Cantrips: Volume #2: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  For the past thirty minutes, he’d instructed her to sit outside with the view, her chocolates, and an excellent wine, while he was inside doing mysterious things. She’d tipped her head back on the sofa, her eyes closed, when she inhaled and knew he’d returned. She put her hand up in time for it to slide along his jaw and tease his hair close to the nape, where the streaked blond strands were darker. While she did that, he bent and kissed her collar bone, sliding the robe off her shoulder. “I’m still wondering how this is your birthday,” she said. “I should have at least gone inside to help you do whatever it is you were doing.”

  “It’s my birthday. Your gift is to do what I tell you.” Though his tone was husky, his grip shifted to the side of her throat, putting enough pressure there she opened her eyes and met his. She found her Master’s gaze upon her, not her husband’s. “Right?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” she managed. He nodded and straightened, taking her hand.

  “Come with me.”

  He’d run water in the Jacuzzi tub, and dropped a couple bath beads in it, more of the same spa products that would add to the softness of her skin and the light fragrance the delicate body polish and essential oil massage had left upon it. Unbelting her robe, he slipped it off her shoulders and set it aside, holding her hand and forearm with easy strength to steady her as she stepped into the tub and sat down. “How many of the chocolates did you eat?” he asked.

  “Two. I’m trying to save some for later.” She smiled. “You’re spoiling me.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. And before you ask, yes, Talia is going to text Matt and Savannah with time-stamped proof of home arrival as soon as Cherry’s boyfriend drops her off at our place promptly by eleven o’clock. One minute past that, and Matt will dispatch the entire New Orleans police force after that hapless teenage hormone-fest Cherry thinks is Edward from Twilight and Peter from Hunger Games, all rolled up in one.” He touched her face. “You know you can trust Talia to watch after your brother and sister.”

  She folded her hands on the edge of the tub. “I know. But I’m glad you told me.”

  “Good.” His gaze swept over her. “Turn sideways and bend your knees up. Position yourself over the jets.”

  The Jacuzzi feature was a straight line of pinhole jets that followed the interior circumference of the tub several inches from the bottom. The water’s force didn’t reach the “who needs a man” rating, as Marcie would put it with a wide grin. Therefore, Cass wasn’t sure what Lucas thought it would accomplish, but she should have known to trust her Dom. At one of their once-a-month wives’ dinners, the women had speculated on how much time their men actually spent thinking about and testing different methods of bringing a woman incomparable pleasure, and how they balanced that with their demanding work schedules.

  “I’m pretty sure Jon has built some kind of machine so they can step into an alternate dimension where time stops. They have hours upon hours to think of these things before they step right back into the office at the time they left. The closet in Jon’s office is probably the portal. Notice how he always keeps it closed?”

  That had been Marcie and Dana’s theory. Cass wouldn’t discount it, but she knew how Lucas managed his time. Never a wasted second, no procrastinating on household chores, his every workout scheduled precisely...

  “Maybe they’re all aliens,” Dana said when Cass pointed it out. “No men are this focused.”

  “If that’s the case, let’s relocate to their planet,” Marcie had said with a saucy grin.

  Cass returned to the present moment because she didn’t want to waste a second of that precisely scheduled time. And because Lucas was talking to her.

  “One arm braced behind you. It tilts your breasts up in that pretty way.” He pulled a stool closer and took a seat on it, watching her keenly.

  As she angled her hips over the jets, the tiny streams of water rippled over her labia and clit. Ticklish sensations, like…

  “Like the tip of my tongue, barely flicking over your cunt. Tasting, teasing. I like those first touches. The way you twitch or squirm, and then your body starts to settle into it, reaching for it. There’s that deep place inside a woman that gets quiet, becomes a still point that orients her toward her sexual response. It’s a transformation, the shedding of everything but this moment. Move your hips in slow, small circles. Feel the water flutter over you. Your nipples are getting tight, those little buds that make me want to nibble on them.”

  She dropped her head back on her shoulders. They were damp from the steam rising from the water, helping her understand at least part of why he’d wanted them to put her hair up. But he liked to brush her hair before bedtime, and she thought he might do that tonight, when all else was done. Unless she and Marcie completely wore him out. It was a delicious thought, as much as she enjoyed the way he brushed her hair, his fingers tunneling in behind the brush to stroke her scalp.

  Lucas shifted off the stool. He was wearing his dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up, along with a pair of well-fitted slacks. His tie was loosened but not removed. The man didn’t know how not to look sexy, but he and all the K&A men knew how to work that executive look for maximum impact. She remembered the first time he’d come home with her, when they barely knew anything about one another. They’d still gravitated toward one another like animals who mated for life after merely one look that told them all they needed to know. He’d taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, looking a lot like this as he helped her sister Jessica, now in college, fix her bike.

  Her lips parted, tongue moistening them at that relentless little fluttering of water over her sex, at the intent look in his gaze as he watched her. His eyes coursed over her wet throat and breasts, taut nipples, and the position of her body. Her knees were bent up against her torso, backside sliding along the bottom of the tub, creating gentle swirls in the water as she obeyed him and let his tongue—because that was what she was imagining as the water jets—play over her body, causing her to move like a graceful mermaid in the water. Her breasts glistened from the steam as they quivered with the motion.

  Removing a blindfold from his pocket, he shook it out. It was black-lined satin with purple laces.

  “Come here,” he said. Moving to the edge of the tub, she shifted to her knees and rose onto them as he leaned forward. He covered her eyes with the mask and began to lace it in the back.

  “Forehead down on the edge of the tub.”

  She gripped the sides of the tub on either side of her as she did it. The position allowed him to do a thorough job of lacing the mask along the back of her head, over the hair bundled against her skull and nape.

  His fingers slid under her face, making sure it was fitted properly over the bridge of her nose and her eyes. He knew she liked the laced mask because it held her securely, like a corset. He’d brought one of her waist cinchers, and had laid it out on the giant king-sized canopy bed of the opulent suite. It was the one that had a blue and white flower pattern across the satiny exterior, with blue ribbon trim for the lacings. Having the mask on made her think about and anticipate when he would put it upon her, shaping and restraining her body for his pleasure.

  She knew Ben and Marcie were across the hall, but she’d not yet seen either of them. Right now her only focus, per her Master’s orders, was this moment, this bath, any and all the things he was having her experience that shed any connection to the world outside. It was his birthday, but his desire, his fantasy, always seemed to involve immersing her right along with him.

  He had her straighten up and stand on her knees with the pressure of his hands, which slid to her throat, his thumbs idly stroking. When he dropped one hand to cup her wet breast, he kneaded it, thumb passing over the nipple so she caught her lip in her teeth on a hum of pleasure.

  “Let’s ease you back down now.” He turned off the jets and helped her to lounge back in the tub, adjusting the bath pillow under her head. “Stay like that and soak.”

 
There was music piped in through speakers in the spacious bathroom, her playlist plugged into the TV with its excellent speaker system. As she lay there, listening to Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” she was glad she did. She’d been blessed with love in so many ways. Her siblings, Lucas, the other K&A men and their wives, all of whom she considered just as much her family as her siblings. It eased the wounds of other losses. Indifferent and now long-gone parents. Jeremy.

  No. Tonight was not going to be about that. It was time, not to let him go, but to let go of the sadness. Although it had happened at the end of his short and tragically self-destructive life, he had found his way. And now he was in a better place. She’d done the very best she could for him. Lucas, Marcie and all of them had helped her understand that. Most days she was starting to believe it.

  She heard steps upon the tile. Gooseflesh rippled over her skin at the passage of air in the steam-filled room, but it wasn’t from a temperature adjustment. The man who had walked into the bathroom wasn’t Lucas.

  Dana was blind, and had talked about how she knew each man not only by scent and the way they moved, but by their use of tactile contact, like a wolf pack. Frequent touches, brushing up against each woman in the group during their social gatherings, speaking to her at length and absorbing her responses as if her very voice was imprinting itself upon him, and they were doing the same to her. Dana humorously called it their way of scent-marking. Whether they did it unconsciously or not, Cass thought she was right, because she recognized the men the same way, even though she had her sight and full hearing in a way Dana did not.

  Except for what the women called the “initiation,” that moment where her Master had committed to her as the submissive he wanted forever, and the other four had reinforced his choice in a quite memorable way, most of the sensuality exchanged didn’t cross the lines into blatant sexuality. Well, okay, sometimes it went there in club environments or during arranged private sessions, like when Peter and Ben had shared Dana one night, long before Ben and Marcie became a couple. But the important thing was that the woman’s specific Dom was always present, no matter what other member of the team was involved. Which was why it was a little unsettling to Cass, knowing Ben O’Callahan was standing in the bathroom where she was blindfolded and naked, and Lucas wasn’t there.

  There was a lingering scent of Lucas, though, which made her think that he had watched her at the door until Ben had arrived so silently. It made sense. Even though she was merely blindfolded, her hands and feet unbound, Lucas wouldn’t leave her unattended with a key sense like her sight blocked. She could pull the laced blindfold free on her own, but it didn’t come off quickly or easily.

  He was taking care of her, and the reminder reassured her, as well as clued her in to what was happening. As Ben dropped to a knee by the tub and trailed a light finger over her blindfold, her lips, she tilted her head. His touch set her nerves to tingling. “He’s testing me, isn’t he?” she asked. “If I get freaked out by nothing more than you being in here and seeing me naked, it tells him I’m likely not up for whatever else is planned tonight.”

  “Something like that.” Ben’s hand withdrew and she heard a swirling sound in the water before he rubbed a heated washcloth over her shoulders, down her back, a massaging stroke. “Maybe he also wanted to make sure you and I were good before this happens.”

  “He thinks we’re not good?” She was surprised to hear that. She and Ben had had their conflicts when he and Marcie initially came together, when Ben was working out some serious issues with his past, but that, while never completely in the past, was under control. Somewhere along the line, Cass had become convinced of it herself. And Lucas knew that.

  She cocked her head. “No,” she decided. “You asked to come in here first. Because you aren’t sure we’re good. Deep down, you think I’m worried you’ll turn out like Jeremy. That your self-destructive side will win out in the end and take Marcie down with you.”

  “I know why Pickard pays you so much.” His voice held some wry humor and another quality, easier to define when he spoke again in a more sober tone. “If I ever thought that would happen, I’d cut her loose first.”

  She shook her head. “Too late for that. You’re already part of her. That’s what those vows are about. And it goes just as deep for her. If you went down, she’d kill herself to keep you above the water. Or go down with you. But I think you know that. Which is why you’ve worked so hard to figure it out. She matters enough to you to try and change that part of yourself. Jeremy never did get that far, not until the end, when it was too late and the sickness couldn’t be reversed. You’re different.”

  She meant it. To prove it, she found and lifted his other hand, putting her lips to his palm before pressing her face against it. He was a lawyer, but he had the rough hands of a fighter, probably because he did a lot of workouts at Matt’s boxing gym without gloves. “She loves you, and I know why she does. Even though sometimes the two of you scare me to death.”

  She couldn’t see his face, but the energy around her told her that her words had hit a mark, hopefully a good one. His fingertips curled, stroking the wisps of hair on her temple. Then he started using the washcloth again. She lifted her throat as he ran the cloth over it, causing water to trickle onto her breasts. It was a nice sensation, but he didn’t follow it, continuing to rub her shoulders and the middle of her back. He had good hands. Amazingly gentle, given what she knew he could do with them, harsh things far beyond Cass’s level but what Marcie craved. Which was fine.

  She told herself that, though Cass knew she still had some discomfort with it. It was difficult to see marks and bruises on Marcie’s skin that made her wince, and know Ben had put them there. But the contented glow in Marcie’s eyes, the adoration Ben obviously held for her, couldn’t be denied. It was a puzzle she hadn’t figured out and maybe never would. Tonight could be wonderful without that understanding, though. She pushed the worry back down and focused on the present.

  Setting aside the washcloth, Ben slid his hand down her arm to the wrist, to one of the silver bracelets she wore. The edges were rounded and smooth, making them comfortable to wear. In lieu of a collar, Lucas had given them to her as a sign of her belonging to him. She remembered what he had said. Because you belong to me, you also belong to them. An important distinction.

  Ben curled a finger under the bracelet, tugging on it. “So that’s settled.”

  She realized he was asking for confirmation, and nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good. You ready to submit to me, under his direction? If you are, you know how to respond to me.”

  His tone changed, just that smoothly, and everything in her oriented to what it meant. It was as effective a paradigm shift as the cuffs on her wrists. He had a harder voice than Lucas in this mode, which made her a little nervous.

  “Yes, sir,” she said quietly.

  “All right, then. Let’s get you dried off.”

  He handed her out of the tub onto a bath mat and dried her himself, thoroughly. Her body responded with swirling tendrils of interest to his attention as he ensured every expanse of skin was dry, the crease beneath her breasts, between thigh and mons, the small of her back. When he was back there, his hand ran familiarly over her backside, a distracting caress, before he dropped a kiss on her collar bone that sent tingles through her neck and side, her nipples. Lucas had left her body awake and humming, and Ben kept that momentum going.

  “All right. Your Master wants to get you dressed for him. Put your arms around my neck.”

  She was going to tell him she could walk out of the bathroom, but realized this was part of turning herself over to their care. Plus, it was no hardship to enjoy a strong man’s arms. They all did this so well and effortlessly, lifting a woman off her feet as if they could carry her beyond the end of time.

  He was wearing a dress shirt and silky tie, too, no jacket. She loved their clothing preferences for exercising their Dom tendencies. It gave a whole new meanin
g to the term “power suit.”

  As Ben set her feet down on the cushioned gold carpet in the bedroom, her Master’s hands were upon her once again. She’d enjoyed Ben’s touch, but it was a relief to feel Lucas’s again, such that she moved into it eagerly.

  “I missed you too.” Lucas kissed her nose with warm lips. “Was he mean to you? Do I need to kick his ass?”

  She shook her head, and Lucas’s hands tightened on her. “Then thank him for his care. Properly.”

  The command caused a little flip and hitch in her stomach. They were keeping her off balance on purpose. She turned in what she thought was Ben’s direction. “Thank you, sir.”

  “She’s a gift,” Ben said to Lucas. Acknowledging her thanks to her Master, not to her. Marcie called those little touches protocol, and Cass had to admit they were very effective in turning up the heat inside her while gravitating her even more toward submissive behavior that would please her Master, and herself.

  Lucas made a noise of assent and brought her to face him again. Putting the waist cincher in place, he began to hook the front, that lovely, gradual process that hinted at how tight the garment would eventually be, the pressure of his fingers leaving a heat trail. When he had it fastened from above her mound to between her breasts, adjusting the crescent underwiring beneath her bosom, he turned her around so her back was to him.

  “The laces need to be adjusted so we can enjoy the emphasis on those beautiful tits and gorgeous ass,” he said. “But you need something to hold onto, because I’m going to pull it tight. I’m in the mood to be more than a little demanding and selfish.”

  “My sub can help with that,” Ben said. “Reach out in front of you, Cass.”

  As Cass did, her hands were met by a questing set of slim fingers. Marcie apparently was also blindfolded. She laid her hands over Cass’s forearms, slim fingers curling. “I’ve got you, sis.” She sounded like Marcie, but there was a different cadence to her voice, one Cass recognized from her own. Lucas hadn’t been the only Dom pleasuring his sub, awakening her body for what might come.