Under Her Spell Read online

  She hadn’t been there since mere days before Terra’s thirteenth birthday, the most important birthday for all of the Magic Ones. Because her mother had never been able to lead her through the magic-sharing ceremony that was supposed to always happen on each Magic One’s thirteenth birthday, she’d received next to none of her mother’s vast amount of magic powers. So her father was stuck in the stables and gardens, and she was stuck cleaning up after Athene’s family, the Werths. Over the years, she’d come to accept that was just how it was, until she’d noticed Athene, of course.

  Back in the present, Terra walked up to Djinn. “Want an apple?”

  “Do you even need to ask, young lady?”

  She took the apple out of her pocket and fed it to him, piece by piece, while she talked to her father. “So, do you have any special requirements for tonight’s festivities?”

  “Yes, keeping my one and only daughter out of harm’s way.” Her father frowned a little and started brushing the stallion a little harder.

  “Aw, Dad…you know I’m set on doing this. You also know I love Athene, and she loves me, and this is the only way for us to be together.”

  “Are you certain they’ll even accept a woman as her…” Zachary paused, then continued in a much lower voice. “As her wife? Even if you win? I mean, I know the world outside of ours is opening up to gay people like you and Athene, but your mother’s people, the warlocks and witches, are all very old-fashioned. I’m not, of course,” he was quick to add. “But I’m merely human. You know this. I’m very fond of Athene, though. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s very kind to the help.”

  “Yes, Dad, and she’s more than just kind to me.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” her father said, looking up at her as he said this. He walked over to her and ruffled her hair a little. “I guess I should have realized I couldn’t change your mind. Just as bull-headed as your mother.”

  “Yeah? I hope you mean that in a good way.”

  Zachary chuckled. “In the best way possible. I suppose I should ask if I can do anything to help?”

  “Without magical abilities, you really can’t.” Terra hated to remind him of his humanity, but she herself was half human, so it wasn’t such a blow coming from a half-breed like herself. “And with my own limited abilities, I’m really not sure…” She looked away into the distance.

  “There is, though, the small, small chance that you might—”

  She turned back toward him. “Might what?”

  “I shouldn’t, well, you’ll find out soon enough. Hopefully.” Her father leaned down just a bit and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s really a shame, this being-human crap. I want so much for you to have it better, Terra. To have what you deserve, my shining example of a young woman. That’s another way you’re like your mom—not just your bull-headedness, but your good heart as well.”

  “And my bravery, too, I hope.” Bravery that she was really going to need, starting that very night and continuing onto the terribly intimidating quest that would begin the very next morning.

  She nuzzled Djinn and waved at Zachary. “I think I hear the dining hall calling me. It says I have at least five hours worth of cleaning, and some decorating to boot. I should be off, in other words.”

  “Sure, Terra. You be careful tonight, though. Promise?”

  “Athene will keep an eye on me, keep me in line. Bye, Dad. I…I…”

  “Me, too.”

  Her father put down his brush and walked Terra out of the stables. He took off toward the garden and she headed toward the door she’d exited through. The kitchen was the quickest way to the dining hall, of course. There would be plenty of tile-scrubbing in her near future, not to mention helping bring in countless deliveries and shine countless pieces of silver. She was not looking forward to her day’s work, but she was still excited about the night that would follow all her work. She might have been slightly—or immensely—terrified about how it all might go, but she was still looking forward to seeing Athene all fancied up. After all, the woman looked damn good in a dress.

  Chapter Three

  Terra’s first chore was cleaning and waxing the large, single-paneled table in the dining hall. She had been shocked when she and her father had first moved to the mansion. She remembered thinking, People actually live in places this big? She’d been fourteen at the time, but that hadn’t stopped the mansion’s staff from putting her right to work. After all, as Isis, the female head of staff, had told her, teenagers usually had jobs in the human world, didn’t they? A slight barb was hidden in the sentence, one Terra had caught, being used to the full-blooded witches and warlocks always seeing her as “lesser” than them.

  Her treatment hadn’t gotten much better with time, either. Even the lowest rung of the staff at the mansion was completely made up of supernatural beings, and only a select few of them treated her with any kindness at all. The chef, Freo, was one of the only ones there who treated her politely, which Terra thought might have been—at least partially—because she seemed to have a bit of a crush on Zachary. At least, it appeared that way, based on how many times Freo had complimented him, telling Terra what a skilled gardener he was, and how good he was with even the wildest of the horses. It was the only praise Zachary got, though, because Terra might have been lesser, but to them, the Magic Ones, her father was barely worth looking at.

  He was entirely as skilled as Freo said, though, his obvious abilities in both the garden and the stables most likely the only reason he was kept around. Well, that and perhaps the fact that his wife, Terra’s mother, had been one of the most powerful witches their kind had ever seen. It had been the only reason she had gotten away with marrying a mere human, because great magical power usually caused great intimidation, even if Nerit wasn’t the type to use that to her advantage. She might have been dead for almost nine years, but she was still spoken of in reverent tones during the rare occasions she came up during the staff’s conversations.

  That didn’t help Terra any, though, because she wasn’t like her mother when it came to her magical abilities, not at all. She’d had to make do with a good work ethic in order to earn her room and board, her faint touches of magical ability only used to help a bit with ensuring the head-of-staff’s orders were carried out to Isis’s exacting standards.

  She never allowed Isis to be disappointed in her, though, and that wasn’t about to change today. After all, Terra might have had plans for that night, but until a bit before that night’s soirée, she was on the clock, so she got out a sponge, filled a bucket with soapy water, and tucked a bottle of orange-scented wood cleaner under her left arm.

  While she scrubbed the table clean, she lost herself in thoughts, thoughts and a long list of worries about that night, which was about all she could do to make the time spent cleaning seem to pass faster. Surprisingly soon, the table began to reflect the high ceiling’s levitating chandeliers on its surface, a sure sign that Isis would, in her own prissy way, be pleased with Terra’s work.

  Next came the tiled floors. They were to be swept, washed, and waxed, and she did all three—in her own humble, human opinion—to perfection. As she’d cleaned the floors, she’d kept getting interrupted with flower deliveries coming in from the hall’s open double doors, and she had placed each arrangement of orchids and baby’s breath (a horrible combination, she thought) on the right end of the table until it almost seemed like the table would flip over from their weight.

  Once she’d finished with the floors, it was off to the large kitchen, where a king’s ransom of silverware would be waiting for her. Upon seeing it piled in a large, completely unsorted pile on one of the kitchen’s tables, Terra couldn’t even begin to stifle the large sigh that the grisly sight caused. Of course. She would have to sort it first, then shine it, and then—

  “Hey, Cinderella, get the hell out of my way!” That extremely rude sentence had come from Thor, who should have had an “n” at the end of his name, because he was nothing if not a thorn i
n Terra’s back. He’d taken a liking to her at first, but it was obviously a sexual liking, and once she’d shown him her complete and utter disinterest in bedding down with him, he’d started treating her like crap. Just as well, because she’d even prefer being treated like utter shit by him to being used as a place to bury his (most likely petite) “hammer.”

  Thor was carrying a very full pot of water to the stove, and he shoved her against a table with a rough elbow to her ribs. She groaned a little as she hit the table, and he smiled at her. “Watch where you’re going and you won’t need to be shoved out of the way, Cinderella.”

  It seemed he’d never read the entire story, Terra had thought when the nickname appeared, or he would have known that she became a princess at the end of it—a princess who could have happily dispersed with any staff members who had been cruel to her in the past. “You watch where you’re going,” she muttered, quietly enough that his large, ugly ears wouldn’t overhear her retort. She glared at him, watching his flat-butted backside thankfully heading away from her. Between his presence and the gargantuan pile of silver, it was going to be an unpleasant afternoon. Oh well, at least she could have lunch first, along with some good company, because her only real friend on the staff, Freo, was walking back through the kitchen’s windowed swinging door. As soon as she saw Terra, she grinned, her pretty, slightly chubby face lighting up.

  “Honeybun!” Now that was a much better nickname, Terra thought, an equally wide grin spreading across her face that had, only moments ago, held a very angry grimace. She liked Freo just as much as she disliked Thor, which was to say a hell of a lot.

  “Hey, Freo. What’s cookin’?”

  Freo laughed like she always did, even though Terra had greeted her that way since they had first met. Freo had taken an instant liking to fourteen-year-old Terra, telling her upon their first meeting that she was beautiful but far too skinny, and did she like chocolate-chip cookies? Terra had put on a bit of weight since then, perhaps more than she might have liked, but she’d never gotten a complaint about her body, just many, many compliments, especially from Athene. She grinned as she remembered the first thing Athene had said upon seeing her naked. “Fuck, your breasts are perfect!”

  “You look like you might be having lascivious thoughts, Terra, by that flush that’s rising up your neck.” Freo was the only person besides Athene who could get away with saying such a thing. “Better either get a turtleneck or start thinking about food instead.”

  “Food? Did my favorite chef in the world just say ‘food’?” She batted her eyelashes at Freo, who smacked her on the butt.

  “Naughty girl. Come, follow me. I’ll make you a chicken sandwich. Just tried a new bread recipe, and I think it turned out very well, and not a drop of magic used!” Freo prided herself on not using very much magic, a fact that made her rather disliked among the staff, but very much liked by Terra. And with food as good as hers always was, they begrudgingly gave her credit in the form of compliments mumbled around mouthfuls of food. Cer and Zeus approved of her food as well, as both of them had allegedly put on a few pounds when she joined the staff, she had told Terra.

  The bread was amazing, and Terra finished the sandwich in no time at all, although that was partially because she was given only a fifteen-minute lunch break today. But she and Freo chatted away while she shined piece after piece of silver, the pile of unpolished ones slowly becoming dwarfed by the finished, perfectly sorted rows. Freo would bring her the occasional taste of food, a bite of beet drizzled with dressing, a bite of rich, dark chocolate, and she even sneaked her a small glass of wine right before Terra left. Of course, it wasn’t from the mansion’s cellars, but was instead from Freo’s own collection, as she had started growing some grapes by her cottage shortly after she’d started there.

  Terra wondered, sometimes, what the wine from the cellar tasted like, but the only kind she’d ever had was Freo’s, and all that really mattered was that it tasted damn good to Terra. She and Athene had gotten tipsy on it a few times, leading to fumbling but still hot encounters in Terra’s room. They’d been more adventurous than usual those times, including one particular night where Terra had talked Athene into letting her finger her ass. That hadn’t been the last time she talked her into it, though, and that was the thought Terra kept in her head as she helped a few male servants set the table in the dining hall.

  Many more tasks followed, and Terra was almost too exhausted to think by the time it was seven thirty. But she had to sharpen her brain, because a lot would be asked of the poor, exhausted thing in the hours to come. Just as she finished her last sip of some wine she’d snuck from under Freo’s nose, her door swung open and there was Athene, carrying a silver garment bag and wearing a gorgeous, silk, and (thank the Goddess) low-cut gown. It went down to her knees, showing off part of the legs that had been pressed up against Terra only a number of hours ago, and she now had to convince herself that a quickie was a very, very bad idea.

  “I think we should have a quickie,” Athene said, and Terra cracked up.

  “A woman after my own heart!”

  “Or the area a ways beneath it. Anyway, while the spell kicks in, I think I should go down on you. It’ll take about ten minutes, and I want your entry into being a man to be pleasant.”

  “Because being one won’t be?”

  “Not to the best of my recollection.”

  “You mean you—”

  “I’m kidding, sweetie. Now, get undressed. And fast, because I need to be back there in ten minutes, or my parents might notice that my body double isn’t too interactive. I put her in a living-room chair reading some poetry, so that should hold them off for a while. They may not be perfect, but they do know how I love a good book.”

  “That you do. And you know I love you more because of it. Well, if I must have sex with you, we should probably get it over with.”

  Athene grinned, dropping the garment bag on the bed. Then, her hips slowly swishing from side to side (in a rather lovely way, Terra thought), she sashayed her way over to Terra, until she stood only about half a foot away.

  Terra barely had time to unbutton her blouse before Athene’s hands rushed toward her, and almost too quickly, she undid the button on Terra’s slacks. Next she unzipped them, and finally, in one quick, deft movement, she yanked them down, Terra’s black cotton panties too, all the way down to her ankles. Shoving Terra’s legs apart, she forced Terra to stumble just a little, because it was almost like her ankles were bound together, her bunched-up slacks hobbling her and making moving with any sort of grace (or speed) completely impossible. She had grown wet very quickly, the excitement of Athene’s control over her convincing her they would definitely have to play this game again, sometime in the near future.

  And then, her wrists were grabbed and held tight against her sides, Athene’s expert tongue getting right to work on her quickly hardening clit. Athene had her moaning almost immediately, as her tongue almost never made a mistake. And yes, it wasn’t making any this time. She was growing a bit wetter, becoming a bit more turned on with each flick and lick of the long, agile tongue that had gotten her off countless times before. It wasn’t going to fail either of them this time. That much was obvious to Terra, as she had noticed her body was already tightening, even though only a mere minute had passed since Athene had begun to eat her out.

  She stiffened some as Athene placed two fingers at her opening, tensing in anticipation for the moment that was coming, when those two fingers would first slip inside her hole. Then that moment came, and every inch of her tension left in almost an instant, quickly replaced with an intense and almost desperate need to come.

  But this might be the last time they could be together in this way until the quest was over, and so it needed to last, at least for a while longer. “Slow…down,” she gasped, dangerously close to the edge.

  “You want me to tease you, then?”

  Goddamn, Terra thought, what had gotten into Athene? Whatever it was, she tho
ught, as she turned her quivering lips up into a wicked, happy smile, where had it been all her life? Athene’s tongue slowed to a crawl, and Terra almost instantly regretted her words…mostly, at least. Athene’s tongue started at the top of her slit and then inched its way down, down, until it met the place where her fingers had entered Terra’s body. Those fingers began to slide out ever so slowly, until just the very tips of them remained inside her.

  A sudden, hard thrust from them made Terra cry out. She was desperate to find something to squeeze, desperate to find some way to hold on, if only for another few seconds. No, it was too soon, far too soon! But there it was, a rich, full orgasm, bleeding out from her cunt and almost making her topple over.

  Athene held her up, though, her hand gripping Terra’s sides, and then Terra felt something strange. It almost seemed as if her body was changing, and with a glance down, she saw that yes, it was! They’d planned to disguise her as a man at the dinner, but, motherfucking hell, did that really have to mean she’d have a man’s chest the whole evening?