I kind of hoped she would decide against it… as clueless as Feejee was about the morality of consuming thinking beings, she worried me far less than Iona did. I had the feeling Iona knew exactly what it meant to take an intelligent life and just did not care. Also, Feejee at least regarded the merfolk traditions about hunting and feeding on land as inviolable sacred laws. I wasn’t so sure Iona felt the same.

I couldn’t explain my worries to Hazel and Ian, though, without blowing the mermaids’ secrets. So long as they weren’t actually hunting humans, stirring up the locals against them would feel… well, I knew what it was like to be treated as a murderous man-eating monster when I hadn’t actually done anything beyond simple existence. I wasn’t about to consign the mermaids to that.

In any event, with Feejee’s timely help, Hazel’s expert supervision, and my keen staying the fuck out of everybody’s way, we got the large cake over to the student union. I helped hold the doors, anyway… and at least my arms were free to carry my gift bag.

The first major obstacle had been overcome… the next would be to secure the party room. Any thought that this problem would be solved as easily as the cake had been transported dissolved as Honey came running across the union’s lobby, her eyes wide and wild.

The phrase “scared out of her wits” popped into my head and it stuck there. She looked absolutely beside herself with fright. I’d never seen Honey run before and honestly, if I hadn’t been watching her run now I would have hardly believed it. Her dress was so long and stiff, and obviously not designed for that sort of thing.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Hazel asked. “I thought you were going to hold down the fort!”

“I couldn’t stay in there,” Honey said breathlessly. “There is a man in there and he says he knows me and I swear I’ve never seen him before in my life!”

“Well, did you tell him we have the room tonight?” Hazel asked.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “He kept talking to me like he knew me, and it was giving me the galloping creeps.”

Hazel sighed.

“Probably somebody from one of my classes that can’t tell us apart,” Hazel said.

“But he called me by name, Hazel,” Honey said. She seemed to be verging on hysteria… her voice was getting shriller by the second. “He called me by name!”

“Uh, if we’re going to keep standing here, can we find somewhere to set this down?” Ian asked. I don’t think the cake was that heavy, but it had to be kind of awkward trying to hold it level and he’d been walking backwards for a good portion of the trip.

“No, let’s just get it where it needs to go,” Hazel said.

“But…” Honey said.

“If someone’s been harassing you, they’ll have to deal with all of us now,” Hazel said.

Honey hardly seemed mollified by this. I supposed that to understand her reaction, it was necessary to remember that a gnome wouldn’t think of herself as being an undersized person surrounded by normal-sized folks but a normal-sized one surrounded by giants.

Hazel beckoned Ian and Feejee forward, and after a few moments of hesitation, Honey fell in line behind us. The party room door was ajar, and Hazel pushed it the rest of the way open to give the maximum clearance for the cake-bearers.

“Hey, you lot,” she said to the people in the room as Ian and Feejee maneuvered past her. “You’re going to have to clear out, we’re having a party in here.”

“It’s a public room,” a girl’s voice said.

“And we reserved it,” Hazel said.

“How can you reserve it?” someone else asked. “It’s here for everyone.”

“Right, and everyone’s welcome to reserve it,” Hazel said. “Which we did. You can come back after nine if you want.”

I stepped into the room behind Feejee and saw that there were two other distinct groups of people using it, three guys playing darts and a larger group sitting down playing cards. I didn’t know which one of them had claimed to recognize Honey, but I recognized one of them: Jamie, the guy whose boyfriend had started shit at the dance, was among the card players.

“Don’t you people have your own game room, anyway?” the guy who was arguing with Hazel, one of the dart players, said.

“No, we sure don’t,” Hazel said. “Our fees go to support the union same as yours do, and we can use this room same as you.”

“Sure, we all have equal right to use the room,” said a girl sitting next to Jamie at the card table. She had dark red hair curling out from under a round felt hat. “So why do you want to kick us out?”

“Look, we don’t mean to put anybody out but we’re having a party for our friend,” Hazel said. “And we have to get everything set up in a hurry, so if you could all…”

“Well, don’t let us stop you,” Jamie said to Hazel. He hadn’t acknowledged me. I had a feeling like he was trying to avoid looking at me.

“Yeah, it’s a big room,” the curly-haired girl said. “I don’t see why we can’t share it.”

“We’ll be needing that table, though,” Hazel said.

“They had it first,” the vocal dart-player said.

“No, they bloody didn’t, because we reserved the whole room,” Hazel said.

“Look, if you want to have cake with your friends or whatever, I don’t see why you need the whole room,” the girl said. “We’re not bothering you and you don’t have to bother us.”

“Except you are bothering us,” Hazel said. “We reserved the room.”

“Do you have some kind of proof?”

Hazel looked at me.

“I guess Amaranth might have a paper or something,” I said.

“Look, either you believe me or you don’t,” Hazel said to her.

“I’m not sure I do,” she said. “You’re not a student group, you’re just a group of students. I’m not sure I believe that they’d give exclusive use of a public facility like that.”

“So you’re calling us liars,” Hazel said.

“No,” she said. “I’m saying maybe there was a misunderstanding. Maybe somebody just thought you were asking if it was okay to hold a party here and they told you it was. After all, it is here for anybody who wants to use it.”

“…unless somebody else thinks to reserve it,” Hazel said. “Which we did.”

“If you’ve got something that says that, fine,” the girl said. “But I’m not leaving just because you say so.”

“Uh, we’re just going to put this down on the bar thing, okay?” Ian said.

“That’s fine,” Hazel said.

Ian and Feejee got the cake box lifted up onto the counter alongside the other food containers that had already been carried over. After divesting himself of his load, Ian was free to really look around the room for the first time. He didn’t bother trying to hide his scowl when he saw Jamie, and Jamie didn’t pretend not to see him. At the same time, Honey tiptoed around the edge of the doorway.

“Hazel… that’s the one who said he knew me,” she said, and somehow I guessed before I looked that she was pointing at Jamie.

“Hazel?” he repeated. “Hazel Wilkins?”

“Willikins, if you please,” Hazel corrected. “What’s it to you?”

“Come on, Mar,” he said, getting to his feet. “Grab the cards and the chips. I don’t think we want to be here for this party.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hazel asked.

“They’re leaving, Hazel,” Honey said, tugging on her sleeve. “Let it be.”

There was some grumbling from the other card players, but they gathered up their things and headed out of the room.

“I’ll see you in class, Honey,” Jamie said on the way to the door, and Honey shrank back behind her cousin.

That just left the dart players and after a few moments of sullen glaring, they left, too. I guess they didn’t feel very bold once they were outnumbered.

“What the hell did that one mean?” Hazel asked. “‘I don’t think we want to be here for this party.’ What’d I ever do to him?”

“He’s just a crazy man,” Honey said.

“He’s a dick,” Ian said.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get cards… are you going to be okay decorating?” I asked Hazel.

“Yeah, we didn’t come up with much in the way of decorations,” Hazel said. “Turns out the papermakers haven’t yet tapped into the lucrative Two’s Day market yet. It’s mostly going to be a matter of arranging the spread. If Miss Feejee can help us get things to the table, we’ll be able to manage.”

“Sure, okay,” Feejee said cheerfully.

She was being helpful but otherwise unobtrusive, which made me hopeful that she’d be able to just go with the flow, no pun intended. If she was going to get involved in things like this… and she’d expressed the intention to hang out more with our crowd than with the Leightons… then it would best if she could keep her predatory inclinations completely under wraps. I supposed she must have been able to, as the rest of the twins’ crowd was heavy on the human blood.

The bookstore was just around the corner from the party room, which was good as time was getting short. We wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to browse if we didn’t want Two to walk in when we were still filling them out.

“You want to get like some tissue paper and streamers or something, too?” Ian asked me when we got to the store. “I think they have colored tissue paper with the art supplies.”

“What for?” I asked.

“Well, your books are kind of just sitting in the gift bag,” he said.

“Yeah, but it’s not like they’re fragile. They’re books.”

“I think the tissue paper is to make it more like they’re actually wrapped, actually,” he said. “You know, so the contents are still sort of a surprise.”

“It’s a surprise party,” I said. “She doesn’t even know she’s getting presents.”

“Okay, I was just saying.”

The cards were confined to a pair of rotating displays near the cash register. The pickings seemed pretty slim.

“Uh… this is like a birthday party, right?” Ian asked.

“Kind of, but it isn’t,” I said. “I think we should stick to the generic occasion cards.”

“Yeah, probably… we don’t want to melt her brain by giving her a birthday card when it’s not her birthday,” Ian said.

“You don’t have to get her anything, you know,” I said.

“I’m not saying that to be mean,” he said. “I just don’t know how she’d respond to that.”

I knew that some places had cards tailored for specific relations, like for grandparents or nieces and nephews. I looked for a “to sister” card, but almost predictably, the stationery section of the college bookstore was limited to parents.

Oh, well… a blank card would be more personal than one with a pre-printed message in it, I decided. Not that I had a lot of time to compose an epic ballad on sisterhood or friendship or anything like that… but of course, Two kind of favored simplicity so maybe that worked out. I forgot about the message and just looked for one that I thought she’d enjoy and ended up picking one with a glitter-covered picture of a butterfly on it, reflecting Two’s taste for “pretty” things. Inside, it said “Thank you for being my friend.”

That pretty much summed it up, I thought.

“What do you think of this?” Ian asked, putting a card in front of me. At first glance, I thought he’d had the same idea as me, but then I saw that the sparkly wings were attached to a tiny woman sitting on a mushroom.

“I don’t think real faeries look like that,” I said.

“Oh, I didn’t realize we’d be graded on accuracy here,” he said.

“I’m just saying that kind of imagery is a little…”

“Diminutive?”

“Just bear in mind that this party’s going to have as many non-humans as humans, if not slightly more,” I said.

“Wow… so I’m not going to be the only human, then?” Ian said.

“Some of her classmates and coworkers are coming,” I said. “Apparently, Two’s more popular than we knew.”

“Okay, how about this one?” he asked, showing me another card that just had diamond shapes made out of diagonal lines of glitter. “This one isn’t offensive to abstract geometrical patterns, or anything like that, is it?”

“You don’t have to be such a smartass about it,” I said.

“I just don’t want to rock the boat,” he said. “Or is that offensive to mermaids?”

“What have you heard about mermaids?” I asked, feeling any icy stab of panic in my gut.

“Uh… that they live in water?” he asked. “Khersis, Mackenzie, I’m just messing with you a little… you know, a little playful banter, like I thought we were doing in the mirror. Or did I read something wrong and I was actually just getting on your nerves?”

“Sorry,” I said. “You didn’t read it wrong, but… well, racial issues are going to be a bit more sensitive than other things.”

“Yeah, believe me, I know that,” he said. “And I should probably just leave it at that so it doesn’t sound like I’m saying it’s hard being a human surrounded by gnomes and elves and mermaids and things, but… sometimes, it is hard being a human surrounded by gnomes and elves and mermaids, not knowing what to say or not to say. I’m trying to be sensitive, but this is uncharted territory for me.”

“Oh, Ian,” I said. “You are trying, anyway. I guess knowing there are issues is pretty much the definition of being sensitive, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

I gave him a playful whack on the shoulder with the envelope for my card.

“Though you shouldn’t have said ‘and things’,” I said. “We’re all people.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “So is this card good?” he asked, holding up the diamonds one.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Great… now I’ve just got to find a present.”

“You aren’t going to find a present in here,” I said.

“Watch me.”

He looked around the lower tier a bit, dragging me around before we headed up again. I felt like a dog on a leash, and I didn’t mind that one bit. He didn’t know where we were going, but the important thing was that he was leading us there.

He started to pull me in the direction of some of the bathrooms on the upper floor, but changed his mind when he saw how busy they were. He started heading for the main doors when he spotted something and off we headed to the side. There were smaller doors leading out of the arena into the rest of the fitness center.

There were a few groups of people hanging out and talking in the comparative quiet of the hallway… guys leaning against walls as they chatted with girls, and people sitting on the floor. Ian pulled me towards the t-shaped intersection at the farther end of it. He hesitated briefly at the end of it. The left hand branch had an arrow directing people to the pool.

“Please, not that way,” I said, when he started to lead me that way. He gave me a look, then pulled me in the other direction.

As soon as we were around the corner, Ian let go of my wrist and grabbed my hair instead. Before I’d even registered what he’d done, he yanked my head to the side. My cry of pain turned into a bit of a growl as he started to drag me forward. We passed weight rooms and an armoury, and then went down a darker hallway into a section that apparently wasn’t open twenty-four hours.

We ducked into a small restroom with just a single stall, one sink, and one urinal. He flipped on the lights, then let go of my hair. With an angry snarl, he kicked the stall door, sending it banging into the side wall.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Just pissed off,” he said. “Even if you were kind of blocking the stairs, how the hell does somebody just push past you like you’re not even there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t know what else to say. Yeah, the guy had been an impatient, careless jerk… but it was over and done with.

“And if I see that preppy twerp again, I’m going to kick his ass. Where does he get off, calling you…”

“You called me a Harlot once,” I reminded him. I wasn’t feeling that charitable towards Jamie, but I didn’t think Ian was being all that fair.

“When I first met you,” he said. “I know better now.”

“Yeah, and this was when he first met me,” I said.

“He meant it as an insult. I didn’t.”

“So, he’s smart enough to know that it is,” I said. “Anyway, did you bring me here to talk about other guys?”

His face turned red and his nostrils flared. His hands twitched at his sides and then closed into tight fists, making the muscles in his wiry arms stand out. He closed his eyes and took a breath.

“Shut up and come here,” he said as his eyes opened.

I hadn’t actually been talking when he said it, but I obeyed the other part. The slap echoed sharply in the small space. I felt the warmth in my cheek, and a second later I felt the pain. I breathed it in, feeling the tingling sensation spreading through the side of my face… and being answered by a tingle down below.

Ian didn’t seem like he was playing, though.

“I’m so pissed right now, Mackenzie,” he said quietly. “When you grabbed my shirt, when you stopped me from fighting that… guy… I was so angry… do you remember, at the dwarf party? I slammed you into the wall… face first. I don’t know if you remember.”

“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, I do.”

“I… I jerked off to that later,” he said. “Thinking about it, I mean… remembering it. Is that horrible?”

I shook my head.

“I shouldn’t want what I want right now,” he said. “I don’t want to hit angry.”

“You’re angry,” I said. “I’m here. You’re not going to harm me.”

“Are you sure?”

I thought about it. I didn’t know exactly what he had in mind, but I could easily have believed he meant to beat the shit out of me. I imagined him backhanding me right across the mouth, punching me in the throat. I pictured him running me into the wall, throwing me to the floor, stomping on my face…

I could see all of that… the potential for it, anyway… in his face. It made for a strangely compelling image. Knowing with a fierce certainty that he wouldn’t do anything to actually injure me… that he wouldn’t pull out magic or signs of faith… let me lose myself in the intensity of the fantasy.

If even Sooni, ridiculous and insane as she was, could bring me to the point of orgasm with an act of brutality, then how much more amazing would it be with somebody who I loved… who cared about me… who I’d given myself to?

I swallowed and nodded. He closed his eyes, and then slowly, he shook his head.

“Really, it’s okay,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said.

“I want it,” I said.

“Shut up,” he repeated. “Just get down on your knees.”

I obeyed without thought, sinking down to the dirty floor. He unbuttoned his jeans and his dick pretty much sprang out without help. I wanted to reach out and touch him, with my hands or mouth, but he hadn’t told me to do anything yet and it wasn’t my place to act.

I looked up at him instead. His face was strangely impassive… he was looking down at me like I wasn’t even there. I felt conflicted… like this should have been an incredible turn on, but it wasn’t. From another person, it might have been, but not from Ian… this wasn’t normal for him. Something was wrong.

“I can’t do this,” he said finally, shaking his head and stepping back. “I’m still too pissed.”

“You’re too pissed to get a blowjob?” I asked.

“I’m not going to enjoy it,” he said. “All I can think of is that smug, pointy-eared moron and his boyfriend.”

“What do his ears have to do with anything?” I asked.

“Oh, get off my case,” Ian said. “I don’t mean anything against elves… just him.”

“This is supposed to be our date, you know,” I said.

Was he going to focus on a couple of slights all night long? It seemed stupid to me that he’d let his anger just eat at him when he’d had the opportunity to blow it off and he’d passed on it. He’d got me all hot and bothered in the first place by leading me around the arena, and then we’d got so worked up on the dance floor… and then there had been a nice bit of roughness on the way here… and now he wasn’t interested.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like a puppy dog who just got kicked and it doesn’t understand why,” he said.

“You could kick me, if you wanted,” I said. “If it would make you feel better.”

He sighed.

“Just get to your feet,” he said.

I thought he was giving up on our tryst, but before I was even completely upright, the back of his hand hit my cheekbone. He slapped me a couple more times… but without a lot of conviction, and I thought that maybe he wasn’t completely into it, but then something broke and he really went to town.

I don’t think I could catalogue everything that happened exactly, in the order that it happened. There was slapping and there was slamming and there was kicking. He wasn’t using any restraint or control, but instead just hammered into me. I gave myself over to him and lost myself in the sensation, let myself be carried away on a river of pain and bliss. When it was finished, we were both panting and sweating, though he was standing over me and I was on the floor.

My head was swimming. My vision was cloudy, though clearing fast. My panties were soaked… I’d came at least three times during the onslaught. As disgusting as it was to feel that kind of nastiness trapped against my skin, the feeling of euphoria was enough to drive that away.

“You… you okay?” he asked. I noticed his arms were shaking, though his dick… which was still hanging out of his jeans… was hard as ever, and almost red.

I nodded.

“Again, please,” I said. The slight growl in my voice surprised and scared me. Ian didn’t pay any attention, to the request or the vocalization.

“A couple of times, I thought you were going to turn on me,” he said. “You looked like an animal.”

“I did?” I hadn’t been conscious of anything like that.

“Yeah,” he said. “When you did it, I just… well, I brought you under control. Can you get up?”

I tried, but it was a struggle. I was sore all over, and some of my joints were actually numb, but it felt kind of good… there was relief in the pain, like an itch right after it had been scratched, or like the feeling I’ve heard that you’re supposed get after a really good work-out. More than that, I enjoyed the lingering pain in the same way I’d enjoyed having Amaranth’s label on my forehead for a day. It was a kind of mark, even if nobody could see it.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said, as he helped me the rest of the way to my feet. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Classes, elemental invocation… and the band. We practice and practice and practice, and I don’t know if we’re really going to get it together.”

“It sounded like you thought it was going well,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to say we suck,” he said.

“I’m sure you sound better than you think you do,” I said. “I thought you played really well when you were just, uh, you know… jamming.”

“Yeah,” he said. He turned away and tried to tuck his dick back into his pants, but I don’t think it was having any of it. “Shit.”

When I realized that he wasn’t going to fuck my mouth, I felt a bit of the animal stirring within me… I’d wanted him so badly all evening, and after what he’d done, I wanted him even more now.

“Let me suck it,” I said. “Please.”

He turned back around, looking at me incredulously.

“After all that?”

“Why not? It was incredible,” I said. “Steff would be so jealous.”

“She would be?” he asked, his surprise growing.

I nodded.

“She’s wanted to do that sort of thing to me forever,” I said. “You got to do it first.”

I noticed his dick throbbed at this bit of news. The rest of him seemed to relax. He put a hand on top of my head and pushed me down. I sank to my knees again. He pulled his pants and underwear down completely, revealing his dick and balls in their full glory.

I had probably never been in the running for feminist of the year, but I figured begging to suck the dick of the guy I’d just let beat seventeen kinds of shit out of me on a men’s room floor probably sealed my status as a traitor to my own sex. I didn’t care. Ian obviously felt so much better after getting his frustration out, and I felt just plain incredible. It was like I’d got a full-body spanking.

I let Ian instruct me in what he wanted, though I knew it pretty well by now. Under his orders, I kissed his balls, then licked them, and then took the sack into my mouth and gently sucked. When he decided I’d done enough of that, I moved onto the shaft.

Whether it was because he was trying to unwind or just looking for something more, he wanted more foreplay than usual this time. I kissed the head of his dick and then up and down the underside of the shaft several times before he allowed me to take even the tip into my mouth and suck gently, flicking my tongue over the salty sweetness oozing from his slit.

I could almost sense him progressively relaxing as I eagerly lavished affection upon him. His breathing changed. His posture did, too. His legs had been ramrod straight, and he gradually shifted into a more natural position.

He stopped giving me so many instructions and let me do my own thing as I took him into my mouth, sucking as lovingly as I could. He’d let out most of his rage and frustration on me, and the rest of it melted away. It was the gentlest blowjob I’d ever given him, and he actually sort of sighed as he came.

“Thank you,” he said when we’d finished

I didn’t say anything. Maybe it would have been polite to say “you’re welcome,” but it also felt like I should have been thanking him. I loved the meaty taste of his dick, the heady musk in his skin and hair. I loved when he came in my mouth. I loved that I was allowed to taste him, to please him.

It occurred to me, as we were leaving the bathroom, that he’d found solace in my body the way I found it in Amaranth’s. Well, not quite the same way… but to a similar extent. That made me smile.

“You’re happy,” Ian noted on the more leisurely stroll back towards the dance. We held hands, but we were walking together now instead of leading and being led.

“I am,” I said. “I love you, and I love being here for you.”

“I just want you to know, I don’t like being a guy who hits girls,” he said.

“You aren’t,” I said. “You’re a guy who has a good time with his girlfriend. You can do it more often, too, if you want… instead of waiting until you’re so frustrated that you’re flying off the handle and you have to go all out, just… vent a little on me. We’ll both enjoy it.”

“I just… I don’t want to take it for granted,” he said. “Ever.”

“I don’t really think that’s likely,” I said. “It’s not in you.”

“It’s in me to hit you,” he said.

“But that’s not all that’s in you,” I said. “You’re your father’s son, but you aren’t him.”

I’d never been able to mention Ian’s father without provoking a backlash, but this time it seemed to be okay.

“Yeah,” he said, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “I guess I’m really not.”

I tried to hurry through the occupied corridor because the wetness was showing a bit in my crotch, but Ian stopped to read a notice board right outside the arena. He grabbed a sheet off of it.

“Oh, you can’t be serious,” I said when I realized it was for gladiator try-outs.

“I need an outlet, Mackenzie,” he said. “I like a little bit of, uh, play, but I don’t want to go through that again.”

“Okay, I know you’ve got problems with the idea, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t trust you so much if you didn’t… but… isn’t that still better than being a jock?”

“Oh, grow up,” he said scathingly, and he yanked me by the arm back into the dance.

Once we were inside the arena again, it was too dark for anybody to notice the state of my pants… I hoped. We spent the rest of the night enjoying the dance. Ian bought me drinks and snacks, and though I spotted Jamie and Jason… the elf in particular was hard to miss… a few times, they didn’t notice us and Ian never seemed to notice them.

It’d had a rough start, and an even rougher climax, but as we headed back to the coat check at the end of the night, I thought to myself that it had been a really nice time.

The battles were the least interesting part of the subject for me, but as a history buff I liked being able to recognize scenes like the Stormlord of Urdoken defeating Ai the minotaur king. I even knew that the depiction of him as a bearded man with a horned helmet was inaccurate. Everybody drew him with a beard because of his association with the dwarves, but elven bards from his age praised his clean-shaven features, and it was well-known that he wore a simple silver and steel diadem even in battle.

The war had lasted for seven months, the battle which decided it was over less than an hour after it began… but the resulting change of ownership for the boundary islands had changed the course of everything that followed. If Ai had won the single combat… or the armies had continued to duke it out for another year… the Mother Isles wouldn’t have been able to rise to prominence a century later.

“What are you looking at?” Ian asked me, speaking loud to be heard over the music.

I realized I’d stopped halfway down the stairs to stare at the picture of Urdoken versus Ai.

“The picture,” I said, pointing at it.

“What?”

“The picture,” I repeated, more loudly. “It’s kind of neat.”

It was really detailed, considering the deliberately primitive style of the artwork. You could see the armies gathered in the distance, with the personal cohorts of the two leaders gathered in close. Flecks of foam and blood flew from Ai’s muzzle, and the muscles stood out on the Stormlord’s arms and neck as he grappled with his opponent.

“I heard you the first time,” he said. “I can’t see it.”

“Really?” I asked. Granted the arena’s lights were all off, but there seemed to be enough illumination from the party lights to show the fine details.

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Not at all.”

“Oh,” I said. We continued our downward journey. On the lower tier, there were a lot of people just hanging out and talking over the music. The actual dance floor…which was an area ringed by lights in the center of the arena pit… wasn’t terribly crowded yet.

“Want to head down?” Ian asked.

“Um… can we wait for a slow song?” I replied. “I don’t really feel like just jumping in without a warm up.”

I didn’t say it, but I also figured that a slow song would drag more couples out on the floor. The bulk of the people in the pit were outside the ropes, watching the people inside. I didn’t feel like thrusting myself into the limelight.

“Okay,” he said. People were coming down the stairs behind us and we were in the stream of traffic. Somebody shoved past me without so much as a glance or a word. Ian steadied me, then put his hand on my elbow and guided us back away from the railing, towards the wall.

As much as we’d tried to repudiate the dominant/submissive dynamic for our date, he seemed to do this instinctively… and I responded to it, instinctively. It felt so good, so right. He could have had me on a leash and I wouldn’t have complained.

I wanted that slow dance to come soon, so I could lean against him and let him lead me around in his arms.

He was looking at me, and I realized he’d asked me something and I had missed it.

“What?” I asked.

“I said ‘how are your classes’?” he repeated, more loudly than he probably needed to.

“Oh!” I said. “Pretty good. Except my stupid W.P. class, but… required.”

“You’re in mixed melee now, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It sucks. ‘Coach’ Callahan’s a total berserker bitch.”

“I heard she’s the only mixed melee teacher now because she killed the other two people who were qualified to teach it,” he said, in all seriousness.

I gave him a scathing look.

“Hey, I didn’t say I believed it!” he said, throwing up his hands. “I just said I heard it. Supposedly, they were going to combine two of the three MM classes, and reassign one of the teachers somehow, since they can’t fire them, and she really wanted to keep teaching that class.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. “Why would she kill both of them?”

“So that she could make sure she got chosen,” Ian said. “That’s the story. Supposedly, they tried to hire another teacher, but nobody will take it now.”

“I can’t believe anybody would actually believe that,” I said. It’s not that I didn’t think Callahan was capable of killing somebody in cold blood, in any sense of the word “capable”… but I refused to believe she could have got away with it. Not twice, and not when she had such an obvious motive.

“Well… like I said, I just heard it,” Ian said. “And Gabe didn’t sound like he believed it when he told me. But, it is true that they were going to combine them into two classes and ended up only having one. I checked.”

“Gabe?” I repeated. “Gabe, who gets off on tactile illusions of porn stars?”

“Yeah, him,” Ian said. He jumped back almost a foot and a half at my reaction. “What? He’s in my dorm. I told you, he latches on… and he doesn’t know how to take a hint.”

“You could tell him to fuck off,” I said.

“I think big words like ‘fuck’ and ‘off’ have too many syllables for Gabe,” Ian said, and with that, he redeemed himself for associating with such a lowlife dick.

The current song… an annoyingly frenetic dance number… ended with a fairly abrupt break in the music. I perked up instantly, along with probably about six dozen other girls sensing the imminent arrival of the elusive love song. We weren’t disappointed. Even I, knowing absolutely nothing about music, recognized the opening to “Maiden of Rose”.

I resisted the urge to grab Ian’s hand and drag him down to the floor.

“So, um… do you want to…?” he started to say.

I turned my face towards the floor, looking up at him with my eyes. He took the hint and grabbed me by the wrist, leading me down to the dance. I had the image of myself on a leash again. I had the feeling if I shared that idea with Amaranth, I might be more easily forgiven for my lapse in leaving the paddle behind.

Would Ian go for it, though?

“Mackenzie?” Ian said. He tugged on my hand, and I realized I’d stopped again, in the middle of the stairs down to the pit. “Mackenzie?”

“Huh?” I said.

“We’re blocking traffic,” he said. He was right… these stairs were narrower than the other set had been, as they weren’t used by huge crowds of people.

“Sorry,” I said, right as a hard body muscled in between us, pushing past us and almost knocking me over the railing. Somebody grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back.

“Hey, watch it, asshole!” Ian said to the asshole who’d shoved me. I saw to my surprise that it was an elf… the first full-blooded one I’d seen, not counting my former history professor, since coming to Magisterius University. His skin and hair were almost luminous in the darkness, and his arms were covered in loopy blue lines. He had a bluish bruise on his cheek.

“You want to dance?” he asked in accented Pax, getting right up in Ian’s face and giving him a shove.

I growled and bared my teeth. A voice in my ear shouted, “Hey!” Ian grabbed me by the back of my hair as I started to lunge.

“Look,” Ian said cautiously, “I don’t want any…”

“You don’t want to dance?” the elf interrupted. “Then what are you doing here?” He laughed too loud at his own lame joke. The laughter cut off abruptly and he gave me a contemptuous sneer. His gaze shifted to just over my shoulder. “Come on, Yamy,” he said, then turned to Ian and said, “Next time, leave the bitch in a kennel if you can’t control her,” before striding down the stairs.

“You don’t have to be a dick, Jason,” the person who’d caught me, a kind of fresh-faced blond guy with a swelling lip, called as he followed the elf down the stairs.

“What an arrogant jackass,” Ian said as we headed down the stairs once more.

“I seem to have problems with elves,” I said. “Or they have problems with me. Maybe they’re just perceptive enough to realize what I am?”

“Or maybe they’re a race of arrogant jackasses,” Ian said.

“Hey, there’s no need to generalize a whole race based on the behavior…”

“…of the whole race,” Ian said. “Trust me, my dad has to work with elves all the time for business and…”

“Can we finish this after the song?” I asked. I didn’t want to “finish” a conversation involving Ian’s ancestral family baggage at all if I could help it, and the song was a handy distraction.

Also, I really did want to dance. “Maiden” was such a stereotypical gushy romantic dance song, and I wanted to have a stereotypical gushy romantic dance.

“Okay,” he said. He led me over towards the dance floor, a low circular platform covered in thin carpet. “Come on.”

We climbed up under the rope into the midst of the colored lights and moving bodies. As I’d hoped, couples were flocking to the floor for the chance at a little canned love magic.

I couldn’t speak for anybody else, but it was working for me. We’d missed half the song, but by the time it was over I felt as safe and comfortable in Ian’s arms as I did in bed with Amaranth on top of me.

The blond guy came up to us after the song finished, while the next few songs were being announced.

“Uh, hey,” he said, giving a little half-wave and a “Is it okay if I come over?” look.

“Hey,” Ian said. “Where’s your little friend?”

“Getting drinks,” he said, approaching us cautiously.

“It’s Amy, right?” Ian said.

“Jamie,” he corrected. “I’m sorry about my friend. He’s not always the most aware of other people.”

“Yeah, well, somebody could have been hurt,” Ian said. He looked at Jamie’s face. “From the look of it, somebody already has been.”

“He didn’t do that,” the boy said. “If that’s what you mean. If it’s any of your business. There was just a little misunderstanding at the check desk.”

“Sure,” Ian said. “Maybe you wouldn’t have so many misunderstandings if you two f…olks would watch where the hell you were going.”

I punched him very lightly in the ribs. I understood that he was pissed and his mind went for the easiest and most obvious insult… and he did get points for the last-second cover… but he should remember that my best friend would be considered a “folk” in most people’s eyes.

Jamie noticed the word substitution, too. His eyes narrowed and he looked back and forth between us a few times. There was something in his eyes that looked like betrayal… but considering I’d never laid eyes on him in my life, I couldn’t see how I might have betrayed him.

“Have a good time with your Harlot,” he said, then turned and stalked away so quickly he might have been an elf himself.

“I’m going to kick his scrawny ass,” Ian said, starting after him.

“No!” I said, grabbing his shirt with both hands. “No ass-kicking on my behalf.”

“Let go of my shirt, Mackenzie,” Ian said. His voice had gone dangerously low, just barely cutting through the noise of the music. My hands loosened their grip, but I held on. He could have pulled away easily, but he didn’t. “I said let go.”

“Ian, if you get in a fight, you’ll get kicked out and maybe arrested,” I said. “And they’ll probably use that against me somehow. Just let it go.”

“His little boyfriend’s an ass,” Ian said. “And his apology’s full of shit. ‘I’m sorry he’s not more aware?’ Fuck, if you hadn’t been you, and you’d gone over, he could have killed you.”

“Ian, that’s two ifs away from a fatality,” I said. “I’m fine. Come on, let’s dance.”

“Okay,” he said, and we started to move to the music.

Well, he did. I was moving vaguely in the same general direction as the music.

If I hadn’t needed another conversation stopper, I honestly would have preferred to sit things out until another love song came on… it was hard for me to just jump into the rhythm, especially since I didn’t have any. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I could have used the transition from the slow song to a fast one to have a chance to ease into it, masking my lame, half-hearted attempts to find something vaguely resembling a groove as some kind of segue.

With Ian’s help, I started to get a feel for the song right about the time it ended, but I made better progress on the next one. Before long, I had reached the mystical tipping point between “trying to dance” and “dancing”. Ian and I moved together… watching each other, touching each other.

Every time I caught him glaring off in the distance, I did something to distract him, like tugging on his ear with my teeth… grinding myself against him… or putting my hand on his groin and quickly massaging his cock. I had no idea if the other guys on the dance floor were as obviously aroused as he was, but it wasn’t like I was about to check.

I had my man, or to be more accurate, my Man had me.

By the time we’d made it through our third slow song, I’d all but forgotten about the other couple and the need to keep Ian distracted… but I kept right on distracting him, anyway. My hand was on his dick, fingering the hard knob through the front of his jeans. His was on my ass, squeezing with his strong, practiced fingers. I growled in appreciation as his fingers trailed the cleft of my buttocks. We came together for a kiss.

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder just as our lips touched. I jumped back and saw a big, beefy older guy in a white collared shirt with an alumni association pin on it. He was also wearing a worn leather guard helm that was similar to the ones worn by the campus guards, but in a style that looked several decades out of date. He had his other hand on Ian’s shoulder.

“Hey, folks, I know we’re all adults here, but I’m going to have to ask you to clean it up a bit or leave the floor,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” Ian said. He pointed at Jamie and his elven beau. “Like they aren’t practically screwing each other.”

“We’ve warned them twice already, and honestly, they haven’t been as bad as you two,” he said. “Look, don’t give me a hard time here, okay? Everybody’s here to have a little fun, the same as you two. Just don’t have so much that it interferes with others’.”

Ian started to say something, but the no-nonsense look on the man’s face changed his mind.

“Okay,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Maybe you go sit down for the next song,” the man said. “Give yourself a chance to… cool off.”

“Good idea,” Ian said. He grabbed my hand. “Come on, Mackenzie.”

He led me away from the dance floor.

“There’s chairs set up over there,” I said, pointing. He was tugging us towards the stairs.

“We’re not going to sit down,” Ian said. “We’re just going to go find some place a little more private.”

Apparently, cooling down was not on the menu.