Magic by Daylight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Dominic stretched to the length of his chains, groaning a little. She looked at him tenderly. “I love you,” she said.

  “Clarice . . .” He sat up abruptly, an expression of joyous surprise in his eyes. “I want your love so much. I was starting to fee! like one of ‘them’ until I met you.”

  She closed the gap between them, leaning down over him. “I never want you to feel like that again.”

  Kissing him, tasting the whisky on his lips, she tried to show him that she was ready to know everything about him. Frustratingly, he only brushed her lips. “I can’t even hold you,” he said.

  “Let me.”

  She began to unlace the thong at the front of his shirt. It seemed very natural to press a kiss into the opening. He groaned again, more sharply than before. She felt his big body shake in reaction to her boldness. “Clarice . . . what are you doing?”

  “You’ll see. I hope.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Several minutes had passed, minutes in which Dominic had not been very cooperative. They had to lie close together, his bound hands between them. She’d put her arms around him and tried to show him with her kisses what she wanted. Though he seemed happy enough to return those kisses, he did not seize her as though he would devour her. Where was the passionate man of their last two encounters, whose desire drove hers?

  Frustrated by his question, she sat back on her heels, studying him. He chuckled. “You look like a general planning a strategy of attack.”

  “I am.”

  “I don’t understand. Won’t you explain?”

  “Very well.” She raised her hands to free her hair, noting how his eyes focused on her uplifted breasts. He was trying not to look, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. She took her time searching out the final pin. Then she shook loose the tumbling waves of gold.

  His voice was husky and he had to clear his throat halfway through his sentence. “You said you were going to ex—explain.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, Dominic, the way I see it is this. ...” She began to open the silver-braid frogs down the front of her riding coat. His gaze followed her fingers. “We have to face facts, unpleasant though they are. We may only have this one night to last us all our lives.”

  “One night...”

  “There may not be a tomorrow for us.” Taking up her courage, she spread open her coat and peeled it from her shoulders. Shrugging out of it, she dropped it behind her. Now she wore only her thin habit-shirt and the chemise beneath. She felt his eyes there and a tingle began to grow in her breasts. She felt them tighten as they did when she was cold, but she wasn’t feeling the slightest bit cold.

  “Clarice ...”

  “So I asked myself, what do I want? I know what everyone else wants me to do. Mother wants me to stay with her for always; you want me to go home.”

  “You’ll be safe there.”

  She smiled at him, tenderly, lovingly, and with just the slightest hint of reproach. “Safety isn’t everything, Dominic.”

  She put her hand to the doubled band of material at her throat, and tugged off the clip that held it together. Breathing a little faster, she untied the knot, and watched his eyes. Not even all her courage would suffice if she saw rejection there.

  “Clarice,” he said again, “what are you doing?”

  Suddenly, there was no more room in her for fear. Undoing each button, she tantalized him with glimpses of soft skin and white linen. She’d been unable to find her own chemise so she’d been forced to take one Matilda had given her. Having made her plan, she chose the prettiest one. It was of linen so fine that it was nearly transparent, lavished with point-lace, much of which was inset over her bosom. Watching the color mount into his face, she wanted to laugh with pure womanly joy but she only smiled.

  His voice was very deep now. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Certainly not.”

  She leaned forward, returning to kneel over him, starting to kiss him again. Her hair fell down around his face even as the open sides of her shirt fell over his body. Clarice brushed his mouth with her own, recognizing in the way he raised his head as he returned her kiss that he wanted her to linger. But she didn’t. She kissed his cheek, his beard rougher than before, his eyelids, his forehead, before returning to his lips.

  “I can’t even hold you.”

  “No. And you can’t hold me off, either.” She couldn’t help giggling a little at the look on his face.

  “Now you’re laughing at me?” The growl in his tone spelled danger but she welcomed that. If she could just push him far enough ...

  He tried scooting back, but she only followed. He raised his bound hands, the crystal links jangling, and said, “Clarice, don’t do this.”

  “Why not?” She sat back on her heels once more, only to remove her shirt. He shut his eyes. “A tactical error,” she whispered and ran her fingers over his chest.

  He tried to catch her hand with his own. “Clarice, as a man of honor, I cannot allow this to go on.”

  “Do you remember the first time we kissed? I thought you were such a fatuous person, but I couldn’t help wanting you even then. I didn’t know what I wanted exactly. I thought a voice outside myself was telling me to kiss you, but I was wrong. It was a voice from inside myself, deep, deep inside. I’d never heard it before. Or perhaps I had but I never listened to it. It told me to take what I wanted. It’s speaking to me again right now.”

  She raised his arms and slipped inside their circle. Reaching up to his face, she gave him the kind of kiss she wanted from him, deep, hard, and completely open. She felt him try to damp out his reaction to her, but he couldn’t, not entirely. He was rigid all over with the effort of not responding to the temptation she offered.

  Then she broke his defenses. Tears came to her eyes as she said, “Help me, Dominic. I don’t want this to end without ever having .. . having known you.”

  He crossed his arms around her back, looping the chain to keep the cold links off her warm skin. Then he kissed her, so tenderly at first that her tears flowed onto his face. Then some spark flared in the dry tinder of their longing and tenderness fled before a welcome blaze of desire.

  The soft slide of her body over his had been driving Dominic slowly out of his mind. Now, even with his hands all but useless behind her, he could show her that madness worked both ways. He knew little of the courtly forms of love but every touch brought its own pleasure. He rolled her over onto her back and for a long time they made no sound but those they drew from one another. Then suddenly she said, “Ouch!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This hay is scratching me. Never mind. Kiss me again.”

  She dragged his head down to hers. He plundered her mouth, she a willing victim. But the glimpse he’d had of the body she pressed so intimately against his had given him an idea.

  He pulled her back on top of him. She hung above him, her breasts near to his mouth. He’d kissed her throat already and the smooth rising flesh above her bodice. Now he dragged the fabric down with his teeth. Her breasts were freed, their rose tips tightly furled. Keeping one eye on her face, he took a tip into his mouth and lavished it with his tongue.

  Her pink-flushed face was made more beautiful by a combination of surprise and increased pleasure. She propped herself up with her hands on his shoulders and he felt the tiny stings of her nails as she clutched him. “Good?” he asked.

  “Oh, Dominic! What... what are you doing to me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “But I think I will continue.” He did, relishing every panting cry. He was ready for her, and when she rocked her hips over him—which she could not seem to control—her skirt brushed over his heavy arousal.

  Even in the Wilder World, animals still procreated. They did not “make love.” Dominic knew that more than any mere completion, he wanted to make love to Clarice. He was still not certain that a gentleman should, but he knew he was going to.

  He sought out the buttons riding over
her hip, only to find that her fingers were there almost as soon as his own. He reluctantly let her wriggle free of his arms while she slipped off the skirt. She stood up to do it and he could not tear his eyes away from her beauty. Wearing only the provocative shift, she smiled at him, her hair wild in a way he’d never seen before, but nothing about her was more arousing than the gleam in her eyes. That alone would have been enough to make him ardent.

  When she slipped the straps from her shoulders, letting the shift slide all the way down, he groaned. The moonlight bleached out her color so that she might have been made of marble. But there was nothing cold about her as she slipped again inside the circle of his arms.

  “All my wishes coming true and me with my hands fettered. There is no justice!”

  “We’re not doing so badly,” she said. “Are we?”

  “No, love. We’re not.” He pressed a kiss onto her bare shoulder as he drew his fingertips down the groove of her back. Shivering, she pressed closer against him still. With every breath, he inhaled the spicy fragrance of her aroused body. It was not she alone who shook with need.

  “What now?” she asked innocently. “I feel sure there’s more to come.”

  He had to clear his throat. “There is. But we can stop now, if you want to.”

  “Stop?” She shook her head in wonder. “I feel... I feel.. . oh, there aren’t any words! I want you to feel the way I do. I want...”

  Dominic sat up, with Clarice on his lap. He had to bite his cheek to do it without giving in then and there to the urgency that demanded the ultimate expression.

  He laid her down on the fallen skirt, hoping the heavy wool would protect her delicate skin from the hay. Then he started to touch her, indulging in his wildest fantasies, while she watched him in wild-eyed wonder. Soon, though, her eyes closed as she writhed beneath his hands.

  He couldn’t help tasting where he touched. Her reaction startled them both. She seemed to shatter, shaking apart in a way that frightened him a little, but went directly to his heart.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her eyes slowly opened. She put her hand to her mouth. “Was that me?”

  He nodded. “Are you all right?”

  Her sigh was a long note of sheer bodily bliss. “What now, my love?”

  Somehow they managed together, between giggles and growls, to free him from the confines of his clothes. His shirt hung loose, his breeches were open. Clarice looked down into his lap. Her eyes went wide. “Is that for me?”

  “If you want it.” She obviously had no notion what her almost-scientific study of his body was doing to him. He dug his fingernails into his palm to keep from seizing her before she was ready. He thought that was the last extremity of torture, until her curiosity drove her to touch.

  “Clarice . . .” he ground out. He didn’t think he could stand another instant of her gentle exploration. Already his heart felt as though it might pound right out of him.

  She lay back, smiling her infinitely feminine smile, waiting for him to take what she offered.

  There was a moment’s awkwardness as he worked his arms over her head. She did not make it easier by dipping her head quickly to lick the nubbin hidden in his chest hair. Then he had her captured against his pounding heart. She gazed up at him. “Help me, Dominic. I want to please you.”

  He kissed her until she was gasping, her hands clutching his back helplessly, as her feet ran over his calf muscles. “Your pleasure is all I ask.”

  Poised at the threshold of her body, he found his way eased by her body’s gifts. He wanted to go slowly, give her time to adjust to this strange intrusion, but she moved against him so welcomingly that he knew the image of invasion was only in his mind, never in hers.

  He heard her catch her breath as he found the secret impediment within. He stopped, appalled by being the cause of her pain, but again she took them beyond it with her generosity. Embracing him, taking all he had to give and giving so much more back to him, the pain was only momentary, soon forgotten by them both.

  Dominic felt chilled and overheated all at once, as he had during a fever long ago. Only the fires she set in his flesh would never go out. As they rocked together, he felt the forces of the universe gathering in his body, as though a great cosmic storm had awakened within him and he and Clarice huddled together at its mercy. They moved together, lost in an all-absorbing rhythm, and Dominic could feel the storm tugging at him, demanding he surrender to it. But he refused to go into the heart of this miracle alone.

  He bent his head and took the tight tip of her breast into his mouth. The addition of this pleasure snapped Clarice’s eyes open. She clutched at him, moaning his name again and again. He felt the intimate clasp of her body tighten further and together they were caught up in the destruction of time and space.

  It was a strangely peaceful aftermath. Realizing that his suddenly boneless body lay too heavily on her fragility, Dominic moved to the side. He felt vaguely surprised that outwardly nothing seemed to have changed. The wagon had not been blown away, nor had the moon exploded into a thousand singing shards. He chuckled deep in his chest as he threw his arms over his head. He’d never felt so well in all his long, long life.

  “You sound uncommonly pleased with yourself, Mr. Knight,” Clarice said, propping herself up on her elbow.

  “Pleased with you,” he answered merrily and then saw that she bore a strange expression. He’d never seen her look frightened before.

  “Don’t,” he said, reaching out for her. “Don’t be embarrassed. You were wonderful . .. beyond my dreams.”

  “Thank you.” But the worried lines did not leave her brow. “Dominic, where are your chains?”

  He looked at his hands as though he’d suddenly grown a new set. The jangling crystal chains, that had never sounded true, were gone. His feet too were no longer shackled. Unable at first to believe it, Dominic sat up and rummaged through the hay.

  “They’re not here.”

  Clarice sat up too, her arms folded around her knees. He couldn’t see any of the parts of her that he’d so recently come to adore, but even so he knew she was unclothed and it had an effect on him that was no longer strange. But at the distressed expression of her eyes, he forgot desire in his need to reassure her.

  “Dominic, is it true ... that if the one who worked the spell dies, the spell ends?”

  “Your mother isn’t dead, Clarice. She’s Fay. She does not die.”

  “Oh, I know but... couldn’t Forgall kill her?”

  “No. He wouldn’t even if he could. The only thing he could do is banish her away somewhere. The Desert North, maybe.”

  Clarice heaved a sigh of relief. “Then what happened to your chains?”

  His grin now was tenderly possessive. “At a guess, I would say you happened to them.”

  “I?”

  “Nothing can stand against love, Clarice. You gave me pure, disinterested love, thank you very much, and even magic isn’t proof against it.”

  “But I did want something from you. I wanted to know.”

  “Did you find out?”

  Her cheeks were as delectable a pink as they’d been when he’d claimed her. “Yes. I—I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “There’s no ‘thanks’ between you and me. What we’ve done was foreordained from the moment Forgall chose me to be your guardian.”

  “I hope you don’t think I should have fallen in love with whomever Forgall sent?”

  “No. You were made to be mine, and I have waited four hundred years and more for you.”

  She smiled at him shyly. “I’m glad you waited for me. If only .. .” He pressed her to finish what she’d meant to say. Dominic felt there should be no “if only” between them. But Clarice only shook her head, her eyes slumberous, and said, after stifling a yawn, “We should probably go to sleep. Won’t we have to be on our way very early tomorrow?”

  “If we are not captured in the meantime.” He lay down on the outspread skirt of her habit. �
��This isn’t very big for two people to lie down on.”

  “You didn’t complain before.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

  “I mean, side by side.”

  She slept in his arms, his body keeping her warm. For himself, he kept sleep at bay. Though he knew he must do battle tomorrow, these moments were too precious to lose in sleeping. Besides, all he’d ever dreamed of lay sleeping beside him. No other dream, however wonderful, could compare to this living fulfillment. When the pink light of dawn touched her face, he awakened her with a kiss.

  “It’s morning. We should dress and be on our way.”

  “Shut your eyes tight and pretend that it is still dark outside.” She drew his head down for another kiss, which lasted a long, long time. Almost before he knew he meant to, he was making love with her again.

  Dressing, afterward, took longer than it should have done. How could he bear to see Clarice’s wonders being hidden one by one without kissing each a fond good-bye? She laughed and tried to keep him from achieving his goals but her efforts were weak on purpose.

  He drove the horse this time, Clarice seated beside him, her long hair flying free in the breeze. “Are you taking me home?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry about me. I can defeat a hundred men so long as I know you are far from danger.”

  She slipped her hand under the bend of his arm. “I don’t want you to think I lack faith in you, but how I wish this battle was unnecessary.”

  “Most battles are unnecessary but not this one. It’s for the very life of the Living Lands.”

  Her sigh of resignation was not a happy sound. She nodded in reluctant acceptance of what he had said. “Then don’t waste time taking me to where I can reach Hamdry. Let us go to your battle. No doubt Forgall can send me back with a snap of his august fingers.”