"I am a careless escort indeed," Gregory said, striving to seem remorseful—but he was definitely trying and seeming, not being.
"Dare I travel with you more?" Peregrine advanced on him. "How do I know you would not turn and attack me?"
At least he looked genuinely appalled. "Oh, no, sweet lady, I would never do such a thing!"
No, he wouldn't, more was the pity, unless she could make him so angry that he forgot himself. "How can I be sure?" she taunted. "Is it because you are not man enough? Not man enough to search, not man enough to care, not man enough to lust after a woman badly enough to seek her out?"
For a moment, desire flared in his eyes. "So beauteous a creature as yourself could inspire lust in the very stones!" Then the desire doused as quickly as it had come, leaving him as bland and polite as ever. "But I would never act upon it to wrong a damsel."
"Then you cannot care much for her," Peregrine said acidly. How could the maddening boy remain so calm? She had insulted his very manhood! She pushed another button. "Or perhaps you were afraid to seek me, fearful that you might indeed happen upon some cruel, crude woodmen who would fall upon you with cudgels—or some bear or wolf who would rip with fang and claw!"
"Perhaps I am," Gregory said with chagrin but no great conviction.
He was entirely too sure of himself, and for a moment she saw again the fire with which he had frightened away her bandits. Fear rose within her, but she thrust it aside and pressed the attack. The foul insults she had heaped upon him must have stimulated some emotion, no matter how well he hid it! She changed tactics and pressed close, projecting desire and recklessness even as she denounced him. "There, I am within your reach, only inches away! Have you the courage to reach out and take what you say you desire? No, for you are afraid my passion will burn you, sear you from limb to limb, leave you shaking with emotions that tear you asunder!"
Her eyes flashed as she spoke and she saw the shudder run through him as her projections touched him. She felt an uplift of elation, knowing she held him fascinated, and pressed right up against him, hip to hip and breast to chest. "There, you did not even have to reach—I have come to you! Do you dare to grasp what you touch? Dare to enfold me in your arms and taste the sweetness of my mouth?" She hit him with every ounce of attraction she had, both sexual and emotional, eyes glinting with vindictive delight.
Gregory swayed for a moment but steadied himself and straightened, arms rising but not touching. His voice shook with desire as he said, "I dare, but I withhold. You are too precious a gem to debase with the sweat of my hands."
She almost screamed in frustration. She knew his whole body clamored for her! How was he able to resist?
Gregory felt the power rising from the earth to fill him, power to resist, to maintain his integrity. He wanted her, yes, so badly that he ached with the yearning—but he did not want her like this, angry and challenging, eager only for proof of her power over him. If he could not bring her to him out of her own desire for the totality that was Gregory, for himself and only for himself, he would not accept her at all.
The thought tripped him into an analytical mode and he felt his senses sharpen, his reason honed by the power of the earth on which he stood. Why should she be angry and challenging him sexually only because he had not come hotfoot after her? Surely not merely to prove her own power! Her anger must be only another ploy in her game of seduction— but why should she want to seduce him if she were not in love with him? He was immensely flattered that she would go to such lengths and dearly wished to believe she had been moved to boldness simply because he had become more attractive—but with the clarity of the site of power, he knew it could not be true.
Still the idiot boy refused her, refused to grasp what was his for the taking! Could he suspect how she wished to strike at him once she had him mesmerized by desire? No, surely not! But she would never have him transfixed more thoroughly than she did now, and if he would not reach out to consummate his desire, she would! Reaching up, she clasped his face in both hands and pulled it down to her own, kissing him lightly at first, lips nibbling, then with tongue teasing, and as his mouth opened to embrace hers and his arms finally rose about her, she reached out with her mind, pulling his into an erotic dreamland strong enough to make him lose contact with the world.
Gregory knew well what she was doing and why but allowed hope to spiral and carry him away, letting his heart believe what his mind denied—that she was truly in love with him. He remembered everything Geoffrey had taught him about kissing and put it to practice, letting the kiss deepen almost of its own accord as he touched her back, her shoulders, her hips in the places Geoffrey had told him of, and was elated to feel an answering increase in her desire. Overcome with affection and wanting to give her even more pleasure than she gave him, he fed her own eroticism back to her, amplifying it strongly. He felt his own desire feed hers, then felt her tremble as her emotions became rapacious, feeding back into him until he felt he would burst even though he threw his whole heart into the kiss and fed the desire back into her, swollen with love.
Finister's whole body convulsed; dazed, she melted in his arms, and Gregory let himself be lost in her kiss and in the ecstasy she wove about him as the emotions of her desire and his fed upon one another, swelling and spinning them both into a whirlpool of rapture that paralyzed them, so intense as to prevent the very deeds it inspired, until the power of the spell overwhelmed Finister and she broke the kiss, slumping in his arms, unconscious.
Gregory teetered, scarcely able to hold on to consciousness himself, but the power of his site slowly steadied him, and he reached down into her mind with overwhelming love but found there only a sort of rosy haze. With great tenderness his mind groped through that mist, trying to achieve mentally what his body had been denied.
He froze, and his heart turned to ice. Beneath the haze of a very real desire still burned the white, actinic spark of hatred and lust for revenge, the hunger to slay him as soon as he dropped his guard. It was still there, the determination to fulfill her assignment, to enslave or slay him, and the hormonal intoxication of erotic feedback only obscured it, delayed it, but never for a moment cancelled it.
Reaction hit him and he plunged into a despair as great as his intoxication had been only minutes before. He slumped to the ground mourning, holding the unconscious woman in his arms and gazing down at her with yearning and agony, overcome with the realization of his failure. All his efforts had been insufficient. His magic had amplified her desire, yes, but he himself had proved inadequate. His enchantment might have taken the desire she had kindled within him and caught her up in a gyre of emotion—but his body, his face, his personality had all failed to win her love.
Cordelia found him there weeping over the unconscious woman. So deeply immersed in his grief was he that he did not even notice her panicked call for her mother and brother.
Something flickered across the face of the moon; looking up, Cordelia saw her mother's broomstick spiralling down to land—holding not only Gwendylon, but Geoffrey, too! So that was why he had not teleported to her immediately, only sent a thought that he would join her "presently." Her alarm doubled—what had happened to him, how had he damaged himself, that he must fly on a broomstick rather than teleport?
Her concern diminished only a little when Geoffrey said as he dismounted, ' 'Mother, you are not sufficiently recovered to do this!"
He sounded quite anxious. Cordelia cried in alarm, "Recovered? Recovered from what?"