Rites & Desires

by Amanda Cherry

  "It’s just that I was married for a long time," he continued. Ruby had to suppress any expression of the glee she felt at his having used the past tense. "I haven’t been with anyone else. I was faithful. All those years--" His voice trailed off and he pursed his lips for a moment.

  Her magic would have let her in on what he was feeling in that moment, but she hadn’t managed to figure out the particulars of using the Eye for such things, and there was something about the potential gravity of this moment that made her think better of having a try. Without it, Ruby had to be content using her mundane sensitivities. And those were telling her that Jaccob was having a moment of anger at his wife. All the better that she let him have it. She nodded again.

  "I know," she affirmed. "It’s all right. Whatever you’re feeling about any of this, it’s all right."

  Tentatively, Jaccob placed his hands on her waist, bending his face to kiss her.

  Ruby was careful not to return the kiss too fiercely. It was clear he still had some hesitation, and she didn’t want to push too hard and spoil things. She knew she could seduce him then. It wouldn’t even be any work. She could quicken her kisses, press her breasts against him firmly, and allow her hands to wander just so, and he’d be putty in her hands.

  Men were easy like that. They were wired that way. Once a man was being handled with a particular finesse, all qualms and questions, all doubts and hesitations, anything at all that might be on his mind would vanish with the rush of blood from his brain to other regions. Even without magic to aid her, Ruby knew she could have him. But without magic, she knew she’d have no way to mitigate the morning-after regret he was likely to have if they rushed into things before he was ready. As much as she was sure the power of the Eye of Africa would be up to such a task, this was far too delicate a thing to trust to a power with which she was not yet intimately familiar. This was not an occasion for experiments. As frustrating as it was to hold back, Ruby knew patience would net her better long-term gain.

  "That’s nice," she whispered as their lips parted.

  Jaccob dared to bring his hands forward, to where the belt on her dressing gown was coming loose. He slid his hands inside of it, bringing them to rest at the same spot on her waist they had been, only this time pressed into bare skin instead of thick silk.

  Ruby delighted in the way his fingertips pressed into her sides and in the warmth of his palms against her as he bent his head to kiss her again.

  Slowly, and fully prepared to stop if so prompted, she tugged his shirt tail from his trousers as his kiss grew more excited. She ran her hands over the rippled muscles of his back, careful to return his fervor but not to be the one to move things along. It was oddly titillating to Ruby to have to be so patient and submissive. If she were being completely honest with herself, it was driving her a little crazy. It certainly wasn’t her usual approach, but as she felt Jaccob’s hands sliding slowly up her sides until his thumbs found the curve of her breasts, she could tell it was working. She found it an interesting mental exercise--encouraging him without taking the lead--and she was having to keep her head about her in a way she preferred not to in these kinds of circumstances.

  After a moment, Jaccob stopped kissing her. He stepped back, his breath ragged, his hands now on her hips, where his fingers had found the lace at the top of her garter belt. She let go of him then, letting her hands drop to her sides as she looked at him expectantly. "I," he said after a moment, his breath coming almost in gasps, "think you may have left the windows open downstairs."

  "Maybe," she answered coyly, understanding now that he was making an excuse to head toward the bedroom. If he needed an excuse, then she was happy to let him have one.

  "Do you think--?" he asked, a tiny blush rising to his cheeks as he momentarily averted his gaze from hers. "--we should go and check? I mean ... it really isn’t safe to--"

  "Yes." Ruby’s firm affirmation cut him off. "Let’s go to the bedroom, and shut the windows."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It had not been the best sex of her life. In fact, if she thought hard about it, it probably didn’t rate in the top 100. But as Ruby lay awake in the dim light of her opulent bedroom, she nonetheless felt thoroughly satisfied. She had gone to bed with Stardust, and that was thrilling, even if the actual act had left something to be desired.

  Breaking in widowers and divorcés had never been her favorite pastime, but in this case, she was more than willing to put in the work. Jaccob had been a careful lover, timid at first, and even after he’d seemed to relax a bit, his tastes had seemed almost painfully vanilla. Still, he’d been tender with her, thoughtful, and my but did he have stamina!

  He was sleeping now, rolled onto his side facing her with the thin gray of the bamboo sheet covering him to just above his waist, the plush down comforters having been long ago relegated to the floor at the foot of the bed. He’d been strangely needy when things were done, and she’d accommodated him as best she could, waiting until he had drifted off to extricate herself from his embrace.

  Glancing at the clock, it was nearly two a.m. She knew she should be trying to get some sleep. But she was antsy. Emotionally satisfied, but physically less so, she lay in her bed and watched the lights of the city as they flickered in the distance, her fingers positively twitching to touch the Eye of Africa again. It had given her a buzz of sorts when she’d lay her hand on it earlier, perhaps doing so again would be enough to get her past the mild level of frustration she was still feeling and allow her to get some sleep. Her alarm would be going off at eight no matter what, and she had a nine a.m. meeting with a band, no member of which had ever been terribly pleasant to deal with before noon. Her morning would be made better by a strong pot of French Roast and a few decent hours of sleep.

  The difficulty lay, of course, in the very real possibility of getting caught. More than once since she’d disentangled her limbs from those of her guest, he’d reached for her in his sleep and found purchase on her body once more. There was every chance he could wake up, even slightly, roll over, and catch her with it. That was a risk she wasn’t ready to take, even though he almost certainly wouldn’t recognize the Eye of Africa for what it was. The local news was still following the case almost nightly, and from what Ruby could tell, the CCPD hadn’t made a lot of progress.

  Even with all the news coverage, there had been no photographs released of the Eye itself, only of the case it had been in before Decay had dispatched it in the alley. Stardust might have been shown a picture that hadn’t been released to the public, but an added bonus to Ruby’s decision to express interest in All Things Stardust was that he’d been rather loose-lipped about the whole investigation. Seeing as he hadn’t mentioned any such photograph, Ruby could be reasonably confident that none were available.

  Still, if Jaccob were to roll over and catch her fondling some gem in her drawer, the least he’d do was ask questions. And she didn’t want to answer questions. She wanted to touch the Eye.

  Ruby rolled over and looked loosely at Jaccob. He was sound asleep. She was sure. His breaths were deep and even, his eyes were shut, and there wasn’t even the slightest sign of a twitch in his muscles. It might not be safe to take the Eye from its hiding place, but sliding the drawer open a few inches and reaching her hand beneath the salt blanket for a moment shouldn’t be a problem. And if that wasn’t enough, there was always the cold shower.

  Ruby rolled again to the edge of the bed. Perched on her left side, she reached with her right hand toward the silver knob protruding from the nightstand drawer. Gently, so the rollers on the track would make as little sound as possible, she pulled the little drawer ajar before turning her head on her pillow to be sure Jaccob hadn’t been disturbed. He was still. Ruby took a deep breath. Good. That was good. Just one brush of her fingers against the Eye of Africa and maybe she’d be able to settle in to sleep. She slid her fingers beneath the salt-tiled fabric covering the magical item.

  It was a rush not unlike the orgasm the evening
had so far been lacking. But rather than satiate her, it energized her. There was no way she was getting to sleep now. There was magic in her, and she needed to use it. She was aching with the totem’s energy; she needed to move, she needed to engage.

  Ruby looked over again at Jaccob. He was sound asleep. She slung her legs over the side of the bed and rose slowly. She crept across the plush carpets to where her dressing gown had been flung over a chair. She wrapped herself in the semi-sheer silk before reaching down and pulling the comforter from its resting place on the floor to occupy the space she’d just vacated on her side of the bed. There was a chance Jaccob would reach for her again in his sleep; she was gambling that finding something in her place would be less likely to wake him than finding nothing at all.

  Satisfied that she’d done all she could do, she tiptoed out of the bedroom and across the hall into her music room. The magic of the Eye seemed to follow her, wafting into her awareness like the scent from a candle as she slid open the door to the marble-floored conservatory. She’d left the drawer cracked on purpose--hoping to maximize access to the magic without risking exposing the artifact to her guest’s curious eyes--and the connection she felt to it even as she walked away was truly stirring. That was good.

  She’d had magic to do tonight--an agenda that had been interrupted by an unexpected, albeit welcome, visit from Stardust. Perhaps getting a bit of her intended work done would exorcise enough of the wildness she was feeling to allow her a few hours rest before her day began. And if there was arcane work to be done in the penthouse, it needed to begin in the most sacred space the high-rise had on offer.

  Ruby guessed most people would find it odd that the CEO of an entertainment conglomerate would consider her music room to be private space. Most people in her position would likely have put such a thing in a more social place in their home. But Ruby Killingsworth was not most people. Her music room was a precious place, second only to the prepared magical space beneath her mansion in the pantheon of what she guarded.

  It wasn’t widely known among her peers and associates that Ruby was capable of making music herself. She’d mostly been able to keep it secret that she’d started out in the business as a singer/songwriter.

  She’d been a bit of a prodigy, to be honest. But she’d learned very quickly that the life of a performer just wasn’t for her. Plenty of them were wealthy enough to be comfortable, but a scant few made enough money to keep up their lifestyle as their careers waned; a pop artist’s career was bound to wane eventually. Add to that the way performers were owned, managed, and handled by the labels, and Ruby decided rather quickly that she preferred life on the corporate side of the music business.

  She’d come to work for Goblin Records straight out of high school. As an intern, she’d all but completely taken over Cassidy Sweet’s wildly successful multinational tour of shopping malls. Only a few years later, having orchestrated one of the greatest sales coups in the conglomerate’s history, Ruby found herself suddenly occupying an office that read "Junior Vice President" on the door. Her climb up the ladder to CEO hadn’t taken long after that.

  Of course, magic had played no small part in her elevation from intern to mogul in record time. And these days, her musical abilities were second only to her magical ones on the list of precious, secret things. Her music room, on the private level of her residence, across the hall from her bedroom, was effectively a shrine to the relationship between music and magic and the success she’d found. Magical items and cloaked foci hid in plain sight, sharing shelf space with her music books and posing as objets d’arte placed about on occasional tables under the guise of decoration.

  This room was the center of her magical presence in the penthouse, and it was the anchor point for the wards she’d spun to protect the place. She’d meant to spend tonight reinforcing those wards with the power of the Eye of Africa when Jaccob had shown up with other plans. Now that he was duly sated and sound asleep, she decided it was worth giving her intended task a try.

  Worst case scenario, the Eye wouldn’t cooperate with her attempts to channel and focus its power, and she’d wind up once again affected by drain. Seeing as it was nearly two in the morning, and she had every reason to want to be tired right now (not to mention several hours ahead of her during which it would be perfectly reasonable to sleep it off), she felt like she had very little to lose in the attempt.

  But first, she needed to get the feel of the Eye. Making use of a focus, especially one as powerful as the Eye of Africa, for the first time was a massive undertaking. There was a learning curve to all magic, one that grew steeper the more powerful it was. Using it to shore up magical security without having tested her mastery of it was unlikely to end well. As deeply as she could feel its magic at the moment, the Eye wasn’t fully hers to command. She was sure she could channel it, but she needed to feel what it was like to use and control this power before she tried to put it to use.

  Ruby crossed slowly but deliberately to her piano. There was a book of music already on the stand, she opened it to a favorite song and took a seat on the bench. Inhaling deeply, focused on the feeling of this new magic and how it felt within her body, she placed her fingers over the key signature at the top of the piece, and shut her eyes. The music played then, the notes sounding flawlessly in Ruby’s head as she passed her fingers over the notes on the page before her.

  The song was perfect, finding its tempo as the speed of her hand waxed and waned along the staff. The music was coming from her bones, reverberating outward enough to rattle the lid to the piano’s keyboard. She concentrated then, reining in the magic as best she could to control the volume--there would be too much to explain were the sound to wake Jaccob.

  With a flick of her wrist, the music left the page. Sounding in her ears and reverberating down to her bones, the staff and its notes whirled about the room, visible all around when she opened her eyes. Ruby danced beneath herself, spinning and swaying as the ebb and flow of the stirring melody moved her, all the while careful not to let the song become audible past her own ears.

  Her arms moved wildly now, conducting the phantom piano in frenzied crescendo as the music swirled about the room--visible staffs spiraling around her and filling the space from floor to ceiling. The sound became a tumult, magically sustaining notes and blending chords one into the next. Ruby was finding it harder and harder to control the tempo and the volume. She grounded herself, digging her feet into the floor as though in attempt to anchor a tug-of-war and strained her arms against the force of the music in her head and in her sights as it tried to carry her off. The notes were glowing, somehow ink-black and yet incandescent in the otherwise darkened room. Her heart was pounding, filling her ears with a percussion so discordant against the lights from the notes and the sounds in her ears that it made her nauseous.

  It took all the strength she had; as though she were pulling against the power of a freight train, she silenced the music in her body. With a flick of her wrists, she returned the staffs to their place on the page. Ruby lurched toward the piano and slammed the book shut where it remained on the stand.

  Her heart was still pounding, and she was decidedly short of breath. Her silk dressing gown clung to her skin in places, and her knees were about to give beneath her. It wasn’t drain--not altogether--although there was an edge to how she felt that could certainly be attributed to that. This was fatigue. This was her body’s inability to channel a power this intense without consequence.

  She had been right to presume the magic of the Eye of Africa was far more powerful than any she’d encountered before. She could use it. She could access it now; she could channel it and direct it and use it for her own purposes. But her body wasn’t used to being a vessel for power of this magnitude. If she meant to attempt a ritual that would imbue her with its power permanently, she would need to spend more time with it. She needed to further attune herself, to acclimate her body to the presence of energy like this.

  She hadn’t even begun to
suss out what a ritual of this magnitude might look like, but experience told her it would be much longer and more involved than using the Eye to play a little music. If she were to succeed in binding the item’s magic to herself, she would need to be conditioned to using it well enough to survive the experience. Ruby Killingsworth had never been an "or die trying" type of individual, and she wasn’t about to start with this. Like any endeavor that required endurance, it would take training to work up to the ability to keep control over the item’s magic for long enough to complete a ritual as involved as she was sure this would need to be.

  But she’d had quite enough for tonight. As her heartrate returned to normal and she began to catch her breath again, Ruby felt as thought she’d just run a marathon. Or, rather, she felt as though she imagined she would were she to have just run a marathon. In truth, she’d never run anywhere in her life. But the metaphor stood in her head. She’d need to work up to a puissant ritual, but right now she needed to sleep.

  With aching arms and on wobbly legs, she made her way back to the bedroom. She slid her sweat-dampened wrap off her shoulders and wadded it up before using it to blot away the excess moisture from her skin. She ducked into her closet and threw on a lace shift before tiptoeing back to the far side of the room and slipping back into bed beside Jaccob.

  She pulled the comforter up over herself, delighting in the feel of the cool fabric on her still-fevered skin. She’d be able to sleep now, she was sure. Carefully, Ruby rolled onto her side and reached into the drawer to re-cover the Eye with its protective fabric. She’d still be connected to the magic, even through the protective layers she’d provided it, but the thrumming of the thing would be muted enough in the sealed drawer to allow her to sleep as soundly as her exhausted body was demanding.