“I’m not giving you an orgasm.” Maybe she’d be okay. Maybe the copa wouldn’t work on her the way he thought. She wasn’t much of a witch, after all. She was practically vanilla. Maybe it wouldn’t work on her, and she wouldn’t have to spend her life knowing what it was like to use real magic.
“It was worth a shot. You sure?”
“So tempting,” she said, and this time she didn’t resist the urge to touch him. He didn’t shift away from the contact. “But, no.”
He left the doorway. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”
Chapter 15
Xia’s living room was stunning. While he organized a few things and got ready for the big event, Alexandrine stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows, trying to get a handle on her nerves. The view of the cove flat-out took her breath away. She gave up trying to relax and just let herself fall into the beauty of the moon on the water while nerves churned a hole in her stomach.
When she got around to noticing anything else, she had to adjust her assumptions about the man who owned this house. Elegant wasn’t the word, but striking came close. One wall was dark blue, the others stark white. Contrast was everywhere. Nepalese rugs in various shapes and sizes accented the bamboo floor. He favored the more austere designs, but one of the rugs was a riot of color and pattern. A bittersweet-orange couch angled toward the windows on one side. A smaller couch faced a gas fireplace built into a wall perpendicular to the windows. Tibetan and Nepalese masks hung on the walls; some of them were garishly painted devils while others were animal faces carved of dark wood. There were framed photographs, too, all of them black-and-white nature scenes. Carved animals cavorted on the mantel, some abstract, some disturbingly real.
Xia came in with an armful of items that he arranged by the fireplace. Alexandrine’s stomach tightened. He laid out a small brazier and poured oil into the bowl on top. He did something with his hand, said a word, and a flame appeared underneath the bowl. He laid out several other items by the fireplace—his knife, unsheathed; a stoppered glass bottle; and a wooden box, which he opened. She recognized the pills he took from it: copa. He crumbled one into the oil, and she swore she saw sparks dance over the surface.
Alexandrine walked to him. She didn’t trust herself to speak without betraying her anxiety. Part of her wanted to run away, to make a mad dash for the door. As she stood there, inhaling the scent of warming oil, she composed a speech about why she had to refuse the ritual. The amulet was hers. Hers. Hers only. She couldn’t give it up or she’d die. And the copa, a really bad idea.
He held up another of the pills. “It’ll be different for you than it is for me. Sometimes a mage gets disoriented his first time taking copa. I’ve seen that happen.”
“Disoriented how?”
“It depends.” His eyes flickered between neon blue and aquamarine, and she wondered what memory he was dealing with. The witch who’d betrayed him to Rasmus? The paler his eyes, she realized, the more stress he was feeling. “I’ll be here with you, Alexandrine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Two distinct compulsions went to war, one new, one old. The first and newer one was the impulse to keep the talisman to herself by any means necessary. The second and far older reaction was her indescribable longing to be able to do something with her magic that wasn’t trivial. She stared at the pill on his palm.
“Does it last?” she asked. “I mean, does the effect fade away, or is it something permanent?”
Xia walked to the larger couch. He held out a hand and waited for her to join him. She did, pulling her T-shirt down and underneath her butt as she sat. “You have to be a serious abuser for the change to be permanent,” he said. “Most of the mages I’ve seen who were addicted died before they reached that point.”
“And the others?”
“If they don’t stop, they all die from it.” He settled in on the couch. “Sooner or later, copa will kill a mage.”
“Great.”
“Don’t worry.” His southeastern view of the water was completely dark. “You won’t go that far tonight. This being your first time and all, you aren’t going to have some instant-death moment. Besides, if you take only one, the change will fade pretty quickly.” He put a hand on her thigh. Very nonchalantly. “You have what it takes not to let it go that far, Alexandrine.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
He lifted one shoulder. His fingers curled around her thigh, though. “I’m not.”
She torqued her upper body to put her forearms on the back of the couch and got her legs tucked under her, with her torso facing Xia. “Thanks for believing in me.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Now, the first sign it’s working is your eyes change. From what I hear, you’ll feel the physical effects later.” He shook his head to get his hair off his forehead. “Don’t be surprised if the copa changes your irises dark gold.”
“Gold, huh?” She was nervous about this whole thing and feeling shaky. “That sounds kind of pretty.”
His fingertip brushed beneath her eye. “Your eyes are pretty just the way they are.”
She touched his hair with her near hand. His curls were soft. “The feeling’s mutual. Have I told you how gorgeous your eyes are? Women probably tell you that all the time.”
“Actually, they don’t,” he said. He settled a hand on the top of her shoulder, stroking gently, and Alexandrine leaned toward him.
“Maybe we should have sex now. In case something bad happens, you know?”
He cupped the side of her face. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. When we get there, Alexandrine, I want to take my time.”
“I’m okay with that.” She felt a light pressure in her head, the way you do when you’re in an elevator that’s going too fast. Did that mean he was pulling magic?
He held out his hand. One triangle of ochre yellow lay on his palm. She took it from him. “I’ll be right here. Okay?”
“Bottom’s up,” she said. The shit was awful. Disgusting. The copa had an earthy, mildewy taste, maybe a little bitter. “Gaghhh.”
“Don’t chew it, Alexandrine. Just swallow fast.”
“Now you tell me. Yuck.” The stuff went gritty on her tongue, but she got it down. “What about you?”
“Me?” He leaned toward her. “I’m getting hot, looking at you in my shirt and thinking how you don’t have anything on underneath.”
“Perv.”
“Yeah, I know.” He sidled closer to her.
“Are you going to take any?” In answer, he took out three and tossed them down like they were his favorite kind of gumdrops. She raised her eyebrows at him.
“I’m bigger than you,” he said. “It takes more to get going in me.”
She frowned at him. “Your eyes haven’t changed color.”
“Baby,” he said softly, stroking her arm between her wrist and the sleeve of her T-shirt, “I’m not a witch.”
“Me neither,” she said. She resisted the impulse to tug on her sleeve. “Not to speak of, anyway. I’m just a plain old nonmagical mage. Of the female variety.” She stayed where she was. Her pulse was going hard, but that was just anxiety with a little bit of horniness thrown in. At least she thought so. “I don’t feel different yet. How long do we have to wait for something to happen?”
“Not long. A couple of seconds more.”
“That fast?” She put her chin on her forearm. So, was she relieved or disappointed? She wasn’t sure. A little of both, maybe. She didn’t feel anything at all. Nothing different. No altered state of consciousness. No magic bubbling up just waiting for her to pull. What a disappointment. The copa didn’t work on her. “Guess that means I’m not a witch after all. The stuff doesn’t work on me.”
“Baby.” He drew a finger along the underside of her right eye. “Guess again.”
By the time Xia said guess again in a voice that was sex on tap, the taste of the pill she’d taken was gone. She still didn’t feel any different.
Xia got of
f the couch and pulled her to her feet to lead her to a bathroom off the living room. Everything in here was black. Everything. The tiles, the walls, the ceiling, the fixtures. He even had black soap. Black towels and hand towels, too. He got her facing the mirror above the black granite vanity. “Take a look.”
She looked. And blinked. Then squinted and took a closer look. Her eyes weren’t the familiar brown she saw every day. Her irises were darker, deeper, almost gold. “Whoa,” she whispered. She put a hand on the wall by the mirror and hung her head, shaking it as if the motion would toss out the color and put everything back to normal. Slowly she opened her eyes. She looked to her right. He hadn’t found black toilet paper. She had no trouble distinguishing the toilet paper from the wall. Everything else blended in. She looked in the mirror again. Her eyes were still gold instead of brown. She raised her gaze and saw Xia’s face reflected in the mirror.
Not that it mattered. His eyes weren’t normal, either, but that wasn’t any different. His eyes had never been normal. “Now what?” she asked.
He scooted closer to her, peering at her eyes in the mirror. “Can you pull?”
She turned around, and they were so close they were practically touching. “I don’t know.”
“Try.” He slipped a finger under the leather thong around her neck and lifted up. Not much, but enough to make her anxious. He let go, and she went back to feeling normal. “Can you?”
She tried to access her magic. But, as usual, there was nothing there. “No,” she said. “I can almost never pull on purpose. It’s mostly been accidental. You know, premonitions. Or else stuff that happens that I never expected.”
“Damn,” he whispered. She shrugged in response. Xia dug into his pocket. “Here.” He gave her another pill, and this time she dry swallowed. The taste wasn’t nearly so bad that way.
“What if this doesn’t work? This will suck if I get addicted to this crap for nothing.”
Xia put a hand to her cheek, and Alexandrine went still. His touch electrified her. “It’s going to work. I can feel your magic, Alexandrine, and it’s seriously turning me on. So believe it, it’s working, baby.”
“Then why can’t I do anything?” She knew she’d let her frustration echo in her voice, because his hand smoothed her cheek. “I’m a failure at this. I always have been.”
“You’re not. The mages who survive learning to use their magic were raised knowing what they are. They live it. Breathe it. They study and practice for years before they go out in the world.”
Her head throbbed, and she rubbed her forehead to ease the tension. Didn’t do any good at all. Her vision was going, too. The corner behind Xia refused to register in her head as a corner.
He slid his fingers up to her forehead and pressed gently. “You grow up to kill monsters like me.”
She pressed her spine against the wall next to the vanity, with her hands trapped between the wall and the curve of her backbone. He looked away, and her eyes were really doing funny things, because his profile vanished. He vanished. He turned his gaze back on her, and there he was. Big as life. She brought up her hands and pushed him away.
“I’m not a killer.” Her stomach went all jumpy. “I’ve never killed anyone, and I’m not about to start now.” She stumbled past him, but the room disappeared. Everywhere she looked she saw black, yet at the periphery of her vision, rainbows arced off angles that weren’t there when she looked. Her brain couldn’t parse out what she was seeing and assemble the information into an image she recognized. “What’s happening to me?”
Xia’s voice in her ear was the only thing that made sense to her. “I’ve got you.” His arms anchored her in the room. “It’s all right. Be calm, and in a minute everything will settle down. I promise.”
“Is this going to go away?” Her stomach stopped twitching and got tight and queasy.
“Yes.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her forward. At least she thought it was forward. The lines of the room tilted off in crazy directions. Everywhere she looked she saw brilliant color. Some of the colors she’d never seen before in her life.
“Sit,” Xia said.
She did and recognized the brighter orange of the sofa. They were back in the living room, then.
“Close your eyes.” She did, and Xia’s voice continued. “Concentrate on something you like. Puppies. Or unicorns or whatever girly crap turns you on. Turn off the panic and concentrate on your magic.”
She thought about Xia in the shower. Before everything went crazy. When Alexandrine opened her eyes, there was Xia, sitting beside her. Next to the fireplace. In his perfectly normal living room. No rainbows. No walls that refused to meet at right angles. “Are we going to do it?” she asked. “The ritual, I mean. Not the hot monkey sex.”
“Soon,” he said. “Focus like that if you start to lose it again, and you’ll be fine.”
“What the hell is in that crap you gave me? And how come you’re not bouncing off the walls, too?”
“I’m not like you.”
“Vive la difference,” she whispered.
“Lie back. Yeah, like that. With your head relaxed.” He shifted closer to her and leaned over her. She got a full-on dose of his neon eyes when she opened her eyes. He put his fingers on either side of her face and massaged her temples.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s heaven.”
“Just relax. Think about puppies and fluffy bunnies.” She rolled her eyes. His fingers were magic. She found herself relaxing in spite of herself. “Feeling better?”
“Yes.” Her thoughts expanded out, and gradually she became aware of Xia in a different way. Not just his physical presence, but also his mental presence. She could touch his mind if she wanted to. What an odd sensation. To think you could get inside someone’s head. She knew that happened—heck, it had happened to her. But to think that sort of thing could be deliberate gave her the chills. His fingers moved from her temples to the sides of her head, rubbing circles in her scalp. Heaven. She’d seen the man naked. Touched him. All six-foot-and-something inches of him. An awesome body. What would it be like to make love with him? His hands had been on her, so she had a clue that he’d put her in orbit. Xia stopped massaging her head. “Don’t stop. That feels divine.”
“This is getting dangerous,” he said. He stood and, grabbing her hand, got them both to the rug in front of the fireplace. The earthy smell was stronger here, so close to the brazier. She was tempted to inhale and hold her breath in case the stuff worked like weed.
Lazily, she opened her eyes. Her eyes met his, and it was like free-falling and landing someplace alien. She wasn’t sure what happened, but whatever it was, she got a dose of Xia so intense she felt like she was inside his thoughts. “Wild,” she said.
He moved just his head. Oh, great. His eyes were doing that glowing blue look again. He tossed something else into the shimmering oil and leaned in to take a deep breath. He gestured for her to do the same, but she was already on her way. In close, the scent of herbs was sharp and intense. And then the lights went out. The only illumination came from the fireplace. Shadows flickered on the floor and on the planes of Xia’s face. Hers, too, she supposed. Xia wasn’t startled by the power outage. But, then, nothing seemed to frighten him.
“What did you do with the lights?”
“Concentrate, would you?”
“On what?”
“Whatever you want. Just pick something and concentrate on it.”
“Fine.” She chose the little brass bowl, because she’d always wanted a bowl like that, but all the ones she saw were too expensive. Several minutes passed in the dim light. The scent of the herbs grew sharper and took on a bitter undertone. She was hideously aware of Xia beside her, sitting with his hands on his thighs, his head bowed. Like he was praying.
Her mind didn’t feel connected to her body anymore. Yes, the copa was definitely having an effect on her. She took a breath and oddly caught a whiff of heat and sand and an ancient desert.
From the herbs Xia had thrown into the oil? She didn’t think so. The scent seemed to be coming from Xia. Her throat was parched, too. She didn’t want water, though. She wanted the taste of copper sharp on her tongue.
“Yeah,” Xia whispered. “Me, too. But I need you to pull, Alexandrine. And then hold, you understand me?”
“Gotcha. Do magic but don’t do any magic.”
His eyes flared. “Do it, would you?”
“You won’t be too disappointed if this doesn’t work?”
“Would you just pull?”
“Fine.” She reached into herself, prepared for nothing much happening as a result. Only, her magic was there. Ridiculously easy to reach. She could pull and have magic flow into her in a river instead of a drip.
He drew a hissing breath and whispered, “Alexandrine.” She watched him reach for his knife and hold it in his left hand. He tipped his head to one side and brought the tip of his blade to the skin above his collarbone. He made a deft nick. He didn’t flinch. The smell of blood came to her so abruptly her head swam.
Xia said something low and soft that didn’t sound like English, because it wasn’t. The meaning danced at the edge of her mind but eluded her, of course; whatever language he’d used, she couldn’t even identify it, let alone hope to understand it. He shifted until he was facing her. “Alexandrine.” He gestured her toward him. “You first,” he said.
“First what?” she whispered. But she knew what he wanted to do. His blood welled up from the nick, deep liquid red, and that drew her attention and stopped her thinking about anything but that welling scarlet. Her head felt feverish.
“Alexandrine,” he whispered. “Now.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned toward him. Just get it over with. If she didn’t do something now, his blood was going to be wasted.
“Keep holding your magic,” he said.
Her mouth touched his skin, and then the taste of his blood burst over her tongue, thick and dark and better than anything she’d ever tasted. She pressed her fingers into his shoulder, half expecting him to shift away. He didn’t. He remained still. Not a flinch. Not even an extra-deep breath. He tilted his head more to give her better access, and she moved in, rising up and slipping her other hand around the back of his neck. Pressure built in her head and focused in the center of her forehead, a tap almost. Her tongue touched his skin and came back. She was dizzy, and she must have swayed or maybe just tightened her fingers on him, because his hand went to the back of her head, steadying her, holding her there.
My Forbidden Desire Page 15