by Kiki Howell
“Um, well, she was nice. She worked hard too, was there for us when I asked. But, I didn’t ask for much. They claim you’re born a SEAL, and I believe that’s true. I was fascinated with not only the military, but with learning all my life. I studied every second I wasn’t out playing, then working out, then working a job as I grew. I miss her, too. I wish we’d had more time to get to know each other when I was little, that we’d had more time together once I joined the military. I visit when I can, and I call.”
“And, your father,” she got out leisurely, each word in its own beat of time as she followed the line of his jeans where they hung stretched tight across his hips.
He laughed, a short, throaty chuckle cut short by a long intake of breath as he touched her cheek. Then, he trailed his hand down over her throat, tracing her collarbone to just above her breast, right over her heart.
“We’ll get to him another time,” he sighed. “He passed away about five years ago now. I’ve been trying not to speak ill of the dead.”
His expression grew more serious then, eyes blazing from under the locks of dark hair that had fallen forward. Between the hairs on his forehead, a vein bulged, as sexy as the one under his eye, right above a tiny scar. She wanted to know the story behind it, behind every scar, behind every memory. What legions of harrowing tales must lie within his mind?
Without touching her breast, her moved his hand to the side, found hers again. This time he watched as he grasped her hand, laid it over his, then let them mesh together. He lifted half his body up onto her. His strong edges pushed down on her one full breast, as his other hand found her alternate as well. Once all his weight balanced on her, he slid their joined hands up to each side of her head and brought them in to cradle her head with his strong arms.
His mouth found hers this time with much more gusto, more movement, more soft brushes of skin juxtaposed in the best way possible with pushes and nips. When he backed off for air, a half smile turned quickly to a partial grimace. She watched as his jaw clenched and his neck moved as he swallowed.
“What? What’s wrong?” she questioned in a rush.
“I just wonder if I should let myself, well, let myself just feel, just enjoy. I’m as scared as I am excited. I never talk this much, and it’s all I want to do with you other than touch you and kiss you. I want to know everything about you. I want to memorize every inch of you. I don’t want to let you out of my sight. I’m getting paid to do just that cause there’s someone out there, or several some ones, who wish to use you... Use that which is so special about you for their own perverted reasons. Magical doesn’t cut it when describing you, your smile, though I’ve only been blessed with seeing it a few times. Listen to me ramble. This is all so new to me.”
“Let yourself. Moments change on a dime. I’ve learned that to be true, and then some, this past week. But, my mom always said we should embrace each moment for all it had to teach us, good or bad. And, when the good ones come along, we need to hold onto them as tightly as we can, to open our eyes and appreciate each second of them. I want to do that now because you’re the one huge bright spot in this whole mess. And, because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
She inched her palm from his so just their fingertips met. Then, she let what she felt for him form into a soft white light that rolled between their flesh. She watched him watch the light. The brightness flickered in his warm, chocolate colored eyes. She melted.
“What I feel for you scares me, too,” she admitted, “but my mom made me a believer in love at first sight with the stories she used to tell me of meeting my father. All my life I wished to be able to experience the same, and here, in the midst of all this upheaval in my life, I’ve found you.”
They spent the next hours talking, touching, kissing, until they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. They could have let go, made love, but they’d agreed to believe in the tomorrow they had together instead. They promised each other to take this wonderful thing happening between them slow, to savor each and every magical moment.
Chapter Eight
AEDAN’S ARMS CREATED a safe cocoon in which she felt wanted, truly desired as a woman, for the very first time. Never one to invest much time in relationships before, she knew something there had changed with Aedan. He made her want things she’d never truly wanted before. Regardless, she had to pry herself away and get dressed to find Darcaryn.
As she awoke, she’d grown desperate for some good news regarding her aunt. While she hadn’t gotten a chance to get exactly close to the woman, she assumed their magic gave them a bond; one deeper than Kyna had means to explain. Plus, she’d never had to fear for her life before. No one had ever wanted to cause her physical harm. She’d never been in a dangerous situation. So, in her gloriously easy, albeit poor upbringing, she’d always held her own just fine.
With that comforting line of thought, she stared at her hands as if they were new to her, just sewn on or something, like bionic prosthetics. The magic had changed everything about the way she viewed the world. She hadn’t figured it all out though. The unknowns made her skittish of those who not only understood it, but obviously knew how to abuse such power. Feeling unstable grew as a new experience for her. One she wanted to halt as soon as possible.
In between looking for her aunt, she also had to get Darcaryn to continue her training, to teach her to become a worthy adversary to her family's enemies. From what she’d heard from her mom in the States, briefly, before she’d taken off for Ireland, her adopted father had had mysterious enemies. She’d just never been made aware of the situation. His death, so easily explained back then as an accident, probably hadn’t been one at all, due to his dealing with the Irish mafia in the States.
With all these thoughts swirling through her brain, she woke her sleeping giant and tore herself from the warmth of the bed. Hard job for the day over, she readied herself for all the rest to come.
She gulped down some tea and food at Aedan and Darcaryn's insistence she’d need it for all she had to deal with. Eating proved easier than to fight them both. They decided it best for Aedan, with all his connections, to continue the investigation for Kyna’s aunt, while Darcaryn continued her training. She knew her aunt would have wanted it that way. The most sensible thing she could do would be to learn not only to fight for herself, but to use the powers these people wanted, to protect her and her family.
She made herself ready and willing to learn, fighting against all her instincts to go out roaming Ireland for her lost family, a woman she’d only known existed for days. Thankfully, the men had more practical intellect at the moment.
Clearing her mind once back down under the house didn’t prove easy, but she tried her best, used each thought of her aunt to fuel her lessons. Darcaryn had gone right to business working with her on elemental magic. He’d called it the most basic, claimed it necessary in all other magic she would use later on.
They started with air today. Darcaryn made wind blow. He created a breeze capable of whipping her hair right there, underground, in a locked and windowless room. Then he talked her through using the energy inside her to push outside of herself, to feel the air, to mix her energy with it, and to make it move at her whim.
At first, she only created little blasts of a strong breeze. Powerful, but streamlined, her air currents almost always knocked something over. She had to hand it to the guy, as dark and as intense as he appeared, he didn’t yell or lecture her for her mistakes. Rather, he seemed to delight in her every achievement no matter how small or detrimental to the environment. He spurred her on with endless enthusiasm and direction, gently encouraging her skills into more refined abilities in no time at all.
Soon, she had papers spinning above their heads, a plant on the floor levitating at eye level, and the fire blown out completely. Despite her success, she only wished she could blow away the sensation of being watched, of another magic, one evil and misguided, mingling with hers. A shiver moved through her body.
; “We better train you to start a fire before we both freeze to death down here.” Darcaryn's attempt at a joke, she guessed, though with the man’s intensity she found it hard to tell.
He merely flicked his wrist and the fire blazed in the hearth again as if it had never gone out.
“I have to admit, that while seeing is believing, as is feeling, something in my brain still wants to reject all this,” she admitted. “I have this desire to somehow make it all out to be smoke and mirrors on your part. To make my life go back to the boring normalcy I knew just days ago back in the States as a science teacher. I miss my students and the practical explanations. Static electricity was the most unusual thing I’d encountered, though I thought I had an explanation for even it, and I was simply more prone to it than most.”
“You felt your power then, even if you had no words, only other sad explanations for it. You probably thought you were one who felt more than others, who could just read others, a non-specific gift you couldn’t explain.”
“Exactly. Life was easy then. I can’t believe we haven’t heard from Aedan yet.” She sighed as she glanced at Darcaryn’s cell phone on the table.
Aedan had promised to call as soon as he had any news. Kyna’s stomach sank at what no news could mean.
“He’s doing his best. These people, they’ve made a career out of not being found. A simple cloaking spell could be all they need to hide your aunt right under our noses. I don’t know if all the military connections in the world could fight against that power. This is why your training is so important. You need to be ready to protect yourself.”
“How could it possibly matter when my aunt had her whole life to train and couldn’t protect herself? If anyone, she should’ve been able to protect herself. And, you...you should be the one who could break any cloaking spell if you know so much. What we’re doing here just doesn’t add up,!” Kyna exclaimed, her thoughts spilling from her mouth as they formed. “You both told me what to do this morning, and I just listened, reacted. So unlike me. And, look where it’s gotten me. I can blow out fire. What good does that do my aunt? I should have listened to my gut this morning and thought of all of this sooner.”
Her anger at herself, for not thinking things through, for letting these men tell her what to do and mindlessly responding, lashed out within her. Energy built within her. She thought if she tried to move the air now she could make the whole house crash down around them.
“Don’t you think I’ve already tried to use a locator spell, that I’ve already tried to take down any cloaking spell I could? I failed,” he practically screamed. “I’ve done and am doing all I can to find your aunt. I care about her. I’ve known her and her father for years. Training you is what I know she’d want in the meantime. So that is what I’m doing to make myself feel useful.”
His voice had risen to a pitch that made her raise her shoulders to protect her ears from damage.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, her voice now shaky and low. “But, you can’t imagine how I feel here, in this strange land, in this huge and unfamiliar house, without the one person here who wanted me to come, who is my blood... To know some powerful people want my aunt and me. And now, just days into my visit, she’s missing. Plus, I have these strange new things my body can do, things that probably put me in more danger to learn, if what you say is true. They want me for my powers.”
“What would be dangerous is to let them take and train you, to corrupt your powers from the start. Your aunt feared that most. If she’d left you in the States, they would’ve taken you, and trained you to their own twisted desires without you having any knowledge of such things. You need to know some magic basics and some sort of right verses wrong in such matters. Maybe she let them take her to allow time for that.”
“Let them take her?” Kyna yelled.
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it any more than you can. She’s the most powerful woman I know. Stop questioning me. Just start doing what she would want in the meantime,” he argued.
“Okay, I get it. I don’t get much about these things. I’m confused. I’m scared. In this situation I don’t think that makes me weak, but strong and aware. So, I will have to trust you and Aedan for now, that you both have more experience, you in magic and him in covert missions.”
Somehow, it seemed so much easier to trust Aedan, though. Something about Darcaryn just didn’t feel right. Her ability to read people made him feel untrustworthy, sinister, and up to something. She swore he had some ulterior motive not quite on the up and up. At the same time, regardless of that dangerous side, she still found him sexy. Something in him called to a baser lust in her, though according to him that was some spell.
“Let’s get back to work,” he huffed. “How about we move to fire, let you get a taste for each element. Then maybe we can throw you into casting a circle, which requires calling upon the four elements. After that, together, using our magic in a combined effort of a locator spell, maybe we can find your aunt. Does that make you feel like what you’re doing here today has more purpose?”
“Yes. That makes more sense. So, how do I work with fire?”
They moved on. Apparently, Darcaryn had quickly learned to move back from what Kyna worked on after nearly getting his hair caught on fire from her just lighting a candle. A simple thought had sparked a flame several inches high, one she didn’t know a candle capable of. She saw spots herself for a few minutes after.
“Your powers have been unused for so long, denied release. Plus, right now you’re overly emotional, and that makes them out of control, too. It’s a good thing you had such a strong mother growing up. One who made you so sure of yourself, so capable, so even-keeled, or you may have burnt a house down without even knowing you did it. Didn’t odd things happen around you?”
“Um, I guess?” she answered, even as she still thought about it.
She easily found strange incidents in her memory, like a cup that had broken in her hand, crumbled to bits, one time when she’d been angry. Her mother had claimed she’d had some sort of adrenaline rush, which had given her increased strength for a moment.
“I guess, maybe,” she stammered. “I mean, my mom always had a reason for things that happened. A logical, scientific reason.”
Her mind started to flip through memories, and an odd thought occurred to her, unsettled her even more, if possible.
“I went into science because there did seem to be so many things I questioned as a child that my mom always had answers for. Sometimes her explanations didn’t set right, so I read to ease my own curiosities. I became this research junkie, always at the library, trying to explain what I couldn’t of my life.”
“And, did the research appease your questions?” he taunted.
“No, I guess it never did. So I just kept researching. Even once I had a degree and started teaching, I still studied, went back to college to earn yet another degree.” She sighed as she fell back into the big chair behind her.
A sudden weight of homesickness started to suffocate her, like having large stones piled upon her chest.
She missed her mom something fierce. During the odd times in her life that she couldn’t find her own strength, her mother had found it for her. She should’ve brought her on this trip. She would’ve been the better for it. Her mother could have answered questions, maybe, and offered support, helped her to remain standing on her own two feet during all this magic crap.
“Maybe tonight you could call your mom,” Darcaryn offered. His tone, his thoughtfulness, caught her off guard.
“You know what I’m thinking?” she accused.
“It wouldn’t take Einstein, or even a witch, to figure out you’re homesick by the way you fell into that chair and lost a shade of pigment in your skin when talking of home. Not to mention the frown that has practically taken over your face. Come on, we need to get back to fire. Hate to be a slave driver, but who knows what each day, each hour for that matter, could bring.”
“Good pep talk,�
�� she sighed as she took his outstretched hand to stand up.
Something sparked between their connected skin. Not a light, but heat, warm and seductive, traveled through her body, woke up parts she hadn’t thought of since last night with Aedan.
She tried to keep him in the forefront of her mind, but he slipped to the back, fell to the wayside, until her brain fumbled to even remember who she’d tried to think of. Instead, Darcaryn, his body, filled her mind as she clung to his hand harder and harder. She took a restless step toward him, and then another, until heat swarmed between their bodies, a mere inches apart now.
Again, Darcaryn had sort of dressed up for a magic lesson. Maybe that was just his style. Today, he had on a crisp, white, dress shirt. His sleeves were rolled halfway up, revealing the muscles and veins that weaved through his lower arm. A black, pinstriped vest hung over his slim, but solid build. She’d noticed how good he looked, how designer wizard he appeared, but tried to ignore and maintain the focus she needed.
Right now, though, all she saw were his eyes, and the crisp contrast of white, black, and ice blue. Forcing her gaze away, she refocused on his short, dark and scruffy beard in stark contrast to the unruly, long copper waves of his hair. Underneath and in between the copper grew an undercoat, if you will, of jet-black locks. It didn’t seem natural, but neither would she believe he’d had his hair colored in such a way. She would believe magic had led to such an anomaly, that he practiced enough to lighten the top layer of his hair. Stifling a giggle, she relaxed into the lightness the absurdity of such an idea brought. That she’d thought it at all showed how much this scientist’s life had changed in such a short time.
When her musings continued on, each one more inane than the last, she gave herself a mental shake. Her mind had gone on some kind of fritz. Chaos ensued. One notion countered the next, battled for dominance at the forefront of her mind for brief seconds, only to be railroaded by another. This progression continued as Darcaryn leaned in toward her, his lips now inches from hers.