“That’s true,” Ellsbeth said, smiling up at him. “But it could elicit an action. Or, you know…a very specific physical response.”
“Ahhhh.” Rawlins grinned and rolled on top of her, pinning her wrists down. “I like the way you think.”
Crafting the ritual was a project they undertook together, filling a few long afternoons in his study. The ritual Ellsbeth had sent Rawlins weeks earlier served as a jumping-off point, providing a structure from which to build something new. It was an intriguing intellectual puzzle—how to cause an involuntary physical response—and also slightly ridiculous; the whiteboard overflowed with theories and calculations, advanced work that looked deadly serious, when in fact they were crafting a method for magically inducing an orgasm.
They worked together as equals, Ellsbeth sitting at his desk with her laptop open while he pored over volumes. Sometimes they laughed, then fell into silence for extended periods as they both churned over a problem in their minds, only to erupt into newfound excitement when they made a new flurry of progress. “You have to read this!” Ellsbeth would exclaim every few hours, forcing the screen of her laptop toward him with a pertinent paragraph highlighted, and every time, he couldn’t help but smile at her unfiltered enthusiasm.
When they ran up against a challenge, they talked it out in tandem. “We need to isolate the subject of the ritual so that only the target is affected by the trigger word,” Rawlins mused aloud. “A metallic elemental would be good for the targeting. The tricky part is, all the metals have secondary effects, which could complicate the efficacy.”
Ellsbeth interrupted quickly, when he had only barely finished his sentence. “What about silver iodide? I feel like that would work.”
Rawlins was surprised by how fast the answer came to her, out of dozens of different possibilities. It was a brilliant idea—not intuitive, but quite possibly perfect. For a moment, he wondered if she hadalready thought this through, and was only pretending to figure it out now for his benefit. Or was her knowledge of metallic elementals and their various effects so comprehensive that she could recall such a thing in an instant?
He tried to set aside his momentary suspicion and focus on the task at hand. “Yes…silver iodide might work…but it has a time-dilation effect,” Rawlins said. “It could extend or contract the duration.”
“Itwouldwork. And we could easily just factor the dilation effect into our calculations,” Ellsbeth said. “There are timetables about the effect of silver iodide on rituals. The math might get complicated, but we should still be able to calculate it predictably.”
“It could be used as the basis for setting the duration of the entire ritual…” Rawlins murmured, picking up on her point, as a grin spread over his face. “You’re brilliant,” he said, kissing her neck while she typed the latest addition to their recipe.
As they neared completion, Rawlins could not help but wish they could publish their results; it was an elegant, interesting piece of work. Even more, the thought of publishing a paper with his name and Ellsbeth’s sharing a byline brought him a surprising rush of joy. It was the prospect of winningtogether,and having someone to celebrate with.
Of course, the illegal (and tawdry) subject matter of their investigation precluded it from ever being shared with the world. It would need to be their secret, just like their entire relationship. And while the secrecy had been exciting before—the sneaking around, the stolen glances—he found himself wishing, on some level, that what they had could be shown off in public.
The weekend before the semester was about to start, they could both feel reality coming back toward them, like a train whistling in the distance. They decided to test the ritual on a Saturday afternoon, creating a circle on the floor in Rawlins’s study, with Ellsbeth, the subject, at the center. Her eyes stayed on him as he spoke the Latin of the ritual, and then he said the word that would become the trigger; to her amusement, he choselicorice.
Afterward, she fidgeted, nervous. It was unclear if the ritual had worked. “Aren’t you going to test it?” she asked, crossing and uncrossing her legs on the couch, both eager and slightly fearful at what itwould be like, if it was successful, to have an orgasm with no buildup at all.
“I’m confident in our work,” he said, and made a show of looking at his watch. “I calculated the duration for eight hours, so we’ve got plenty of time. You should get home and change.”
“Change…for what?”
He feigned surprise at her question, holding back a smile. “For the ballet. I got us tickets for tonight.”
An hour and a halflater, they were crossing the snowplowed highway toward their destination, a theater in Bennington. Ellsbeth sat in the passenger seat in a dark-blue dress, her hair pinned up. Rawlins worked hard to keep his eyes on the road while her face hovered in his periphery, drawing his gaze with a pull like gravity. Spending so much time with her lately and studying every inch of her skin for hours in bed had somehow only deepened his attraction; he felt like a scholar whose entire field of expertise was a single person. As passing headlights framed the delicate curve of her cheek and slid away, two thoughts came to him at once, paired in a way that delivered a shiver of pleasure.
She’s perfect, and she’s mine.
But to speak such thoughts aloud seemed excessive, bordering on psychotic, so he told her simply, “You look beautiful.”
“And you clean up nice,” she replied, reaching across to smooth his tie, fingers drifting down to his waist. It took all his focus to keep his eyes on the road. “So are you going to test it out in the car or make me wait even longer?”
He grinned without turning his head. “I’ve told you before, you need to learn patience.”
Being out in the world together, all dressed up, felt like they were getting away with something. They hurried through the cold into the theater and found their seats moments before the performance began, a modern staging ofRomeo and Juliet;Rawlins had always enjoyed the Prokofiev score and had been eyeing the performance for months.
Sitting in the dark beside Ellsbeth, Rawlins was struck by the sense ofbelongingthat filled his entire being. They were anonymous as ever, unlikely to encounter anyone from Newlyn so far from campus and while classes weren’t in session. The self-consciousness of their first dinner date was a distant memory; even if they could not be a couple in any traditional sense, it seemed so natural now to be out in the world with her at his side.
She leaned into him, wrapping her arm around his and leaning her head lightly on his shoulder while the bombast of the music began below. His hand settled onto her knee, pulling the fabric of her dress up just enough for his fingers to rest on her skin, lightly tracing her flesh. They both gazed at the stage, but his attention was as attuned to her as he knew hers was to him, their bodies subtly straining toward each other in a shared bubble of quiet affection.
He waited long enough that he hoped she would forget the ritual entirely. Twenty minutes into the show, when he was confident she was caught up in the performance, the music swelled, and Rawlins leaned in and whispered into Ellsbeth’s ear, “Licorice.”
If he had any doubt the ritual had worked, it was dispelled instantly; he heard her sharp inhale, and the faint catch of a stifled moan in her throat; her entire body tensed and she squirmed in her seat. Her arm tightened around his. She stifled her response enough to avoid drawing attention, but he was thrilled with the rush of power over her pleasure.
“You’re terrible,” she whispered to him in the darkness, and her hand drifted up his thigh, tracing his cock hardening through his slacks.
He did it once more during the show, and again at the final curtain call, forcing her to stay seated a moment longer when everyone else stood to applaud. He glanced back at her as though chastising her refusal to stand, and she bit her lip, shaking her head at his mischief.
He had forgotten how fun it was—or perhaps he had never known—toplaylike this. To amuse each other. To live with a shared joke, the premise of which was the absurd excess of their mutual desire.
