It’s launch day for the new edition of THE INCUBUS AND THE ANGEL: Book Three in the Magic University Series! I’m so pleased once again to have brand new cover art from the fantastic Fox Estacado Arts.
The ebook, audiobook, and paperback editions should all be live now from all your favorite online retailers, and your favorite local booksellers should be able to order copies if they don’t have it in stock!
Print ISBN: 978-1-62601-121-2 • Paperback $16.99
Digital ISBN: 978-1-62601-122-9 • Ebook $6.99
Amazon • Smashwords • B&N • AllRomance ebooks • iTunes • Indiebound (forthcoming once bookstores start carrying the book)
Under the cut, an excerpt from the book and a large size version of the cover:
Excerpt from Chapter Two:
Kyle has a female friend, Lindy Carmichael, who is an enchanter. Like him, she grew up in the mundane world and had to learn about magic later in life. Lately she’s having trouble with her magic and is unable to power her spells. Kyle has a temporary solution for that: as a lightning rod he can transfer magical energy to a sexual partner. He and Lindy decide to have sex the night before her exam, and Kyle insists part of the ritual is he should take her out to dinner first…
Chapter Two
Kyle came out of the shower with his skin steaming. In the winter, there was no such thing as a shower too hot for him. In the mirror, he could see he looked boiled, like a lobster, but the redness would fade fast enough when he had to walk outside in the chilly wind.
He looked through his clothes while Glendon ignored him, lost in the world of his earphones while he wrote something with great concentration in his journal. Kyle pulled out a green silk button-down shirt that was sort of nice. He wouldn’t freeze if he wore the sweater with the house crest over the shirt, but he didn’t really want to wear that out on a date. He put the green shirt on anyway and decided if he was going to perform an energetic ritual later, he might as well work on using magic to keep himself warm in the meantime. He got dressed the rest of the way and then sat on the end of his bed, holding his palms so they faced each other as if he were carrying a large soap bubble.
A ball of heat, that was what he was carrying. He let it build up between his hands like an electric charge, his cock surging along with the blood in his palms. With each quick beat of his pulse, he grew warmer and more aroused.
He wondered if maybe it was too much, and if it would scare her if he showed up at her door so obviously erect. Well, at least his dress slacks didn’t show it off the way his jeans would have. And he would keep his coat on for a bit, while they walked to the restaurant. Maybe by the time he took it off he wouldn’t be quite so swollen.
He combed his hair. Glendon looked up. “Big date tonight?”
“Er, well, yeah, pretty much.” Kyle said.
That made Glendon blush. “Oh. I was making a joke. I figured you were just out of clean laundry. Um, never mind. Have fun?”
Kyle smiled at him. “It’s okay, Glend. You can make fun of my clothes anytime you want.”
“Thanks. I think.”
Kyle shrugged on his coat, made sure he had his wallet, and then headed down the stairs. He passed Zelda on the way and wondered if he imagined that a cat-like hiss of disapproval followed him down the stairwell.
He didn’t feel the slightest bit cold walking to Camella House. In fact, he had to keep his coat open to not overheat.
Lindy was waiting for him in the common room. She had dressed up, too, Kyle noticed, wearing heels and a dress that showed off her long legs and somewhat coltish knees. He’d never seen her in a dress that he could remember.
“Hi,” he said, as she came up to him and he placed a peck on her cheek. She was slightly taller than he was, at least in heels.
“Hi,” she said. “So, where to?”
Kyle had thought all week about where they should go. He was living on the small stipend that his fellowship allowed him, even extended as it was by the fact that at Veritas he rarely had to purchase textbooks. Somewhere too expensive was right out, but he certainly wasn’t going to take her for burritos or pizza. “Have you eaten at the Vietnamese noodle place?”
“Ooh, no, but I’ve wanted to try it,” she said with an eager smile. She buttoned up her coat, which was the same length as her dress, just above the knee.
He nearly said something about worrying that she might be cold, then decided to simply slip his hand into hers as they stepped outside. He wasn’t wearing gloves and neither was she, so her eyebrows went up as she felt how warm he was.
The restaurant was not far at all, just down Dunster Street, and soon they were seated in the window, watching people hurry by. Kyle found himself blushing when Lindy took his hand under the table and smiled. “You’re like a furnace.”
“I’m…”
“You don’t have to explain. I can feel it. God, Kyle, it’s like you give real meaning to the term ‘hot.'” Her smile was real, happy. She held his hand until the waiter brought them each a huge bowl of hot soup, full of noodles and thin sliced beef and fresh herbs.
They exchanged small talk. She was from New Jersey, but had moved to Minnesota when she was in grade school, then back to New Jersey after the discovery that she was magical. “You must have a rough time with the winters here,” she said.
“I did at first, anyway. And this one really feels like it’s dragging on.”
“It’s nowhere near as bad as last year,” she said, “when the snow started in November and only stopped when ice storms came instead.”
Kyle suddenly didn’t want to talk about the weather. Last year’s sudden freezes and wild winter weather had been Frost’s doing. “I seem to have learned a way to beat the cold, temporarily,” he said, trying to smile but only managing a wry look.
“I’ve read a little about what you’re doing,” Lindy said, leaning forward over her soup bowl. “You couldn’t do it all the time though, right? Or you’d burn out?”
“For most Esotericists that’d be true,” Kyle said. Most magic users had a limit to how much energy they could draw from the world around them merely by thinking about it. Being a lightning rod, Kyle was somewhat different in that regard, but he didn’t want to talk too much about how different he was from other magic users. “Right now it’s this soup that’s doing it, though!”
She laughed. When she finished her soup, she wanted to hold his hand again, and that made him smile. “Forgive me,” she said. “But I just want to be touching you.”
“I don’t mind,” he assured her.
She blushed then, and looked down. “This is different.”
“Is it?”
“Well, except it’s not. I mean, it feels like a regular date, except what’s different is I know we’re going to have sex at the end of it. No guessing and wondering if we are, and no wondering if it’s going to be good…”
Kyle didn’t know what to say to that last part, so he just sat there, slightly stunned by the compliment.
“Oh, come on, Kyle, I’ve been suitemates with three of your lovers now. I can’t ever remember one of them saying anything but glowing things about how you are in bed.”
“Um…” Kyle hadn’t really thought girls would talk about that sort of thing with each other. Apparently, he was wrong in that regard. “I’ll do my best.”
She moved his hand to her knee, which felt incredible under his fingertips because of the stockings she wore. He ran his fingers up and down the inner part of her thigh, not reaching under her dress by more than an inch or two, but barely suggesting where the touch could go. She shivered.
“What next?” she asked, her voice husky with desire.
“Chocolate,” he said, his voice just as low. “Chocolate, and then back to your room.”
She crooked her head. “And chocolate is part of the ritual?”
“Don’t you think it should be?”
“Oh definitely, though I can’t quite say why. I suppose there is something to the whole Valentine’s Day thing, though, isn’t there?” She got a thoughtful look on her face. “That’s the sort of thing that ought to be in a Handbook for Prodigies and Foundlings, don’t you think?”
“For sure!” Kyle felt a kinship with her when she said that. He’d been stumbling his way through the magical world for three years now, constantly running into things that “everyone” except him knew. “Only they’d never let such a book be printed.”
She shook her head. “I know. You’d think, though, if they could make buildings that only we can see, they could make books that only we could read. This whole not having any textbooks thing… It drives me crazy.”
“You too? At first I thought it was kind of cool, but trying to look anything up can be such a pain.”
“And forget it if you miss a class because you’re sick or something. But you know, if you need to look anything up, you really ought to ask in the library. They can find anything.”
“Oh, yeah, I know. Michael helped me find some pretty obscure stuff last year.” He didn’t mention that this year he’d mostly been avoiding being alone with Michael, though, and so he’d been making his materials requests through the Department of Prophetic Studies. They had a nice small library of their own in Pallando Hall, and Kyle had a desk and a carrel on the upper floor under a skylight where his study materials were compiled. “So why don’t you work on being the first one to enchant books for people with the Sight alone?”
She laughed. “Well, it can be done, but it’s a powerful enchantment better suited for something like a building. You could muster a huge amount of energy to make an entire book only for the Sighted, but then you’ve only got one copy. What if you’ve printed hundreds? Or thousands? It’s just not practical…”
She stopped herself then with a self-conscious laugh, as if she had gone on too long.
“I couldn’t enchant my way out of a paper bag,” Kyle said, motioning to a passing waiter for their check. “It’s amazing to me that you’ve picked it up so easily.”
“Ha, well, not so easily sometimes. I don’t know if I’m a good enchanter so much as I’m a good enchantment student. You know? Because I didn’t really grow up with it, so I really have to think about it. Alex can snap his fingers and make posies fly through the air, but he’s crap at explaining how or why. He says you have to ‘just do it,’ but I really have to think about it before I can.”
The waiter put the check down between them and Lindy put her hand on it. Kyle shook his head. “I’m paying.”
“I’ve heard,” she said with an eyebrow raised, “that the enchanter usually buys the lightning rod dinner.”
He shook his head again. “That’s after,” he said. “We’re sticking with mundane protocol here, remember? I’m taking you out for a nice dinner, so that I can then go back to your place to do wicked things to you.”
“Ah, right,” she said with a smirk.
Kyle slipped a twenty dollar bill into the folder the waiter brought, and then held out his hand to her. She slid hers along his palm with a smile before grasping it and getting to her feet.
They walked another few blocks to the little shop at the edge of the Square that served amazing hot chocolate, and where they sold truffles shaped like mice and penguins. Lindy bought a few in a small box that she slipped into her pocket. They sat on the bench along the wall in the bustling shop, side by side, pressed in by other chattering couples and groups of friends, though Kyle hardly noticed the crowd. They talked about classes a little more, and Kyle was pleased to learn she liked poetry. She was big on Blake.
“Kind of funny, I liked his poetry before I found out he wasn’t mundane,” she said.
“Yeah. I…” Kyle suddenly found he couldn’t say the words on his tongue. I always liked Frost. “Robert Frost,” he managed to say instead. “Same thing.”
She seemed to take his lack of sentence structure as a sign, and leaned close to deliver a kiss that was pure chocolate velvet. Kyle didn’t even remember if he had finished his chocolate, then. When she pulled back, she whispered, “Let’s go?”
And he nodded and took her hand again.
* * * *
As promised, Jeanie was out. Lindy closed the door behind them and locked it, then let her coat slip off. Kyle smoothed his hands over her buttocks as he pulled her close. “I can’t remember ever seeing you in a dress before.”
“You’ve never been about to have sex with me before,” she said, rubbing her nose against his as she talked. They were of a height like this.
Dresses had never seemed so sexy to him before. “Mm. You wouldn’t even have to take it off for us to do it…if this was…pure necessity.”
She kissed him, then said, “Necessity. I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about when people say things like, ‘I need you.'” She kissed him again, then nuzzled his ear and whispered, “I need you.”
His cock throbbed where it was pressed between them. He was tempted to lift her up right there against the door and find out if she was actually ready for him, simply pull her panties aside and slip into her wetness. But he forced himself to remember two things: the spell, and her inexperience. “Need you, too,” he breathed back. “But light a few candles first, hm?”
“Right.” She had her hands on his hips, and she eased him gently back from her and then went around him to set a few candles in glass cups on the desk. He stood next to her as she lit them, closing his eyes on the wavering flames and seeing them blue on the insides of his eyelids as he concentrated on building up energy. He groaned softly as she stroked her hand up the fly of his slacks. He was brimming and ready to spill into her already.
“What else do I have to do?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just receive, basically,” he said. “And enjoy yourself. I promise I won’t keep you up too late. I know your exam’s tomorrow. But I don’t want to rush.”
“Exam’s in the afternoon,” she said with a smile. “No need to rush.”
“Excellent.” He pulled her close again, and although he undid the front buttons of her dress enough that he was able to reach in and caress her nipples into rigid, sensitive nubs, he did not encourage her to take it off. She unbuttoned his shirt and in short order he was standing in a pile of his clothes, completely naked.
She ran her hands up and down him, from shoulder to hip. “I knew you were cute. I didn’t know under your clothes you were gorgeous.” Her hand brushed across his erection. “Even this is good-looking.”
“I’m glad you think so.” He helped her to lie down, slipping one shoe at a time from her feet and then peeling her stockings away. He could see wetness glistening as he dropped her panties off the side of the bed, and ran a finger through it. Her shiver seemed to pass right through from her to him, so he did it again, her lower lips parting this time as she rubbed her feet against the bed.
He settled himself between her legs and sought her clit with his tongue. Now there was much more than a shiver—and very shortly her legs squeezing him hard and her voice crying out, “Oh God, Kyle! Don’t! I’m going to—!” But she couldn’t finish the sentence as she came, and Kyle wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyway with her thighs clamped tight over his ears.
When the spasms of her orgasm subsided, she let go and he could hear again. He slid a finger inside her, and she groaned deeply. “It’s okay,” he told her. “You can come as many times as you like, though it’s probably best if I come last. That way you won’t accidentally dissipate whatever I give you.” An experienced woman in the Esoteric Arts could come whenever she preferred, and probably still be able to move the energy around, but without any training he didn’t think Lindy was likely to.
“Mm, okay,” she said. “Gee, does that mean if I haven’t used it all up after the test tomorrow, I should masturbate?”
He laughed. “For someone with not much experience, you sure don’t hold back what you say.”
She squirmed a little as he crooked his fingers inside her. “Ha. Maybe I was just waiting for the right person to say it to. Oh, fuck, that feels good…” He felt her inner walls squeezing his fingers. “Mmm. But really, Kyle…I feel like I can say anything to you.”
He grinned. “Good. Then you won’t mind telling me if you want to come again before I, um, penetrate you. With my cock, I mean.” He wiggled his fingers again.
She squeezed him once more. “Uh uh. Want your cock, now.”
“I want to be sure you’re really ready for it…”
“Now, Wadsworth,” she said with a feral gleam in her eye.
Launch day! THE INCUBUS & THE ANGEL fly together again!
