Ritualistic.
“Hello? Half-naked woman standing over here,” I said.
The muscles of his shoulders twitched, but he still didn’t turn to look at me. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll make it worth your wait. Promise.”
“I thought we said no promises.”
“You did.” He walked past me to the corner and lit a candle there with a new match. He pointedly avoided looking at me. Okay, this was getting weird, though I suppose no weirder than him being a part of a secret society of magic cops. He walked around me, gaze averted, and lit the last candle in the last corner of the room.
“You’re really into candles, aren’t you?”
He put the matchbox down on the shelf next to the last candle he had lit. “Something like that,” he said. He turned off the overhead lamp and the room filled with a soft golden glow. This time when he turned, he was looking right at me, and the fire from the candles reflected the burning passion in his gaze.
“Are you sure there isn’t something else you’d like to do?” I asked. “Maybe burn some incense? Wash a couple of windows? Fold some laundry?”
He stalked across the room and stopped in front of me, so close I could feel the heat off his body, even though we were not touching.
“You talk too much,” he said.
“That’s a great way to get me in the mood.”
He stood there, still staring at me, and I thought about reaching out and grabbing him, but this looked an awful lot like a game of chicken and I was determined he touch me first, not the other way around.
“I see you’re still wearing a shirt,” I said.
He leaned back to make elbow room, and pulled his shirt off.
Hells, he was a fine-looking man. Muscled, not gym-worked, but hard and flat. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to lick him up.
He leaned back in again, but instead of pulling me into an embrace, he very gently pressed his fingers against the mark on my temple. “If the candlelight is too bright, tell me,” he said quietly.
He wrapped his right arm around my waist and pulled me against him, and I got my hands on his back. He drew his finger in some quick pattern against my temple. I gasped at the hot race of mint that flowed into me, warming me, warming the magic in me, making me hot, trembling, hungry.
I moaned, and opened eyes I did not know I had closed.
“There is sensual pleasure in the weight of carrying magic,” he said. “Let me show you.”
“Yes,” I breathed. He bent his head and kissed me.
My world exploded. His lips were warm, his tongue sliding into my mouth and slowly exploring the taste of me, as if I were something wonderful to savor. His fingers traced the whorls of magic on my palm, my wrist, the inside of my elbow, flicking across erogenous zones I never knew I had. His motions were sweet and almost painfully gentle. I squirmed and pulled away from his lips, unable to bear the sensation overload. I leaned my head against his chest, breathing hard as he traced up my arm, then drew heat and the sweet slide of mint across my shoulder and collarbone. His finger caught under my chin and he lifted my head. I wanted him to get out of his pants. I wanted to be out of mine. But I did not want him to stop doing exactly what he was doing. He pressed his leg between mine, and shifted so that his right hand was firmly against my back. He dipped his head and kissed the marks on my neck, sending another shiver of need through me.
I moaned.
He sucked, his tongue exploring the lines of magic that flowed up the curve of my neck.
I closed my eyes, moaned again as his tongue drew up the side of my jaw. Warmth and need spread through me, flickering like fire from my nerves, pulsing through the lines of magic.
He bit—not too hard, not hard enough—and I gasped. I wanted more. I wanted him to never let go.
His mouth drew up my cheekbone and I trembled. Though I was shaking, I ran my hands up his back, his neck. I slipped my other hand down to his belt line. I wanted to feel him. The fire building in me was too hot. He breathed across my cheek, and I could not move.
His fingers teased the lines of magic on the tip of my shoulder, tugging magic up to the surface of my skin so that I felt tight with it, tight with the need for release. He traced the pattern again, his fingers dipping down my cheek, down along the bare, soft skin of my neck. I arched back so I could feel him, feel more of him. I wanted him to release me from this hungry, joyful need.
“Let go,” he said over the pounding roar in my head. “I’ve got you.”
I opened my eyes and he kissed my temple, his tongue tracing a pattern there.
Magic welled in me, rising like a tide I could not stop. It filled me, stretched me, rising to his touch, rising to meet him, to wrap around him, drown him, consume him.
But his tongue teased and encouraged. He kissed his way back down my cheek, bit at the thin lines of magic that curved across my collarbone and fingered to the edge of my breast. I shuddered.
I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t hold this much magic; no one could. My body ached with the weight of the magic filling me, magic Zayvion tugged, stroked, sucked, and drew upon in rhythm with his hands and tongue.
We kissed.
“Let go,” he whispered against my lips.
I opened my eyes. I couldn’t hold on. To the magic, or the need.
I opened my mouth to beg him to give me a minute to catch my breath, or maybe to tell him I wanted this, this abandon of control more than anything in my life. But I didn’t have time. I didn’t have thought. I didn’t have breath. Just one more second and I would explode.
The candles in the room dimmed and I groaned.
Zayvion’s hands glowed with the yellow light of the candles. He mumbled a spell in a language I had never heard before. He released the spell, plunging deep into the magic I could no longer contain.
I yelled out, burning with pleasure, throbbing with the joy of him deep inside the power that coursed through me. The world was reduced to textures: soft, silk, the watery touch of air. Reduced to colors: Zayvion’s eyes burning tiger-bright, his hands lost in a glow up to his elbows that cast his dark skin in gold light and ink shadows, the room a night sky around us, the deep brown earth holding us strong. Reduced to smells and tastes: sharp garlic and the mild cheeses of our dinner, the pine-sweet musk of Zayvion’s sweat, the honey of melting candle wax.
Magic poured out of me, filling the room, and I poured out with it.
This, this was the way I wanted to die, pouring out, losing myself to the glory and power of magic, Zayvion strong and hard inside me, becoming part of the world, and then becoming all of the world.
But I was still human enough, still me enough, to want more—to want to take Zayvion on this ride with me.
I didn’t have to cast a spell, didn’t have to concentrate. I wasn’t just a woman with magic anymore. I was magic. What I desired, magic became. And I desired Zayvion to experience this joy.
I poured magic into him. Zay groaned and breathed hard, his eyes half closed. We stood, holding each other tight. We still hadn’t finished undressing, but that didn’t matter. How could the mere pleasure of flesh compare with this, with me feeling him inside my whole body?
Zay groaned again, and I knew he could feel this, feel me around him, feel magic pouring hot and fast into him.
“Come with me,” I said, or maybe I only thought it. “We can be everything.”
I kissed him, and he kissed me back, hungrily.
Zay drank me down, and I poured out magic, whipping magic around us like ribbons in the wind, spooling from my fingers, from deep within the earth, from deep within me, into him.
And still it didn’t fill him.
I pulled back enough to look in his eyes. They still burned bright, but there was something else behind that. A darkness as calm and deep and endless as the night sky. I could pour as much magic as I wanted into him. He was a lightning rod, a man who could Ground me and the magic I sent into him, and pour it back to the earth from which it came.
“Oh,” I said. This was so much more than I thought, he was so much more.
