by Berinn Rae
He laid an arm across his aching eyes, heaved an easier breath. “No matter what Gran said, I’m not stripped, Lil. Scorched, yes. Hurting? Hell, yes. But I felt all your amazing power before I stepped into that apartment and I went freely, with my heart wide open.” He lifted his arm to look at her. “Tell me something, do you know how to draw pain using magic?”
“No. But — ”
“I do. I can show you. All I need is you in this bed, wrapped around me. Please, Lily.” Another spasm twisted his face. On the carpet in front of her, the geode pulsed a brutal red … not a reflection of her feelings this time, but his. Lily wrapped her hands around the stone and imagined easing it into cool lake water. She heard Daniel’s sigh of relief. Beneath her fingers the light dimmed to a kaleidoscope of muted blues and silver. He rolled over on his side. She saw his fingers move, shaping and reshaping spells in the flickering candlelight.
Through the link, she felt him struggling to gather power and wanted to weep. What was she doing here? Even if her magic were free she still hadn’t a clue how to use it properly. God, she hated learning in baby steps! One couldn’t get to where one needed fast enough. All she wanted was to crawl in bed with him as he’d asked. But Madame Bagasha had been adamant.
“Trust me,” she heard his whisper. “I need you in this bed, Lily.”
Every instinct cried out to hold him, smooth his hair, brush reassuring kisses on his damp forehead. And Madame Bagasha had also told her to trust her instincts. Perhaps if they didn’t touch she could lie, just for a bit, beside him. She stood and, moving carefully to keep her hands from brushing his skin, she pulled the comforter up over his shoulders, encasing him in a cocoon of blankets until only the dark of his hair showed on the pillow.
Then she climbed onto the bed at his back. She thought she heard him groan and froze for a long moment before stretching out to lie curved in his shadow, not touching him. Daniel’s breath hitched in response to her. She felt the geode’s power surge again. The scent of apple blossoms filled the air and then the geode changed its rhythm to match her pulse.
Lily lay stiff and carefully unmoving for a long time, holding tight rein on her awareness of Daniel so close, the male smell of him, the heat of his body. And lying so still, she was suddenly, starkly aware of the shackling spell swelling into a thing large and deadly in her chest. She could taste an acidic metal on her tongue, feel a spiked darkness coiling through her organs, sucking the warmth from her limbs, from her blood. Lily remembered this sense of losing cohesion, of shredding to pieces, a memory from long ago when her parents died. Now she had the same crumbling sensation. As if her heart hadn’t the strength to expand and contract. She bit down hard on her lip and used the pain to keep her focus sharp. The last thing Daniel needed was terror leaking through her shield. And so she lay stiff, still, while her spirit bled from her like paint dripping from a canvas.
Daniel’s magic touched her first as a tentative breeze on her cheek. She saw it against the candle light, a drift of blue mist. Her heavy heart leaped eagerly towards him, and he shrank away. Self control, she reprimanded herself and soon felt him hesitantly seek her again. He was directing his magic through the geode, letting the crystals act as buffer from the emotional forces his psychic nerves were too tender to tolerate. So they were both learning in baby steps, Lily thought.
Knowing the geode helped shield him only made Lily more desperate to reach him. But she waited. Feeling another sweep of his magic, she slowly lowered her shield. And finally understood. He’d been trained to link magic with others, as all witches of the Cohort did. He was trying to show her what to do. She opened herself further, felt the probing of his mind in hers like fingers playing music she already knew how to sing … a sweet touch that left her gasping.
• • •
Only then did Daniel realize how fast the shackling was draining her.
His eyes snapped open. Ignoring the pain, he rolled to pull her into his arms. His synapses blistered when his skin touched hers. His magic ricocheted out of control. The geode blazed with light and Daniel felt a mighty tug as the power inside the rock began to draw the worst of his pain.
Then Lily’s body went limp, her skin turned a pale cold, her lips too harsh a red. Her eyes, a blue as clear as a morning sky, shone on him as if all the life left in her was his to take. Daniel shook with rage at the impotency of his weakened state, at the abusive power his Gran had wielded just because she could. His lips brushed Lily’s icy cheek … and he tasted a strange magic swarming the room, free and wild as a mountain wind. Opening his senses to it, Daniel caught his breath and laughed.
“Bless the Powers!” he cried in a broken voice. “Lily, you won’t believe this. In her single-minded rage, Gran missed something incredible when she shackled you. You, darling girl, have more than one magic!”
Lily blinked blearily at him. “Is that possible?”
In the dim candlelight, Daniel’s eyes glowed. “It seems for you nothing is impossible! Your magic isn’t singular … it sort of splinters off, like a fractal. You know, how water crystallizes in all directions when it freezes? Gran never realized that. What she shackled was like an arm, a piece. I’ve never heard of such a magic! And, man, is it beautiful, Lily. Wild and creative and courageous. Like you!” He grinned like a fool and covered her face with kisses. Which burned like hell, the softness of her under his lips, the flavor of her in his mouth. But he didn’t care.
“This magic, Lil? It’s free. Unbound. I know it sounds impossible. Yet now I’ve Read it, I realize I’ve been immersed in this energy since you walked in the room. It’s a power so elemental, it defies restraint!”
“But can it heal you?”
“Oh, yes!” He let her cocoon him in blankets again but when she lay back down, tugged his arms free to wrap loosely around her.
At her scalding look, he said, “Give me a break, Lily. I can’t not hold you.”
Unafraid of the pain and impatient now, Daniel sank his magic into her again. As his empathic gift glided through her body, a sigh escaped her. Her wild magic raced in ecstatic circles around his, and after several tries, he managed to tame it enough to join his in testing the bonds of the shackling spell.
• • •
Lily marveled at the fluid, confident way his power moved through her, probing and curious and possessive. At some point she fell into a place beyond thought … beyond all need for thought, where only impression and sensation ruled. Her skin flushed. She stretched in dreamy, sensual pleasure. Magical threads wrapped like arms around her and desire stroked her nerves as if his tongue, and not his psychic skill, caressed her.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God … ” she moaned, her body arching beneath a mystical touch more erotic than any she could imagine. She felt the flush of rising orgasm and stiffened, embarrassed.
“Damn it, Daniel, stop playing with me!”
She heard his breathy laugh.
“I’m sorry, sort of. I’ll be good now. I just wanted … well, you know what I want.”
“But you were inside me. And it was almost as good as the real thing.”
“Not even,” Daniel growled. After a long moment where he gathered his wits, his discipline, and some self-control, he was able to pull her magic into a joint weaving. He let her explore the give and take of their two abilities working together. Later Lily would try to describe the intimacy of the experience, how she opened fully to his Reader’s sight, how his magic, so masculine and yet gentle, tangled around hers. How, with her own magical sight, she saw her verdant greens and his iridescent blues soaring and diving together like musical riffs in a symphony, too delicate and beautiful for the naked eye. Oh, if she could but paint the colors they created this night …
Needless to say they blew Gran’s shackling to bits. And while their two magics learned each other, their bodies strained together, her fingers playing in his hair, his hands sliding over the robe to stroke her back, fit her hips tighter to his.
At one point Danie
l quoted softly in her ear, “To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, to raise the genius, and to mend the heart … ”
Lily laughed and burrowed closer to trail kisses down his throat.
She heard his sharp intake of breath. “Jesus! Cool the magic, darling girl, or I’ll be shagging you senseless in another minute, burned nerves be damned.”
Lily drew away and looked at him. “Could you … ?”
“No. So for pity’s sake, ratchet back that amazing energy a notch or two.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re not.”
She hooked a leg across his blanketed hip. “You could be more accommodating, you know. I can’t get in to heal if you stay shielded, Daniel.”
He groaned. She got an impression of extreme sexual frustration and, with a sigh, gentled her magic to drift about them like rain. Reluctantly, Daniel unblocked his senses. His pain, sharp-edged and visceral, snapped at Lily’s mind like a rabid dog. But her concentration held. Praying her lack of finesse wouldn’t harm him, she released a soothing current down his sensory pathways and found the epicenter of nerve damage ablaze with jagged pain. Instinct kicked in. She felt a force both primordial and timeless rise up from her womb. The geode flared on the table beside them. In her arms, Daniel whimpered before all tension drained from his body as he surrendered to her.
Using the geode as vessel and transmitter, Lily whispered her spell.
“Untried power that caused this pain, help me draw it back again.”
Magic crackled in the air like static, stirring Daniel’s hair. He whispered her name, tightened his arms around her. She felt a wild surge of love and calmly, confidently banked it into a usable force. Cheek settled against his chest, she let magic swell from her like an operatic aria, ripe, fertile, ebbing and peaking, rising and sweeping. Whispering the words over and over, she let her spell fall into him and began wrapping each burnt synapse in comfort as soft as goose down.
Daniel’s fists uncurled, his legs straightened and he fell, at long last, into a natural sleep. Lily, deep inside the beauty of their entwined mysticism, murmured tender words and drew his pain like a syringe draws blood from a vein. All the while she matched him heartbeat for heartbeat until, after a time, she too drifted to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-one
Lily woke in the pre-light of dawn with a hangover, Daniel’s hangover, throbbing in her temples. As if she’d been the one slogging scotch the night before. She lay in a tangled nest of blankets. The room smelled of cooling beeswax, wet leaves … and Daniel, tangy sweet and warm nearby. Memory rushed in and with it, a sharp intake of breath. Opening her eyes, she saw him propped on his elbow grinning down at her.
He brushed a delicate kiss over her lips. “Gods help me, but I love you.”
His eyes were luminous in the soft light, intent, vulnerable, and hiding nothing without his glasses on. Lily wanted to sink to the bottom of their melting depths. She reached out a finger to trace the arc of his dark brow, then curved her palm around his stubbled jaw before resting her thumb at the corner of his mouth.
“Do you hurt?” she asked.
“Only a little. You are magnificent, Lil. Heaven knows what other miracles your little body holds, but I plan on claiming every one. Will you mind, do you think?”
“Hardly,” she laughed and stretched in lazy satisfaction. “I hurt, too. I seem to have your hangover.”
“And is your skin super sensitive?” Daniel rubbed his rough cheek lightly over hers. She shuddered with pleasure. “The aftereffects of magic, I’m afraid.” His voice hitched as she nuzzled his throat.
He pressed her back on the bed to kiss her again, long and deep, teasing her lips open with nips of his teeth. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair. His mouth slanted harder across hers, a sliding wet flame that drew a whimper from her. She trembled and sighed and clung to him as if only he could give her what she needed.
He sank deeper into the kiss and gasping as if in searing agony, broke away. “Christ! I can’t … wait, Lil, can you shield, at least a little?”
With his magic riding her and his breath gusting against her skin, Lily couldn’t think, let alone visualize a mental barrier. She turned her head away from him and tried, tried to block out the scent of his skin, the staccato beat of his heart, the needy clasp of his arms. But her senses had been opened so completely by him the night before, all she could see behind her closed eyelids was the alluring blue of Daniel’s magic filling her inside and out.
“Can’t,” she managed to gasp under the impatient graze of his teeth along her jaw. She turned to meet his mouth, drawing his breath into her as her arms locked around his neck, and had the sudden, dizzying impression of being inside his skin again. She felt his elation that her desire equaled his, then only an awareness of the thrust of his mouth against hers. Magic roared in their blood, hot, commanding, irrepressible.
• • •
Daniel could no longer tell where her emotions ended and his began. Their hunger generated an insistent energy that urged them closer, desperate for each other. Both fought to untangle the blankets separating them, and then Daniel’s knee was free and between her thighs.
Pain exploded in his head once more. He tore his mouth from hers with a curse and rolled off her.
Lily lay quivering beside him. “We must wait, please. Until you’re fully healed.”
“I’m done waiting.” He turned his head to look at her. Resolve glowed as fiercely as passion in his eyes.
She grinned shakily. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That you’ve spoiled me for any other woman for all eternity?”
“There’s that, yes,” she laughed. “But last night, your magic, it moved inside me as if, well, as if you were inside me. And now … Sweet heaven, with both you and the magic touching me … will sex be as — ”
In answer, he moved over her again and took her mouth in a groaning, open-mouthed kiss, teeth biting, tongue probing until her body gave in to pure sensation. She tasted of innocence and carnal bliss. Her hands glided over the curve of his shoulder, down the long line of his back.
“I can’t shield … oh, Gods!” A shiver rocked her as Daniel traced his lips over the curve of her shadowed breast. His magic drank her in as he drove his hips deeper. Neither of them had the strength of will to fight a craving more demanding than the necessity to protect themselves.
Passion pounding in his blood, Daniel peeled the robe off Lily’s shoulder and let his hands feed greedily on her soft skin. He knew she burned even as he burned, with pain more ecstasy than agony. She was so pliant, so receptive beneath him, aquiver at the wet thrust of his tongue in the hollow of her throat, whimpering as his hand roughly cupped her breast.
“My power!” Lily gasped, fingers digging into his back. “It’s rising. Daniel, I can’t control it!”
Daniel felt her wild magic explode into him more violently than it raced under her skin. Only his quick shielding kept his nerves from sizzling to ash again. Once more, he tore himself from her. “Damn it!’
Lily fell back, panting as if she’d run ten miles and clutched the bed clothes to keep from reaching for him. “I’m sorry … ” Her voice shook with tears.
For a long moment they lay side by side, fingers barely touching. Then Daniel rose above her with grim determination. “Let your magic out, all of it. Now. Even if it hurts me. I want all of you, Lily.” His quick fingers were already loosening her belt, sweeping the robe aside until she lay naked to his view. He sucked in an awed breath as his gaze moved over her small breasts, rosy pink with desire, her petite waist, the fine bones of her hips and legs.
“God, you’re so tiny,” he breathed. “So perfect … ”
Her skin flushed beneath his skimming hand. His fingers teased one nipple to tortured bliss, then the other before they spilled down her body to splay possessively over her flat stomach. A frenzied ardor built in Daniel’s eyes before he lowered his head and tasted with his tongue where his han
ds had been. His mouth on her was relentless, suckling her breasts, biting the heaving arc of her ribs. Every inch he tasted and she melted under him, weightless, buoyed only by his magic and his delighted investigations.
Her fingertips dripped flames of their own down his chest, across his belly to trace the soft line of hair disappearing under the waist of his boxer shorts. Before she could dip further, he snatched her hands to drag them above her head, stretching her beneath him. He groaned at the torment of her nipples hard against his chest, her belly slick under his. Never had he let his power loose. Never had he allowed himself this freedom to dive into another being so fully and with such unprotected abandon.
• • •
Lily felt metaphysically stripped, every nerve crackling under a sensual onslaught too intense for her body to contain. Her heart, open and vulnerable, filled with his cry of triumph and as his magic rushed to meet hers, she gave him all of her. Their combined power, so forceful and creative, began to spin his excruciating pain into an exuberant joy. Heat rose, primal and desperate, between her legs. She tore at the blankets between them and begged him to take her, no longer caring of the cost. Her fingers dragged at his boxers and suddenly she found herself unable to move.
A spell held her immobile! The shock to her aroused senses felt like a bucket of ice hitting her face. Abruptly, sanity returned. She knew at once the spell came from Madame Bagasha. Lily’s arms fell from around Daniel. Gasping for breath, she asked him to stop.
“I feel it, Lil, a bloody command spell.” His lips brushed her shoulder. “And it’s pissing me off.”
Lily, equally pissed, raged once again at being manipulated by another’s will. Her magic, swollen with his, reared up and smashed Madame’s spell to pieces as if it were made of eggshells. Unstoppable now, she pressed closer as his demanding hands danced over her hips, teasing the inside of her thighs. Daniel’s mouth crushed hers as his fingers slid inside her. She cried out, exploding in a climax of blazing, brilliant color. She felt her orgasm pour searing pain through Daniel’s veins. Still he did not stop kissing her, stroking deeper with each thrust of her body. She could no longer breathe, knew pain throbbed in his head because it throbbed inside hers.
