In Which Mackenzie Hungers For Steff
Openly talking about her personal problems and the progress she’d been making seemed to leave Steff uncommonly shy and flustered, and for a moment I could almost see why she found me so attractive… seeing someone you like drenched in that kind of vulnerability was hot.
I found myself simultaneously wanting to protect her and do terrible, terrible things to her body… at least, in a vague and general sort of way. I couldn’t think of anything that extreme to do that wasn’t actually, literally terrible, and I didn’t want to do anything like that.
Really, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with Steff, aside from the fact that it would be with her. I supposed there were some limitations that came with being a passive/receptive partner. I could touch Steff, I could do things to her with my hands and my mouth, but no matter how innocent and vulnerable she looked at a given moment, in general it was for her to do to me, not the other way around.
Anyway, she had more options for doing to than I did. I was aware that there were ways for a woman to penetrate another’s body, but Steff was naturally equipped for it.
So, I didn’t tear her clothes off then and there… I simply stepped up to her and gave her a quick kiss… or at least, I quickly gave her a kiss. The actual kiss itself wasn’t over very quickly. It lingered, it probed, it explored… and so did I, mapping the contours of her body as she had done mine.
Her dick was rock hard beneath the dress, and it jabbed me in the hip as I writhed against her. She started to pull away, but I grabbed her wrists. She looked at me, confused and a little intrigued.
“What exactly do you want here?” she asked.
What did I want? I wasn’t used to being this aggressive… that was the problem. When Amaranth asked me what I wanted, the answer was “to be yours”, but Steff didn’t own me and I didn’t want her to.
I just wanted her to take me anyway… take me and not care about the consequences. Maybe that was a touch hypocritical or ill-advised when I was otherwise rooting for her to think things through and not act on all her impulses… or maybe there was an essential difference I was overlooking here, between her thoughtless and inconsiderate actions and her taking into consideration both of our deeply felt desires and acting on them.
“Whatever you want to do,” I said. The words fell out of my mouth, and I knew them to be true… I hungered for Steff, a deep down gnawing hunger, but this wasn’t like when I’d gone all bloodthirsty. I was myself, and I was submissive. “As long as it’s done to me.”
She groaned quietly and pushed me away.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll go someplace more private…”
“‘You can go wherever you want as long as it’s to get ready for melee,” Steff said, trying to adjust her skirt in a way that made her massive erection less noticeable. Somehow, this didn’t quite work.
“A half hour or so of cramming isn’t going to make a lot of difference at this point,” I said.
“It’s the difference between some effort and none,” Steff said. “It’s a start, and you’ve got to start sometime.”
“Sometime later,” I said, and I reached for her.
“Oh, hon, if you get us kicked out of the library, I’m never going to forgive myself,” Steff said. “That would be like getting beat up by Honey… embarrassing. Though I could see you getting beat up by her. In fact, I’d pay to see that.”
“Hey, you got beat up by Hazel,” I reminded her.
“She got in a good hit,” Steff said. “That’s not the same thing as beating someone up. In an actual fight, she’d need more than a single lucky shot… and speaking of what you need to get by in a fight, you’ve got to get crackin’.”
“You want to come with me?” I asked, wanting to draw out my time with Steff, find a way to keep her close, keep her in my sight… keep her hands on my body . “Maybe you could help me work on stances or something?”
“Uh, no,” Steff said. “I know where that’s going to lead, and you have got to got to got to take this seriously. That’s an order. I mean, I could hardly blame you for fooling around if I was there, fooling around with you, but this one’s an order for a good reason.”
“So we’re just going to suffer it out, after being apart for…”
“For like a day,” Steff said. She giggled. “Torture, I know… you’re such a horny little devil, Mack, and you don’t even have half an elf cock like I do to blame it on. Anyway, I’ve suffered enough, so I’m going to go off and think about delving in your butt while I masturbate like a motherfucker whose mother has been rendered unavailable for fucking.”
Steff seemed to be as resolute on this point as she was about anything. She wanted to have her way with everything, especially me, and at that moment this was her way. I sighed and resignedly wished her goodbye, which she returned as she left.
If Steff had meant for me to concentrate on the stick fighting book, she shouldn’t have left me with that image… the one about her pleasuring herself while she imagined taking me in the ass, I mean, not the overly literal expansion of a common idiom.
I did my best to try out some of the basic stances shown in the book and put my hands in the position shown, though the fact that I didn’t actually have a staff with me made me feel extra self-conscious and silly about the whole thing. Even without being able to seek out release, it was still more pleasant to think about Steff than it was trying to act out fighting stuff in the back of the library.
Orders were orders, though, and I did do my best, reading through the introduction chapter and following along with the illustrations and instructions of the basic stance and the simple moves. If I didn’t do them very well, Callahan would probably blame that on me being me instead of me slacking off until the last minute.
It was kind of weird to realize I was basically hoping for a teacher to think I was stupid… or maybe incompetent, since fighting didn’t have much to do with intelligence. That wasn’t at all like me… but then, Coach Callahan wasn’t at all like a regular teacher.
Though it was maybe just possible that Steff had a point about my attitude towards fighting. Even if it was reasonably well-grounded, it wasn’t helpful if I really did need to learn.
My enchantment lab went better than I’d ever have expected, which was extra nice considering it wasn’t a class I ever expected to have problems with.
First of all, we moved on to a new topic: the instructor introduced the concept of “meta-enhancement”… taking the enhancement we placed on an object as an object itself, and then enhancing one of its properties.
“For now, the one we will be most concerned with is its duration,” Rankin said. “General robustness and resistance to dispelling attempts don’t matter much when your enhancement only lasts for a matter of minutes or less. Now, it’s important to note that not only is a duration enhancement more ‘cost effective’ than simply throwing more energy at the whole effect if you just want to make it last longer, but it’s also a useful technique that can be applied to almost any spell or magical effect, not just ones derived from the techniques you learn in this class.”
While it was easier in terms of energy spent, it was a lot more difficult a technique to grasp, and we spent a lot of the class period doing ‘hands-on’ work with the professor’s assistance. I loved it, and my experience detecting magic made it a little easier to see what was going on.
My raw duration was probably higher than most other beginners’, too, as it had more mystic strength behind it, but it could definitely stand some improving. Buffing up the length of my insulation spell before winter truly arrived seemed like a good idea. What I would really want to do was learn how to bind the meta-enhancement in the same spell as the subject enhancement. It would make the spell quite a bit longer, but way more convenient.
At the end of the period, the professor made an announcement.
“A few of you who are enchantment majors have come to me privately to complain about the repeated use of a knife as a focus for enchantment,” he said to us. “Such exercises are useful for armoury majors who will be working mainly with weapons and other items of personal equipment, and they serve the needs of enchantment majors adequately…. but as several of you are not finding this to be particularly stimulating, I’ve decided to offer a choice.
“If you would rather work with something else of your own choosing, you may, so long as you are able to locate a simple, archetypal example of it: a plain t-shirt of the standard design, for instance. If it is a personal item, make cetain it is one you’re prepared to part with… as some of you have learned, it is possible for a poorly directed enchantment attempt to damage or destroy the focus of the spell.”
I boggled… was that really all it took to get away from the stupid knives? Just asking the professor? That seemed way too easy… though if it meant I didn’t have to keep messing around with a sharpened bit of metal, I’d take it.
I felt a tiny twinge of disappointment when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to apply what I learned towards personalizing my knife, but of course the knife was now gone… and it wasn’t like shininess was something I’d want to increase on a quarterstaff or pitchfork. I’d have to pick something that could translate well into tricking out a staff, or something that could be attached. Steff had been dismissive when she talked about putting a glowing ball on top, but you really could pack a lot of useful stuff into a staff.
Almost none of it was simple enhancement, unfortunately. It wouldn’t be until I hit the higher levels that I was able to imbue a staff with new properties or bind spells to it permanently. I could start laying the groundwork as soon as I mastered permanency, though. Improving its balance would help me bring it to bear more quickly as well as fend off attackers who got too close too fast, until I could blast them away with magic. Making it more resilient would help me protect my investment in time and energy.
Ironically, it seemed like a lot of what I could think of doing to improve it would fall under the same general heading as “weapon enchantment”. Weird, but not that important. I knew now I’d have to get my own staff before next Tuesday, though, if I was going to start working on this and get credit for it.
Except the power circles we were working with weren’t nearly large enough for a staff… damn it, I thought. I’d have to come up with something else.
The end of my enchantment lab meant that it was time for mixed melee, unfortunately, which meant it was time to impress Callahan with how little I’d learned in the two days since we’d spoken. Since it had only been two days, though, it was hard to see how she could reasonably have been expecting anything else from me.
“Anyway, I’ve suffered enough, so I’m going to go off and think about delving in your butt while I masturbate like a motherfucker whose mother has been rendered unavailable for fucking.”
This is an amazing line. I laughed /so/ hard. Thank you for having an awesome brain that can come up with this stuff, because, seriously. 😀
“If I didn’t do them very well, Callahan would probably blame that on me being me instead of me slacking off until the last minute.”
Mack, oh no that is the same thing in this context. D:
I usually like Mackenzie, despite her occasional missteps, but Khee-wiz, I’ve been absolutely disgusted by the hypocrisy and downright sheer, stubborn blindness of the latest chapters, when it comes to her and fighting.
Gets me each time I read through.
WAKE UP, MACK!!!
“…since fighting didn’t have much to do with intelligence.”
Easily one of the stupidest things Mack has thought so far. It’s easy to call something stupid when you don’t know dick about it.