A Kiss of Magic: A Kiss of Magic Book One (6 page)

Then she stepped away from him and turned, showing him that yes, her bottom was everything he had expected it to be, before she had dropped down into the water, hiding herself beneath the bubbles he had created earlier.

He arose from his knees and unbuttoned the cuffs to his shirt. He untied the cravat at his throat and tossed it down on top of her clothes. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off, letting it join the pile as well. She had turned to face him, drawing bubbles up to cover herself as she anxiously watched him undress.

“Y-you’re coming in too?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“How else will we keep the water hot?” he asked, unbuttoning the fly to his pants. He toed off his boots.

“You could just hold my hand…outside of the tub.”

She was nervous and he didn’t blame her, but he wasn’t going to let her hide from him. He removed his stockings and then shucked his pants free. He watched the emotions play over her face, but there was only one he was looking for and he found it.

Desire.

He moved forward once he was naked, dropped into the water, and headed straight across to her. She was breathless with anticipation by the time he closed a hand around her ankle and dragged her forward to meet him in the center of the tub by it. He ran his free hand around her waist and pulled her up flush to his body. Dendri had never felt such warm, soft skin in all of his life. Everywhere he touched her she was pillow soft and silky skinned. The wet of her body against the wet of his aroused him as nothing else had before this. Oh, he was a man of large carnal appetites, and he had experienced much in his lifetime, but lately it had seemed as though every connection had lacked luster. No true excitement. But here, he thought as she writhed against him innocently, here was true luster. True excitement.

“Hold still a moment,” he whispered tightly into her ear. She immediately did so, going still and holding herself rigidly in his embrace.

“Relax,” he instructed her further.

“I can’t relax. Dendri Adiron is holding my naked body to his,” she whispered.

“I am not merely the fame of my name,” he said with a frown.

“But you cannot escape it,” she said.

“I would be just a man with you.”

“You will never be just a man. You are too powerful in both ability and personality.”

She softened the blows of her words with two gentle kisses down the side of his neck and he relaxed beneath her mouth.

“I do not want you to know me as the untouchable Dendri Adiron.”

“I am touching you,” she said, her hands stroking along the line of his shoulders.

“And I am glad of it,” he whispered heatedly against the side of her neck. “But I think you know what I mean.”

“Perhaps if you make love to me I will see you only as a man. But I fear it will only make you appear more powerful in my eyes.”

“Hmm,” he said on a low growl, “We shall have to experiment with that theory.”

He ran his hand down her back, pausing at the flare of her waist into her backside, but then drifted his touch down to grasp one of her cheeks and pulled her closer. Her legs parted, then wrapped around his waist, her ankles hooking together in the small of his back. He grew ever harder at her boldness, and so was rigid when his cock came to nestle into her warmth and wetness. Her boldness pleased him, more than he could say. It told him that she was welcoming him. That she wanted him as much as he wanted her. It was merely that she was afraid of all the changes in her life. He didn’t blame her. He felt similarly. Not fear necessarily, but intimidation. A Gestalt couple was nothing to brush off and everyone would know that. Practically overnight his fame would triple, would reach well beyond their continent, never mind their city. At least he had some experience dealing with fame. She did not. She had no experience even being deemed worthy of a little majic. For her the experience would be nearly traumatic. And somehow, in the middle of all of this, he had to coax her into his bed and into his heart.

Coaxing her into his bed would be the easy part, he thought as he slid his cock around her opening, aware he was just a thrust away from making her his lover in full.

But he would not rush her. He would not rush them. This was going to be a precious thing between them, and he would not spoil it with haste.

“Let me taste you,” he said softly, drawing her away from her attentions to his neck and pulling her beneath the onslaught of his mouth. The perfection in which their mouths met floored him, just as it had the times before. They had shared only a few kisses, but they made such an impact that a few was all that was needed. He savored the sweet flavor of her and felt the foundations of his world shattering and crumbling apart. He broke from her mouth after a few minutes and trailed his mouth along her gentle jawline. He found the sensitive spot at the rear of her jaw just as he embraced one of her abundant breasts in his hand. She nearly overfilled his hand, he realized, but in the end she was a perfect fit to his large palm. He thumbed her nipple until it was as stiff as it could be, then he did what he had been dying to do since he had first seen her naked in their sex majic together. He remembered how shocked he had been that she had pulled him so quickly and so securely into their interlude. Him. One of the most powerful mind majji of their kind. Now he realized it had been a joint effort. Some part of their brains had realized that they were attractive to one another and the Gestalt had done the rest.

But that had been mental illusion and this…this was reality. A hot, blindingly wonderful reality. He lifted her breast to the fall of his mouth and sucked her pointed nipple, fat and juicy as it was, into his mouth and onto his tongue. He drew on her until she cried out softly, her body curving eagerly against his. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and he fantasized about what that would feel like once she was beneath him and he was inside of her.

She was on his lap, squirming incessantly, drawing herself against his cock to stimulate herself. She was rubbing her clit against him and it was driving him mad. He clamped a hand on her hip to hold her still, his balls aching and tight with the urge to be inside of her. He relinquished her breast and ground out, “Easy. Easy, Yasra.”

“No,” she complained, trying to move in spite of his grip on her. “I’m hungry. And hot. I need…oh, how I need.”

“Good God you’re enough to drive a man insane!” he hissed. “You need? I need too. I need to hear you come.”

He slid his fingers between her legs and thrust two of them up inside of her, making her cry out. He rubbed the heel of his palm against her anxious little clit in time to his working fingers. He caught her other nipple in his free hand and seized her mouth in a blistering kiss. Using the power of the Gestalt he heated the water around them until it was a sultry, steaming wash against their hot bodies.

He fucked her with his fingers, listening to her cry out in a building series of exclamations. She was hot and tight around him, her juices making his hand slick beneath the water. He kissed her then, muffling her cries momentarily. Then she broke from his mouth, threw back her head and came hard around him, her cries echoing into the tiled room.

“There we go,” he soothed her as she sobbed for breath, “there’s what I promised you.”

She fell forward against him, burying her face in his neck as he removed his hand from inside her body. He hugged her close then, comforting her as she no doubt rushed through hundreds of emotions at once. It had been an emotionally exhausting day and she had just left her every last defense behind.

And sure enough, she began to cry.

“Shh,” he soothed her further, holding her tight as he sat back in the tub with her sitting in his lap. He was still mightily aroused, but that would wait. It would wait as long as it had to. She was the important thing here. “It will all be all right,” he said.

“Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“Do you want it to be? Think of all the strife you have had in your life simply because you thought you were powerless. Think of how little you thought of yourself.”

“I didn’t,” she denied. “I would have been happy as a non.”

“You would have been happy perhaps, but you would have always carried with you your sense of having failed. Failed at majic. Failed your parents. It wouldn’t have been right, but you would have felt it all the same. You already did.”

“It’s not fair you can see so much inside me and you’re a complete mystery to me.”

“I am sorry. Part of an Aspano’s power is the ability to put up mental barriers. You will be able to do the same one day…with a little practice. But don’t feel bad, for I am just as new at all of the other houses as you are. We have a long way to go before we will reach our true power as a Gestalt couple. But I want to teach you one thing first.”

“Oh?”

“To speak into my mind. Your Aspano ability only exists when we are touching, but if I remain connected to you I can hear your thoughts at any given moment. Try it.”

“Well…what do I do?”

“Speak a thought in your mind, but aim it toward me.”

Her brow furrowed as she concentrated.

This water grows cold.

He laughed. “Yes it does. Let us warm it together. But be careful…lest you scald us.”

“I like it very hot.”

“Control of the amount of heat you can create comes with practice. We are yet new at this so we should be careful…especially while sitting in the middle of that which we are warming.”

“You’ve done it once already.”

“I am more used to schooling my mind and my majic than you are. You are newly fledged. It will take time. Now try to warm the water.”

Dendri watched her expression as she concentrated. Hers was such an expressive face. And he preferred to see her focusing on something other than how frightened she was. The more familiar she became with her new abilities, the more she made friends with them, the better off she would be. The more comfortable she would be. The more accepting she would be of her new life…and of him. And he wanted her to accept him. He breathed for the opportunity.

The water began to grow hot around them again, the heat soothing and sultry. Once it was sufficiently hot, he brushed a hand over her concentrating face.

“That’s enough. What a fine job you’ve done.”

“I did do a fine job,” she said, preening proudly.

“You are a natural to this, Yasra. You were born for majic.”

“So my parents insisted,” she said with a frown.

“Do not think of those odious people. They try to take credit for what you yourself have done. You do not need them in your life.”

“That was one of the blessings of being a non. I knew my parents would want nothing to do with me.”

“They are cruel and selfish beings. They do not deserve you.”

“Well, they will get a lot of mileage out of the claim to fame of being the parents that gave birth to the Gestalt child.”

“Let them,” he said. “And then forget them.”

“I will. As long as Bess is with me…we have been together a long while. She is not merely a servant to me.”

“That much was quite obvious to me. She is a good friend to you, and therefore is a good friend to me. She will be treated as an equal. You’ll find all the nons in this house are treated with kindness and respect.”

“But they are all servants.”

“Yes. Would you rather they didn’t have jobs? My servants are paid fair wages and they live in the small house at the rear of the property. Each has their own room. They live more comfortably here than they would elsewhere and I do not charge them rent. In exchange I ask that they do their jobs well and be available to me any time of the day or night. But I do try to respect their private time. They are given one day a week off for them to do whatever they like. I am a fair master, Yasra.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said softly. “It’s just that our world is so very unfair to nons. The most they can hope for is wealth in trade. There are some very great scholars, but because they are nons they are not deemed good enough to teach majji. And even if they were allowed, the majji would not be likely to show them any respect. I have seen majji be creatively cruel to nons in the past.”

“Were they cruel to you?” he asked, his jaw tightening.

“Yes,” she said softly. “But they were merely wounds of ego and pride. I have seen nons physically wounded by majji as part of a joke against them.”

“Who? Who would do such a thing? There are laws against majji harming nons!”

“I know. But the laws are enforced by majji and they rarely side on the side of the nons.”

Dendri frowned darkly. He had not realized the unfairness of the life around him. As a being of power he had never given thought to the fact that all their laws were enforced by majji. It had always seemed fair to him. He had never looked at it from the side of a non trying to seek justice against a majji.

“Then this is something that must change. Why does no one make protest about it?”

“Against beings more powerful than you are? Nons live in fear of reprisals.”

“We are not a dictatorial society,” he argued. “We do not harm others for speaking their minds.”

“Are you sure? Have you ever been a non trying to speak in the face of so much power? It seems as though those who have been brave enough have simply disappeared or in some way been silenced.”