Page 56 of Twisted Magic

“I’m far from sane and I still can’t say no,” he purred in reply, running his hands over her body, one dropping to cup her bottom and the other sliding up under her hair to press her against him. She closed her eyes as he came in for the kiss, then sighed half in disappointment, half in sheer pleasure as he dropped the kiss on her eyelids, first one side, then the other, his breath feathering warm and sensuous over the delicate skin. “I love you, Seliah,” he said softly. “In the end, that’s all that matters.”

“Yes,” she agreed on a sigh. “This is the most important thing in all the world.”

And when his lips met hers, it was true. Everything else fell away and only he existed. Jadren. His heat, his scent, the lean lines of his body pressed into every curve of hers, his silky beard against her face and the even softer, satin feel of his lips and the scorching interior of his mouth. His magic, delving into hers and unspooling it, inviting her into him with the same erotic skill as he coaxed her tongue to tangle with his. Like perfectly oiled clockwork, his magic ticked all over her skin, pinpoints of passion, tingling and teasing, caressing and stoking.

She’d expected mischief from him, an edge of violence and danger that he often brought to their play, but this was different. This was love. Languid, needy, and needing. And she sank into it, sank into him, submerging herself, opening and offering everything.

Vaguely, in the background, she was aware of movement, of the near-silent assembly of perfectly matched pieces, smoothly fitting together just as she and Jadren did.

“Seliah,” he breathed against her mouth, not letting her go, not lifting his head. “Look.”

Mimicking him, she didn’t pull away, but watched from the edges of her peripheral vision, dazzled by the gleam of metal pieces spiraling in a slow-motion whirlwind of construction. The room built itself around them, forming a ceiling and cylindrical walls, the floor slipping beneath their feet and furniture assembling itself from nothing. As they both watched in wonder, slowly pulling a distance apart as they became more confident they wouldn’t break the spell, the arcanium manifested itself in gleaming colors of hundreds of different metals and other materials. Cabinet doors appeared on the walls, and various workspaces extruded themselves.

“The El-Adrel arcanium,” she said, feeling it needed to be spoken aloud, fully expecting Jadren to chide her for making an observation on the blisteringly obvious.

“Yes,” he said, in the same hushed tone. He shifted, catching and holding her gaze. She became aware that a fine trembling ran through him. “Thank you, Seliah. Without you, I would never have known this.”

“Are you getting soft on me?” she teased.

Narrowing his gaze, he nudged her hip with his groin, demonstrating his impressively hard erection. “Obviously not,” he replied, capturing her mouth in a bruising kiss. “I think that, however, we won’t want to use that.”

His tone held such a scathing quality of disgust that she glanced over her shoulder at what his glittering black gaze fixed on. It was a chair, very like the one she’d seen and experienced in Katica’s torture chamber of a “laboratory,” with articulated extensions to bind a person’s arms and legs into whatever position their captor desired, the main section cradling their torso and a headrest with an additional strap to go across the forehead. She cringed, remembering the pain inflicted on her in that other chair, then moved between it and Jadren to block his sight of it, knowing his memories eclipsed hers by hundreds of thousands of times.

“We won’t,” she promised him. “She’s dead. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

The hard, haunted edge to his face softened and he smiled at her, almost gently, and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “My darling, girl,” he murmured. “You are so fierce I sometimes forget what an innocent you are. The chair is intended for the wizard’s familiar, to maximize extraction of magic through pleasure or pain, ideally both.”

“Oh.” Her throat struck, drying immediately. Then she firmed her will. “If that’s what’s needed in order to—”

“If that’s what’s needed to put you in alternate form,” he interrupted, “then we’re not doing it. I draw the line there, Seliah. I know how you feel about being restrained and I’m not doing that to you, ever, so forget that right now.”

She dropped her forehead to his chest in overwhelming relief, realizing she’d begun to tremble. She’d overcome a great deal, but she didn’t know if she’d ever get over that core-deep dread of being trapped and unable to move. Maya had counseled her that some fears become part of you and never fade or disappear, that she might just have to learn to live her life around that, like finding solid ground through a landscape riddled with bogs.

“I hate to think of Fyrdo in that thing,” she said.

“Then don’t,” he said wryly. “I certainly intend to scrub the image from my brain and disinfect thoroughly afterwards.”

Selly winced. No one wanted to picture their parents having sex, much less something like this. She noticed his erection had wilted and could hardly blame him. He noticed her noticing, lifting her chin with one finger and giving her a thorough kiss. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it back. We don’t want the chair,” he said to the room in general.

A feeling of listening, different than before, and general expectation hummed in the walls around them, the metal scintillating as if moving. The chair melted into the floor, becoming one with it.

Jadren raised an auburn brow. “Fascinating.”

“How much of that is you and how much the house?” she ventured.

“I’m not entirely certain,” he admitted. “It’s different in here. I am different. The power… magic is flowing into me and not from you. It’s El-Adrel magic, purified and intense. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

She’d been aware that he wasn’t drawing from her and tried not to feel a little bereft that he didn’t need her magic. Especially as he left her side to prowl about the room, investigating the contents of the cabinets and the jumbles on the benches of works in progress. One cabinet held several heads, reminiscent of Katica’s automatons, but with variations that turned Selly’s stomach. As much as the laboratory had been a house of horrors, this place might be worse.

“We have a lot of purging to do,” Jadren commented in disgust, then glanced at her when she only grunted a reply. Taking her in, he strode to her and cupped her face in his hands. “You’ve gone pale,” he noted with concern. “It’s too closed in here. This isn’t good for you, we should—”

She stopped him with a sharp shake of her head, wrapping her fingers around his wrists—not to pull his hands away, but for stability. She gazed into his beloved face, knowing she trusted him beyond anyone else in all the world. “We’re doing this,” she said, as firmly as she could, ignoring the quaver in her voice. “Together,” she added with a twist of a smile. “I lectured you about running away. Well, I’m not going to run from this either. This place isn’t evil in itself, just because it was used for horrible things. Yes, we’ll purge it and make this arcanium our own, but in the meanwhile, we need to use the magic here to practice putting me in alternate form.”

He smiled, a rueful half-smile. “I was hoping there would be instruction manuals. There aren’t. Seliah… I don’t know how.”

“Well, what did your late-mother do when she transformed Fyrdo from a goat back into human form? I know you were watching. And you saw Gabriel do it with Nic, too.”

He pursed his lips, thinking. “The two wizards did it very differently. I don’t know if that’s because Gabriel wasn’t taught and made it up himself or if it’s the difference in magics.”

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