Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 88613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
“Let’s play, and you’ll find out,” Claire said with a wink. I would have shot back a flirty line at her, but I’d backed off ever since I found out she and Dawn had a thing. Besides, my attention wasn’t on Claire at the moment.
Nor was it on anyone else in the room.
No, my attention was solely on the long-legged and handsomely rugged Marvel sitting directly across from me, forearms casually resting on his thighs as he leaned over and read his cards. Did he not realize just how sexy he looked in that position? I could easily imagine him with my hand on the back of his head, pushing him down further, my thick cock sliding between those pretty pink lips.
Yeah… working with him was going to be interesting.
Chapter 8
Cards Against Marvels
Caleb
Laughter rang through the cavernous living room as Robby’s voice turned into a high-pitched squeak resembling that of a helium-addicted rodent.
He’d been chosen to be “enchanted” by the Rodentia card, his voice now changed for the next two turns. The cards had been infused with specifically woven threads of mana that were activated whenever the winner of the round spoke a phrase. From my guess, they used blue threads as a base to serve for the illusions and then red threads to “tie” those illusions down to specific cards.
Sounded complicated. Way more than anything I could ever—or want to ever— do.
Still, it was a fun time, and I had already been enchanted twice: once had me floating about five inches off the floor for two turns, and another turned my shirt and shorts inside out for one turn.
It was fun. More fun than I’d had in a long, long time. And it all happened because I’d decided to stay. It was a split-second decision and one I really teetered on declining. I wasn’t really in the mood to socialize. Maddox and I may have decided to work together, but I still wasn’t entirely sure I even liked him. Sure, I was attracted to him—massively so—but that didn’t mean I had to like the guy.
But something about the energy of Maddox’s friends swept me up in the wave. I’d swallowed down the quick-to-form “no” and replaced it with an honest “yes” instead. And I didn’t regret it for a second. Not even when Maddox made an obnoxious comment about how I could float over to his lap.
Which… fine, I chuckled. And I did feel my cheeks blush. But I huffed him off and played my card instead, winning the turn and deciding to enchant Maddox with a card that turned him into a giggling brick house of a man for three entire turns.
Payback was nice.
We continued to play for a while; the longer the game went, the more comfortable I started to feel. It was becoming easy to forget why I even came to the castle in the first place. It wasn’t until Claire glanced at her watch and said she had to start getting ready for her date that the game began to wrap up.
“So who won?” Robby asked as he collected the cards. He was a vampire, sharp fangs poking out from under his lips whenever he smiled, but he was clearly welcomed into the family just as much as Mason was. Not all vampires were bloodthirsty assholes who liked to fuck around with people, although not everyone believed that, unfortunately.
“Me,” Mason lifted his hand of winning cards and fanned himself with them.
“So, what do you guys think? Is it a hit?” Claire asked as she started to pack the card back into the box using a thick scarlet-red thread of mana.
“I had fun,” Maddox said, a hand on his stomach as he leaned back in the armchair. It was a large brown leather chair that looked like it could comfortably fit two people, and yet his massive tree-trunk-like thighs took up most of the seat as he spread his legs. “The giggling left me a little sore, though.”
“At least you didn’t end up with two feet as hands.” Claire looked down at her hands with a newfound appreciation for them. Her enchantment definitely had to be one of the funniest, especially when she rubbed her toe-finger against Robby’s leg. His aversion to feet had the vampire up and across the room in two seconds flat, threatening to leave if she didn’t sit on all four of her feet for the next few turns. It had left us all cracking up, the remainder of the ice between me and the group shattering.
It didn’t escape me that this exact scenario was one I’d been searching for all of my life. Since I was a kid, all I wanted to do was belong. I wanted to have a tight-knit group of friends who teased each other relentlessly and had each other’s backs unconditionally. That inner want grew into an overwhelming need when my parents pushed me out of the house, leaving me to fend for myself when I was only fifteen years old.