Moonlight and Magic

by Rebecca Paisley

  In her mind, she saw him as clearly as if he were in her room. She bent her head, her hair falling around her face and out the window. She leaned further and watched it touch the ground below while still pondering his beautiful image and every memory of him she had hoarded in the last month. “I’m lonesome for you, Sterling,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “I love you from a place so deep inside me, I don’t even know where it is. Maybe love makes its own little niche inside people; places inside where love dwells, and from them rise all these wonderful feelings. I don’t know, Sterling. All I know for sure is that I miss you, I love you, and I want to be with you tonight.”

  She was at the door, her hand on the knob, before she even realized she’d walked toward it. Sweeping into the great room, she stopped in front of his sleeping mat. She bent as she had at her window, allowing her thick, ebony mane to fall upon him. Gently, slowly, she moved her head from side to side, her silken tresses brushing his face, his shoulders, his bare chest.

  “Love me,” she whispered when he opened his eyes. “I can’t sleep, Sterling. Please love me.”

  He watched her sink gracefully to the floor. She knelt before him, wreathed in moonlight, her eyes shimmering down at him. She was an ethereal beauty, he thought. She’d flowed from his dream of this night, and now, here she was, before him, real, begging him to love her. “Chimera—”

  “I was so lonely, Sterling,” she said softly. “I want you to love me tonight, but if you can’t, please hold me. I’ll ask nothing more. Just hold me close to you. I miss your arms. Please, Sterling, don’t deny me your arms, your embrace.”

  Her voice sang gently through him like a quiet lullaby. Her pleas, sweet and simple, became her accompaniment and the tender melody overcame all his reasons for resisting her. He tried to find them, failed, and could not summon the strength to deny her what she asked. Dios mio, he’d missed her, too. He hadn’t realized just how much until this night, until now, when she knelt before him, pleading for him to hold her. He opened his arms and felt a profound contentment when she filled them.

  “Oh, Sterling,” she breathed. “You can’t know how I’ve longed for the feel of you. The month has seemed like an eternity to me.”

  Desire flamed through him. Clenching his jaw, he made a firm vow that their embrace was all that would happen between them.

  Chimera curled her arm around his waist, her fingers running lightly down the long hard stretch of muscle she found in his back. She knew he was strong, but the muscle she felt now was harder than normal. He was tense, she realized.

  Slipping her other arm beneath his neck, she pulled him as close to her as she could. “There now, Sterling,” she soothed, her hands touching, massaging, caressing every part of him she could reach. “I asked for a hug from you, but it would seem you’re more in need of one.”

  Sterling couldn’t fight the warm feeling that welled within him. She’d done nothing but hold him, comfort him. It was so simple, but incredibly powerful.

  It was, he realized suddenly, the kind of embrace he’d seen her give to Snig. How he’d longed to be in her arms then. And now he was in them. It touched him so deeply, he could no longer resist wanting her, needing her, having her.

  His lips found hers for a long, deep kiss, and he felt the pleasure he’d denied himself for too many weeks. With a desire so intense it astonished him, he wanted to be her lover tonight. He could no longer cling to his reasons for not allowing it to happen. Her pure sweetness simply overpowered them.

  He pulled at the ribbons on the front of her nightrail, smiling when her pale, full breasts were revealed to him. “Brujita mia,” he whispered, his lips finding, smoothing, loving her lush breast. “Cual es el toque magico tan extrano que tienes sobre mi? Que tipo de hechizo hiciste? Ah, my little witch, what is the strange magic you use on me?” he translated huskily. “What kind of spell have you cast?”

  She did not respond, but only allowed him to do what he would, what he wanted. Her silence, the fact she asked nothing from him, made him want her even more. He slid her nightgown off her satin shoulders, to her tiny waist, and down her smooth legs before reaching for the fastening of his breeches and removing them. Sliding his arms around her, he pulled her atop him and watched as her hair made a warm, black pool of silk upon his chest.

  “What do you want, Chimera?” he whispered, his hands smoothing over her back, across her bottom, upon her thighs.

  “I want,” she began, and moistened her lips, “whatever you can give me.”

  Her answer set him afire with need. He pushed her hips downward, watching her eyes flutter closed as he impaled her. He began to move within her slowly “Hold me again,” he whispered into her ear. “Like you did before.”

  Her arms enveloped him. She held him closely, tenderly giving herself up to the pleasure building inside her.

  “Yes,” he whispered raggedly, he too feeling the blossoming ecstasy. “Yes, Chimera, like that. Keep holding me like that.”

  “Yes, like this. Sterling...yes!”

  He felt her release. She shuddered upon him, quivered around him, her trembling, blissful sigh quickly inducing his own. “Yes!” he groaned in sweet surrender. “Like this!” He rocked in her arms and felt them tighten around him. Dios mio, it was heaven being in her arms, he thought, loath to release her, loath to allow her to release him.

  “Sterling,” she gasped into his neck. “I only asked for your arms, and you loved me. I give you my love too. All of it and for a lifetime.”

  Her urgent declaration, sliced through all the pleasure he’d felt. Nothing had changed since the last time. She was still blinded by his cursed ‘talent’. He felt as though he were bleeding inside, then anger welled.

  “You can’t stay in my bed,” he said firmly. He was furious with himself and cursed his weakness. Damn it to hell and back! “Go to your room, Chimera, and don’t do this again.”

  Her heart, which had been singing within her breast, spiraled to the depths of her belly. She rose to her knees and looked down at him. “This is the second time we’ve made love. After both times, you’ve gotten mad at me. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you like to make love to me? I told you before that if I’m doing something wrong, you only have to tell me, and the next time—”

  “No next time,” he said, and rose to kick a pillow across the room. “Our lovemaking, as pleasurable as it is, must stop. It only makes me want you more. It only serves to deepen the love you have for the man you think I am!”

  “Think you are? Sterling, what—”

  “Yes, think I am!” he exploded, too furious to guard his words any longer. “The magic, Chimera...my lovemaking—that’s what you’re in love with.” There. He’d said it. He defied her to argue.

  “What?” she asked, completely confused. “I’m in love with your lovemaking? Sterling, how can someone fall in love with an action?”

  “Believe me, it’s possible.” He snatched up his breeches and yanked them on. “It happens all the time.”

  She sat motionless, befuddled. What in the world was he talking about? With a deep sigh, she retrieved her nightgown.

  He watched it slide over her body and cursed himself again when the sight flooded him with another wave of desire. “Look, Chimera. I don’t want to hurt you. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you persist—”

  “Sterling, I’m trying so hard to understand what you’re saying, but I can’t seem to—”

  “There are a lot of things you can’t do, and loving me is one of them.”

  “But why? Why do you say that? Do you think you’re unlovable?”

  Her questions were like salt on an open wound. He closed his eyes to her, to the room, to everything except the pain he could never shut out.

  Chimera saw his inner struggle and realized she’d stumbled upon something of vital importance. She longed to go to him and hold him in the way he’d seemed to so enjoy earlier, but held back. There was something about his stance that wa
rned her he wouldn’t be receptive to her touch. Instead, she concentrated on trying to send him her love through thought.

  “You don’t love me, Chimera.” He opened his eyes. “Go to your room.”

  “No.”

  “Go.”

  “I don’t want to, and short of dragging me, there’s no way you’ll get me there.”

  He raised an ebony brow. “If that’s a challenge, I accept.” He took a step forward.

  She took one back, “Do it, and you’ll have to tie me to the bed to keep me there,” she warned. “I want to stay here with you, Sterling! I want to talk to you and tell you all my reasons for loving you.”

  “Dios mio, you’re the most persistent person I’ve ever known! And bold, too. The things you say! Chimera—”

  “‘Tender-handed stroke a nettle, and it stings you for your pains. Grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains.’ Aaron Hill. Do you know what that means?”

  “I have a vague idea,” he snapped. “Why don’t we leave it at that? I’m in no mood to spend the night deciphering stupid rhymes.”

  “If you touch a nettle lightly, it sticks you. But if you just grab it, it’s like silk in your hand.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “What the hell does that have to do—”

  “It has to do with being bold. Bold. And sometimes being boldly persistent is the only way to get by in this ungiving world, Sterling.” She summoned courage and crossed the room to him. Placing her hands upon his shoulders, she curled her fingers into his hair. “Now please talk to me. Tell me why I can’t love you. I really need to know, Sterling. If you don’t tell me, I’ll be forced to guess, and what if I guess wrong? Of course you could always tell me if I guess wrong, but you probably won’t. And then I’ll be stuck with the wrong conclusions about—”

  “Chimera—”

  “I just want you to talk to me,” she said softly. “What crime is that, Sterling?”

  He yanked her hands away. He wanted to shake her, make her teeth rattle, so great was his fury at her determination to understand the pain he carried within him. Dammit, it was none of her business! Why did she insist on goading him into these fits of fury no other woman had ever been able to push him into?

  The truth, he decided suddenly and angrily. Why not tell her the whole damn-blasted truth? It would put an end to her never-ending questions, her endless curiosity, the useless fantasy she entertained about loving him!

  “Sit down,” he ordered.

  The tone of his voice, the glint in his silver eyes warned her to obey. She turned and plopped into a chair.

  “How quickly you obeyed. Meekness doesn’t become you, Chimera. I prefer the woman of fire.” He couldn’t resist taunting her. His anger demanded it.

  “But you told me to sit down, and I—”

  “Quiet!” He glared at her, saw the gleam in her eyes, and raised his brow. “That light in your eyes,” he snarled, “go ahead and pierce me with it, Chimera. Here I am, waiting. Do it.”

  “Light? What—”

  “It’ll find nothing because there’s nothing to find. You speak of my inner flame, my molten core. There is none, Chimera. The man you see before you is all there is to me. How could there be more? She—My mother left me, and when she did, she took all there was to me with her. My heritage, my—everything. She left a shell of a baby in the orphanage. She took...everything. Can you even grasp how empty that makes a man feel?

  “Who am I, Chimera?” he seethed. “I know my father’s name was Salvador Montoya. But who the hell was Salvador Montoya? And...Brianna. Irish, but was she more than that? Dammit!” he swore, and looked down at his wrists. “What blood runs through these veins?” he demanded. “You speak of inner flames, Chimera? How can I tell you what colors they are or how high they blaze? I know...nothing of them.”

  He stormed to the window, pressed his forehead against it, felt rage shudder through him, and then spun to face her again. “But I do know about the magic. Yes...the magic. The touch. Women, young, old, experienced, innocent...all of them succumb to it. In holy and unholy ways, they all do. At first I enjoyed the attention. Relished the power I had over them. It even gave me some sort of self-definition. Magician, I used to call myself, cocky kid that I was. But as time passed and I grew into manhood, I realized the magic, the sensual sorcery, wasn’t a blessing but a curse.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “Women. I love them, I hate them. I need them, I could live forever without them. They fulfill me, but they don’t fill me. Does that make sense to you, Chimera? Can you think of one of your famous quotes that explains it?”

  She watched agony crawl across his face, and felt her heart leaving her chest to go to him to ease the pain she felt as if it were her own. Desperately, she searched for something to tell him, something that would make it all better for him.

  But for the first time in her life, words eluded her. She could think of no quote, no wise proverb. Her perpetual optimism disappeared, and cold despair took its place.

  “I never thought I’d see you speechless,” he scoffed. “Has the whirlwind in your mind been smothered in thick fog?”

  She struggled to conceal her hurt. Somehow she understood his deep need to lash out at her. It stung, but for Sterling... For Sterling no pain was too great to bear. “I...Sterling, I—If you feel the way you do, why are you looking for your mother, who is a woman? What are you hoping to gain from—”

  “Everything,” he answered flatly. “She’ll give me everything, and don’t you dare tell me she won’t.”

  “Very well, I won’t. But what is everything?”

  “Everything is everything I don’t have now.”

  She tried to remember all the things he’d confessed. “Identity. You say you don’t have one. Lovable qualities. Those, too, you deny having. You lack a sense of being filled. You’re empty. Does that about sum it up?”

  “One more thing,” he growled. “Women always want something from me. If it’s not my presence in their bed, it’s the work or favors I can do for them. Do you deny you fall into that category?”

  Guilt consumed her.

  “Go to bed, Chimera,” he commanded. “You’ve got all the information you’ve wanted since I first arrived. I stand before you, stripped of every painful secret I tried to keep. I hope the evening has been satisfactory for you, but if there’s anything else you can think of that I haven’t answered, just ask, as is your way. Well?” he prompted when she remained silent. “No more questions? Do I dare to believe that mind of yours is now completely void of all curiosity?”

  She stood. “I do have a question.”

  “Ask it,” he snapped.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. You can’t help being a woman, therefore you can’t help being the way you are.”

  She hated his answer. It was the cruelest thing anyone had ever said to her.

  He saw the anger in her eyes and sneered. “Get as mad as you want, Chimera. Throw a fit. You will not move me.”

  “I’m trying very hard not to cry right now, Sterling. I’d rather be brave. But you’re making it extremely difficult.”

  “Then go to bed.”

  She felt her bottom lip twitch. Her eyes began to sting viciously. She kept them wide open, hoping the tears would evaporate before spilling. They didn’t. They coursed down her cheeks, and with them escaped a sob. She covered her face with trembling hands.

  Sterling didn’t budge from his place at the window. He merely watched her. Her anguished rocking made him tremble, but he ignored it with every ounce of willpower he possessed. He would not let her get to him, he vowed. Whatever strange emotions he felt for her, they were useless, and from this night on he would not let them surface. “Your anger didn’t move me, and your tears don’t either.”

  “I hurt,” she whispered. “I hurt so badly. Sterling.”

  He stiffened and took a deep breath. “I suspect your hurt will heal,” h
e said curtly.

  Her hands dropped from her face and fell to her sides. Through the glimmer of her tears, she looked at him. “But I don’t hurt for myself,” she confessed. “I hurt for you. I cannot imagine how it feels to be empty,” Chimera continued quietly, moved by his astonished expression. “To long for fulfillment and find it nowhere. To search for some answer that defines who you are...how hard that must be. I can’t help but hurt for you, Sterling. I wish there was something I could say or do, but I...”

  Her voice faded as the full depth of her helplessness came to her. Slowly she turned and walked toward the hall, then turned. “Sterling, I feel as empty as you do right now, void of everything—except guilt. I never felt guilt before I knew you. I’m not a saint, but...well, all I’ve ever done was live happily with Xenia and my boys. I’ve never really done anything so horrible that it caused me shame. Nothing, Sterling, until you arrived.

  “I’ve done everything wrong since you got here,” she whispered, and reached for the hall doorframe. Turning, she lay her forehead against it. “I’ve done nothing but demand from you. And what have I given? You don’t want the love I’ve offered, don’t believe in it. I’m a simple girl, Sterling. I’ve never been much further than these woods I live in, and I know nothing at all about the ways of the world or the people who live in it. I’m truly ignorant of everything except for what I read in my books.”

  She straightened and walked slowly toward him. “But I’m not blind, and I do see your pain. As much as I want to, I can’t fully understand it because it’s yours and not mine. But I can hurt for you, Sterling. That I can do.”

  She stood still before him. “When the triplets fall and get ouchies—that’s their word for a scratch or a bruise—I hold them, kiss the ouchy, and make all the hurt go away. I realize your problems go much deeper than an ouchy, but you can have a hug and a kiss. I can’t think of anything else to give tonight.”

  Her arms opened for him. Sterling knew they would be warm. He could already feel their warmth, which drifted toward him. He saw her lips, soft, slightly parted, and knew they were gentle. They’d spoken gentle words to him tonight, and he could still hear them whispering through him.