Already shivering, all I can do is nod.
“Thank you,” he whispers, sliding the straps down my arms. He grips the fabric just below my neck and rips the top in half. As if it’s no big deal, he tosses it behind him like discarded garbage.
“Hey. I don’t have anything else to wear.” But my voice comes out at half the volume I want it to. It’s hard to yell at him when he’s standing there looking like he is and wrapping his arms around me.
“We’ll figure something out,” he mutters, unclasping my bra with an expert hand.
I start to cross my arms over my chest, like I do every time I find myself without a bra, but he stops me.
“No, don’t cover up.” He flicks his tongue across his lower lip. “They’re… incredible.” His voice is strained.
Instead of looking down and being embarrassed by the compliment, I force myself to maintain eye contact. The intensity I’m faced with sets my skin on fire. Still gazing into my eyes, his hands travel across my breasts, down my stomach, and down to the button on my jeans.
They pop open, and he slips them down my knees, kneeling as he does. Breathing hard, I step out of them. He runs his hands up and down my legs, and then lifts himself onto his knees and lightly kisses my stomach. With a gasp, I dig my fingers into his hair. I peer down in time to see him smile. He leans forward and closes his teeth around the top of my panties. Then he jerks his head to the left, and they too rip easily in half.
This time, I don’t complain.
He tosses them to the side and slowly stands, rubbing two fingers over my clit. I grip him as my breathing becomes heavier. Closing my eyes, I force his hand away and step back.
He groans.
I smile. “No, no. It’s my turn.” I lower myself in front of him and peer up.
He’s staring down at me with large pupils and a strained expression. I wrap my hand around him and take him into my mouth.
“Mm,” he mumbles.
When I look back up, his eyes are closed and his head has fallen back. A thrill rushes through me. I take him in, inches at a time, the way he fucked me earlier. Flicking the tip of my tongue across the head of his cock, I take him farther into my mouth. With my spare hand, I show the twins some love.
“Oh, gods, Kinsley. Fuck!”
I almost smile. I’m getting pretty good at this.
After only a few minutes, he lets out a growl.
“Enough,” he tells me in an almost angry voice.
I pull away and stare up at him with one eyebrow raised. He gestures me forward with a finger.
“You don’t belong down there. I need you. Please get up.”
My heart hitches in my chest. I take his outstretched hands and let him pull me up. He easily lifts me into his arms, and I wrap my legs around his waist. From there, he carries me toward the water and lowers us both down into the pool.
“Okay,” he begins in a gruff voice. “This is how it works.”
“How what works?” I ask, staring at his full lips.
He smiles. “The Great Rite.”
I flick my gaze upward toward his eyes. “Oh, right.”
He laughs. “I’m going to make love to you…”
I tighten my legs around him.
“And we’re both going to have to try and concentrate, the entire time, about being somewhere safe.” He speaks in a slow, measured rhythm as if just saying the words requires a superhuman amount of focus. “That concentration is most important when we climax because that’s when the magic is at its strongest.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Think you can handle that?”
I bite down on my lip. “I’ll sure as hell try.”
“Good, because it’s our best shot of getting out of here.” He removes one arm from around me and waves it in a circle. Pale blue light shoots from his fingers and forms a bubble around us.
I gaze at it in wonder.
“Protective circle,” he explains. “It will contain the magic until we release it.”
“And we release it by…”
He smiled. “You ready?”
I press my body closer to his. “What do you think?”
He smiles again. “Okay, you have a place in your head? I’ll pick up on it and we’ll aim our focus.”
I stare at him, and he laughs, pushing me against the side of the pool.
“You have to have a place in mind before we start.”
I nod, trying to tell myself that this is more than just sex. This is magic. Magic that may very well save our lives. Closing my eyes, I try to think of a safe place. A place far away from here. At first, nothing comes to mind. Then I focus on the word safe and an image floods my mind.
An old safe place in an old house where I spent my childhood. The memory is so vivid that I can smell the candied bacon my dad used to make in the mornings. I can hear the baseball game blaring from the old box-shaped TV he used to watch with his non-alcoholic beer.
Charming’s energy floods me, magnifying the memory and making me aware of every inch of skin he has pressed against me. My skin begs to be touched. I squeeze my eyes tighter in order to stay focused.
“I got it,” he whispers against my ear.
With a tingle, I nod.
“Stay focused.” His voice breaks on the last word.
I nod again. Then he slides himself inside of me. With a moan, I let my head fall back, and the image I had in my head blanks. All my awareness centers on how good he feels. How I want him deeper inside of me. He pumps his hips toward me slowly, again and again, until I feel mad with desire.
“Oh, Charming.” I tighten my body around him, lift my hips, and press myself down on him as hard as I can.
“Kinsley,” he murmurs. “Focus.”
With a gasp, I pump my hips up and down faster. Bursts of sensation flood my mind and body.
“You feel so good.” I moan again.
“You too,” he whispers. “But we must…we must focus.”
Another wave of his energy floods my mind, and the image comes back. I cling to it as he presses his mouth to mine. It flickers on and off then finally back on with vibrant focus.
My skin tingles with something more than just his touch. It burns with power. With magic. With the magic of touch. The mystical sensation pours fuel all over the physical sensation, and I want to come.
Somehow, I’m able to focus and hold myself back.
“You feel so good, Kinsley,” he whispers against my ear again, still fucking me at the same slow pace. “So wet, so warm.”
“Mm-,” I moan, biting into his shoulder.
He lets out a grunt and thrusts himself harder into me. The first tingle of orgasm sinks into my core. Even with all of this going on, I’m still able to focus. We both are. With every thrust, every kiss, every moan of satisfaction, the image becomes brighter like some tangible thing stolen from memory and placed into this cave beside us.
My hands dig into his hair as he thrusts into me, picking up the pace every few seconds.
“Mm. Charming. Don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” he mumbles. “I won’t stop until you come.”
A burst of warmth shoots straight up my spine. My toes go numb, and I throw my head back.
“You’re close,” Charming says in a barely audible voice. “You must focus, Kinsley.”
He thrusts into me once more, and my body goes limp in his arms. He presses his face against mine and lets out a groan that brings me closer. As difficult as it is, I focus. Another burst of warmth runs through me. This time it’s different. This time it’s the start of an orgasm enhanced by touch magic.
I let out a loud yelp, and my toes curl. With my mind focused on where I want to be, my body shakes with the most intense sensation I’ve ever felt in my life. It’s even better than before, something I thought wasn’t possible. I cling to Charming for dear life.
All around us, the cave is scorched in fire. Victoria comes toward us, a murderous look on her face. Then an intense pressu
re bears down on us, and I stop breathing.
We drop down through the water, and I cling to Charming like a life raft. Together we pass through a tunnel of multi-colored light and land hard onto rough carpet.
Sucking in a large breath, I lift myself from Charming’s chest and glance around.
We are no longer in the cave surrounded by flames.
We’re in my childhood home.
19
CHARMING LIFTS HIMSELF up, and I back away to give him room. He follows my gaze around the small, ranch-styled house.
“What is this place?” he asks.
I stand up and saunter toward the mantle in the living room. My mouth opens slightly as I pick up one of the pictures resting there. Staring down at a family photo with me wedged in between my smiling parents, a tangible sadness settles around my heart.
I clear my throat. “This is the house I grew up in.”
Looking around, it appears as if nothing has changed. My heart thumps harder in my chest because this house has been abandoned for years.
I used to drive by it on my way to work years after my father succumbed to cancer, and for years it’s been a ghost of a house where phantom memories play.
I turn to Charming, a tear streaming down my cheek. My hands tighten around the picture. “D—Did we do this?”
He puts down an angel figure on the glass end-table and peers up at me. He nods. “Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. “We did.”
I shake my head. “But how is that possible?”
“I told you, touch magic in and of itself is powerful. Add the Great Rite to it…” He chuckles and looks around. “But not even I thought it would work this well.”
“What do you mean?” My voice comes out much sharper than I intend.
Charming raises his brow at me. From the look of concern written there, he must have just noticed I’m crying.
“Hey.” He closes the distance between us. “Are you okay?”
I wrap my arms around my naked body as he closes in on me.
“I don’t know. This is weird. I haven’t been here in so long.”
He rubs his hands up and down my arms. “Talk to me, Kin.”
I smile at the impromptu nickname he gives me, and the way he says it. His voice itself is a source of comfort. I lean against him. “I’m sorry, this is just…”
Then I start to cry. Not just any old crying. I start ugly crying. I bury my face in his chest so that he can’t see me.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” He smooths down my hair and tucks my head under his chin.
I could stand here like this with him forever.
It takes me a few moments to stop the ugly cries. When they finally subside, I pull away and he wipes my cheeks.
He tilts his head to the side. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I attempt a smile, then I sidestep him and stroll over to the couch. It’s actually a loveseat with black and cream colored cushions, but when we all lived here, it was all we could afford. My dad found it on the side of the road, and my mother cleaned it up.
She didn’t care about things like money until he died. Now it’s all she seems to care about. That and my becoming stick-thin like her. I grab the throw over the back of the couch and wrap it around myself.
Turning back to him, I say, “I can find something for you to wear. If everything really is as it used to be, you can wear my dad’s old clothes. He’s a little bigger than you but…”
Charming comes over, takes my hands in his, and sits me next to him on the couch.
“Don’t worry about that.” He picks up one of the throw pillows and mashes it between his hands. A bright, golden light sparks from them. It’s so blinding, I have to shut my eyes. When I open them again, he’s dressed in fitted jeans and a t-shirt that shows off his lean, defined muscles.
My eyes widen. “How?”
“I have the transmutation gift.” He winks at me.
I laugh. “So you can bring things back from the dead and turn things into other things.” I lean back into the cushions. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
He grins. I swear that smile is carved by the gods themselves.
“They’re both very draining gifts,” he tells me. “I can’t use them very often. Tonight, I’m just showing off.”
I smile. “Oh, and why would you be doing that?”
He shrugs. “Well, there’s this amazing girl…”
“It’s always a girl.”
“That’s what my dad used to say.”
“Used to?” I frown. “Is he…” I shake my head, stopping the question before I can ask it. “I’m so sorry.” I stare back over at the mantle. “I know how you feel.”
“No, he’s not…”
I peer back over at him.
“I mean he’s not dead. He’s just…not around.”
I bite down on my lower lip, unsure of what to say. I hope that my silence will encourage him to go on, but he doesn’t. Instead, he clears his throat and scoots closer to me.
“Now talk to me, Kin.”
I stare into his eyes. They seem even bluer for some reason in the dim light given off by the lamps in the room.
With a sigh, I stare down at my hands and shrug. “Like I said, it’s hard to be here. After all these years.”
“You said it was the house you grew up in.”
“Yeah, my mother put it on the market when my father died.”
“How long ago?”
I look back over at him. “Five years.” Tears well up in my eyes, and I clutch my hand over my chest. I feel another bout of the ugly cries rising up. I stomp it down and clench my jaw. “Geez, sometimes I feel like it was yesterday.” I laugh without humor. “You know how they say time heals?”
He nods.
“It’s bullshit. Sometimes I think it makes it worse. Every day is just a reminder that I’ll never see him again.”
Charming wraps his arm around me, and I stare out in front of me. Images from my childhood play out in front of my eyes. Me as a child putting my mother’s lipstick on my dad while he slept on this very couch. Him trying to French braid my hair. My mother yelling at us without heart to clear the Legos out of the living room.
Then the later years. The years he got sick. The house was drained of his boisterous laughter. My mother went from being overly critical to flat out mean. The smell of sickness clung to the walls like a painting of my father’s descent to death.
“He died in this house, you know.” I turn to him again. “It was the best thing my mother did, bringing him home when we found out he was terminal.”
Charming pulls me closer.
“Near the end, I had this moment of false hope. He seemed to regain strength. He was laughing again. The light flicked back on in his eyes.” I scoff. “The next morning, he was gone.” I shake my head. “I think that’s part of the reason my mother could never sell the house. She had a lot of financial troubles.” I scowl at the memories following my father’s death. “Of course she made up for them by marrying big almost as soon as my father was in the grave.”
A few minutes of silence follow my last sentence. Finally, Charming clears his throat.
“Well, everyone has their own way of grieving,” he says. “Maybe that was her way of moving on.”
I snap my head in his direction with a snarl on my face. His eyes widen, and he backs away.
“Are you defending her?” I ask.
He holds his hands up like he’s warding off a hungry wolf. “No, I was just…”
“Because you don’t know her!”
He slowly nods. “Yes, I was just saying…”
I hold my finger up. “Do not defend her!”
With that, I stand up and storm out of the living room, around the corner, and into my old bedroom. I blink several times.
Again, it’s just like it was all those years ago. Decked out with a full-sized bed, a small desk shoved into the corner, and a long fish lamp near the door. With a smile, I flick the lamp on
and watch the multi-colored lights swirl in the water. Bubbles erupt from the base, and plastic fish kick to life, swimming around in circles.
It was a gift from my dad. We always fished together, only we never really caught anything. It was a private joke between us. The memory brings a pang to my chest.
Footsteps pad toward me, and I glance over my shoulder. Charming is standing there looking at me carefully, hands shoved down into his pockets.
I turn slightly and bite my lip. “I’m sorry I went off on you like that.” I sigh. “I have mother issues.”
“Clearly.”
I turn and cross my arms across my chest. He laughs. It’s like being a kid and hearing the music from an ice cream truck. I want to run toward the sound. It makes me smile, too.
“Listen, all I was trying to say was that maybe you should give your mother a break.” He looks down.
A wave of sadness flows across my skin. It’s like I’m more connected to him than I’ve ever been with anyone, so I don’t reach for anger. I shut my mouth and listen.
“You never know how much time you have, and you might regret it if—” He clears his throat. “If something were to happen to one of you, and you never resolved your issues.”
I stare at him. I take in his slumped shoulders and the turned down angle of his lips. There’s a story in that body language. He has a personal connection to what he’s saying.
I don’t know how I know that, but I do. As certain as I am that he’s the best sex I’ve ever had.
I inch toward him and take his hand. “Tell me about your dad.”
He lifts his head and stares at me through those thick eyelashes. He clears his throat and tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not much to tell. He just isn’t around anymore.”
I squeeze his hand. I don’t believe him. Not for one second.
“You know, it isn’t really fair that you made me share my darkest hour…” I pause because I don’t know if I’m telling the truth. In my memory, tires screech inside my head. His body slams up onto my windshield. I close my eyes and shake my head. I continue in a shaky voice. “And you won’t tell me any of yours.”
He smiles. “I will.”
“When?”
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