by Ann Macela
Definitely what she’d heard happened when mates didn’t come together fast enough for the phenomenon’s enforcer. But, she and Saxt were together. Okay, was her center or the soul-mate imperative trying to tell her something, and it had to do with Saxt?
Johanna had come no further than her side of the bed when her center punched her again. When she flipped aside the covers, a wave of desire and downright lust washed over her. Sparks flew along her nervous system and lodged in important parts of her body. Her breasts swelled, her nipples drew tight, and she began to ache between her legs.
The darn imperative wasn’t trying to give her a message—it was out to get her. What was the matter? She and Saxt were bonded. They were mated. What more did it want? She rubbed her middle. No answer was forthcoming from any quarter—her mind, her center, the phenomenon, or Saxt.
She refused to suffer alone. He was as much as a part of this as she was. Was he helping? Of course not. All he was doing was sleeping. He hadn’t even realized she’d gotten out of bed. Guess what, Saxt. It was time to wake up, and she had a surprise for him. Welcome to the party, soul mate!
She flung all the covers to the bottom of the bed and shoved him from his side onto his back. He grunted, but didn’t awaken.
My goodness, would you look at that! He was all ready for her. How nice of the imperative to arrange it.
She straddled him, braced herself on her arms, poised herself directly over his impressive erection, and slid down on it, all the way.
“Wha …?” His eyes blinked wide open. When he tried to rise, she switched her hands to his shoulders and pushed him flat. He stared up at her, and she could tell when he woke completely because he relaxed. And raised his hands to her breasts.
“A good morning to you,” Saxt said in that low, sexy voice while he fondled her. “This is the first time one of my dreams really did come true.”
Johanna took his hands from her breasts, interlaced her fingers with his, and held his down on each side of his head. She fought for a few seconds and won against the urge to move on him. She had a couple of news items for him first.
“Listen to me carefully, soul mate. While in the bathroom, I was hit by the imperative with several jabs in my center. Then, when I came to the bed, the most incredible need to jump your bones almost bowled me over. I don’t know what’s going on with the phenomenon. First you go ‘Rhett Butler’ and carry me up the stairs, where we have our way with each other in a manner that almost electrocutes us. Next I’m fighting pain, even though we’re bonded. You have any ideas about this?”
As encouragement to answer, she gave him a little squeeze and felt him twitch inside her.
He gave her a little thrust in return. Even in the dim light, she could see his grin. “Several ideas. None at the moment that answer your questions. I do have a suggestion about our present position, however.”
“I’ll bet I know what it is, too. I want to state firmly that I’m going along with your suggestion, but not because of the imperative.” She contracted her inner muscles again.
“Of course not.” His voice broke the tiniest bit on the words, and he inhaled sharply on another internal hug from her.
Now she grinned at him. “I simply hate to waste a perfectly good erection.”
“Come here, mate.” Saxt spread his arms to the sides, and since they were attached to his hands which she was holding, the effect was to bring her chest down to his.
As their centers aligned, magic began to circulate.
As their mouths met, sparks and lightning and fireballs flew along her nerves and through her blood. Back and forth, around and around, surges and retreats. In the energy’s wake rushed lust and need and want and craving. Johanna had never been so sexually excited in her life. She began to move on him, and he thrust up with each of her downward slides.
Saxt said something against her mouth. She managed to break apart from their kiss enough to understand him when he said it again. Open her eyes? She did so, only to be immediately blinded by the rainbow colors swirling around them. Colors that pulsed with the beat of her heart. Colors that melted from one wavelength of the spectrum to another until finally they coalesced into silver, then gold, then …
A blinding, brilliant, bewitching explosion of white that penetrated her bones. The detonation threw her into the most powerful, stupendous orgasm of her life. Beneath her, Saxt thrust with his body and his tongue like a crazy man and followed her convulsions with his own.
All Johanna could do was hang on, ride him through the storm, and hope they survived. When they both stopped shaking, she collapsed on his chest. Every muscle in her body hurt, and she was too exhausted to even twitch. She felt herself sinking, and let bliss overwhelm her.
Chapter Thirty-One
When Johanna next opened her eyes, morning light shone faintly through the bedroom windows. They were under the covers, and she had no recollection of either of them pulling the blankets up. She and Saxt were lying on their backs, touching along their sides. Her left leg lay over his, and his right hand was on her thigh. She put her own hand on top of it, with her fingers between his. A faint buzz of energy passed between them.
“If we have to go through more of these bondings,” he said in a deep, gravelly voice, “it’s going to kill us.”
“Probably,” she agreed with a groan. “I’ve never heard of a double bonding. Especially not twice in a row. We made love Friday night and didn’t have this fireworks display.”
“Double? More like quadruple. I’m beginning to think the phenomenon has an ulterior motive here.”
“What is it, though?” Johanna grimaced. “I wish it would be more explicit and leave off the pain. Last night, the darn imperative told me in no uncertain terms that I was supposed to make love with you. I am perfectly happy to do so, but not to be coerced.”
“I agree. So, what’s the answer? We bonded again. What does that mean for us, do to us?” He sounded as disgruntled as she was.
“Besides becoming more mated than ever, the usual outcome is a rise in level,” she said. “We’ve already had that with the first one.”
“So, let’s see what the second brought. Start from red. Lux.”
“Lux,” she cast also.
Two red lightballs about six inches in diameter floated above them.
“Okay, those look normal,” he said. “Take them up to seventeen.”
In unison, the balls progressed through the color spectrum to silver, and finally up to mostly silver with gold streaks.
“That’s seventeen,” Johanna said. “I don’t think I’ve reached my limit. My ball isn’t full.”
“Mine either. Go for eighteen.”
She pushed more energy into her ball. The gold increased until it was predominant.
“To quote Barnaby, ‘Holy Moly!’ We have gone up another level.” She gave his hand a squeeze, which shot more energy up her arm.
“Put your ball on auto. I want to see if they’ll merge.”
She did, and as they watched, the shining orbs melded together, grew in size to a single basketball, and deepened to a solid gold.
Saxt sighed. “Gold is all well and good, and that solid color should be level nineteen or twenty, but what do we do with it? How do we use it? The balls only merge when we touch. We can’t snuggle up in a pentagon.”
Johanna tried to concentrate on his question. It was difficult, then impossible, as magical energy continued to course between their hands, even though hers was on top of his, not palm to palm.
Well, duh, their answer was right in front of them. In hand, so to speak.
“Cancel your ball,” she said, dispelling hers, taking her hand from his, and sitting up at the same time. “I have an idea. Sit up and face me.”
Saxt sat up and duplicated her posture, with his feet crossed and knees wide. He looked more curious than skeptical.
Johanna scooted backward until their knees weren’t touching. “Okay. These last two times we’ve bonded, we’ve been clasping hands, palm
to palm, and magic energy has been using them for a conduit. Right?”
“Uh-huh. I took your hands first, I think, after we got into bed.” He frowned, obviously remembering his actions. “To stop you from touching me. To slow you down.”
“At first. When you, uh, came back up from my lower body—” She wasn’t quite certain how to describe what he’d been doing down there, decided those words would suffice, and hoped she wasn’t blushing. “—then we went palm to palm again.”
“Yeah, and the power flowed between us through them. I didn’t have a reason that I can recall. It was simply the thing to do. I don’t remember ever using that ‘conduit’ before, though, either with us or with Maddy.”
“It didn’t happen with Billy either. When I was in the bathroom before our last bonding, right after the imperative hit me in the stomach, my hands started tingling. When I brought the palms together, I could feel magic passing between them.”
Saxt brought his hands together, palms flat against each other, fingers interlaced. “Huh. I can feel it now. You know … this is sort of the way my hands feel when I’m about to draw my sword. When I’m preparing the spell and start energy moving from my center to create it.”
He switched his grip to the interlocking golf-like grip the Swords used to hold their blade. “Yep, the same.”
Johanna copied his actions. “You’re right. How interesting.” She held her separated hands up to him. “Here, let’s see what happens.”
They clasped hands palm to palm and intertwined their fingers.
“I can feel the energy coming to and from you,” she said when their palms met.
“Me, too. I also have the urge to cast a blade.” He shifted his fingers on his left hand to a sword grip with her right, his little finger between her index and middle ones, his thumb over hers. Ordinarily, the blade would come out of the hollow between the hands, much the way a golf club did for a player.
His grasp felt a little strange, but she decided that was because he was a left-hander, and, as a right-hander, she was used to having that hand on top. “Do you think we can? Wouldn’t it take us casting simultaneously?”
“It’s simply a matter of our energy reaching the same point at the same time. If we cast then, shouldn’t it merge into a blade? Why don’t we try?” he asked eagerly, and she was reminded of one of her students trying too hard, too fast.
“Why don’t we get off the bed so we’re standing and cast a pentagon first?”
“Good idea.”
They climbed off the bed and stood in the open space between it and the bathroom. When she turned around to face Saxt, Johanna realized they were both naked. “Shouldn’t we put on our robes?”
“Nah, we’ll take it very slow and easy. Cast the blade at level one. That should be all right,” Saxt replied. “Ready for the pentagon? One, two, three.”
The five-sided structure formed around them. Johanna surveyed their situation. Yes, it should be okay.
They held hands in the sword grip again, his left and her right. She could feel his energy pulsing against her palm. Their free hands hung at their sides.
“Ready?” he asked. When she nodded, he said again, “One, two, three.”
She cast, and she assumed he did also. Nothing happened. No blade appeared. Not even a sliver.
“I can feel your energy trying to move out of your hand,” she said.
“Yeah, ditto on yours. Oh, we were holding both hands before. Maybe it’s the double connection.” He held her left hand in his right.
“Wait,” she said. “My intuition—or the imperative—is telling me that won’t work either. We’re not arranged correctly, whatever ‘correctly’ means. Let me think for a minute.”
Johanna turned her back on him. Looking at his body and feeling his gaze did not help her concentration. She was sure they almost knew the answer. She stood in the classic sword stance, hands together in front of her, body balanced, shoulders relaxed, and mimicked casting her sword. She thought about how energy traveled through her body to manifest itself in her blade.
Although her center purred pleasantly, no “eureka” moment occurred.
Behind her, Saxt placed his hands on her shoulders and slid them down her arms. The movement pulled her against his body. His arousal was evident.
Johanna couldn’t help wiggling when she came in contact with his lower body.
“Just ignore it,” Saxt said. “It happens whenever I touch you.”
Ignoring his body would be like ignoring a leopard in the room, but she said nothing. Mostly because her attention suddenly concentrated on what was happening to their hands.
Where his surrounded her clasped hands.
Where both sets of hands were glowing.
“Oooookay,” Saxt said. He was sort of hunched over her shoulder, his head close to hers. “It’s awkward, but seems to work. It does give us more possibilities.”
“I’ll try for a small blade with my hands inside yours,” Johanna suggested. “Feed your energy into the back of my hands. Here we go. One, two, three.”
A shining red sword about eighteen inches long appeared in her hands.
“Cancel the spell, and let’s try it with my hands inside,” Saxt said.
The results were the same.
“I feel like we’re so close to figuring out our problem. We can’t do that here, however,” Johanna stated after they dismissed the spell. “My center is jumping around, pushing for more, and my energy well has doubled in capacity. Consider what happened in our bonding. If we’re able to cast a blade together, there’s no telling what kind of power we’ll use or create. We need to go to a protected room and be safe.”
“You’re right. Let’s go to the Center right now. Nobody will be practicing this early, and we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
At the Defender Building, they didn’t see anyone on the way to the practice rooms, as to be expected at seven thirty on a cold Sunday morning. Although Saxt would have loved a cup of coffee, it wasn’t worth the hassle of the restaurant or the lobby kiosk. He usually couldn’t walk across the hall here without three people wanting to speak with him. Now was not the time for interruptions. For “breakfast,” he and Johanna had eaten some power bars she kept for students with flagging energy. That would have to do.
Johanna checked the sign-in sheet for room reservations and led him to a “D” room, the specially protected kind used only for practice with and destruction of evil items. She was taking no chances with whatever they would be able to conjure up. He agreed with her precautions.
She cast flamma to light the candles in the sconces on the five stone walls while he locked them in and checked out the chamber. The pentagon engraved in the floor was about twenty feet in diameter, and in its center sat the usual five-sided pedestal with a shallow, clear-crystal bowl on top. The walls pulsated slightly with the residue of protective spells cast in past sessions. They wouldn’t activate those—too much of a drain on their energy. Their pentagon, set to keep all the magic in, would be sufficient. All was in order.
They took off their coats and put on their robes. Inside the etched figure, they cast a smaller, sixteen-feet-diameter pentagon—no need to waste energy on the larger for only the two of them. Its shimmering walls glowed silver and gold.
“I have to tell you,” Saxt said, looking up at their fortress, “it’s a real charge to know we can cast at such a high level. I never dreamed of the possibility.”
“Neither did I,” Johanna replied. “Oh, my, we’re going to have a lot to do, learning the spells available at eighteen—and also sixteen and seventeen.”
“Don’t remind me. When am I going to do my own work?” he groaned before waving the thought away. “I’ll worry about that later. Let’s work on our first problem. Those power bars of yours helped, but I’d like some real food before long. For now, let’s start with our individual blades and see how high a level they’ll reach.”
Within second
s, two swords shone gold with silver streaks.
“Those are eighteen, like our lightballs.” Saxt sheathed his blade. “I couldn’t make mine higher.”
“Neither could I.” Her blade disappeared also. “Let’s try our experiment.”
She stepped to a position midway between the pedestal and the walls, facing the center. “Standing here, I’m about four feet from the bowl. Does that give you the room you need?”
He moved behind her and checked his distance to the walls. “Fine. Here’s how I understand our situation. At home, we cast a single blade together with your hands inside, then did it with mine. Let’s do that again. This time, see how high we can push the blade. We each cast our personal blade before. Let’s try a generic longsword design to keep a constant in the experiment?”
“Yes, the comparison will be better.” Johanna brought her hands together, and he put his arms around her to clasp them.
It took them a few seconds to find a comfortable stance, with him looking over her left shoulder, their heads touching. She wasn’t going to be able to extend her arms as far as she usually did, and he was crouching slightly and his arms stretched forward more than in his normal stance. Having robes on wasn’t as much fun as being naked was at home, either. Still, with her in his arms, he couldn’t complain.
As before, when his hands enclosed hers, all four glowed with silver and gold.
“Ready?” she asked, and at his nod, said, “One, two, three.”
The glow on their hands faded as from them rose a three-foot red blade.
“Push the power slowly,” he murmured. “One, two, three.”
The colors blended from one to the other through the spectrum to silver, to more silver than gold, to more gold than silver. Eighteen. They pushed harder. The level went no higher.
“I’m feeling a greater energy pull from my center,” she said. “Can you?”
“Yeah. This sword requires more to maintain than my single sword.” He studied the blade. “It’s not solid gold, though, not the way our combined lightball was. Let’s shoot a beam out of it. Maybe more power flowing through it will raise the level. You’re holding the blade. You’d better be the one directing the beam.”