Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

Personally, I wondered if it had something to do with being lovers with a Closer. Zayvion was good at taking people’s memories. Maybe he was good at helping them stick around too.

“Ready?” Zay said it softly, but I jumped anyway.

Boy was too damn quiet. I glared at him from just inside the bedroom door.

“Make some noise, will you?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said all low and sexy-like. “How about I make you make some noise?”

I smiled. “I thought we were taking a shower.”

“That’s a good place to start.”

“Okay, magic boy. You’re on. First person to cry mercy folds the laundry.”

“After you.” He stepped aside so I could walk past him, and I did too, without freaking out or even having to hold my breath even though there just wasn’t enough room in the hall for me and him in the same place.

Of course my bathroom was even smaller.

And it was currently filled with a half ton of living rock who was flushing my toilet and watching the water circle the drain, his wings quivering in excitement.

Great. When had he learned to flush the toilet? My water bill was going to be sky-high.

“Stone,” I said. “Out. Go play with a lathe or something.”

He swiveled his head and looked at me over his shoulder, one five-fingered hand still resting on the tank plunger.

“Window, boy. Go to the window. It’s dark out. Nighttime. You could go. Out. Go fly.”

He clacked doubtfully and looked back down at the water.

“Need some help?” Zayvion asked.

“I got it.” I walked into the bathroom, squeezing around Stone, and giving myself the willies.

I put my hand on Stone’s head and stared straight into his intelligent, round eyes. “Out.” I pointed my other hand at the door, and tipped his head that way.

He cooed happily at Zayvion, who leaned one wide shoulder against the doorway and took up all the remaining space and air.

“Getting out of the way would be nice,” I said to Zayvion.

“Oh. Sorry about that,” he said, clearly not at all sorry.

He backed into the hallway and snapped his fingers twice. Stone’s ears flicked back, then pricked up when Zay snapped his fingers again. Stone looked at me, clacked, in a why-didn’t-you-say-so way, then lifted up on his two back legs and waddled out of the bathroom.

He clattered like a bag of marbles being shaken, and Zayvion treated him to another head scratching and told him he was a good boy.

Fine. Let him play with the statuary. I was taking a shower.

I started the water and stripped, throwing everything but my bra-which wasn’t wet, wonder of wonders-into the hamper. I did not look at myself in the mirror, because right now I didn’t care how many scars I had, nor if my father was going to be looking at me through my eyes. Hot water was calling me and nothing was getting in between me and the steam.

I shut the door so Stone wouldn’t wander back in, took off the void stone, and put it on the sink, then stepped into the shower. I dunked my head under the strong, hot spray and moaned. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to shower at the gym this morning.

“No fair starting without me,” Zayvion said.

Man was too damn quiet.

But I did hear him taking off his shoes, and then just one clack of his belt buckle being undone.

The thought of him, of his body, in the shower with me, made me wish I hadn’t agreed to this little bet.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I called out.

He pulled back the curtain at the head of the shower, caught my arms in his wide, strong hands, and pulled me in for a kiss.

I sputtered and laughed against his lips as he manhandled me to one side so he could step into the shower. He tried to pull me out of the water so he could get in and soak, but I planted my feet.

“Get your own hot water, cowboy,” I said, holding my own under the showerhead.

Zay drew his hands down my arms, his fingers leaving my wrists to caress my stomach and hips. He stroked back over my ass, and pressed against me full-body.

Yum.

“What if I like your water?” he asked.

“Then you’re going to have to work a heck of a lot harder for it.”

“Fair enough. I think I’ll start here.”

He leaned down again. This time his mouth found my shoulder. He kissed me there, his tongue licking over the marks magic had left on me, stroking and urging the magic inside me to rise to his touch.

I bit my lip on a groan. Magic flared in me, licking hot, and I didn’t even try to hold it back. Thought, for just a moment, that I should have left the void stone necklace on. And then I didn’t think about anything but Zayvion, and what he was doing to me.

Zayvion’s other hand slid up my butt, pressed at the small of my back, while his mouth moved down to the edge of my breast.

Okay. I was done with the shower. Done with being clean. All I wanted was him.

“Say mercy,” he murmured.

What? Oh no. Hells, no. I wasn’t going to lose.

“You say mercy,” I said. I pulled his head up, my thumbs beneath the scratchy stubble along his jaw, and then pivoted so his back was against the wall and the shower fell on both of us.

He smiled, wet, hot, gorgeous, and leaned his shoulders back, giving me all the time I wanted to take in his dark, hard body.

I spread my legs for balance. He gasped at that move, which made me grin. Then he swallowed, his eyes sparking gold. He reached out to pull me in closer, but I held my ground, even though his need washed through me. I had plenty of need on my own, thank you.

I knew what he wanted. He knew what I wanted.

I held eye contact. “Mercy, Jones.” I pressed my hand against his thigh, and slowly kneaded my way upward. “Say it.”

He closed his eyes, tipped his head back. “Allie,” he breathed. “M-my God, woman. Come here.”

Close enough. I couldn’t wait any longer either.

We embraced, giving in to the passion we could no longer contain. I drew him into me with aching sweetness, his body familiar and right. Water slipped hot fingers down my shoulders, back, thighs, licking, searching, finding every inch of my skin that was exposed, wrapping me in wetness and heat.

Inside me, Zayvion’s emotions rose and raged like a summer storm. His need licked beneath my skin, warring with the magic I held inside me, pushing it up and up through me, where he caught it in his mouth, drank it from my skin, my soul.

More. I wanted more. Wanted him to take more, wanted to give him more.

I called on magic. Pulled it through me, and let it pour out, a wild flood of power and passion and raw need, into him.

His muscles, his body, stiffened, hardened, arms clenching me tighter, caught in a burning overload of pure magic that lifted to my call, answered my desires, and rushed swiftly as glyphs pulsing in the air, into him.

He drank the magic down, changed it, and thrust it back into me.

For a moment, everything went black. Silent. Still.

There was no beginning to him. No end to me. There was only the heat of our nerves, the thrum of our heartbeats, skipping, catching, pounding in rhythm to the magic that gave and took, from him, from me, to him, to me, building and falling, and building again.

We were more than man and woman. Magic took control and drew through us glyphs and spells flashing lightning and fire and heat through my mind, his mind. Our soul.

Burning us together as one.

We cried out for mercy with one voice, one need.

It took time, maybe too much time, for magic to release us. Too much time until one of us finally pulled away.

Time while Zayvion convinced me that we were not one, but two people, two bodies, two minds, his kisses gentle, slow, his lips and fingers reminding me of my own skin, my own body, separate from his. Reminding me of the rightness of that. The rightness of being me.

I opened my eyes, blinked from the light. Not magic, just plain electric light.

“It’s okay,” he said, and I knew it was. I also knew he was worried. I could still feel his emotions as if they were mine, could taste his worry like sour rinds at the back of my throat.

“Allie,” he said, his fingers splayed against both sides of my face. “Do you remember where you are? Who you are?”

No words could kill a mood or bring me crashing back into my own mind, my own body, faster.

I had memory issues. That was something I would never forget.

Checklist: we were standing in the shower. The water was off. I didn’t remember washing the soap out of my hair, but I knew I had. I didn’t remember turning off the water, didn’t know how long we had been in the shower.

But yes. I knew who I was. Allison Beckstrom. Hound. Newly a member of the Authority, filled with magic, and Soul Complement to Zayvion Jones.

And I was just as sure that for some time, I had forgotten all those things, and had instead been content to be more. Had been a part of Zayvion, joined. One.

“Me-my place,” I finally answered him. “How long?”

His relief rained through me and I tasted candy melon. “Maybe an hour,” he said. “I’m not sure.” Which meant he’d lost track of reality too. That I’d made him forget who he was.

Was it wrong for me to love, just a little, that I could do that to him?

His eyes shifted back and forth between mine.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Light-headed. What exactly happened?”

“We made love.”

I frowned. “I know that.” Eloquent. My middle name.

“Soul Complements,” he said, as if that covered the rest of what I should know.

He stepped out of the shower and I stepped out with him, unthinkingly needing to stay in contact with him, to move in tandem with him, to be no more than inches apart from him.

He handed me a towel. “We fell. . fell too far into each other. Magic drew us in, and we didn’t let go.”

I took the towel and stayed where I was while he purposefully took two steps away. The need to follow him and limit the distance between us was still there, but it was fading. I dried myself off in silence.

He rubbed the towel over his hair, and mopped off, the towel wadded in his hand. He shook the towel out, and wrapped it around his waist.

“What did we do wrong?” I asked.

“We lost control.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

“Too far, too long, and we won’t want to be who we are without also being the other person.” He said it without emotion, as if he were reciting a textbook. “We’ll lose ourselves. Lose what we are as individuals. That’s a problem.”

He was right. I wanted that closeness, that awareness of every inch of him. Wanted him, wanted us, bound together, burned, melded by magic. There was a power in it. I could sense it, could almost taste it. A power I’d never felt before.

And knowing I could never have it again, that we should never have it again, made me hollow and empty, even though he was only a few steps away, and closer to me than any man in my life.

“You don’t think this will happen every time, do you?” I asked.

“Every time we have sex, or every time we take a shower?” He smiled.