Courts and Cabals Omnibus: Books 1-3, page 17
“Three reasons. First: guns bring a lot of attention. Even though we’re out, supernaturals don’t like to bring unwanted attention on ourselves. Humans still outnumber us about a hundred to one, and no one wants an angry mob coming down on them.”
“That makes sense.” After what Lilith told me about how supernaturals decided to come out in the first place, it made sense that they didn’t want to draw more attention.
“Two: especially when dealing with Fae, cold iron ammo is regulated. The cabal has its own stockpile of the stuff, but it’s not exactly legal. If a local mage sweeps a crime scene and finds cold-iron residue, it automatically becomes the UN’s jurisdiction. The cabal’s human lawyers can make the typical harassment and misdemeanor charges that come with the cabal package go away, but if there’s a serious incident, the UN will send their special agents, and that always ends in a world of hurt.”
“I can believe that.” Just meeting Agent Dud, I could tell he was dangerous. He’d definitely killed people before.
“Last but not least, there’s tradition and pride involved.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her words.
“I know it sounds retarded,” she acknowledged. “But with these higher-level supernaturals, they’re told by everyone they’re the best, and they want to prove that. Going mano-a-mano in armed combat is the purest form of a dick-measuring contest. Anyone can kill anyone with a gun from a hundred meters away, but there’s something different about taking a life with your own two hands.” The way she said it suggested she had some experience.
“Have you . . .?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Twelve oh one,” she changed the topic and hopped to her feet. “Your grace period is over. Game on.”
I’d spread the dirt on my way to take a piss earlier, and now that it was go time, I half expected Dani to spring to her feet and kick the door into Chloe’s face, or whoever else Aveena was sending for my head.
That didn’t happen.
The big hand on the clock continued to move without caring that people were free to kill me now. When one o’clock rolled around, I stopped standing in the middle of the room and sat down on my bed. By two o’clock, my eyes were starting to shut despite my best efforts. Dani still looked rested, but I needed to do something to stay awake.
“Tell me about where you grew up?” I stifled a yawn.
“I grew up in the capital city. . . Moria.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” I asked, looking into her eyes for some clue that the dwarves hadn’t named their city after a grown-up fairy tale.
“Yeah,” her stony expression broke, and she chuckled. “Humans call it Mt. Whitney, but to my people it’s just called Hom.”
“Really . . . Hom? Like Home?”
“Yeah. It’s the oldest city in the Americas. No one here even remembers when we made the migration from the Eurasian or European ranges. They have fancy names, so as a fuck you to those elitist assholes, we just call it Hom.”
“These are the same elitist assholes who flunked you for being a sky-lover?” I clarified.
“They’re slightly less elitists, but probably bigger assholes,” she confirmed. “It’ll be easier for you if you accept I’m the coolest dwarf you’re ever going to meet, and leave it at that.”
“Got it,” I leaned back on the bed despite myself.
We were quiet for a long time, and I could feel myself drifting off to sleep despite a literal Sword of Damocles hanging over me.
“If I haven’t said it yet, thanks, Dani. You’re literally trying to save my life.”
She didn’t respond, and for a second, I thought she didn’t hear me. “Shut up and go to sleep, Cam,” she finally said. “It’s going to be a long few days.”
For maybe the first time since I’d met her, I did what Dani said.
Chapter 14
I was a little surprised when I woke up on Monday morning. After all Chloe’s talk and bluster, I’d survived seven hours past the deadline. During the night, Dani had nodded off where she sat by the closet. It wasn’t a good sign, but I was still breathing, so I couldn’t complain.
“Dani,” I prodded her shoulder. “Time to get . . .”
I didn’t even see her move. One second, she was asleep, and the next, my legs had been knocked out from under me, and gravity smashed me onto my back. The wind rushed out of me, and my lungs spasmed as I tried to draw breath.
“Fuck,” Dani’s face appeared above me. “Sorry, Cam, but in the future, best not to touch. Yell and I’ll wake up.”
“Ok,” I wheezed, and accepted an offered hand.
Mid pull-up, her head snapped around, and she dropped me. I smashed back into the ground as my door was kicked open, and Jerome rushed in ready to fight with two other Clan Whitepaw shifters. My best friend nearly impaled himself on Dani’s sword before pulling up short.
“Stop,” I wheezed as Dani stood guard over me. She looked like a child next to the massive shifters, but something in her stance told me it was an evenly matched fight. “She’s with me.”
I rolled onto my stomach and leveraged myself up. This time, I swatted away Dani’s hand and glared at her. She just shrugged and sheathed her sword.
“We should probably work out a shift change of some sort,” Jerome insisted. He’d been really close to the tip of that blade.
The dwarf and werewolf worked out my protection scheme as I caught my breath and stretched my back. It was ok in a few minutes, but having your lungs spasm in pain from blunt force trauma was not the way I wanted to start my day.
It got better from there. I had at least two allies by my side at all times. I didn’t even see Jerome smoke at all during his shift, or smell weed on him after he came back from classes. That was sacrifice. For the time being, I wasn’t holding court under the bleachers, which, due to the impending midterms, pissed people off. It was bad for business, but my inner circle was circulating word that someone was gunning for me. Most people just saw that as an excuse, but they’d never had a pissed-off Fae on their ass.
I caught sight of several groups of changelings during the day. All their eyes were drawn to the mystical tattoo on my hand, and several pulled out their phones. I don’t know if orders changed sometime during the day, but I didn’t get a “kill on sight” vibe from them by lunch.
“It looks like Lilith wasn’t lying about this mark. No one wants to fuck with my cabal.”
Lilith sat with me at lunch and dinner, and our conversations were surprisingly normal. She talked about her English midterm. Her professor was notorious for getting it done early, and she was confident she’d aced it. I had no reason to doubt her abilities.
My first midterm was on Tuesday. I was up late with Dani again, practicing with my knife and learning a few tricks. I tried to impress her at one point by pulling a move where I dropped the knife out of one hand, caught it with the other, and stabbed. Basically, I tried to pull an Arya Stark on her.
It didn’t work out as well for me as it did on Game of Thrones.
“That’s so fucking stupid! You take the cake for most retarded retard,” she didn’t hold back. “That shit doesn’t work in real life. Maybe, just maybe, if you’re a supernatural master swordsman, you can pull it off, but you’re a human facing Fae. All you did was leave yourself open and defenseless.” She seemed genuinely pissed at me, and where I usually didn’t give a shit what other people thought, her hurtful barrage put me down in the dumps.
“Sorry,” she said a few minutes later. Judging by how awkward it was, I doubted she’d apologized a dozen times in her whole life. “I just don’t want you to die. You’re pretty cool.”
That was the best compliment I’d ever gotten from her, right above being called a love-sick puppy. I passed out after midnight and woke up Tuesday with my head still attached to my shoulders.
“Fuck you, Chloe,” I felt like every second I was alive was a giant metaphysical finger in that bitch’s face.
This morning, Jerome and Dani had it worked out, and it was a smooth handoff. The problem today was that I had history with Miller, but more importantly, Aveena was in that class.
I entered the room wary and surrounded by my shifter bodyguards. They forewent their usual seats and clustered around me. Even Sam Little, whom I knew wasn’t really involved, took a protective seat between me and the noble Fae. His girlfriend, on the other hand, was happily chatting with Aveena until Miller arrived, and she returned to her seat right in front of me.
I didn’t think Sally McDougal would have trouble stabbing me in the eye if it got her family into the Fae’s good graces. Ireland was as close to home turf as the Fae had in our world, and buying some good will with Aveena, and through her, the Lady of Winter, was worth a little bad PR.
That made taking my history midterm very difficult. I was trying to read, comprehend, and answer my essay questions in detail, while also trying to watch everything around me at once. Before I knew it, Miller was calling one minute left. I knew he’d take sadistic pleasure in my not-up-to-snuff answers, and I guessed I’d get a B plus. I was good with that.
As far as I could tell, Aveena didn’t look at me for the entire hour. In fact, it was like things had reset to a week ago, and she didn’t even know I existed. I didn’t know if that reassured me or freaked me out. I tried not to think about it too much as I continued with my Tuesday. Lilith joined me for lunch and dinner again, but informed me that the people the cabal were sending got held up by something beyond their control. They were supposed to be there on Wednesday morning, but instead would be arriving on Thursday afternoon. I was fine with that. It gave me another night to practice with Dani.
The dwarf and I fell into our nightly routine: Lilith glamoured her into the building, we did homework until lights out, and then we practiced with our blades until I was too tired to be worked up about an impending assassination attempt and passed out. That night, I even managed to score a hit on her.
She looked surprised, like she’d expected me to be in one place, and I was in another. We had our scabbards on, so no one actually got hurt, but I still danced around like a fool at the minor win. She proceeded to kick my ass for the rest of the night to prove it was a fluke.
Wednesday morning rolled around, and I had a first-period break. Jerome and his crew didn’t show up to see me off at seven, and I got to sleep in. I awoke to Dani looking out the window at the morning sky, her sword of choice within arm’s reach.
“What’s up, sky-lover?” I greeted her, and she answered with the finger. “I’m gonna shower, I’ll be back soon.”
I assumed she stood guard outside while I bathed, but I never asked. I peeked my head out into the hallway to check if the coast was clear. The floor’s bathroom was right across from my room, so I hurried across and closed the door. The room was split into two sections. On the left were sinks, urinals, and shitters. On the right were six shower stalls. Everyone always wanted the two handicapped ones at the end. They were bigger, and since most people were in class, the showers were empty.
“Sweet,” this was what I loved about having first period off. It was worth it to miss breakfast.
I plopped my little shower caddy – complete with my knife – in the back corner of the tiled floor and turned on the water. The wave of warmth traveling down my body felt great. I closed my eyes and let it wash over my face. The soreness from the workouts was fading faster every night, and the muscles I didn’t use daily were getting stronger.
I heard footsteps approaching, but didn’t think anything of it until the curtains were ripped away. Water blinded me for a second, and I prayed the pendant I always wore was enough to deflect the first blow. A hand grabbed the back of my head. I tensed and tried to pull back, but Chloe was so much stronger. My abs hardened in a futile attempt to deflect the glamour dagger she was going to ram into my gut . . . but it never came. Instead, a tongue pierced through my lips and swirled around my mouth.
I finally blinked the water out of my eyes, “Dani?”
The dwarf was naked as the day she was born. Her massive tits pressed up against my stomach. I was over a foot taller than her and was partly shielding her from the water cascading around us. Her reddish-brown hair was in a single, long braid that went all the way to the top of her ass.
“I waited for you to make the first move, but it looks like you’re a chicken shit, so I’ve got to make this happen.” She pulled my lips back down to hers with one hand and grabbed my cock with the other. She stroked back and forth, and I responded to the stimulation with a groan as blood flowed south.
My logical brain froze for a second, but the brain in my penis took over and directed my hands to grab that ass, and what an ass it was. Dani was sturdily built. Stocky, at five feet, she might be confused for chubby at a distance, but there was not an ounce of fat on the girl. It was visible muscle. Dwarf women were strong, and Dani was the epitome of that strength.
My hands met unyielding flesh, and I smacked that ass as she continued to jerk me off. “Dani,” I gasped when we finally came up for breath. “Lilith . . .?”
The dwarf pulled back the curtain to the shower to show her phone. It was pointed at us, and hopefully on a secure livestream. With the backdrop of her room, I clearly saw Lilith playing with her pussy.
“Don’t mind me,” she replied conversationally, and gestured for us to continue.
Dani grabbed the sides of my face, turned me back to face her, and continued to make out with me. I’d only been with a couple of women in my life, and the best way to describe Dani was . . . aggressive. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t shy about asking.
She stopped jerking me off and trailed kisses down my chest. My cock throbbed as she got closer and closer before licking me from base to tip. “Fuck me,” I moaned.
“I intend to,” she replied, and then started working my shaft with her mouth.
It wasn’t as good as Lilith, but it was still fucking awesome, and even better, I got to maneuver her head. In fact, she wanted me to. I grabbed the back of Dani’s head and set the tempo. The few times I made her deepthroat me, she gagged as my tip hit the back of her throat. She was a lot of woman, but she was shorter than Lilith. Something had to give if she wanted to fit all eight inches of me down her throat.
After a great blowjob, I pulled out of her mouth. A ribbon of saliva connected my dick with her face for a moment before the water washed away. As she stood up, it was my turn to be aggressive. I pushed her up against the tiled wall and grabbed one of her legs to lift it up. The height differential was an issue, but I didn’t have a problem hoisting her up and lining my tip up with her entrance.
Mom’s had pick-up-a-car-to-save-the-baby strength; guys had pick up a girl to fuck her strength.
“Oh gods below!” Dani inhaled as I slowly pushed up into her. She gripped my back to the point of pain, but I pushed on. “Fuck me, Cam!”
I did as she ordered me to. I plowed into her again and again, her hard nipples pressing into my chest like diamonds trying to cut glass. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but eventually my strength was spent. Dani was breathing hard, and I registered bite marks on my shoulder. She hadn’t drawn blood, but it was close.
“Don’t stop,” she begged as my cock eased out of her and I set her back on the ground. She pushed me into the back of the stall and turned to back up into me.
Her ass swallowed my cock whole, and her walls tensed with her first orgasm. The tightness almost set me off, and I grabbed onto her hips to keep my balance.
“Don’t you dare cum in me, Cam,” she ordered as she worked herself in and out of me. “I know you’ve got some super spunk, and I don’t want none of that.” She was breathless, but the order was clear.
“I can do that,” I gripped her hips tighter and plowed forward. Her pleasure-filled scream shook the stall. Apparently, Dani was a screamer.
I took a second to look at the phone. We’d left the curtain open, and I had a clear view of Lilith going to town on herself. She was teasing her clit between two fingers and squeezing her breast. Our eyes met, and she bit her lower lip playfully. I smiled back and returned my attention to Dani. I switched my grip from her hips to her single braid. With a yank, I pulled her head up. By her groan, she liked that, and by the hungry look on Lilith’s face, she wanted me to fuck the dwarf harder.
Dani’s legs were shaking now as I continued to pound her pussy, but she wasn’t done giving orders. “Stick your thumb in my ass,” she commanded.
“What?” I’d never been asked to do that before, and hesitated.
“For once in your fucking life, Cam, fucking do what I tell you and stick your motherfucking thumb up my motherfucking ass!”
My thumb jammed forward and into a place I’d never ventured before. It seemed to do the trick, and she nearly collapsed. I was forced to grab her hips and hold her up as her legs shook uncontrollably.
“Right there . . . right there . . . yes . . . fuck yes!” she yelled, and I felt her tighten around me with her second orgasm.
That was it for me. “I’m gonna . . .” she pulled out of me so fast, twirled, and practically fell on her knees before me with her mouth open. I only gave my rod one jerk before streams of jizz erupted out of me.
The first was aimed low and splattered all over her tits. I gave an involuntary jerk up, and the second landed right on her face, but missed her mouth. I had no control over the upward trajectory from that point. The third stream went into her hair, while the rest went over her head until I ran out of oomph. As the last bit of my seed dribbled out of me, her tongue grazed my cock and coaxed a final trickle into her mouth.
We both just stood there for a second as we rode the pleasure wave back down to earth. She slowly got to her feet and ran her hands over her tits and face to clean off my jizz. “I think we both need a shower,” she laughed.
I gave a weak chuckle. She was a dwarf and able to bounce back from these things quicker. Human me was still trying to catch my breath, and I wondered if I was going to have bruises around my crotch from her ass smacking into me.
