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Her lips curved, sultry, perhaps pleased. “Yes, wizard.”
He let her go and watched as she stepped back enough to strip off her clothes, a thrill racing through him that she did so at his command. Though he’d seen her naked more regularly the last few days, this was different. When she stood there, naked and so very beautiful, she looked at him through her lashes. “Wizard? Where shall I put my clothes?”
It shouldn’t be that arousing that she asked, but it was.Don’t think.“You won’t need them for a while,” he answered, surprised at the sound of his own voice, smooth and in control. “Put them in a cabinet.”
“Yes, wizard.” She crouched to pick up the pile, carrying her boots and gown to a cabinet and shutting them inside, her hips swaying seductively as she walked. He could watch her simply walk around naked for hours. In fact, the thought occurred to him with the bone-deep reverberation of a gong, hecouldhave her do that, and she would obey. Everything in him felt as if it came alight, dark excitement flaring in him, Nic the fire that blazed through him, his own magic heating with it, turning to quicksilver and steam.
She stood quietly by the cabinet, awaiting instructions, he realized.Excite and then control my magic. Work the metaphor and do exactly that to me.“Come here,” he told her, feeling the flare of her arousal in the magic twining between them. She was right, he would and did know. When she reached him, he moved aside enough to point at the exact center of the arcanium, clearly marked by a circle of silver tiles as bright as full moon. Obediently, she stepped onto it, jewel-bright eyes fixed on him, shimmering with magic and desire. “You will kneel for me,” he said softly, noting how she shuddered in response. Yes, she’d mentioned wanting that.
Gracefully, she knelt, looking up at him, the threads of connection humming between them. Moved, he caressed her cheek, and she leaned into the touch, warm and yielding. Magic throbbed in him, like he’d never before experienced, hers and his together, a vast ocean of it, feeding into the silver structure and the lake around them, even to the moon, obscured as it was. And from only this much.
“Is this all right?” he asked her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Whatever you want is all right, wizard.”
Right. Take control. Excite and control.
Caressing her cheek down to the line of her jaw, he grasped her throat, gently but firmly, and tipped her chin up. “Open your mouth.”
She trembled under his touch, the pulse point under her jaw leaping against the pressure of his fingers as she complied, opening her lips to him. Following impulse, he slid his thumb inside. Needing no further instruction, she closed her lips over it, the sweet pressure an echo of how her mouth had felt on his cock that afternoon, bringing him to such excruciating completion. He wanted that from her, more and again.
But not yet.It’s good for me to simmer a bit, to recharge my magic reservoirs,she’d said. All right, then, he could make her simmer. He just needed a few supplies. In the meanwhile… She could inspire him as she waited.
“Clasp your hands behind your neck,” he told her, his daker nature thrilling to her immediate compliance. The pose lifted her full breasts, much as she’d teasingly offered them to him. “Arch your back. More. And close your eyes.”
On a shuddering breath, she complied. Her nipples were hard, bringing the lush globes to exquisite points, shivering with her breathing and building arousal.
Allowing himself to enjoy this—don’t think; follow your instincts—he moved around her, making minute adjustments to her pose and touching her as he liked. She responded to his least caress, magic and desire rising beneath her skin, her lips parted slightly, eyelashes like black lace against her skin, the expression on her face rapturous. Feeling like a sculptor graced with the perfect medium, he lifted her breasts, enjoying their sensual weight, then settled them again, sliding his fingers down her spine to arch her even more. There—perfect. “Just like that. Don’t move,” he told her, brushing her lips with a kiss, and she moaned, a delicious purr of a sound.
Brushing his hands over her thighs, he eased her knees apart. She shifted slightly to assist, still holding the rest of her pose. The skin of her inner thighs was impossibly soft, alluring, enticing. Indulging himself, he traced the sweet stretch up to the hollows framing her sex, the heat from her core palpable as a flame, the slickness of her arousal all the evidence he needed. Trailing his fingers through the damp curls, he watched her expressive face, the rise and fall of her breasts, the tension making her quake as she fought not to move.
She was very good at it, as disciplined as she’d hinted, not moving even when he parted her nether lips and gathered her liquid arousal like harvesting fresh honey, then painted her taut nipples with it. A whimper escaped her, and she pressed her lips closed over the sound.
“Wait here,” he told her, and she took a breath, clearly trying to settle herself.
As he prowled through the arcanium, he watched her, the light gleaming on her skin from all sides, making her the focus. A work of sensual art, like an erotic sculpture. She held still, eyes closed, but something in her posture—perhaps her magic—spoke of how keenly she’d trained her attention on him. Opening the drawers and cupboards, he toyed with her, picking up various implements simply to make them chime and arouse her curiosity. The lines of her body strained with interest, her face a picture of barely restrained impatience.
Gathering a few simple things, ignoring some of the more exotic and intriguing tools, no matter how they beckoned, he set them aside and undressed as silently as possible. She was listening for him, so he was quiet, increasing her suspense. Perhaps she knew exactly where he was, just as she stood out like a flame in his mind. The arcanium had become like a silver pond, dense with magic, intensifying so the least tremor from either of them sent ripples that affected them both.
Carrying his selections with him, he moved silently back to her, feeling like a hunter stalking his prey.The predator can have no mercy in its heart for the prey.But he did feel mercy, and an infinite tenderness. What she gave him here was the deepest sort of offering. Her absolute trust, giving him whatever he asked. For the first time, he fully understood the intimacy and excruciatingly intense secrecy of the arcanium. Wizard and familiar, this was a relationship of magic and desire, something primal that went to the core mysteries of the universe.
But the Convocation was wrong. The power came from this willing yielding, what she gave up purely out of her own desire. Nothing else would hold as much meaning. No compulsion, no magical bond. Unless it was the Fascination that ensured she submitted to this, rather than her own needs.Don’t think.
Still, he crouched before her, tracing the line of bruises collaring her throat. She trembled, gasping slightly through barely parted lips.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered, and she did, the deep, glowing green illuminating her face, bringing her vividly present to him. Lowering his head slowly, he extended his senses into her more than he ever had, twining tendrils of silver to rest on the pulse points of her soul, sensitive to the least flinch from her, any sense of unwillingness or resistance. There was none.
There was a hint of fear, yes, the edge of trepidation he’d felt from her all along, that she’d told him came from the terror of losing her will to him completely. Perhaps, if they could find a way to ritualize this exchange, they could isolate that power differential to only working the magic. She wanted to find her alternate form. They needed to build the power to defeat their enemies.
It needs to be different, so we both know what lines of power we’re working. Both in the arcanium and outside of it.Nic still met his gaze, perfectly unmoving under his hand, yielding utterly as he brushed his lips over hers, her essence thrumming to the touch, her heat rising around him, the wine-dark, bloodred magic suffusing his entire being in turn. He wanted to devour her entirely, and she would let him. The sense of power—and attendant responsibility—nearly made him dizzy. This, everything about this moment with her, encapsulated how he’d felt since the magic cracked him apart in its claws, turning him inside out. This was what he’d needed all along, her, and to learn the control.
With a rush of something that felt like relief, like the release of a fever he hadn’t known plagued him, he stretched those silver threads into a rope of control. Releasing her from the kiss, he kept his hand on the back of her neck, pressing her gently and inexorably down until she folded with her forehead resting on the floor. Taking her hands from behind her neck, he moved them to the small of her back, crossing her wrists. She stayed as he arranged her, the only sound her shuddering breaths as he trailed the soft rope apparently made of silver thread over her skin. He let her feel it, wonder at it, before he looped it over her delicate wrists, winding it around and between her hands, binding them there.
So achingly beautiful in her helplessness, she drew him more profoundly than ever. He didn’t like to think what that meant, but then, he wasn’t supposed to think. She had given him that order, and he could obey at least that.Your thoughts shape the magic.So he focused his thoughts on her beauty, her sensual brilliance, her fierce nature turned inside out and offered to him with exquisite vulnerability. On how very much he loved her.
Surely that was a sort of magic too, the passionate love for her that craved both cultivation and direction.
Retrieving his shirt, he tore it into strips, a shiver of reaction rippling over her skin with each hiss of sound. Nothing soft had survived the years of neglect in the arcanium, nothing except that silver rope, which was likely moonlight made solid and softened to a silken fiber. The binding of it on her skin hummed to his magic, a conduit that collected and funneled his magic and hers, amplifying and concentrating. Her knees must surely be growing sore on the unyielding tiles, so he folded his leather jacket, sliding it beneath them, taking the opportunity to spread her thighs wider, raising her full moon ass high above them, her swollen sex parted and offered like the ripest fruit.
