“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.
No. I struggled not to lose control of the magic. I struggled to hold it still, breathing deeply to try to clear my mind. If I lost control of the magic, Zayvion could be killed.
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.
If I was the battery, he was the grounding wire. I could throw magic around all I wanted and he’d never loose his hold on me. We fit, so neatly a part of each other, magic to magic and soul to soul.
“What are you?” I whispered.
“What do you want me to be?”
This had such lovely possibilities.
I drew my hand up his butt and rocked my hips to remind him I was also a woman of flesh and desire. Still, magic poured through me, through him, to the earth.
One corner of his lips quirked upward.
“More?” I asked him.
“Think you can?” he asked.
“Try me.”
Zayvion kissed me, softly, and the magic swelled between us.
“Bed,” I said.
We made it to the bed, though I needed some help getting there and getting my pants off. I was dizzy with power, light-headed to the point of little specks dancing at the corners of my vision. But I didn’t want to let go of the clear rush of magic streaming through me. I wanted to make love to that calm, strong man, and try to break his calm, strong focus.
Once we were on the mattress and sheets—both of which were soft—the room seemed to spin a little and stopped only when Zay was above me, his eyes dark, dark windows into eternity.
He wasn’t just Grounding me, he was sucking the power through me, swallowing me down faster than I could refill, and drinking up more. I ached with the speed of the magic rushing through me. Ached with it, and loved it.
Time to fight fire with fire. I concentrated on holding the magic tightly inside my body, not letting any of it, not a taste, not a glimmer, not a thread of it escape me.
Zay jerked and moaned, and his body, which was naked now, thank heavens, responded to the sudden deprivation. He lowered against me and we kissed. I wanted to feel him inside me in every way, magic and flesh, but I made him work to get my mouth open, made him work to release my hold on the magic, and then, when he had done so, with as much patience as I could tolerate, I gave him all of me, and he gave all of himself in return.