Magic on the Storm

Chapter Six

Time. We needed it. The Authority thought we had it. A day or two before the storm hit. Which was good. Because I really did want that shower.

Zay and I walked up the stairs and I paused in front of my apartment door-habit. Didn’t hear anyone moving around in there. I was on my way to a several-month streak of people not breaking into my apartment, and I wanted that streak to continue.

I unlocked the door and stepped in, switching on the hall light.

“Stone?” I called out.

A familiar coo, half pipe organ, half vacuum cleaner, answered me from the corner of the living room. Stone, the gargoyle I couldn’t get rid of, slipped out from beneath the fall of my curtains, stretched his big, batlike wings, and tipped his wide head to one side, his ears perked up in perfect triangles.

“Hey, boy. You ready to get up for the night?”

Stone was big as a Saint Bernard, but had a heck of a lot more teeth and muscle. He clacked, his bag-of-marbles happy sound, and trotted over to me. He was heavy enough that I felt the vibration of each footfall. He pushed his flat snout under my hand, then angled his head for a scratch.

Even though he was made out of stone and was alive via magic, he was warm to the touch and loved getting scratched. I rubbed my fingers behind his ears.

He clacked-happy-then dropped me cold for Zayvion, who knelt and gave his head the rubbing of its life.

Stone cooed.

“I see how you are,” I said. I shrugged out of my coat, hung it on the back of the door, and carried my gym bag with me into the bedroom. My answering machine wasn’t blinking-no messages waiting for me, which was a little strange. I had expected something from Stotts, since Detective Love had made a point of telling me he was looking for me.

“Want a shower?” I called back to Zay. I unzipped my bag and dug out my notebook. Tugged the cap of my pen off with my teeth and opened the book to a blank page.

It took me less than thirty seconds to note what had happened today, but I wanted to update it before I spent more time around mega magic users tonight. Magic hadn’t wiped out many of my memories lately. I didn’t know if I was just getting better at setting Disbursements, or if maybe having my dad take up residency in my brain had done something to help with that.

And with all the training I’d been doing, physically and magically, I was getting more and more nervous that magic was just. . I don’t know. . saving up to take a huge chunk of my life away.

Maeve said the void stone necklace might help block that price magic extracted from me. Or that my training was helping with the memory loss.

Whatever it was, ever since I’d started training, I’d kept my memories.

Personally, I wondered if it had something to do with being lovers with a Closer. Zayvion was good at taking people’s memories. Maybe he was good at helping them stick around too.

“Ready?” Zay said it softly, but I jumped anyway.

Boy was too damn quiet. I glared at him from just inside the bedroom door.

“Make some noise, will you?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said all low and sexy-like. “How about I make you make some noise?”

I smiled. “I thought we were taking a shower.”

“That’s a good place to start.”

“Okay, magic boy. You’re on. First person to cry mercy folds the laundry.”

“After you.” He stepped aside so I could walk past him, and I did too, without freaking out or even having to hold my breath even though there just wasn’t enough room in the hall for me and him in the same place.

Of course my bathroom was even smaller.

And it was currently filled with a half ton of living rock who was flushing my toilet and watching the water circle the drain, his wings quivering in excitement.

Great. When had he learned to flush the toilet? My water bill was going to be sky-high.

“Stone,” I said. “Out. Go play with a lathe or something.”

He swiveled his head and looked at me over his shoulder, one five-fingered hand still resting on the tank plunger.

“Window, boy. Go to the window. It’s dark out. Nighttime. You could go. Out. Go fly.”

He clacked doubtfully and looked back down at the water.

“Need some help?” Zayvion asked.

“I got it.” I walked into the bathroom, squeezing around Stone, and giving myself the willies.

I put my hand on Stone’s head and stared straight into his intelligent, round eyes. “Out.” I pointed my other hand at the door, and tipped his head that way.

He cooed happily at Zayvion, who leaned one wide shoulder against the doorway and took up all the remaining space and air.

“Getting out of the way would be nice,” I said to Zayvion.

“Oh. Sorry about that,” he said, clearly not at all sorry.

He backed into the hallway and snapped his fingers twice. Stone’s ears flicked back, then pricked up when Zay snapped his fingers again. Stone looked at me, clacked, in a why-didn’t-you-say-so way, then lifted up on his two back legs and waddled out of the bathroom.

He clattered like a bag of marbles being shaken, and Zayvion treated him to another head scratching and told him he was a good boy.

Fine. Let him play with the statuary. I was taking a shower.

I started the water and stripped, throwing everything but my bra-which wasn’t wet, wonder of wonders-into the hamper. I did not look at myself in the mirror, because right now I didn’t care how many scars I had, nor if my father was going to be looking at me through my eyes. Hot water was calling me and nothing was getting in between me and the steam.

I shut the door so Stone wouldn’t wander back in, took off the void stone, and put it on the sink, then stepped into the shower. I dunked my head under the strong, hot spray and moaned. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to shower at the gym this morning.

“No fair starting without me,” Zayvion said.

Man was too damn quiet.

But I did hear him taking off his shoes, and then just one clack of his belt buckle being undone.

The thought of him, of his body, in the shower with me, made me wish I hadn’t agreed to this little bet.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I called out.

He pulled back the curtain at the head of the shower, caught my arms in his wide, strong hands, and pulled me in for a kiss.

I sputtered and laughed against his lips as he manhandled me to one side so he could step into the shower. He tried to pull me out of the water so he could get in and soak, but I planted my feet.

“Get your own hot water, cowboy,” I said, holding my own under the showerhead.

Zay drew his hands down my arms, his fingers leaving my wrists to caress my stomach and hips. He stroked back over my ass, and pressed against me full-body.

Yum.

“What if I like your water?” he asked.

“Then you’re going to have to work a heck of a lot harder for it.”

“Fair enough. I think I’ll start here.”

He leaned down again. This time his mouth found my shoulder. He kissed me there, his tongue licking over the marks magic had left on me, stroking and urging the magic inside me to rise to his touch.

I bit my lip on a groan. Magic flared in me, licking hot, and I didn’t even try to hold it back. Thought, for just a moment, that I should have left the void stone necklace on. And then I didn’t think about anything but Zayvion, and what he was doing to me.

Zayvion’s other hand slid up my butt, pressed at the small of my back, while his mouth moved down to the edge of my breast.

Okay. I was done with the shower. Done with being clean. All I wanted was him.

“Say mercy,” he murmured.

What? Oh no. Hells, no. I wasn’t going to lose.

“You say mercy,” I said. I pulled his head up, my thumbs beneath the scratchy stubble along his jaw, and then pivoted so his back was against the wall and the shower fell on both of us.

He smiled, wet, hot, gorgeous, and leaned his shoulders back, giving me all the time I wanted to take in his dark, hard body.

I spread my legs for balance. He gasped at that move, which made me grin. Then he swallowed, his eyes sparking gold. He reached out to pull me in closer, but I held my ground, even though his need washed through me. I had plenty of need on my own, thank you.

I knew what he wanted. He knew what I wanted.

I held eye contact. “Mercy, Jones.” I pressed my hand against his thigh, and slowly kneaded my way upward. “Say it.”

He closed his eyes, tipped his head back. “Allie,” he breathed. “M-my God, woman. Come here.”

Close enough. I couldn’t wait any longer either.

We embraced, giving in to the passion we could no longer contain. I drew him into me with aching sweetness, his body familiar and right. Water slipped hot fingers down my shoulders, back, thighs, licking, searching, finding every inch of my skin that was exposed, wrapping me in wetness and heat.

Inside me, Zayvion’s emotions rose and raged like a summer storm. His need licked beneath my skin, warring with the magic I held inside me, pushing it up and up through me, where he caught it in his mouth, drank it from my skin, my soul.

More. I wanted more. Wanted him to take more, wanted to give him more.

I called on magic. Pulled it through me, and let it pour out, a wild flood of power and passion and raw need, into him.

His muscles, his body, stiffened, hardened, arms clenching me tighter, caught in a burning overload of pure magic that lifted to my call, answered my desires, and rushed swiftly as glyphs pulsing in the air, into him.

He drank the magic down, changed it, and thrust it back into me.

For a moment, everything went black. Silent. Still.

There was no beginning to him. No end to me. There was only the heat of our nerves, the thrum of our heartbeats, skipping, catching, pounding in rhythm to the magic that gave and took, from him, from me, to him, to me, building and falling, and building again.

We were more than man and woman. Magic took control and drew through us glyphs and spells flashing lightning and fire and heat through my mind, his mind. Our soul.

Burning us together as one.

We cried out for mercy with one voice, one need.

It took time, maybe too much time, for magic to release us. Too much time until one of us finally pulled away.

Time while Zayvion convinced me that we were not one, but two people, two bodies, two minds, his kisses gentle, slow, his lips and fingers reminding me of my own skin, my own body, separate from his. Reminding me of the rightness of that. The rightness of being me.

I opened my eyes, blinked from the light. Not magic, just plain electric light.

“It’s okay,” he said, and I knew it was. I also knew he was worried. I could still feel his emotions as if they were mine, could taste his worry like sour rinds at the back of my throat.

“Allie,” he said, his fingers splayed against both sides of my face. “Do you remember where you are? Who you are?”

No words could kill a mood or bring me crashing back into my own mind, my own body, faster.

I had memory issues. That was something I would never forget.

Checklist: we were standing in the shower. The water was off. I didn’t remember washing the soap out of my hair, but I knew I had. I didn’t remember turning off the water, didn’t know how long we had been in the shower.

But yes. I knew who I was. Allison Beckstrom. Hound. Newly a member of the Authority, filled with magic, and Soul Complement to Zayvion Jones.

And I was just as sure that for some time, I had forgotten all those things, and had instead been content to be more. Had been a part of Zayvion, joined. One.

“Me-my place,” I finally answered him. “How long?”

His relief rained through me and I tasted candy melon. “Maybe an hour,” he said. “I’m not sure.” Which meant he’d lost track of reality too. That I’d made him forget who he was.

Was it wrong for me to love, just a little, that I could do that to him?

His eyes shifted back and forth between mine.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Light-headed. What exactly happened?”

“We made love.”

I frowned. “I know that.” Eloquent. My middle name.

“Soul Complements,” he said, as if that covered the rest of what I should know.

He stepped out of the shower and I stepped out with him, unthinkingly needing to stay in contact with him, to move in tandem with him, to be no more than inches apart from him.

He handed me a towel. “We fell. . fell too far into each other. Magic drew us in, and we didn’t let go.”

I took the towel and stayed where I was while he purposefully took two steps away. The need to follow him and limit the distance between us was still there, but it was fading. I dried myself off in silence.

He rubbed the towel over his hair, and mopped off, the towel wadded in his hand. He shook the towel out, and wrapped it around his waist.

“What did we do wrong?” I asked.

“We lost control.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

“Too far, too long, and we won’t want to be who we are without also being the other person.” He said it without emotion, as if he were reciting a textbook. “We’ll lose ourselves. Lose what we are as individuals. That’s a problem.”

He was right. I wanted that closeness, that awareness of every inch of him. Wanted him, wanted us, bound together, burned, melded by magic. There was a power in it. I could sense it, could almost taste it. A power I’d never felt before.

And knowing I could never have it again, that we should never have it again, made me hollow and empty, even though he was only a few steps away, and closer to me than any man in my life.

“You don’t think this will happen every time, do you?” I asked.

“Every time we have sex, or every time we take a shower?” He smiled.

I knew he was trying to change the mood, push away the seriousness of what had just happened, of how bad it could have been. I tried to follow his lead, to let go of the fear.

“I don’t think the shower had anything to do with it,” I said. Yes, I sucked at letting go of fear.

Zay shrugged one shoulder. “I wouldn’t say it was entirely innocent. All that warm, wet water touching us everywhere. And the soap definitely had ulterior motives.”

I wrapped the towel around me, tucking it tight at the top. “That career in comedy? Walk away now, Jones.”

“And give up on my dreams?” He gave me a grin, and carefully avoided touching me while he picked up his jeans and shoes and carried them into the bedroom.

I rubbed my hands over my arms, needing contact, needing his touch, but firmly staying right where I was. Zay could make jokes. I’d just do what I always did-endure.

Zay had been staying with me enough lately that he had a spare change of clothes and a dresser drawer of his own.

“I’ve always thought if the magic thing didn’t work out,” he called from the bedroom, “I could give comedy a try.”

Comedy. Right. The last thing Zay had on his mind was a career in stand-up. “I thought you had the whole ice-polo thing to fall back on.” I dug in the drawer beneath the sink and pulled out my brush.

I could do this. I could be just me. See me being just me? I was hella good at it.

“I like to keep my options open,” he said. “You know how the girls love an athlete with a good sense of humor.”

I left the brush on the sink and put on the void stone necklace again. Magic settled in me, taking the edge off my discomfort. I walked into my bedroom. Zay had already put on his boxers and jeans. He was half bent, digging through the laundry basket for a T-shirt.

I was done pretending. “So this magic and Soul Complement thing. You think we’ll be okay?” I asked.

He stood, the T-shirt in his hand. “I have never once doubted us. Not once.”

I walked over to him. He had slipped back into expressionless Zay, Zen Zay. He wasn’t giving off much in the way of body language except for patience, and I was trying my best not to listen in to his emotions. “Not even when you wrote me that Dear John note?”

He grimaced. “That was me doubting myself. Doubting if I could keep you safe.”

“How about if you let me keep me safe?” I gingerly placed my fingertips over his heart, felt the soft rhythm there, felt the rise and fall of his chest. But nothing more. No emotions, no thoughts.

“Are you blocking your thoughts and feelings?” I asked.

“Just trying not to project. You?”

I shook my head. “So this is okay?” I dragged my hand down and around his rib cage, my fingers sliding along the waistband of his pants. I wrapped my arm around his back, leaned into him. Still had my towel on too. Go, me.

I felt the tension drain out of him as he exhaled. “This is very okay.” He put his arms around me, pulled me close.

I tucked my head, resting it against his smooth, hard chest. He tipped his head down, not far, and kissed my hair. “Good?” he asked.

I nodded, and rubbed my hand down his spine, massaging the muscles of his wide back as I went, until I finally slid my fingers into the back pocket of his jeans, to keep my hands off any other tempting part of him.

He smiled. My hair caught in the stubble along his jaw.

“Very nice,” I mumbled.

I stood there and savored the sound of his heartbeat, of his breathing. Stood there longer than I should have, and still didn’t want to part. But I didn’t feel trapped with him, and didn’t feel apart from him. I felt like I belonged here. Felt like I was home.

I yawned, and finally pulled away. I didn’t know if it was the whole magic thing, or just the long day, but I was tired. “I need a short nap before the meeting.” I tugged off my towel and let it drop to the floor as I walked over to the bed.

Zayvion inhaled behind me. Oh, right. Naked me, plus half-naked him, plus bed equaled one thing.

I looked over my shoulder.

From the fire in his gaze, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

“A nap,” I repeated, crawling under the covers quick. “I’m tired. You should be tired too.”

Zayvion stalked over to the bed. “Maybe I’ll make it worth your while to stay awake.”

“No. No way. You said we should be careful, remember? You said we might get too close and mixed-up and stuff, remember? Sleep, Jones. Sleep is good.”

He grabbed a fistful of my comforter and tugged. “Promise I’ll be good.”

“Zay. .”

“Or, if you’d rather, I’ll be bad. Either way works for me.” He tugged a little harder on the blanket, exposing my shoulders and chest. I was losing ground quickly. I scooted down the bed a little and tugged back.

“Here’s an idea,” I said, shifting tactics. “Why don’t you take a nap with me? Nice warm blankets. Nice soft pillow. We could get some sleep. Rest up before the big storm meeting tonight. .”

His smile faded and all the sexy on-the-prowl was gone. I shouldn’t have brought up the meeting, shouldn’t have let the real world back into this small moment we were sharing.

“I’m sorry-”

“No, you’re right.”

He let go of the comforter and rubbed at the back of his neck. A sound of something falling in the living room made us both glance out into the hall. It was just Stone stacking the alphabet blocks I’d bought him. I knew Stone wasn’t a child, but I was tired of coming home to find all the cups dragged out of my kitchen and stacked in precarious pyramids in the living room. Plus he liked the blocks enough I’d bought him three sets of the things.

They kept him busy.

Stone usually stayed in the apartment during the day. But at night, he came and went as he pleased-opposable thumbs meant doors and windows were not a problem for him. I didn’t know what magical statuary did at night, but since I hadn’t heard of any gargoyle sightings in the news, whatever it was he did, the big lug was discreet about it.

When Zay looked back at me, some of the seriousness was gone. “Move over, woman.”

He crawled under the blankets and hogged the bed.

Note to self: explain that the bed was mine, and I should get more than half of it just on principle alone.

He hadn’t put on his shirt, but still wore his jeans, as if knowing we’d be out of bed soon. I shifted closer to him, and judiciously placed a sheet between us, because a half-naked man in my bed-especially if that man was Zayvion Jones-was going to ruin my control.

“How long do we have?” I asked.

“Forever,” he said.

I savored that thought. It was a nice fantasy, anyway.

“Maeve’s at ten, right?”

“Mmm.” He shifted so I could throw my leg over his, and rest my head on his shoulder, his arm snug down my back. “An hour or so.”

“Need the alarm?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll be awake.”

I was going to ask him about that. Ask him why. But I really was tired, and it took only a few breaths before I slipped off into deep, blissful darkness.