He didn’t say anything for a bit. “On my way.”
She kept the phone in her hand. “He’ll be right here.”
“Great,” Italian lawyer said. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
Durian must have been close because before she expected him, he was sliding himself beside her, a hand around her waist. He had a shopping bag in the other hand. He bent to kiss her cheek. And then he went for her mouth. “Darling. Mm.” Short as kisses go, but he managed to rock her world.
She froze at the contact. His mouth was soft and warm. At the last minute, it occurred to her she needed to act like she kissed Durian all the time. She plastered herself against his chest and reciprocated. And damned if she didn’t get turned on. When he drew back—tactical error there, she realized—she should have been the one to pull away—he stared into her eyes.
Like an idiot, she stared right back. His eyes were just beautiful. “God, you smell good.”
He blinked. “Your favorite, of course.”
If she was going to make of fool of herself by behaving like a teenager with a bad case of puppy love, she might as well make it worth the humiliation afterward. She snaked an arm around his neck and pulled his head back to her. She gave him a short, hard kiss, but open-mouthed, and she lingered at it afterward.
“Remind me,” Durian said when she moved away, “to be sure I have an ample supply of that cologne.”
“Durian.” The guy stuck out his hand for Durian to shake, and for no reason at all, Gray stepped forward until she was between Durian and the man. Durian pulled her back to his side. She gave in and leaned against him. “It’s been a long time. Nice to see you again.”
Durian kept his arm around her waist, but his hand angled toward her hip. The tips of his fingers brushed the bare skin between her shirt and her jeans. Warm skin, his was. “You’re a long way from home, Leonidas.”
“This is my first trip to America.” Leonidas pulled back his hand. She looked between the two, trying to figure out if they were friends, enemies, or something else. “Will you and your young lady join me for coffee?”
“I regret we cannot.”
“I am sorry to hear that.” His voice changed from easygoing to tense. “I would have enjoyed your company.”
“You two know each other?” she asked. She let herself lean against Durian’s torso. Since her left arm was dangling awkwardly between them, she hooked her arm around his waist. Under his expensive clothes was a well-muscled body. My. Wasn’t that nice?
Leonidas examined her a little too closely for her peace of mind. “Let’s say we know of each other.”
Durian gave him a brisk nod and addressed Gray. “Where are your bags?”
She pointed to where Joy stood and the next thing she knew, they were loaded down with shopping bags and walking out. They were on the street before Gray dared to speak. “So. Who was that?”
“A mage, as you must have guessed by now.”
“I got that.”
“He is one of the more powerful mages. He’s from Greece. Sparta, most particularly.”
“More powerful than Christophe?”
“Yes.” He looked at her as they headed onto the street. “It’s no accident that he found you. There will be others, Gray, and chances are they won’t be as polite or circumspect as Leonidas.”
She didn’t like the idea of more mages. At all. “If Nikodemus won’t let you kill Christophe, then I’m guessing he won’t let you kill Leonidas either.”
“No.”
“Bummer.”
“We’ll start your training immediately.”
CHAPTER 9
A Few Days Later
Watch me first,” Durian told Gray.
She locked gazes with him and like that, he was in her head. Her magic was there, drawing him deeper than he expected. Since they’d begun working together, she’d improved beyond his expectations. She now had more than decent control of her magic, for example. There were other effects, too, mostly as a result of her fealty oath. The part of his soul that had been so long isolated didn’t seem quite so vast anymore.
Her smile slowly disappeared. “You don’t think I can do this, do you?”
“In respect of your magic, I have no doubts about your ability.”
Her disappointment was a flash of heat that transferred to him, too. “Liar.”
“No doubts that matter, I assure you. Your physical limitations are what concern me.”
“We just ran three miles in fifteen minutes.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s twice as far as I’ve ever run in my life.”
“All things considered, you did well. You aren’t out of shape, and that is a benefit.”
She looked down at herself, in her snug black leggings and a neon green T-shirt that made him wish he’d done the shopping for her clothes. He looked at her, too, since the opportunity presented. She was more sleekly muscled than he’d expected. She hadn’t been sedentary in her previous life, that was plain.
“Gee, thanks,” she said.
Best, he thought, to keep this businesslike. “Over the next few weeks, your magic will continue to contribute to your endurance in much the same way that it reduces your need for sleep and increases your strength and quickness.”
“You think I’m going to be hopeless at fighting, don’t you?”
He looked around the upstairs room he’d cleared of furniture so they would have a place to train. “You have decent control of your magic.” He’d spent the better part of the last few days working on nothing but that. “That mastery does not mean you could hope to physically prevail against any but the least powerful of the kin.”
“I’m still using training wheels; is that what you’re saying?”
He felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “You will outrank a good many of the kin, Gray. But we’ve only begun. For you to learn everything you need, to integrate the physical and the magical, that could take weeks. Months.”
Leaning over with her hands propped on her knees, she dropped into a deep side lunge. At least her limbs were flexible. “Maybe.”
He didn’t trust her too carefully blank expression. If she was annoyed with him so be it. “I’ll go slowly,” he said. “So you get a sense of what you need to learn.” He saw the glitter of a challenge in her eyes, and his heart sank. “I admire your spirit, but pride will only be a barrier to what you need to learn.”
“I’m a quick study.”
He walked to the middle of the floor and set himself. “Ready?”
She nodded.
Taking care not to move at anything near top speed, he moved through one of the simpler forms he’d devised for the training that made him feared among the kin and magekind alike. He had, over the years, created a highly personal hybridization of several of the warrior arts. Humans were clever about turning disadvantages into advantages. Even used against a creature an order of magnitude faster and stronger, the martial arts could be quite effective. When someone like him used them against a sanction, the results were always lethal.
The series he’d elected to start with was simple enough but the various steps would reveal which weaknesses he would have to work on with her. Balance. Coordination. Strength. All things that came naturally to the kin, but that in humans required dedicated training.
He relaxed into the movements. At the end, he finished an explosive upward kick with a controlled return to center. He was always more psychically balanced when he worked through his forms, and now was no different. He reset himself into a waiting stance and met her gaze. “This time, you follow along.”
“No need,” she said. “I got it.”
He didn’t hide his skepticism. He’d developed his style of fighting over centuries, borrowing and adapting from any system that contained something useful to him. He had spent years adapting movements to his magic, until he arrived at the deadly blend he used today. “This is not a game.”
“I didn’t say it was.” She stretched her arms. “You’re good with yo
ur body, and that means you make it look easy. I get that it’s not.”
“I would be happy to show you once more.”
She didn’t blink. “I have it.”
He stepped aside and added overconfidence to his list of required remediations. “Then do show me.”
Gray nodded at him. She shook out her arms and legs, finished off with an oddly controlled roll of her head and shoulders and took up his starting position. Before his eyes, she transformed herself. Not the shift from human to a true manifestation of one of the kin, but a transformation nonetheless.
She executed his form without a single error.
Perfect. Better than perfect. She took the physicality of his form and made it lyrical. Breathtaking grace and power. He saw flashes of himself in her movements, but they became hers. Her magic had already made her stronger and faster than she had been, so some facility was to be expected, but her adaptation to the change in her physical state was astonishing. Not just perfect but sublime.
Gray brought the form to the ritual conclusion he’d devised on his own, and it was heartbreakingly lovely to watch. She released the finish pose, and cocked her head at him, deadly serious.
He took a step back, half in love with her simply for her sheer physical ability. He felt he’d been deceived, too, though he knew it was mostly pride that made him feel that way. Quite stupidly, he’d thought she would be… anything but what he had just seen.
He said, “What were you before Christophe?”
Some of the light went out of her eyes. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You aren’t just good, Gray. That was—” He flicked a hand. The thought of what she could do with that kind of command over her body made him think it was Christophe who had been lucky to survive. “—brilliant.”
Something flashed behind her eyes and was quickly suppressed. “You’re angry?”
“I made a fool of myself, telling you it might take years to teach you.”
Her mouth twitched. “Maybe you had it coming. A little.”
He gazed down at her and had to relent. “Perhaps.”
“You do need to teach me.” She put her hands on her hips, and he was put in mind of Degas and his bronze ballerinas. “I don’t understand the magic. What you do, Durian, what you are, comes out in the way you move. Physically, sure. No problem. Bring the whole mind thing into it?” She swept a hand around his makeshift do-jang. “This gets more complicated than what you showed me. I know that.”
He walked toward and around her, letting his magic build up to match what he felt from her. “How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”
She opened her mouth to make what he was sure would be some acid retort, but then didn’t. “Twenty-eight.”
“Thirty years ago, Gray Spencer, before you were conceived, I was already three millennia old.”
One corner of the room was piled with rugs so there’d be a place for them to sit comfortably if they so desired. She walked to the rugs now and reached for one of the water bottles stacked there. He held up two hands in an I’m-going-to-catch-it motion. Gray tossed hers to him and picked up another. She cracked the top and took a long drink. “I danced.”
“What kind of dance?” For some reason he imagined her doing the tango with some dark-haired tuxedo-wearing partner.
She shrugged and stared into her now empty water bottle. “A bunch of stuff, really.” She tossed the bottle into the corner. One thing he’d learned about her was how stubbornly she protected her previous life. “Nothing that matters.”
“You were good at it. Obviously.”
She stood up, her weight on her back leg, her front leg turned out. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about what I used to be?” Her face was too carefully neutral. She was keeping him away from anything but a surface connection with her. “That’s over with.”
He should have guessed much sooner. “A professional,” he said.
She didn’t answer, and Durian’s chest pinched. Someone with her physical gifts, and he had no doubt she had been gifted, had to have suffered when it was taken away. Christophe had much to answer for.
He nodded curtly. He hadn’t shared any more of his past with her than was necessary. No matter how deep his curiosity, he wasn’t going to insist that she share anything with him. She was right. “Does this bother you? The reminder?”
However badly he’d put it, she got what he meant. He saw and felt the catch in her emotions. “Thanks, Durian.”
In a rare moment of acknowledgment, they stood silent, both of them, he thought, aware their lives had just changed course. They were more to each other than they had been just moments ago. If they were to become lovers, something he’d begun to think of as a rather enticing inevitability, the result would now be more than just a pleasing sexual union. She would scour his soul when it happened.
What, he wondered, would happen to her?
She cleared her throat. “It’d be easier not to think about what I used to be, but it’s there. A part of me.” She looked away. “Besides,” she said in a quiet voice. “I won’t deny there’s joy. Even if it hurts.”
Durian forced himself to stay where he was. He wasn’t ready to confront what had just happened to them, and he didn’t think she was either. “Shall we continue?”
Within twenty minutes of him working with her she’d picked apart his physical tics. Every dip of a shoulder that betrayed him, every quirk of a muscle. She saw, absorbed it in some way he could not reconcile with her human limitations. She nearly always flawlessly reproduced what he’d done. Usually better.
He moved them quickly past the simpler forms. Ninety-nine percent of the time she put herself precisely where she needed to be. She rarely made a mistake twice, and if she did, she recovered quickly. Once or twice she made him show her some move or combination until she was sure she understood—whatever it was she thought she needed to understand. On those occasions, she’d crouch down and watch him with a laser focus until something clicked for her. After which she was perfect in her execution. Her only difficulty lay in integrating her magic. She did struggle with that. He was confident, however, that she would overcome her present difficulties.
Every now and then, they stopped their work to eat one of the energy bars he’d brought along, or rest quietly, each lost in their personal thoughts. Sometimes when she thought he wasn’t looking, she’d do some movement on her own, and each and every one of them sparked his hunger for the beauty of her movement and the command she had over her body.
Her endurance was already well beyond what any normal human possessed; they’d been working for several hours at nearly top effort. They stopped for another break. Durian loosened his hold on his magic and watched the tracings on her arm and temple react while he had her eat another energy bar. They were close and without thinking he drew a finger around the edges of the traceries on her temple.
She shivered. He dipped his head toward her, and after an infinitesimal hesitation, she lifted her chin. His fingers moved over her, and her magic sparked underneath his fingers. He wanted her with a vicious ache. He was afraid to take her too far, too fast, yet curious to know how much she could do.
He allowed her magic to seep into him, to permeate him. His oath to her shimmered between them. She sucked in a breath. With her head clasped between his hands, he said. “What you could do if you stopped fighting your magic.” Too much. He wanted this too much. He released her and forced himself to step back. “You might take Christophe without even trying.”
Her eyes opened wide, and he stared into those chilly blue depths and thought she saw far too much. She said, “Teach me how. If I’m not doing something right, tell me. Show me what I’m doing wrong. I’ll learn. I swear.”
“You must learn to connect your magic to your body.”
She nodded. “How?”
“If I am to teach you about what I am, you won’t be able to go back to something safer.”
&nb
sp; Her eyes caught his and when her mouth curved, he touched her there, with the edge of his thumb sweeping along that arc of her lower lip. She said, “Safety is way overrated.”
“You move… exquisitely.” He opened himself to her so that she could reach, if she cared to, for the darkness he’d been keeping from her, that dark and dangerous edge to his magic that made him what he was. “Let your magic fill you when you do. Trust it. What Tigran was belongs to you now.” He touched the tracery at her temple. “Don’t be afraid of what you are, Gray. I’m here. If you get into trouble, I’ll help you.”
“All right, then.”
He pulled without hiding from her what he did or how this magic took shape. He reset and after a moment, she did the same. While she watched, to one side of them, the air quivered, darkened and took form. A darkness formed out of the air and took shape as a humanoid creature, not flesh and blood, but shadow and magic. Durian directed himself to the entity he’d called up.
“What is that?”
“A form of imp,” he told her. “Created from my magic and possessed of a limited though self-sustaining consciousness.”
She looked suitably impressed. As she ought to be.
“In short, this is the perfect sparring partner.”As a conjured creature it lacked heft or weight, but when he moved to show Gray what he meant, it countered him as if it had both. “We’ll work together at first.” He tapped his head and relaxed his usual hold on his magic. It was freeing to hold so little back from her. “We’ll be linked, and, if you’ll permit me, I’ll draw on your magic for you.” He cupped the side of her face for a moment, and he flashed onto the moment, yet in the future, when he would touch her like this as a prelude to sex. “You’ll see and feel what I mean about using your magic with your body.”
She nodded.
He returned the gesture then passed a hand through the creature’s body. Shadows separated then closed after him. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because it isn’t physically substantial that it cannot harm you.”
“How, if it’s not real?”
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