Page 6 of Twisted Magic

Yeah, big miss there. “I was waiting for you to get home, and then I forgot, in the ensuing argument,” he replied, hearing the irritation in his own voice. Deliberately turning to her, he kissed her lingeringly, stroking her lovely body under the water. “Now, where were we?”

“We were done with putting off reading that missive.”

“I don’t want to read it,” he protested. Not whining at all.

“I’ll read it,” Seliah said, slipping out from under his arm, brushing him off when he tried to tug her back. “Chaim is right,” she told him firmly, not without compassion, but no longer in sultry purring cat mode. “Putting it off won’t change anything.”

Jadren mentally put ‘destroying our afterglow’ on the list of Chaim’s many crimes. “We can read it in the morning,” he grumbled.

“Or, we can read it now.” She levered herself out of the water and onto one knee, giving him a glorious view of her long body and narrow ass, along with the crevice between. Only having to reach a short distance, she remained on her hands and knees, giving him all sorts of ideas. She scooted backward into the pool, scroll in hand, and waded across to him. “It’s my turn to ask if you’re going to behave.”

He managed a saucy grin, throttling the urge to use magic to destroy the ill-omened thing. He might not be much of a wizard, but he was willing to pit some lightning against the spell supposedly warding it. Seliah gave him a narrow glare, knowing him far too well. “I’ll be disappointed in you if you try anything.”

“Fine.” He wasn’t pouting, he really wasn’t. “I won’t.”

“And don’t pout. It’s unattractive.”

“So much for your promises of undying love,” he muttered sullenly. Why bother pretending to be chirpy if she was going to call him on it anyway?

“I can love you to my dying day, which I will, and still call you on your shit, just as you call me on mine,” she replied evenly. Holding the scroll firmly on each end, she presented the middle to him. “You have to unlock the seal. It’s keyed to you.”

“Oh, give me that.” He swiped the thing from her, savagely pleased by her startled yip—she’d underestimated how fast he could be—and hauled himself out of the water. “I’m not sitting here in wet leathers, boiling in this pool, while I read whatever vicious bit of extortion my mother has settled upon to make me do her bidding.” It was definitely from her hand. His monstrous mother’s magic was all over the scroll, like a poisonous fungus that would infect everything it touched.

Going inside, he tossed the scroll on the small table where he and Seliah sometimes shared meals and began yanking off his soaked leathers, not easy as they seemed to have shrunk to his skin. Seliah strolled in, gloriously naked, hair hanging in wet coils, her nipples taut on her full breasts, all of her as enticing as ever. “You look like a drowned rat,” he told her, just to be mean. Served her right for pushing him.

She rolled her eyes, grabbing a towel and using it to wring out her hair. “So much for sex improving your foul mood.”

“It did,” he bit out, yanking away her towel to dry himself. “Temporarily. Until you and Chaim ganged up on me.”

Taking up another towel without comment, she resumed working on her hair, standing hip cocked and bent sideways, methodically working her way down the tangled length of it, then dropping the towel to the floor and using her foot to scootch it around, mopping up the fallout. Throughout the process, she moved with sinuous sensuality, drawing his eye though he tried to ignore her.

“Chaim has good intentions,” Seliah finally said, after he’d donned a soft pair of pants and shirt, and seated himself at the table. Not yet touching the ominous scroll.

“Chaim would cheerfully toss me off a cliff and bond you as his familiar if he thought you would cooperate,” Jadren said, telling himself that Seliah had made her choice and that she would never do such a thing. Would she?

“Someone already tried tossing you off a cliff, but it didn’t stick,” she reminded him. “Immortality comes in handy that way.”

“Relative immortality,” he corrected, biting his tongue on pointing out that she hadn’t reassured him that she didn’t want Chaim for her wizard. Not that he needed to be reassured, but she could have said something. “Liat believes my ability to heal myself has its limitations. I just haven’t reached them yet.”

“Well, let’s not explore those limitations,” Seliah replied with a shudder, eyeing him darkly as she seated herself and began combing out her hair. “And quit stalling. Read the cursed thing.”

“Aren’t you going to put something on?”

“My robe is drenched,” she answered sweetly.

“You have others. Dark arts know they practically grow them on trees here.”

“I’m comfortable. Still hot from that… extended soaking.” She shrugged, making her pretty breasts bounce, and he wrenched his gaze away, looking deliberately at her face which held a too-innocent expression. Yeah, she was doing this on purpose.

“You exhausted me sexually,” he informed her bitingly, “so there’s no point in trying to seduce me again.”

“Just doing my part to distract you from your concerns,” she replied in a soothing tone that he recognized as Seliah emulating Nic’s technique for managing Gabriel.

“Don’t do your care-and-feeding-of-wizards thing with me.” He pointed a finger at her. “I don’t care what Nic Elal taught you. It’s not your job to manage me. Don’t be all subservient.”

She widened her amber eyes and combed her hair. “You seem to have a difficult time deciding which aspects of my traditional role as your familiar I should observe. You want me to obey, but not be subservient?”

Growling under his breath, he transferred his glare to the still-sealed missive. She was far too clever. Why couldn’t he have bonded a feather-brained familiar? Someone nice and biddable, thoroughly conditioned to go along with whatever their wizard wanted. No, he had to fasten upon a rogue familiar and feral human being. Never mind that his controlling and monstrous mother wouldn’t have allowed him to bond any familiar who wasn’t as much of a social pariah as he was. In that way, he and Seliah were a matched set.

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