood on its whiskers and claws suggested that the huge black rat was the same one Asher had spotted in his room last night when he’d woken to use the privy. A vicious, ugly beast, as were its two companions, but that didn’t mean any of them deserved the fate their professor had just described.

“You’re making the second-years practice their air magic by suffocating innocent creatures?” Asher repeated in disbelief, straightening up from where he’d been inspecting the cage on the desk. The three murine occupants scurried frantically within the confined space. “That’s fucking barbaric!”

“Language, Mr. Larsen,” Professor Allarie chided, as though swearing was worse than the literal torture she’d so casually tossed out as explanation for the captive rats. “What would you have the students do, practice on each other ?”

“At least mages can consent!” he argued stubbornly, feeling hot fury spark up his spine. The rest of the first-year class watched on silently with wide eyes and gleeful intrigue.

“Does that mean you’re volunteering as my next class’ test subject?” The professor’s voice was laced with dark threat.

Asher set his jaw and folded his arms. He tried not to imagine what being deprived of his air might feel like. “Yes.”

But she dismissed him with a contemptuous glance, turning to face the rest of the class. “As I said before that pointless interruption, you’ll be doing single element casts with your partners today. Use the techniques we went through yesterday to disable-”

“They’re terrified ,” Asher pointed out, still bristling with horror. “You have no right to do this!”

“Speak again on the subject, Mr. Larsen,” Professor Allarie said irritably, “and you’ll be paired with Mr. Whitlock for the rest of the trimester.”

Asher looked at Xem, irrationally pleased to find him already glaring back. His violet eyes shone with murderous intent and his knuckles hissed dangerously with sparks as he casually rolled his wrists where they rested on his desk. No one in their right mind would risk Xem Whitlock being assigned as their permanent duelling partner, unless they planned on spending life bruised and beaten.

“Very good,” their professor said. She smirked, satisfied her threat had landed. “Now we’ll-”

“I would have thought mages were above animal cruelty,” Asher said loudly. “Clearly, we’re not as advanced and progressive as this Academy likes to claim.”

The room descended into stunned murmurs, and those students closest to Asher suddenly found themselves other places to stand.

“Mr. Whitlock,” hissed Allarie, her lips drawn into a tight line. “It seems Mr. Larsen needs to learn a thing or two about when to hold his tongue.”

“It would be my pleasure to teach him, professor,” Xem responded with a cool cadence, rising gracefully from his chair and gliding over to stand before Asher. Ever the teacher’s pet with his advanced skill and smug diligence, he received a level of respectful reverence from the professors that was rarely shown to other students.

His uniform—the pretentious black Gannon coat, tan breeches, and shiny boots—was as immaculate as always: neatly buttoned, starched and polished, and a clear contrast to Asher’s inability to even keep his shirt tucked in or his suspenders untangled.

Asher squirmed under the intensity of Xem’s gaze. Being this close to the other mage was doing unexpected things to Asher: sending heat through his cheeks and down his neck, hitching his breath, and weakening his legs. He could also feel his cock thickening uncomfortably beneath his breeches. It seemed Xem could breathe life into it with his mere proximity, and Asher desperately hoped it would go unnoticed by the rest of the class.

“The rest of you, pair up,” the professor was saying, although her voice sounded muted like he was hearing it from underwater. In contrast, the small sigh that escaped Xem’s lips as he shifted his weight between his feet was a roar in Asher’s ears.

“I did not realise standing still would pose such difficulty for you,” Xem said dryly.

Asher gave a delighted smile. He didn’t care that the words were drenched in sarcasm, or that he was apparently wriggling so much the mage would bother commenting on it. Because Xem was talking to him.

He had not been so blessed since the contemptuous dismissal that first day when he’d approached Xem in the Attic.

“And I didn’t realise you’d be so…” Asher trailed off, having enthusiastically begun the retort without an idea of where it was going. “I mean, you…”

Xem snorted. “So is talking in full sentences, it seems.”

That time, Asher flushed with humiliation and ducked his head. Apparently his body had decided what it should do when faced with dauntingly powerful men, and that was to shiver and harden.

“Asher,” Xem said.

Trying but failing to suppress the full body shudder that rippled over him at the sound of his name in Xem’s mouth—and the thought of what else of Asher’s he would enjoy having Xem take between his lips—Asher forced himself to lift his chin and meet the intense violet gaze staring back at him.

There was open amusement on the other mage’s face. “You know I’m going to beat you in this duel,” he said. Not as a bluff or a boast, but as an unequivocal statement as emotionless as conveying the time of day.

“Yes,” agreed Asher, equally as certain.

“Then why the fuck are you smiling?”

He was saved from having to reply by Professor Allarie giving them a clipped command to begin. Magic immediately blasted out from the hands of each student in the classroom, from jets of water to waves of fire, but Xem hadn’t moved an inch.

Neither had Asher.

“By all means, recruit,” Xem murmured. “Take the first shot. It’s the only one you’ll get.”

Asher heaved in a breath, raised both hands, and began the somatic movements required to perform elemental magic. Left palm facing down and tipping to an angle towards his right wrist as it rotated anti-clockwise, and then thumb out, tucked in, out again. He was proud of himself when he brought his hands together and his forefingers touched perfectly, fingertip to fingertip, because he’d never achieved such an adept casting before. A flawless icicle flew from his outstretched index finger, three inches long and with a point sharper than an arrow.

It hurtled towards Xem’s unprotected chest. Asher watched in horror, predicting the way it would split his uniform beneath the Academy’s crest, pierce his heart, and blossom blood. How Xem would fall to his knees, eyes wide and accusing, and how Asher would feel in killing his soulmate.

He leapt forward and swept his right hand through the air to dispel the magic. But the hand movement hadn’t been correctly executed, and now there wasn’t time to stop the projectile as it…

…as it dissipated into steam a foot away from Xem.

The mage raised an incredulous eyebrow at him.

“I said you could take a shot,” he drawled. “Not that I’d let it land.” A frown formed on his flawless forehead. “Although why you chose something so dangerous if you truly believed I wouldn’t defend myself is an interesting question.”

Because Asher hadn’t believed he could do it. He’d never cast magic that well before, and had aimed for an ice shard with the expectation of getting a puff of snow.

Had it been Xem’s presence…his soulmate’s presence, that had allowed his magic to flourish?

“I-” was all Asher got out before Xem’s delicate, pale hands flashed in movement and something struck out at Asher with impossible speed.

He had just enough time to recognise it as a vine—thick and gnarly, like the roots he used to hack through to prepare new soil back on his family’s farm—before it lashed across his stomach, sending him staggering backwards. Winded, Asher raised his hands to defend himself, only for the vine to split in two and lunge at his wrists. They looped around his hands and forced them apart.

Xem moved closer with slow, deliberate steps, using his mastery over earth to thread smaller vines between each of Asher’s fingers and render his magic helpless. It showed impressive control over the element, skill that Asher could appreciate even as he struggled against the restraints that now held his arms outstretched.

He was also incredibly turned on.

He’d thought the magical traces Xem left in his wake were addictive, but being touched by his magic itself was a whole other high: an erotic combination of pain and pleasure, as though Asher had been edged for hours and was only now being promised release. His skin tingled where it was wrapped in the vines, hot and achy. He fought the urge to moan.

Xem, violet eyes glittering, touched his thumb to the little finger of his other hand and Asher found himself dragged backwards by the vines around his wrists. His back slammed hard into the classroom wall and he grunted, trying to flex his fingers but discovering them entirely immobilised.

Fuck.

He was now so hard beneath his breeches, it was painful. He was grateful for the duel as an excuse for why his breathing was so ragged, but being pinned to the wall like a butterfly in a collector’s case was not helping to hide his obvious erection. All attention in the classroom had been drawn their way, the other duels quickly discarded in favour of watching someone else’s suffering, and Asher saw more than one person glance down between his legs. Their snickers made his blushing return in full force, and this time he couldn’t even hide his face, for another vine slithered across his neck to hold his head firmly in place against the wall.

Xem, entirely predictably, had annihilated him.

And the price of Asher getting to feel the mage’s magic directly on his skin would be his very imminent, very public, humiliation.

“You surpassed all my expectations, Asher. That was even more pathetic than I could have imagined.” Xem offered him a dangerous smirk. He didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard; all activity in the classroom had ceased but for the eager way the other students’ heads were flickering between the pair of them.

Professor Allarie made no attempt to intervene, showing sudden and undivided interest in wiping her glasses.

“What was it, two seconds? Maybe a grand total of three?” taunted Xem. “Tell me you at least last longer than that in bed.”

Asher choked on a breath. Hearing the word bed in Xem’s enticing accent, the consonants morphed to make it sound like there was an r in there, had stolen all thoughts from his head. He tucked it safely into the back of his mind so he could examine it later, play with it and caress it and bring himself to release to the sound of it, and instead tried to match Xem’s casual attitude.

“Why? You looking for tips on how to keep it up?”

Someone laughed. It was abruptly cut off when they realised who they were laughing at, but it was enough to make Xem’s pale face flash with fury.

“Says the mage sporting a hard-on from having his arse kicked,” Xem shot back, because really, it had been too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed. There were braver chuckles from the crowd this time, and he bared his teeth at Asher. “Although that contemptible performance makes me question if you deserve the title of mage at all. Perhaps you should just trot on home to daddy’s farm, hmm?”

Wait. How did Xem know Asher had grown up on a farm? A lucky guess? Or…had he been asking around about him? Had he not been as disinterested in Asher as he’d pretended?

Asher swallowed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His body—and his mind—would never let him leave, not while Xem remained at Gannon Academy. Asher had already figured out that no one else could sense the intoxicating magnetism of the other mage, or they’d have been plastered to Xem’s side all hours of the day and night. It seemed it was just him who lived in torment.

The world had a strange sense of humour, assigning Xem Whitlock to be his soulmate.

Not that Asher resented it. Xem was clever and quick, ridiculously talented, and had a body that made even the school uniform look attractive. He was just…not fond of Asher. At all.

“Then if you think you deserve your place at this Academy,” the other mage said cuttingly, “prove it to us, recruit. Get yourself free.”

Xem waved a hand and the vines around Asher’s left wrist disintegrated, releasing his arm and allowing his fingers to move freely. But his right hand remained trapped, bound to the wall with the strength of mortar.

Prick. They all knew students weren’t taught one-handed magic until their third year, so no one could seriously expect Asher to pull it off. And maybe if he’d had a knife he could have tried sawing through the vines, but blunt fingernails weren’t going to do shit against the strength of the elemental magic that Xem wielded.

The man just wanted everyone to see him fail.

Summoning up a smirk of his own, Asher shook out his left wrist and then manoeuvred his hand. It formed a one-handed gesture, but one Asher was far more familiar with than advanced third-year magic, and it made Xem’s expression drop into a stony glare while the other students tried to hide their appreciative snorts.

The mage formed a somatic spell with careless annoyance. Vines instantly materialised back around Asher’s left hand, encasing the rude gesture it had sent Xem’s way, and more sprang into existence to wrap around his legs and chest.

“How about you take that middle finger, Asher,” Xem said in a low, dangerous voice, “and put it to better use?”

Asher hissed in surprise as he was unceremoniously peeled off the wall and manoeuvred by the vines around his limbs down onto all fours. And then Xem used his earth magic to drag his offending left hand behind his back, forcing it under his breeches and down the crack of his arse.

Someone whistled. Asher felt his cheeks flush again, but this time with rage. The fucker better not-

“Alright, that’s enough,” their professor said in a rather half-hearted way. “Get back to your seats.”

Xem cocked his head, holding Asher’s furious gaze.

And for a moment Asher thought he might do it anyway, might actually make him finger himself in front of the whole class, and the expressions on the other students’ faces said they thought so too.

And then Xem shrugged and turned away as if it meant nothing to him either way, vanishing the vines without warning so Asher collapsed to the floor. He heaved in a breath, glaring at the tiles beneath his face.

“ What ?” Professor Allarie shrieked a moment later, and the alarmed tone forced Asher to lift his head.

She was staring at the cage that was still resting on her desk, yet its metal door was scuffed and twisted as if something had blasted through it. The resulting gap was more than large enough for a rat to escape, and now the cage sat empty.

“Mr. Larsen, I’ll have you in detention every night for the rest of the year!” Her voice had gone shrill, her eyes bulging as she rounded on him with an accusing finger, and Asher’s heart sank. That was as good as expelling him. Without the time to practice, he’d never be able to catch up to the other students and then-

“I’m afraid I had Asher’s feeble magic all tied up, just like the rest of him,” Xem drawled from the other end of the classroom where he had his booted feet insolently propped up on his desk, and there were a few tittering laughs in response.“Regrettably, it couldn’t have been him, professor.”

Allarie threw Asher a disgusted look but didn’t accuse him further.

No, the rats’ rescue hadn’t been Asher’s doing.

Because as he took his seat at the front of the classroom and stared at the mangled cage door a couple of feet away, the scent of cinnamon wafted from the bent metal in Xem’s unique magical signature.

A sher was seated on the floor in a dim corner of the Academy library, trying and failing to cast the vine magic that Xem had used on him earlier that day. After he’d found the relevant textbook, he’d retreated further into the stacks to hide from the other students. He didn’t want them to see how he’d tried it fifty...sixty times now, each attempt resulting in miserable failure.

He frowned down at the open book in his lap and tried again. Little fingers bent and held tightly to the palm by the thumbs. The three middle fingers turned to face first the caster, and then the victim—in this case, an innocent oil lamp that had, so far, avoided all of Asher’s efforts to wrap it in restraining vines. And then a final push was meant to finalise the casting and make the earth magic materialise.

It did not.