Magic Unchained

by Jessica Andersen

  She was alone—she could feel it on her skin and deep down inside. And with no magic, she had no way to get back to her body. She was trapped, locked into—

  Movement snaked into her peripheral vision and she spun in a defensive crouch, then screamed when a foggy tentacle latched onto her thigh, burning with cool fire. Another wrapped around her in an instant, dropping on her like python coils; they slid and tightened until she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but scream as she was dragged into the mist.

  Terror lashed through her. The fog was all around her, and then, gods, inside her—a terrible invading presence. It filled her up, pressing inside her chest and her skull as if searching for something and not finding it. The head and heart were the seats of a mage’s power, but she was no mage. As if suddenly realizing that, being angered by it, the fog seared through her, burning and tearing. Agony! She screamed, fell onto her side, and curled fetal as blackness washed across her vision and her entire world tunneled down to the presence inside her, the burning pressure in her head and heart. Weakness washed through her. Impotence. Then anger, because she didn’t want to be weak anymore, didn’t want—

  Blackness overcame her, shutting down her systems and leaving only a last despairing cry to echo through her fading self: Help me!

  Sven jerked awake, heart hammering as he blinked into pitch blackness. “Cara?”

  She lay in his arms, with her body pressed against his and their legs intertwined, a soft, yielding layer of moist sand beneath them. But she didn’t answer, didn’t move, barely even breathed. Her cry for help echoed in his soul, but not aloud.

  “Motherfucker,” he grated. The words echoed in the pitch-black, bringing back the sound of stone all around him, water nearby. He didn’t need the inputs to know where he was, though: the coyote cave. He was back in his own body, out of the vision and returned to the earth plane without her, spit there by the gray vortex. Its whirling power had been incalculable, searing his veins with a strange magic that had felt like the familiar bond times a million, as if he weren’t just bonded to Mac; he had become Mac, if only for a moment. Even now, that same feral power expanded his senses, sharpening his instincts and making him feel like he could do anything, fight anyone… except his own fucking selfishness. Because he might have held on to her in real life, but in the vision—where she’d been depending on him to get them safely back—he’d left her behind.

  He snapped the spell word to light a foxfire, and it blazed instantly, bigger and brighter than his usual, amped by the power that thrummed through the coyote cave. The ceiling had returned to its original position so the animals hung high above the coyotes, and the water had drained away, leaving just a thin river that circled around the central altar. The entrance was still sealed, though, and the magic was thick in the air, heavy and expectant. And Cara lay against him, her breathing far too slow. Her dark hair was a stark contrast against the milk of her skin and the startling white stripe, making him think of Sleeping Beauty, poisoned apples, and evil queens. Only he was no prince, and it was going to take more than a kiss to wake her up.

  Pulse thudding, hoping like hell this would work, he went for his knife, cut his palm, and let the blood fall to the sand as he whispered, “Pasaj och.”

  There was a burning in his blood, a jolt in his soul, and the wild magic snapped and snarled within him. But there was no sense of movement, no mist, no vision. Instead of jacking in this time, he stayed stubbornly inside a body that suddenly seemed not to fit quite right. And instead of calling her back or sending him into the barrier after her, the spell called something else instead. Sparks kindled in his gut and his blood heated, and he was suddenly so very aware of her curves, and the way they fit somehow despite their differences.

  Her breath feathered across his throat, bringing a low growl from the gray fog inside him—one that shimmered to life as thought-glyphs: Want. Take. It wasn’t Mac’s inner voice, though; it was his own. And although he’d told himself a thousand times why he couldn’t take what he wanted, he couldn’t remember any of the reasons right then; he could only wrap her tighter in his arms, pull her closer to his body, and ride the fierce surge of possessiveness that suddenly burned in his veins. His senses heightened and his skin grew sensitive as his cock hardened and the urge to mate took hold. He wanted to have her, hold her, bury himself inside her. He wanted to feel her clawing at his back, wanted to hear the sounds she made when she came. And then he wanted to come himself, lose himself inside her and steep his scent into her pores, marking her as his own.

  Don’t. It’s sex magic. The words seemed strange, as if coming in an unfamiliar language from a part of himself that was so much smaller and less important than the flames that raced through him, a mix of power and desire, and the sharp ache that came with having denied himself for so long.

  “No, damn it.” He wasn’t going there, didn’t dare even touch the fringes of the electricity that sparked between them. She was magic, power, glory, and goodness all wrapped up in a tiny yet perfect body, but he knew better than to even take a taste, not knowing whether he would be able to force himself to pull back and not take it too far. She was his weakness, after all.

  Sacrifice isn’t supposed to be easy. The reminder might have come in the nahwal’s many voices, might’ve come from deep within Sven himself. But it blazed with new certainty, bringing the knowledge that this wasn’t just a test; it was a chance for him to be there for her as he’d failed to be so many times before.

  Rearing back, he looked down at her for a moment, memorizing the sight of her curled against his chest as if she belonged there. Then, not letting himself hesitate any longer, he clasped her hands in his, aligning their cut palms and feeling the low buzz of the forming blood-link. Here goes nothing, he thought, but what he really meant was, Here goes everything, because in the next instant he dropped all his shields and opened himself to her, holding nothing back.

  Power blazed inside him and flowed through the link into her. Then he flowed through the link, as well, and for a disorienting second, he wasn’t inside his own head anymore. He was in hers. He felt her strength, her determination, her insecurities, her loneliness, and the lifelong fear that she wouldn’t be good enough, that she would let down the people who were counting on her, so much longer a list now than ever before. And each of those things resonated inside him. Oh, holy shit, how they resonated. But although those core emotions were in place, that was all. Her essential self, her full consciousness, wasn’t there. All he could sense was the hollow echo of his own soul as it ate itself from within.

  She was lost in the darkness. Because he’d left her behind.

  Guilt slashed, but he didn’t ease back. Instead, he tightened his grip on the blood-link and focused on pouring his power—his magic—into her. Cara. I’m here. You’re here. You need to find your way back. He thought it like a prayer, sending it into her and hoping to hell it would find her and lead her home.

  Silence was agony. Brutal, crushing defeat.

  He sagged against her, held her closer, tried to wrap himself around her until he wasn’t sure where his flesh ended and hers began. And all the while, he was sending the magic. It rushed from him to her and back again, bringing only lonely echoes and the growing fear that he was too late, that it wasn’t enough, that he’d already—

  Hello? It was so faint that for a second he thought he’d imagined it. But then he heard it again: Hello? Anyone?

  Jesus gods. Relief slammed through him, weakening his defenses even more. “Here! Gods, Cara, yes, I’m here!” He said it aloud, heard it reverberate off the cave walls.

  Sven?

  Yeah. This way. Come toward my voice. He sensed movement in the fog, caught a shimmering outline, a thread of desperate joy as she flung herself at his magic.

  For a second, his essence caught hers and they held on and clung as they had done before, in the vision. And then—thank the fucking gods, she was back, once more fully inhabiting her body an
d soul, and pushing him back into himself. Suddenly he could taste her on his lips, smell her on his skin, and feel her body warming and shifting against his as she turned in his embrace. And that was no dream or vision. It was real.

  His eyes flew open as she flung her arms around his neck and clutched him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. “You came back for me.” Her words were muffled against his throat, her face hot against his skin. “You did. You came back.”

  “Of course.” Pain stabbed that he’d given her such reason to doubt it. He eased her choke hold and rolled them onto their sides, partly so he could pull away and get a look at her, but mostly so she wouldn’t feel the big-ass tent pole he had going in the front of his pants. Hold it together, he told himself. You can do this. Furiously, he shunted the churning, sexual magic to the foxfires, which glowed so brightly they seemed to drip with light. The move leveled him off enough that he could stop himself from grabbing her, though, and bought him enough breath to grate, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, but her eyes were locked on his, her pupils dilating. “No.” Her breathing synched with his, fast and shallow. “I don’t know.”

  Her pulse throbbed at her throat, beating in time with his heart and the heavy thrum of blood lower down, where he was hard and ready. Needy. But that need didn’t matter if the desire went only one way. Except that unless he was misreading the vibe that had sprung up between them, the sizzles were going both ways all of a sudden. Magic flared through him, putting red-gold sparks in the air and heightening his senses to an almost painful intensity. And when he shifted to stroke the place where color rode high on her cheeks, his hand shook with the effort it took not to bury his fingers in her hair and dive in for a kiss. But if he took a taste he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop there. He would want a nibble, a bite, and then more. Everything.

  At the thought, his body tightened and a growl rose up from somewhere deep inside him, sounding greedy and feral, and not at all like the man he wanted to be with her, for her. Worse, he was suddenly looming over her, leaning too close, his mouth only a breath away from hers. “Sorry,” he said, easing back. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t be sorry.” She followed him up, one hand suddenly wrapped in the collar of his shirt, anchoring them together. Her breasts brushed his chest with her every breath, and the contact flared through his body like a perfect sunrise over the ocean—brilliant and blinding, and making him feel like he could do anything. Against his lips, she said, “We’re the only ones who will ever know what happened inside this cave. Which means we can do whatever we want. And right now, I want you.”

  “Cara, this isn’t real. It’s—”

  “Sex magic,” she interrupted softly. “I know. I can feel it. Whatever you did to bring me back, I can feel you inside me, connected to me. I want to feel the rest of you that way too.”

  “Gods.” He was dying to be inside her. Fucking dying. He pressed his hand atop hers, trapping her palm over his heart. He told himself to ask if she was sure, give her another out, or, hell, walk the fuck away. But somehow he knew it’d been too late for walking away the moment he saw her wristband in the mud and everything else had ceased to exist. He had found her, saved her. And maybe right now she could save him a little too. So he leaned back in, pausing only to say, “Last chance.”

  As she drew breath to say something, he closed the gap and kissed her. Madly, wetly, deeply he kissed her, holding nothing back and asking for everything in return.

  Want me, his kiss said. Need me. And hers in return said, I do. Which was a damn good thing, given that he wanted her like he wanted his next heartbeat, his next breath, his next sunrise. So, beneath an endless ring of coyotes, he kissed her and let the rest of the world fall away. And if somewhere deep inside him warning bells were going off, he ignored the hell out of them, because he was so fucking tired of holding himself back when it came to her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cara gave herself up to the kiss and the moment, not stopping to care what would happen next. She had been lost in the fog, would have stayed there forever if he hadn’t come for her. And there, in that endless gray world, she’d had a moment of sudden clarity: She didn’t want to die with regrets.

  If that had been the end of it, she would have hated leaving the earth plane without getting back at Zane and Lora and wresting them from the winikin before they did any more damage. She would have wished she had done things differently with her father. And she would have deeply regretted giving up her chance at fireworks. Now, though, it seemed that she was being given a second chance. There was magic in the air and a man—the man—was holding her, kissing her. And he wasn’t pulling back this time. Instead, he slanted kisses across her mouth, along her jaw, and up to the sensitive lobe of her ear. He urged her closer in the soft, shifting sand, and when their bodies pressed together, she felt his arousal, his need.

  No regrets, she thought. Free to touch him, finally, she was bold with her lips, and with hands that no longer stung from the cuts on her palms, which had healed to scars already. Magic, she thought as the heat raced through her, making every sensation ten times more acute. More, it was sex magic and she, a winikin, could feel it, which should have been impossible. Right then, though, she didn’t care what it meant; she only gloried in the burn of desire.

  He shuddered and pulled away a few inches, so his eyes were very close as they searched hers. Then he surprised her by skimming his fingertips along her jaw and up to her temple, then to touch the place where her hair went from dark to light. Growing up, he had teased her about it so fiercely she had tried to dye it dark, but had succeeded only in staining the bathroom wallpaper and earning a month of double chores. Now, though, he rubbed a few of the white strands—coarse and heavy in comparison—between his fingers in a move that said that he knew who she was—not a vision or a casual hookup, but her.

  “Cara,” he began on a sigh.

  “Shut it.” She pressed a silencing finger to his lips. “Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. We want each other. More, we know this won’t work in the long run, but that hasn’t stopped us from wondering. Who knows? Maybe this is the gods’ gift the nahwal mentioned. Maybe they’re giving us this one time together to get it out of our systems, so we can move on.” That could explain why she felt the magic too, and why the cave hadn’t opened back up even though the water had drained away.

  His breath feathered across her hand; his eyes bored into hers. From behind her restraining fingers, he said, “There’s only one thing I want more than this, and that’s to not hurt you ever again.”

  A small sliver of pain jabbed below her heart, because while she knew he meant it utterly, she also knew that was impossible. No regrets, she reminded herself, and said, “Sorry, I can’t promise that.” Nerves buzzed through her, but beneath them was a heady stir of courage. She almost never told the full truth, instead editing to keep the peace and bottling up the rest inside. Not this time, though. “It hurts to see you around Skywatch and not be able to touch you or even talk to you. It hurts to know that you and Mac are going to take off at some point, or that if you don’t and we make it through the war, I’m going to be the one leaving. But the thing is, none of those things will hurt extra if we do this. If anything, it’ll hurt worse if I miss this chance, because then I’ll have regrets. That much I really can promise.” She dropped her hand and replaced her silencing touch with a kiss that started soft but quickly turned hot and needy. When it ended, she pulled away and whispered between heavy breaths, “When it’s all over, let’s not have regrets. At least not about this.”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat, his face etched with intensity as he weighed her promise. “Be sure,” he rasped. “Be really fucking sure.”

  “I am.”

  His eyes changed, kindling with a new and potent fire. She could almost hear his noble intentions shatter, but he said only, “Thank Christ.” Then, groaning a dark and delicious curse, he rolled suddenly,
pressing his big, hard body fully atop hers as he kissed her, tasted her, touched her, rose over her, and took.

  And, yes, thank Christ, because this was what she wanted. More, it was what she needed in this moment and this place, with this man. She was finally—oh, gods, yes, finally—telling the world to go screw itself, at least for an hour or two. Gods, did that feel good.

  Her heart thundered as she grappled to touch him, taste him, then bowed back on a hiss as his fingers brushed the edges of her breasts, the lines of her waist and hips. He cupped her ass and then slid his touch inward to brush the sensitized flesh. Heat gripped her, ground at her, and she sagged against him with a low cry. She was hot, wet, and needy, her clothing a barrier that had to go.

  She tugged at his stretchy, formfitting shirt, got it up and off, and purred when she was able to play her fingers along the muscles beneath. The purr turned to a gasp, though, when he slid a hand under her shirt, cupped a breast, and then dragged a thumb across one nipple in a move that sent sparks shooting through her system.

  “Oh, gods.” She bowed against him, curled around him, her mouth an “O” of pleasure.

  “Off,” he growled. “All of it.”

  Their clothing made a nest in the soft, yielding sand at the edge of the pool, and his magic heated the air as they twined together, kissing, licking, sucking—it was all fair game when sex magic burned in the blood.

  Murmuring something low and reverent against her lips, he slid a finger along the crease between her legs, easing forward, forward, and then finding her. His low groan echoed her pleasure and she let her breath hiss out as he teased the opening, his touch an erotic shock to her system.

  His erection was sandwiched between their bodies, pressing hard and insistent against her mound. As her blood burned higher and hotter, driven by the rhythm he set with his fingers, she slid a hand between their bodies and rubbed her palm across his testicles and up along the heavy, distended vein that lined the bottom of his hard, upthrust cock. He groaned, then shuddered when she closed her fingers around him.