Chapter 6

CHAPTERSIX

Almost before she finished making the offer, refusal was in his expression. Before he could voice it, she’d slipped off the cot to kneel between his thighs. Her hands rested on his knees as she gazed up at him. Under his suddenly intent look, her words came out a whisper. “I know what you said, but I’m okay. Tell me what you need, my lord.”

He caressed her cheek, twining a lock of hair around his fingers. Her magic was quiet, despite her strong emotions that could scatter in all directions like the escaped gargoyle balls had at their first meeting. Maybe he was doing that steadying thing he did, or her magic was just behaving, as it sometimes did when its distraction really wouldn’t help in any way.

When doing something else would help more.

His fingers held the strength and surety she remembered. Though his expression reflected the hardness his experience had put him through, she felt what lay behind it, all the things that had drawn her to him from his first touch. Compassion, resolve, character. A man’s need, but tied up with it was his regard for her needs, his care for her well-being. Which he proved with his next words.

“I’m sorry that I gave you a moment of doubt over my motives. The reasons for my absence.”

“No.” She shook her head. “That wasn’t your doing. I was being an idiot.”

“Your experiences have given you doubt of the men who express interest in you. Experience doesn’t make you an idiot,” he said. “I won’t tolerate you speaking about yourself that way. Do you understand?”

Did he know that how he framed his words could tighten her body, make it reach for its desires? His next statement told her he did.

“I require you to acknowledge it, Ramona.”

She wet her lips. “Understood.”

Watching the Doms and subs at Sweet Dreams act like this had mesmerized her. Because under the formality was an intimacy so deep it allowed those properly structured exchanges to go hand in hand with straight-out raw emotion.

“I hate that you were in pain and I didn’t know,” she said. “It leaves me a lot of feelings and nowhere to put them.”

“You are to blame for none of it. Our desire to spare one another pain makes me hope we were destined to be back together. Let’s let go of anything else and move forward with that thought. Agreed?”

She nodded against his touch, closed her eyes to press her lips and cheek to his palm.

“Conjure the circle around us and set your containment.” His voice got rougher, and his other hand cupped her throat, gripped her shoulder. “I’ll reinforce it.”

In the mundane world, this might be seen as either one of them taking advantage, using sex as an excuse. But in this instance, the decision had a strong purpose. Their equally strong, matching desire didn’t make it less so.

Under his touch, the power of it, her mind took her down the path where this could go. That was when her courage faltered, the past warring with the present. Something mere words couldn’t fix. Silas detected it, and his touch altered, reassuring rather than commanding. “Or we can call your friends to help and use a different form of magic,” he said. “Your choice.”

Her heart plummeted, stomach twisting into a knot. He wanted and needed the sex magic. It would bring him restoration on several levels. Things would open up that might help him see a wider range of solutions to the mark problem. He could call his Wake commander.

It would also connect him even more deeply to her. The bindings he’d put on her wrists would take a step closer to becoming a true binding, a Master who could command her desires, who she’d yearn even more to serve. To care for.

That was the kind of thing she’d allowed herself to imagine when the idea of him had been a fantasy. Then he’d walked into her shop and become a potential reality. She stood at the threshold of finding out if the reality could answer her craving, or if it would fall short. Be obliterated entirely by what she was or the vagaries and intentions of Fate itself.

In the end, it boiled down to one decision. Be a coward or not. Live life or hide. Risk the pain. But every creature learned to avoid pain.

Except him. He’d just gone through hell for a soul, and then pushed through the aftermath to be back with her.

Trembling, she rose on her knees, pressing against his touch, bringing her close to his face. She put her hand on his cheek, stroked the skin that etched out the strong bones beneath. As she looked into his eyes, she could still see the emerald sparks that had existed in those empty sockets. The Reaper face was as much his as this one. It was all him, all the layers and facets of his experiences, the responsibilities he carried.

The primary charge of his life was the fabric of his very soul.

“I want to,” she whispered. “But sex can get out of control for me. It’s problematic, for what you’re needing.”

“What I need has far deeper levels.” He thankfully interpreted her words the way she’d intended. “I won’t let it get out of control. I won’t let you get out of my control, Ramona. Will you trust me, when I’ve given you no reason to trust me?”

“No reason?” She stared at him. “You came to me first. You weren’t gone because you were being the dick guy who didn’t call the girl who was interested in him. I think you’ve earned some of my trust. A little bit at least,” she allowed with a small smile. “Enough to send a message.”

“Enough to join with my body,” he said. “That’s more than sending a message.” He sighed. “As I warned you earlier, it’s been a long road since last I saw you. A lot of imaginings. For you…it’s been life. You’ve changed your shop around. Added new sections.”

“Reaper merchandise sells very well,” she defended. “Meeting you was just a coincidence. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I was actually talking about the puzzle table at the entrance, and the coffee corner.” His hands fell to her waist, squeezed. “I like your Reaper section, though.”

He sobered. “I also saw the pictures pinned up behind your counter. Your friend had a baby with the Light Guardian. And the succubus and Mikhael mated. My reappearance is much like that ‘dick guy’ showing up on the second date and expecting what he has no right to expect.”

He’d laid out everything that had happened to him without holding back, knowing she was listening. She owed him the same. Though to tell him required an in-depth study of his bare shoulder, her eyes fixed on it as she ran one finger in a short track back and forth along his collar bone.

“I’ve imagined myself with you almost every night since I saw you last. You know that.”

She drew back, showed him her wrists. Then, deliberately, she lifted them as if offering herself to be bound again. With rope, cuffs, or magical bindings of all kinds.

Or the best kind. His own hands, rising to close over them as his gaze showed honed male awareness. “Whatever this journey,” she said, “I’m not wasting a minute of it.”

He mattered to her, enough to give her pause, to make her fear, but the enduring lesson of her life held the gift she could give them both. She followed the magic where it swirled, even if it went in more than one direction, to places that didn’t initially make sense or could cause heartache and unbearable loss.

An overused term, since the worst things possible were bearable. Resilience could be a curse.

“All right.” His grip tightened. When her lips parted, he increased that hold upon her. “I’m doing this for the magic, but not only the magic. I want you to understand that. I want you, Ramona. In ways that might be frightening, if you don’t have a lot of experience, so tell me your experience.”

“I’ve had sex, but only once,” she said. When she flinched at his surprise, he released a wrist to cup her face.

“You need have no shame. I don’t know much about Chaos witches, but I know it is a born gift, and not one easily managed, let alone during intimacy.”

She nodded against his touch, shifted her gaze to his jaw. He had a nice one. She wondered if the light sandpaper of it she’d felt under her hands was conjured as part of his human form, or if he did actually have to shave. “I couldn’t reach climax during it,” she said. “Probably because I brought the house down around us right before. Surviving the hail of building materials became more important than completion. I’m telling you this, not particularly because I want to be mortified, but in case it changes things. If it says we really should bring in Ruby and Raina to help.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

He considered. “Let’s give it a try. If I suspect any problems, we can always stop and call them. Or call them afterward. I see no significant time advantage in stopping what demands…completion.”

The trace of erotic wickedness in his gaze took her by surprise. He traced her cheek with those distracting fingers, the side of her nose, her lips. The curve of her chin as she lifted it for him, to give him access to whatever he wished.

His green eyes watched her the way he had that first time, as if she were the most remarkable thing he’d ever seen. Some men recognized how much that meant to a woman, used it as a seduction tool. But when a man did it because it came from him, that wonder and fascination, something deep in a woman responded.

She looked at him the same way, closing that circle, so they could get lost in one another. There were a lot of things happening in the world—there always were—but this never stopped being important, this kind of moment. It helped and healed a lot of things.

He thought he would frighten her, but she knew when in control of himself, Silas would never let her truly be afraid. She thought of Cal Horscht. He had certainly been afraid, knowing what might happen if Silas was overcome, but she expected as long as Silas’s protection held, Cal had learned what being truly safe meant.

Silas bent, his lips finding hers. That first kiss, after such a long separation. A quiet whimper caught in her throat. She lifted her hand to cover his, where it rested against her face. When he stroked her throat with his thumb, that sound of need vibrated against his touch.

She’d dropped her other hand to his thigh, holding, feeling the shift of muscle as he slid forward. The towel parted further, his thigh against her side as his arm went around her to pull her closer. He held her between his spread knees, his fingers kneading her back, tracing her bare skin beneath the thin cloth of her top.

He had a heated mouth, firm lips, a tongue that lazily seduced and played with hers. His scent filled her senses, that sandpaper jaw grazing her tender skin. All of it felt so good. She was already portioning it, though, knowing how to space it out in the necessary manner. It was far more challenging doing it with him, but she’d had a lot of practice when she self-pleasured, building to a careful climax that stayed within certain limits.

Unlike when she was self-pleasuring, though, she was with an intuitive Master. Silas lifted his lips from hers. “You’re tense, trying to control your reactions. You don’t have to do that.”

“My magic…you heard what Mikhael said. I’m the only one who can fully shield myself. Please…I want this.”

If he didn’t believe her, thought she didn’t, her heart might just crack open. He brushed her wrists with his fingers, his eyes piercing as a falcon’s. “This says you want to give me everything.”

“I don’t allow my wants to make my choices.” Trying to lighten things, she added, “I don’t want to demolish my store. Do you know how long it took to get those top hats in a pyramid?”

He stroked his knuckles along her face. “I’ll help you put it back together. Of all people, you know exactly what wondrous things Chaos can bring.”

She stared into his green eyes, deep as a tunnel of spring grass. She smelled the scent of it. She’d probably have a lawn instead of wood floor any minute now.

Though her hands rested on his chest, fingers curling against the hair and feeling the thud of his heart, a chasm was opening up between them. If she couldn’t find the right words, get him to hear and understand them, it would become so wide they wouldn’t be able to cross it.

“I’ve spent my life learning who I am, what my magic is. Protecting others is important to me, Silas. It’s a responsibility I don’t relinquish. I can’t do it, even for something as wonderful as I know losing myself in your touch would be. Yes, you’ve proven that you can help steady it, and because of that, I will give you everything I can, up to that line. I can promise you’ll have that.”

But the truth she wouldn’t speak, because she wouldn’t kick him while he was down, was that they didn’t know the full capabilities of that mark. Plus, his normal command of his abilities might still be temporarily reduced.

Chaos magic wasn’t kitchen magic. She literally could level a building with it. Every building on this street.

He was listening to her, thinking through what she was telling him. A flicker of darkness, a tightening of his mouth, suggested he intuited the things she didn’t say, because he was an intelligent male and experienced magic user.

She steeled herself for his withdrawal, but he didn’t take his hands away. They rested at her waist, stroking the top of her buttocks, the small of her back. His fingers were beneath the waistband of her thin skirt, finding flesh.

“Did you know, a Reaper has no knowledge of his lives before?” he told her. “The moral structure is there, and experiences come forth when needed, but never enough to make a full picture. You just know, deep in your bones, you chose this. Committed to being a Reaper, with everything you ever were and ever intended to be, no matter how short you fell of the goal.”

He brushed a kiss along her temple, her cheekbone, her jaw, moving like a drifting feather to breathe on her lips, touch them with his, swallow her trembling breath. His palms glided over her arms, back to her waist, gripped hard. “I just spent an eternity protecting one soul. There is nothing more important to me. I understand what you are telling me, Ramona. Which is why I’m telling you this, as the male who wants to command you, possess you, and the male who wants to reassure you that you can trust him with that ultimate gift. You will cause no harm by letting me have everything.”

She’d closed her eyes, absorbing all the potent things he was doing to her, with words as much as his touch. “You’re asking a lot for a guy I just met.”

A smile against her flesh. “I tend to be demanding. In a lot of ways. That’s what you should be most terrified of.”

“‘Fear is just the gateway to wonder. It’s just a matter of stepping through it.’”

He lifted his head, met her eyes. “Exactly.”

“I will try. I promise.” Then, slowly, she reached up, gripped his shoulders, and gave herself to it again. The heat of his kiss, the demand of it, the strength of his arms. They circled her, a rumble of approval low in his throat. He teased her tongue with his own, played with her mouth like he was tasting an unforgettable meal. Filled with textures and flavors to savor, making one marvel at how the cook had brought together the ingredients to taste just that way.

“Cast a circle around us.” He spoke against her mouth.

His arms kept holding her as she did it, giving her his strength and reassurance, even as his hands moved, awakening other senses. Sliding over her back, her shoulder blades, down her sides, over her rib cage. His fingertips teased the swell of her breasts before moving back to her hips. He hadn’t even removed her clothes and she was already…

On fire.

He took care of it with a wash of coolness like the mist billowing away from the striking power of a waterfall. Her eyes opened, and he was stroking her cheek, his gaze filled with the power of what he’d promised her. He’d balanced her magic before she had to do it herself.

She’d had a taste of it when they met, but she’d told herself she’d exaggerated it in her memory. Even if she hadn’t, it had been fifteen minutes, one kiss. Yet he’d just demonstrated the same level of skill that Mikhael had, anticipating the twists and turns of that mark and countering them, keep them from becoming too agitated.

Only in this case, Silas wanted her agitation. He wanted her wild and restless like that waterfall, roaring for more.

More was something she definitely wanted. As she cast the circle, he lifted her from the cot. If he did have reduced strength, he was still far stronger than a normal human. He had no difficulty pressing her up against the pillar that braced the roof, and fortunately fell inside the cast circle.

She’d plastered the pillar with old music sheets, giving it an antique look. Sometimes when she put her hand on it, music would play, notes on the papers randomly rising and falling along the pillar’s length, like a piano keyboard.

Now she heard a discordant sound, as if he’d pushed her against one, a la Pretty Woman, Richard Gere setting Julia Roberts down on the baby grand.

His towel had loosened, so when Silas guided her legs around his hips, her heels pushed it away and her calves crossed over his very firm ass. It brought her dampening core against his abdomen, and his erect cock brushed her ass. It had been so long since she’d held a naked man against her, all the textures and differences.

“Show me your desire,” he growled against her mouth. “Let it loose, Ramona.”

He put one hand back against her throat, dipped his head and bit. She arched, dug her nails into his shoulders, legs tightening over his hips. She was unable to deny herself the waves of pleasure as she undulated against him like those notes along the pillar.

Her energy swirled forth and blew through her shop, strumming the warp threads on her looms, making the wheel on the spinning wheel creak. She was able to draw that power to her, and he helped, pulling it in, inviting it inside the circle, turning it into a vortex that pressed them even closer together. Everything outside the few square feet of space around them vanished, walled off by whatever protection he’d just added to her circle casting, keeping her and her energy contained within his hold.

Under other circumstances and maybe later, she’d want to explore and understand how he did it, but other things rose up in her. Desires that had not been let this loose in far too long, and never with another. Never where she didn’t control all the variables.

He pulled her shirt off her shoulder, put his mouth over her collar bone and suckled, his tongue exploring the tiny pocket. With her back arched, her small breast pressed against his jaw. His hand came up to capture the soft curve before he adjusted to put his mouth over the nipple, the way he’d done that first day, with the shirt in the way. She pleaded, an unintelligible noise, as the thick hair feathered over his brow caressed the base of her throat.

When he lifted his head to take in her reaction, the ruthless set to his mouth thrilled her. He intended to break her into pieces and set all those pieces on fire.

He helped her pull the shirt over her head to get rid of it. She moaned as he gave her the full wet heat of his mouth. He suckled gently at first, exploring and shaping her nipple, taunting it into an aching hardness until she was bucking. It didn’t make him move any faster.

He gave her that look of fiery satisfaction again, his claim on her reactions driving everything. He relished her wildness, and doubled it when he moved to the other breast and gave it the same treatment. She was throbbing, her cunt wet and slick as she worked it against his muscled torso.

He had his arms under hers, so she couldn’t reach down, pull at his hips, bring his cock in contact with the part of her that knew he was meant to be there.

No, he would take his time, underscoring the point.

She could be savage and powerful, and she was. Without his hold on it, her energy might have crushed them like a giant’s fist, but it kept whirling around them, a silent rush of heat and vibration, containing all the thrill of life lived at its most free, a full gallop.

They balanced the pleasure with the ability to experience every detail. They were a God and Goddess, at the center of their creation, lost in one another, because that was the hub. There was nothing they could harm in the universe, because they were the universe.

Chaos and focus could expand awareness to encompass far more than the norm. She could do it when she was fully absorbed in her magic, but it was something she’d never been able to share with another. Even in mindless passion, she realized it was a momentous thing. One that had her gripping his hair, damp and thick under her touch, before he claimed her mouth for another triumphant kiss, a demanding, passionate message. He was rewarding her trust and acknowledging she was giving him something just as special with it as he was giving to her.

“Please,” she said into his mouth. “Please.”

His hands were under her skirt, finding only her, sliding over her thighs, then probing with gentle thumbs. He muttered a reverent oath as he found how slick she still was, no matter that she’d painted his abdomen with her juices in patterns as chaotic as her energy.

She wanted to touch him, and he let her get a hand between them, close it around his thick length. A Reaper yes, but also blessedly male, a word with simple power and primeval meaning.

Then he took control, gripping her hand, so they both guided him to her ready sex. When the ridged head fitted into that opening, his hand came back to her face, lifting her chin, his gaze locking with hers.

“My witch,” he said softly.

The words made her tremble and shudder. He was certain of them, of himself, but what gave her a heartbeat of fear was she was equally as certain. Which meant the way forward could be fraught with peril, because the world loved to fuck with that kind of certainty, do its best to tear it apart and take it away.

She wanted to throw an impenetrable protection spell over them, but the spellcraft that could hide them from those kinds of avaricious, seeking powers didn’t exist.

He was waiting for her response. Wouldn’t enter her body until he had it.

“Yes,” she whispered. I am yours.

He came into her slow, with a restrained power. She felt every inch, but she also felt his care. She’d told him how long it had been, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt her. That broke her apart in ways as devastating as his demanding side could do it, integrating and driving into her heart and soul, claiming both.

He let out a soft groan, his eyes alive with that fire. “Everything,” he murmured. “I want to give you everything.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressed her face into his neck. In this moment, he was doing just that.

“You told me you imagined being with me every day. I’ll demand those details, and make every one of them a reality.”

As he spoke the hoarse words, he began to move, at first slow and easy, driving her body up a steep, excruciating track toward release. He made sure she felt the full sensation of every stroke, every dragging, pleasurable inch of movement. Her muscles contracted on him in need, but also purposefully. As she kept doing it, she earned a feral sound of pleasure. He braced a hand against the pillar, the other holding her securely as the power of his thrusts increased. The crashing sounds of piano notes increased, a jazz piece, discordant, triumphant, bittersweet.

She tilted her hips to take him deeper, as her hands clawed, tried to pull him even closer. She kept squeezing him inside, muscle groups that Raina’s demons had taught her how to use. Inside and outside she gripped, stroked, told him yes and more, in every way.

Her body spasmed, the climax so close. The little leap of panic in her chest told her she hadn’t held back enough. The circle was holding, her energy swirling around them in this second, but that didn’t mean anything.

“I’ve got you, witch.” His breath in her ear was hot as the temperature between them. “Let it go and trust me. Dance with me in the storm…I won’t let you…cause harm.”

Her attention snapped to him. It was a rhyme she used for balance, to calm herself. She must have been murmuring it to herself that day. Now he gave it back to her, amended.

She couldn’t completely abandon herself to the slide, but she honored her promise to him. She offered up more control to another than she ever had before, leaving behind the trepidation as she leaped and found herself securely in his hold, her magic a fireworks around them that could incinerate, destroy, remake, create…

It did all of those things.

As she cried out her release, body writhing in his hold, she couldn’t see beyond the circle. They were caught inside a prism flooded with colored lights, her energy churning around them, but they held onto it together, rode that storm, and it did no harm.

He was deep and full inside her, the friction making her gasp and shudder, and then cry out again as he released just behind her. Even in the midst of that, even as she sensed he got his own full measure of satisfaction, he didn’t fail her, didn’t abandon it all to her. His care of her was part of his pleasure, and knowing it, seeing it, did things to unmake her, unmake decades of pain.

She was his witch. Gladly.

And then she discovered what he meant about being demanding. He wasn’t done.

* * *

She’d forgotten there was another reason for doing this, for raising the energy. He needed to send a message to his fellow Reapers.

As she shuddered through the aftershocks of her climax, he deftly used the currents stored in the circle to send it, murmuring in a language she didn’t know. He did it with enough ease she wondered if he’d really needed her help to do it at all, but even a person skilled in cooking needed the ingredients and fire to make the dish, right?

His gaze cleared and he brushed her mouth with his own, arms still securely around her. “Open the circle,” he murmured. When she silently dispelled the Quarters and opened the boundary, he slid from her body. At her quiet moan, his hands tightened on her, his own answer to the vibration that the separation sent through them. He also didn’t release her, not letting her feet touch the ground.

“Now that we’ve taken care of our chores, time to give you the attention you truly deserve.”

Holy cow. She slid her arms further around his shoulders as he hefted her higher on his body. She adjusted her legs for a more secure hold over his hips, and was gratified when he tightened his arm across her back. He brushed his mouth against her ear again. “You’re so thin. Do you ever eat?”

“Says the man whose true form is nothing but bones. Literally.” She made a face at him. “Chaos magic burns a lot of calories. Raina threatened to have a bumper sticker made that said, ‘this is my stick family,’ and put me on it. Sorry. I don’t really have curves.”

“You have more than enough for me.” He molded a palm to her buttock and stroked, sending a wash of sensation through her. “More than enough to spank.”

The sensual—and purposeful—menace in his chuckle made her quiver. And he noticed.

Apparently, he’d familiarized himself with the contents of the storeroom she had across from the full bath. Particularly an old scarred antique dresser she’d bought as a scratch-and-dent sale item from Cordelia. She kept brochures and other small items in the drawers, but had future plans to make it into a creative display for her linens.

A mirror was bolted to it, so when he put her down, she was facing it. She was naked from the waist up, her skirt somewhat falling back into place. He stood behind her, off center enough she could see his thigh, the way his chest tapered to his hip. When he kept his arm around her waist and pressed closer, her eyes widened, because he was fully erect again. Her sex, still slippery from his release and her own, contracted. He’d been thick and full, and she’d liked having him stretch her, fill her up inside.

“I told you I was demanding,” he said, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “There’s only one thing that will stop me, witch. Do you know what it is?”

He slid a hand around to brush her clitoris. She jolted at the vibration through his fingers, the electrical energy, and saw the wicked intent in his green gaze.

She’d given her magic to him, and he was playing with it, exploring it. Using it. Channeling it through them both, mixing it with his own energy, twining it over his fingers.

He tangled his other hand in her hair, the blond locks wrapping around his fingers. “Maybe I’ll keep you on the edge of orgasm, denying you until you let that last wall drop, fully trust me. Place your palms on the dresser.”

With the pressure of that hold and the weight of his body, he canted her forward, helped her obey. She let out a moan as he adjusted his stance, fitted himself to her still wet opening and eased back in, inch by inch. The movement pushed her against his fingers, onto the electrical pulses he was sending through her, through both of them.

“But I won’t do that,” he said, his gaze lifting to pin hers in the mirror. “I know trust must be earned, and you said you would try. You did. We’ll get there together. But when we finally do,” that wicked glint came back, “That’s when I’ll punish you. A reward for your trust.”

She would laugh at all the contrasts in that statement if she wasn’t so overwhelmed. He’d just given her an orgasm, and he was barely giving her a breather before he was driving her up again. Not asking for a response from her—demanding it. She was giving it to him, as if her body knew its sole purpose in life was to obey his commands.

When he was fully seated inside her, he stilled, tilted her head back. He took her mouth in a kiss she met with a needy whimper. He ignored it, holding her there and plundering her mouth with slow, leisurely strokes of his tongue, nips of her lips, giving her the edge of his teeth. The more she made those tiny sounds, the hotter the lust in his gaze grew. Her need was feeding his Dominance as surely as the energy they were raising was restoring his strength. Maybe they were one and the same. She wasn’t sure she could think clearly about it right now.

“Look at your wrists.”

She did. The script burned into her flesh was alive, twisting, tingling. She could see the golden brass glow of the ribbons spiraling up her arms, crisscrossing over her body, binding her spread legs, just like the night she’d awakened his parting gift. He gripped her left wrist, brought it back against the small of her back, his fingers tangled with hers as he kept the other hand at her hip. He held her fast as he pushed into her slow, drew out the same way, watching the way her body arched, her left breast jutting forward.

“That thing you were doing. Milking my cock. Do it again, while I try to destroy your concentration.”

She would have laughed in a joyous kind of despair if her whole body, all her energy, wasn’t spiraling so madly only gravity told her she was on the ground, not spinning through the universe. That tingling was all over her skin, in between her legs, bringing everything to life, so much energy, and she realized that was what he’d done. Turned it all toward her, toward her pleasure, giving it a place to go, rather than dismantling anything outside of them. Instead, it was dismantling everything inside of her.

She gripped him, watched his eyes glow, mouth tighten as he reacted to the pleasure of it. He played over her clit with those magical fingertips, bent his head to suckle and nip at her throat and collar bone. Then he guided her hand back to the dresser so he could take a hard, bruising grip on her ass, kneading it, thumb working between the crevice, against her rim, bringing her onto her toes.

“Silas,” she gasped. How long could he do this? Could she keep up? Did she care about the answers to those questions? His vast need was only deepening her desire to satisfy it. Whose magic that was, she didn’t know, but maybe they were creating it together.

“When you can take no more, we stop…just past that point. You know why.”

She did. It was why those bindings were on her wrist. To tell her she was his. That she served him.

He’d told her she’d tell him every detail of her fantasies about him. But long before she’d met him, she’d had a night where she was working on pieces of new spellcraft, playing with words. Her mind had drifted to a wish, for the man who could be everything she needed him to be. Her feelings had overwhelmed her and spilled onto the pages of her spell book. Those words rose in her mind now, that call she’d put out into the universe.

I try to speak your name, the one given you by your mother, the Goddess, the name known by all others. It shapes itself in my mouth, but I can’t speak it.

I can’t call you anything but who you are to me. Like an endearment between only us, but so much more. A true name for my heart. Calling it out, I will find you in the darkness, because it is the name that binds us together. That bound me to you and you to me.

To me you are Master.

“Come for me, witch,” he told her, and they released together, that magic once again spiraling tight against them, vibrating against their damp flesh. She held onto it, once again not fully able to let it go, but this time, with his hold overlapping hers, he left no doubt he had it, and her, securely in his grasp.