"In emergencies, I will do anything necessary to keep you topped off."
"This isn't an emergency. You have more magic available to you now than you have ever had, don't you?"
"Yes." She studied my face. "You really mean it?"
"Yes."
She stood up and opened her arms. I flew from my chair into her arms.
"I should hate you," I murmured. "But I want you so badly."
She lifted my lips to hers and kissed me deeply. I began pulling her to the bedroom, tugging at her buttons and trying to get her clothes off her at the same time. She laughed, and together we hurried into the bedroom.
"Please, Arianna, let me be in control," I told her.
"All right," she said. "But I will not be passive."
I laughed joyfully. "Can you give me a magic tongue?"
She laughed along with me. "You already have one."
I pulled her shirt off her and slid her jeans down her legs, then pushed her onto the bed. I pulled my own clothes off before chasing her onto the bed.
I captured her mouth while pinning her to the bed. I tried to invade her mouth with my tongue, but she giggled into the kiss and slipped her tongue into my mouth. Our tongues battled, and I moaned into the kiss.
"Oh god, Arianna," I said, breaking this kiss. I lowered my mouth to her neck and bit.
"Hey!" she yelled.
I moved my lips and sucked hungrily.
"Stop that!" she ordered, and I immediately pulled away.
She studied my face. "Oops," she said. "I didn't mean that." She closed her eyes. "Carry on."
I immediately attacked the other side, marking her delicate skin. Then I moved down to her breasts, taking one nipple into my mouth, teasing it mercilessly. I fondled the other with my fingers, then switched.
Arianna arched her back underneath me. "Oh god, Moira. Oh."
I shifted my weight, then reached between my legs and gathered some of my wet musk. I painted her lips with it, then slipped my fingers into her mouth. I was doing to her what she had done to me. She giggled then sucked on my fingers.
We kissed, and I tasted myself on her mouth. I became even more aroused, and any remaining patience I had fled.
I moved down her rapidly, done with the foreplay. I spread her legs roughly and centered my mouth over her sex, sucking hungrily.
Oh god, she tasted good!
I licked her in long, rapid licks, unable to control myself, unable to exercise any sort of artistry.
Arianna encouraged me. "Yes, baby," she said. "Take what you want. Yes, baby."
I slipped my tongue inside of her, and she squeezed around me. I wished for a longer tongue, but I moved my mouth to her clit instead, sucking and lapping at it.
She arched her back and thrashed, her struggles growing even wilder when I slipped two fingers inside of her.
I lifted my mouth away. "You may use your magic, Arianna."
"Oh god," she said. "I don't have to."
I lowered my mouth again, and then I couldn't stop. I drank of her musky oil, the taste driving me insane with need.
Her body climbed towards an orgasm. I tried to hold her there, but I was all driving need, and I pulled her directly into an orgasm.
She screamed my name.
She was shuddering, and her inner walls clutched my fingers, pulling me deeper. And then, she collapsed against the bed.
I continued to lick at her, but she reached down and clasped me, pulling me up to her.
We were both panting. I wasn't remotely satisfied. I wanted more of her, much, much more.
"Wow," she said. "Someone was a little bit pent up."
"I want more," I told her. "Please, Arianna."
"Oh god, Moira, give me a minute here."
"No," I said. "This is your fault." I again began kissing her, sharing her taste with her. She licked around my mouth, then pulled me tightly to her.
"Let me, Arianna. I need more."
"Moira," she said. But she opened her legs, and I immediately accepted her offer.
* * * *
We made love for hours. Finally, she used her magic, delivering a series of intense orgasms to me, one after another. She kept doing it until I begged her to stop.
We collapsed together. I was completely wrung out and satiated.
"Best. Sex. Ever," I admitted once I could finally speak again.
She chuckled.
"Oh my god," I said. "What day is it? Should I be at work?"
"Sunday, baby," she said. "It's Sunday."
"How much of that was magic?" I asked.
"Just at the end," she said. "I couldn't take any more. You were an insatiable beast."
"If you had seduced me from the beginning, if you had gotten me into bed, and then done all that, everything else would have been different."
"I tried," she said. "You weren't remotely interested. And then, well, I probably responded in a panic. What if someone else found you before I could change your mind? Could I change your mind? I figured you knew exactly what I was and rejected me for that reason."
We dozed for a while, cuddled together. I was deeply in love. I knew it was her magic, that it wasn't real love. But it felt like real love. And she promised herself to me. Furthermore, ironically, I took a certain comfort from knowing she wanted this to be a forever relationship.
* * * *
It took us several more weeks to top me off, full of magic. Arianna was astounded by my capacity.
"I wonder if it has to do with how old you were when I claimed you," she said.
We experimented with distance. Her ability to draw magic from me diminished with distance, but even at up to twenty miles, she could draw from me in a fashion she found satisfying. It was harder to feed magic back to me at a distance.
Similarly, talking mind to mind diminished with distance. If we were touching, and one of us concentrated on the other, we could usually understand what the other was thinking. That worked both ways. The ability to eavesdrop decreased significantly as soon as we broke physical contact. At twenty miles, if the receiver wasn't paying attention, we had to sort of shout to get her attention, but if we were each paying attention, we could carry on a conversation fairly easily.
Emotions were different. I couldn't read hers any better than I could anyone else's, and she was exceedingly good at hiding her emotions when she wanted to. I was an open book to her, and she could usually pick out my emotions long distance.
When she first bound me to her, I did office work for a small dairy distributor. Basically I did all the office work, starting with answering the phones and opening the mail. I also was the customer service department. One day, about three weeks after going back to work, I got a call from the owner of a mom and pop grocery store. One of our drivers had made a fairly small mistake. The woman had a right to be annoyed, but her reaction was well out of line with the level of mistake, and she took all her frustration out on me.
I was crying by the time I got off the phone with her. The woman knew it, too. She knew me, and she was able to make her rant very personal. Normally, I don't let things like that get to me, but for some reason, it did that day.
"What's wrong?" Arianna asked me over the link as soon as I hung up with the woman. She sounded concerned.
"Nothing," I said.
"Do not lie to me," she said. "I am on my way there."
"No," I said. "I'm fine."
"You are not fine!" she said.
She broke a few traffic laws, but she pulled up in front of our office. "I am outside. Get out here. Right now."
It was a direct order, and I couldn't ignore it.
She pulled me straight into her arms. I began crying again.
"I'm just PMSing," I told her.
"That might be a factor, but something set this off. Tell me what happened."
It was another direct order, and I had to answer. As I told her what the woman had said to me, she got stiffer and stiffer.
"That harridan!" Arianna said.
She proceeded to ask me questions, most of which were to make sure she knew where to find the woman and her store. "I'll handle this," she said.
She began to pull away.
"No!" I said. "Arianna, you can't!"
"I very well can," she said. "And I am going to."
"No, please!"
"Go inside and go back to work, Moira."
I immediately turned around. I struggled to disobey, but my body began walking to the door.
"Arianna!" I yelled. "Wait! Please."
I got to the door, still begging her, when she said quietly, "Wait."
I stopped in place and sent her, "Please, may I hold you?"
"Yes," she said.
I turned around and ran back into her arms. "Please don't do anything, Arianna. She's a bitter old woman. She has some cause to be. Her husband fought in Vietnam, and he didn't come back quite all right."
"Life is tough all over," she said. "There is no excuse for spreading the misery. I think I will go curse her store."
"Please, Arianna. Her daughter-in-law will be the one to suffer. Her daughter-in-law is a good person. Please, let it go. Just hold me for a few minutes, okay?"
So she held me and made soothing noises, stroking me.
"Can you use a little magic?" I asked her.
"Yes, baby," she said, and it only took her another minute to calm me down completely and shore up my emotions.
"Thank you," I said. "I wish I could go home with you."
"I'll be back to pick you up later," she said. "Moira, I am going to go talk to her."
"No!"
"I won't hurt her."
"I'll get fired."
"No, you won't. And her daughter-in-law won't suffer, either."
"Before you hurt her, what if she just received some really bad news? There might be mitigating circumstances."
"Maybe there are," Arianna said. "How likely is it you are the cause of those mitigating circumstances?"
"Zero," I admitted.
"I will give her a chance to explain herself," Arianna said. "And then I will make sure she never does it again." She lifted my chin and kissed me gently. "I won't go overboard, Moira, unless she is exceedingly foolish." She pulled magic from me until her eyes glowed.
"I better get most of that back," I told her with a weak smile.
"We'll see," she said.
"Just remember, you hate Bayfield and want to return to Madison. If you use all that magic you just took from me, it'll take another week."
She laughed. "Bayfield is growing on me, but I admit I am anxious to start our new jobs." She smiled. "Ready to go back to work?"
"After one more kiss," I told her. I knew I was being needy, but I didn't care. She kissed me and brushed me with a little more of her magic, and then I backed away and watched her get into my car. "Thank you," I sent to her.
"You are always welcome, my little familiar."
"I'm not so little," I told her.
We always knew where the other one was, a benefit of the familiar bond. I knew when she arrived at the little grocery store, twenty miles away. And while I couldn't normally tell her moods over the link, I knew right when she started talking to Mrs. Evans. I could feel her rage over the link.
"Arianna?"
"I'm fine," she said.
"Please don't kill her. I don't want to visit you in jail."
"You wouldn't make it with the restricted schedule for conjugal visits," she admitted to me.
"For me, Arianna. Mercy."
"She doesn't deserve it!" Arianna told me.
"Maybe not. Mercy. Please."
"I'll think about it. Leave me alone now, unless something else comes up."
I could tell when she was done. She stayed at that store a long time. And when she was done, she drove into downtown Bayfield and engaged in a little wharf therapy. That is, she sat on the wharf and let the lake soothe her.
Later, she picked me up. As soon as I was in the car, she said, "I'll tell you when we get home."
We drove quietly. When we stepped in, I asked, "Are we going out?"
"In a while," she said. "Come cuddle with me outside."
"May I change clothes first?"
"Yes," she said. "Please."
I changed into casual clothes and joined her on the porch. We sat together in a two-place recliner. She insisted I cuddle into her, my head resting against her chest.
"She's a bitter old woman," Arianna said. "And a raving bigot as well."
"I know."
"Her grandson came out last week. In reaction, she kicked her son, daughter-in-law, and their kids out. She's running the store alone."
"They're better off, if they can land on their feet somewhere else."
"I would help them, but she didn't know where they were, and I don't know where to look."
"We can put some feelers out," I said. "What did you do to her?"
"I cursed her."
"Oh, Arianna..."
"Wait," she said. "I cursed her dreams. Every night, from now until the day she dies, in her dreams she is going to hear every cruel word and experience every cruel act that she did to anyone else that day. She is going to hear it as if it was said to her, and she is going to feel it as if it was meant for her."
"You can do that?"
"I'm a witch," she said. "Curses are what we do."
"Have you done that one before?"
"Yes."
"She's known my orientation for a long time," I said. "I don't exactly hide in the closet. Why now?"
"Because of the thing with her grandson, I think," Arianna said.
I leaned up and kissed Arianna's neck.
"You're not angry with me?"
"No. Thank you for looking out for me. I like your curse. Very fitting."
"Thank you," she replied, smiling. "It really is my favorite."
* * * *
Once I fully accepted our relationship, Arianna didn't express any additional impatience with our stay in Bayfield. She insisted she wanted me topped off with magic before we moved to Madison.
"Why?" I asked her. "I have so much already."
"Because this is low stress here," she replied. "What we're doing is working, and I am taking the long view." She paused. "And to some extent, this is a vacation for me. I'm not really in a hurry for it to end."
"Sure," I said. "I only worked a ten-hour day today."
"I'm sorry about that," she said. "I wish you could enjoy this time with me. I can't promise you travel, honey. I am banished to Wisconsin and may not leave. But I will give you a good life."
"When are you going to explain this banishment?"
"Someday," she said. "Maybe soon."
But eventually she decided I was full, or as close to it that it didn't matter. We drove to Madison and went hunting for a house to rent.
"I can't afford a house," I said. "I could barely afford my old rent, and the cottage was too much."
"You won't need to pay for it very long, Moira," she said. "I want us to have the privacy a house offers. Besides, your new job will pay far more than your old one."
"What new job?"
She refused to answer, but only smiled knowingly.
We looked at a lot of houses. Some were small; none were big. Some were cute, but those were expensive.
Then we found a dump, a real dump. The landlord was a slimy, cheap man, and I hated him on sight.
"This one," Arianna thought to me.
"Oh, no, please, Arianna," I replied. "This place is a dump, and the landlord is a slimeball."
"Trust me," she said. "Watch."
Then she got the landlord talking. I felt her use a little magic, and suddenly it was like he had diarrhea of the mouth. She got him to admit to us what a scum of a landlord he was; he had six different houses, and he cut corners on every one. He never fixed anything, and he always found excuses to keep everyone's security deposit when they left.
"Arianna," I said. "Please."
"This house is sound," she t
old me. "He hasn't owned it long enough for his neglect to really settle in. And he's not an innocent, so I can abuse him."
I didn't have an immediate answer to that.
"Moira?" she asked. "Do you agree? He's not an innocent?"
"I don't want anything to do with him, Arianna. Please. That one three houses ago was really cute. I liked it. Please."
"Watch," she said. "And if you don't like it when I'm done, we'll take the cute one, but it will cost twice as much."
"I don't care," I said. "You said you'd be helping soon."
"I will, but watch. You can veto when I'm done, if you like."
Then she turned to him and spoke out loud. "We'll take this house, if my girlfriend agrees," she told him. Then she began dictating terms, drawing on me for magic while she did so. She wrapped the magic around him, wrapped it around him tightly. She offered half the rent he had asked. She told him we would not pay a security deposit, and then she made him tell her everything wrong with the house. When he was done, she told him he would fix everything, and he had only two weeks to get it all done. She told him that if we ever had a complaint, he would fix it immediately, if necessary by paying whatever professional we choose to hire to do it.
When she was done, all he said was, "Okay."
"I want to paint it ourselves," I said. "Make him pay for the paint."
She laughed. "We'll paint it next weekend, and we're taking the cost of the paint out of the first month's rent."
"Okay," he said.
"Did you bind him to that agreement?" I asked.
"Yes," she told me. "Well?"
"I love you, Arianna." Then I opened my mouth. "We'll be back next weekend to paint." I held out my hand, and he shook our hands.
From that point forward, he treated us like a gentleman treats a lady. I think he surprised himself, but by the time we moved out, he seemed sorry to see us go.
Real Estate
Arianna was true to her word. It took her literally ten minutes to get me a job, working as the office manager for a real estate agency. I knew nothing about real estate, but surprisingly, the owner didn't care. Imagine that.
The same day, Arianna took her own job, as an agent for the same company.
My job was salaried; hers was commissioned. She didn't have a license to sell real estate in Wisconsin, but that turned out to be little more than a formality; she already had all the legally required training. She only needed to take the test and pay some fees.
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