Cantrips: Volume #1: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  “I will have you quote Dante while you clean my cunt,” she whispered, knowing from the heat washing through her that her eyes had flickered to near crimson among the jade lights. “I want to feel the vibration of those words against my skin, my scholar.”

  ‘Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.’ His gray eyes were molten steel, and her lips parted at the fervency behind the quote she heard in his mind. She would deny herself no more.

  At the next upward roll of her hips, she captured his broad head in the mouth of her sex, took it inside just an inch and squeezed down on it, letting him feel the kiss of moisture and heat. His hands clenched into fists, holding himself back, and she watched the ripple of very non-monkish muscles, from powerful shoulders to striated abdomen and flexing thighs. Thank the Goddess her monk liked hard, physical work. He was lean, but there was no soft spot on him. Except his heart.

  Slowly, she let herself glide further down. His engorged organ penetrated deep, stretching her until she came to a rest against his pubic region. The wet petals of her sex kissed him fully, pressing into that intimate area. In the sensitive region between her cunt and buttocks, she could feel the give of his heavy testicles.

  She met his brilliant, lust-filled gaze. Show me your strength, Thomas. Unleash that third mark and do as you will with it.

  Even though she could see it coming, it took her breath, how it possessed him. She had expected him to thrust into her from his current position on his back, take her on a hard ride on his loins. However, that expectation was gone in a flash. Instead, he tore the sash loose from the foot of the bed with a rip of fabric so decisive the strip unraveled from his wrists as he moved. He flipped them, put her under him, one arm locked strong and sure about her waist so he did not tumble her. As he brought her to her back, he reseated himself with a thrust so intent that it wrenched a cry from her own throat at the thrilling rocket of sensation that went through her. His bare body pressed down on hers, his chest against her breasts, his pumping buttocks underneath her heels. She locked him to her, arms and legs clasped with unbreakable strength around his body.

  He was moving her with his thrusts, and he cupped his hand under her neck, tilting her head back and returning to her throat, sealing his mouth on that bite mark. Not to drink this time, but to put the impression of his teeth there again, his breath hot and rasping, moist against her sensitive flesh. The hair at his temple brushed the side of her face, his biceps flexing against her arms as he held her just as tightly.

  Yes, Thomas. I’m all yours, sweet monk. For tonight, I am as much yours as you are mine. That is the gift the third mark gives us both.

  He was beyond words, but as in all things, he amazed her. Though he was a man with no more than a stable lad’s experience, he’d learned a great deal from watching her with other lovers. I will...not release...until I bring you...pleasure.

  It was overwhelming, to hear the thought in his mind against the rutting savagery in his face, in the powerful movements of his body. The way his fingers clamped upon her. Every stroke inside of her was torture and heaven at once. Inside his soul so deeply now, she could feel how it felt to him, the wet silk of her sucking along his length, pulling and drawing on him, demanding his seed. Yet every hard smack when he surged forward brought him against her clit, already well stimulated to swollen need before she’d ever brought him inside her. As she arched up, ready to go with him, he left her throat and bent, taking her left nipple in his mouth, drawing hard, demonstrating a devilish knowledge of the workings of a woman’s aroused body.

  The shudder of the climax spread through her lower abdomen, making her thighs tingle with heat, and she gave him another gift. She let him into her mind now, let him feel and see it coming, increasing the power of the climax that was about to crash over them both.

  “Now, Thomas,” she whispered in a thready voice. “Give yourself to me now. All of you.” Her whisper escalated into a sound of pleasure as her clit rippled, her sex clutching him hard, demanding he obey her. Riding the power of that wave, she turned the tables on him, flipping them back over with her vampire strength. Taking him to his back, she collared his throat with one hand, holding him to the ground as she worked herself atop him, slamming her hips down on his cock as it began to spurt seed inside of her. One of his hands gripped her hip, the other closing on her rigid forearm. As his eyes met hers, it wasn’t clear who was in control...or who wasn’t. She knew it didn’t matter.

  She jerked back against his hold, a cry tearing from her throat as the new angle pushed her up over a higher edge. The jet of his semen increased that pleasure, and she fed herself on his guttural roar of completion. He was as much animal as any man was in such a moment. Yet he was also so much more, her monk.

  He went for a while. It had built up in him for a long time, of course, but she knew it was more than that. The carnal intensity of a third mark gave him an increase in stamina and duration. All the things that would bring a vampire mistress greater pleasure, when she used him for her needs.

  Only in this case, that knowledge would not be put to use. She already knew he wouldn’t break his oath to God again, unless she pushed him to breaking. She might make him pay for his restraint with various little torments, but she had too much regard for him to take it further than that. In the end, they would both be tested for the decades ahead.

  When he met her gaze, she knew she’d left her mind open to him for that. Though not intentional, she didn’t regret it. As the climax slowly ebbed, she eased her grip on his throat and gave him a rueful smile. Her limbs shuddered as she slipped off to lay at his side. She was pleased when his arm came up and around her, gathering her close so that she could rest in the shelter of his body.

  “God bless you, my lady,” he murmured.

  §

  He would doze some now, as most men did. She’d turned away to give him that breather, but backed her body into his, encouraging him to curl around her. She liked the feel of his bare chest pressing against her shoulder blades, her long hair spread over both of them, tangled in their limbs. His damp cock pressed against her buttocks, his thighs cupping hers. He had his arm over her, holding her close, his mouth against her neck, which kept a thrum of sensation cycling through her. Every now and then, she made small movements against him, tiny presses, enjoying the feel of his body and wanting to move against it like the ocean, a tidal rhythm of teasing strokes.

  He was breathing deeply, yet after a time she knew it was not the even breath of sleep. She turned in his arms to face him, sliding one long nailed finger along his cheek, her thumb against his mouth. His eyes were stark with emotion and, when she reached into his mind, it was a tangled garden of reaction, thorns and petals, rich soil and the blaze of the sun. “You’re all right, my quiet monk?” she asked.

  Nodding, he laid his fingers over hers on his mouth, tracing her knuckles. “Though I sometimes doubt my faith, my lady, I am glad I have it. Because if you were my faith, I would follow you through a dozen lifetimes to always be at your side. If you ever gave me your heart as freely as your body, I’m not certain there’s anything I wouldn’t do for you. It makes me realize that it will take a very, very brave man to dare to love you fully. And,” he added with a touch of a smile, “it makes me relieved and yet sad not to be that man.”

  Tilting her head into his hand, she pressed her mouth to it. “You are brave enough for me, Thomas. I will be glad to have you at my side in this life, as many years as your God is willing to loan you to me. I will consider it singular evidence that He has in fact blessed me.”

  Then she tilted her head back and gave him her usual devilish smile. “Or cursed you.”

  Thomas gave a half laugh, then a groan as her hands closed on his cock, stirring to life again. “It’s still some time until dawn, monk,” she said, that relentless glint staying in her eye. “You will serve me until the sun rises.”

  “As you wish, my lady.” But after the sun rises...

  �
��If ever you abandon your celibacy, I will gladly welcome you to my bed. But I will never require it of you. While I do not share your view of what God is or demands of his servants, I know the love and faith you carry in your heart. As my third mark, I see how deeply that penetrates you. In truth, I already knew that.”

  A sad smile touched her lips, but she rose to her elbow, locking her gaze with his. She felt how her next words surprised and moved him, and knew she’d tuck that reaction into her heart, along with everything else about this night. It helped her strengthen her voice, let him hear the promise in it, the oath of a vampire queen.

  “Hear me now, before I take you again. When the dawn comes, it will be my privilege, my regret and my torment to honor that part of you. For the rest of our lives together.”

  Taking The Gloves Off

  A vignette featuring Mason and Jessica of Beloved Vampire from the Vampire Queen Series.

  * * *

  Originally posted in serial format April-August 2010

  Part One

  Jessica paused in front of the heavy oak door, studying the wood panels. Any other human would simply see a random pattern in the grain, a variety of textures, rough and smooth. But with her third mark, she could take it much further than that. She could see how the wood was smoother, shinier on the area several feet above the ornate doorknob. Where a man, over six feet tall, might put one hand flat to give the door a healthy shove as he turned the knob with the other. Reaching up, she laid her hand over that area, moving it back and forth in a drifting stroke, imagining his palm pressed there.

  She’d been coming here a lot lately. Well, in stages. And only when Mason was traveling on Council business, where he was far enough away he couldn’t tap into her mind and know what she was doing. She hadn’t asked Enrique and Amara, his other servants, to keep it from him, but they seemed to understand that this was her personal battle, and respected her privacy.

  Every day he was away from her, he called right before dawn. At his command she was always in his bed, wearing only the covers that bore his scent. He would tell her to touch herself, order her to imagine her touch as his own. Fingers running along her throat, over her mouth, such that her eyes closed, lips parting for him the way all of her body submitted at his merest touch. Then down, trailing over her sternum, moving over to cup a breast. He’d pinch and tease a nipple, ordering her not to move any other muscle of her body as he did it, no matter how restlessly her legs wanted to move, or how she wanted to press her buttocks into the sheets, imagining his body holding hers down, spreading her thighs. The way his long copper hair, unclipped from its usual tie, would trail over her skin like a horse’s mane, his muscles flexing, slipping under her fingers as her nails bit into that hard strength.

  He would keep it going until her hand was between her legs and she was glad they had a phone with an earpiece, so her trembling fingers weren’t required to hold the receiver. He would make her stroke herself until she was so close to climax her voice was breaking. Then he would tell her to roll over on her stomach, hands out to either side like wings. He’d have her legs spread wide, so that she felt the barest flutter of the sheet against her wet cunt where the linen pooled in that triangular area between her thighs. He would ask after her day, what she’d been doing. He’d answer her questions about what he’d done with Council. They’d talk about a million important and minor things, murmur things that could only be spoken in the dark. Finally, just as she sensed the dawn light cresting the waves that lapped up on the beach below their South American home, he’d whisper to her to sleep. “Dream of me, habiba, and how much I miss you. How I will touch you when I return, and make you cry out for me.”

  She returned to the present, finding her palm now had a light sheen of perspiration on it. She’d learned to be extraordinarily disciplined in her life, so it was amazing, how hard it was to resist the response his merest word could bring forth from her. As the bond had grown between them, his sensual ruthlessness had grown as well. It told her she was evolving, becoming more comfortable with the truth that he’d known from the beginning, that she was a natural submissive, a rare gem in his world. But it also told her he, too, was evolving. Back into the type of Master he’d always been, one that could help her explore that natural submission to the limits of her soul. If she could convince him that not only did she want him to do so, she’d reached the point she needed it.

  God, she missed him. It wasn’t so long ago she’d wished him straight to hell, had wanted nothing more than to be left alone by the whole world. She’d fought to survive, and believed surrender was weakness. He’d taught her it could also be strength. But in the process, he’d also made her fall so incredibly in love with him that the same strength turned against her in full force when he was away like this.

  She gave herself a mental shake. Okay, time to stop thinking about how crazy he made her and instead focus on this, a way to prove that he didn’t have to leave her behind.

  At the beginning, she’d only made it to the door to this wing of the house before she turned back. Fled back, if she wanted to be honest. But it got easier, so then she pushed herself to move through that wing and get to the archway that led to this lower level. It had taken several weeks for her to have the courage to merely stare down that winding set of stairs that curved off into darkness, if she didn’t turn on the wall sconce lights to guide her way.

  Then, one day, she made it partway down the staircase, at least to where that first curve was, hiding what was beyond it. On his subsequent trips away from home, she’d come there just to sit on the stair. She’d bring a book to read or some of Mason’s paperwork to do, having taken over most of the administrative needs for his myriad business interests. That spot became her plateau for quite a while. If she lifted her head and stared at that stone wall across from her, trying to coax her eyes to follow it down to the remaining stairs, their twisting descent, she’d feel a similar twisting descent in her feelings and thoughts, one that more often than not sent her scampering back to the safer parts of her world.

  Which made her despise herself.

  That was why she wasn’t ready to share this with Mason, though she was willing to tell him so many other things. He patently disapproved of anything that made her think less of herself. He’d made it very clear there was nothing she needed to face behind that door in order to be the kind of servant he needed her to be.

  She believed him. However, he’d agreed to serve on Council for the next twenty-five years, partially as a nod to the Council’s clemency to her for her “crime” of killing the monster vampire who’d held her captive for five years. It required a lot of meetings, a lot of travel to Council headquarters and other Regions. Interactions with other vampires always meant sexual games with the servants, a gladiator arena for vampires to explore politics as well as pleasure. Because of that, and what she’d endured at Raithe’s hands, Mason refused to take her with him.

  With Raithe, vampire gatherings had always held a particular horror for her. But recently, when Lady Lyssa and Daniela had visited with Jacob and Dev, their servants, she’d seen more of what Amara had described, the way such gatherings were supposed to be. For a servant, it could be yet another way to prove loyalty, as well as experience pleasurable surrender to the vampire she called Master. A way to prove she’d step into the fires of her fears and trust that the flame wouldn’t burn, as long as she wore his marks.

  After that visit, she’d been sure she could soon take that step to the next level, to Council meetings or gatherings of vampires that weren’t part of his inner circle. However, he could walk through her mind as easily as she walked through his extensive gardens, and he knew she wasn’t there. Five years of brutal trauma didn’t vanish overnight. When he made her face that she wasn’t ready, even though it infuriated her, she couldn’t deny the more-than-lingering signs of it.

  Coddling her over it wasn’t going to change that, though. She’d trained herself to fight. Why couldn’t she train herself to ov
ercome those nightmares and fears, separate them from her present reality? All she had to do was figure out the absolute difference between her past and her present, and believe in that truth utterly. So she’d begun to test herself like this, knowing somehow that room and what it contained would provide the test she most needed.

  Finally, after several months of work, she’d made it to the door. Behind it was a personal dungeon that had been used—before Jessica’s arrival—to serve Mason and his guests. It was equipped with every possible permutation of BDSM device and tool, things that could drive pain, pleasure, surrender and trust to their absolute limits. Amara had told her provocative stories that made Jessica’s body warm as she imagined herself there with Mason. That was the other challenge she faced. If she summoned up enough courage to open that heavy oak door, she had to convince him to take his full pleasure of her there, to prove to him she could move on, that she could be more to him.

  She liked the stories Amara told her. But what had kept her on the stairs all those weeks, sometimes trembling and caught in living nightmares of her past, was that those same types of implements had been used time and time again to torture her. Not for her pleasure or surrender, or to win her trust, but to win her screams. To break her, force her acceptance of a fate even a demon straight from the fires of hell might have considered heinous. It was a trauma she couldn’t banish, no matter how much she fiercely wished she could. And the domineering male vampire she loved with all of her soul wouldn’t budge on putting her in situations that he knew would take her back to that horror.