Do You Believe in Magic

chapter TWENTY-SEVEN



Recovery came faster this time, Clay reflected as Francie slid off his body and he turned her to spoon himself around her back. His top arm hugged her to him, and she grasped his hand in hers and kissed it after he tried to use it to play with her breast. In retaliation, he kissed the nape of her neck and along her shoulder until she squirmed and nipped his finger.

“Ouch.”

“See what happens when you mess with me?” She kissed the small hurt.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Growl. Rumble.

“Was that me or you?” he asked.

“Both of us, I think. What time is it?”

“I don’t know.” He raised up enough to see his alarm clock on the chest by the bed. “Eight o’clock in the evening.”

“What day?”

“Still Saturday, I think. When did you eat last?”

“Last night, I guess. I wasn’t very hungry this morning.”

“Well, come on, woman. We’ve got to eat something if we’re going to keep this up!” He paused to give her a smacking kiss on the shoulder and a little pat on the behind. When she turned onto her back to give him a teasing glare, he leered, grinned, and promised, “And we are going to keep ‘this’ up.”

He kissed her quick on the lips and levered himself out of bed. Disappearing into the walk-in closet, he called, “Don’t put your jeans back on. I’ve got a robe you can wear.”

“Okay.” She headed for the bathroom. As she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, she inspected herself in the mirror. She didn’t look any different than usual—or maybe she did. Her hair was all over the place, her skin looked flushed, her eyes sparkled. She looked well loved, she decided, and she was, she decided that, too. Funny, she felt no embarrassment or modesty about being naked in front of him. Must be all those years spent in locker rooms, she shrugged. Or maybe with soul mates, you just didn’t care, just enjoyed looking at each other. She smiled in remembrance.

She grew sober as she dried her hands. She and Clay had to talk about being soul mates, discuss seriously what it meant, where they were going. She had to analyze what was happening to her, come to terms with her own reactions to him, with her newfound self-confidence where this particular man was concerned, with the idea of him in her life and her future.

But not this minute. Right now she was going to enjoy the situation and him—especially him.

She finger combed her hair, restored some order, and simply gave up on the rest. He was right, they needed food. When she came out of the bathroom, he was waiting with a dark red, silk robe held open and ready for her. He wore a tattered terry-cloth robe of an indeterminate color that might once have been blue.

She raised her eyebrows in speculation about the robe, then turned her back to him and slipped her arms into the sleeves.

He closed the robe around her, giving her a hug in the process. “A present from Daria,” he clarified.

“I need a shower,” Francie said, wondering if he could read her mind.

“We’ll bathe after we eat,” Clay said. “I’ve heard several times from my stomach, and I’d just as soon appease that first. Come on, let’s see what we can find in the kitchen.”

Francie’s stomach gave a growl, and she laughed. “I agree with you.”

They went down to the kitchen and turned on the lights. “How does some pasta with my mother’s sauce sound? I have some in the freezer she gave me the last time I visited. It would be quick,” Clay suggested.

“Sounds wonderful. Do you have anything for a salad?”

“Check the fridge.” He pulled a large pot out of one of the cabinets.

She opened the refrigerator door and stood back in amazement. “My goodness.”

“What?”

“There’s so much food in here.”

“What did you expect? Cold pizza and beer?”

“Well . . .”

He laughed. “My mother’s training was thorough. I prefer my own cooking to eating out or buying takeout all the time.”

They prepared the meal as if they had been doing it together for years, Francie thought as she sliced tomatoes and sprinkled them with olive oil, basil, and a bit of pepper. Clay opened a bottle of red wine, and in a short time they were spooning Parmesan cheese over linguini with a rich red tomato-and-mushroom sauce.

Neither spoke until they each had three forkfuls in their stomachs.

“I feel like I’m just shoveling it in,” Francie said before she took the next bite.

“Me, too,” Clay nodded, then took a swig of the wine. “I’ve never been this hungry after . . . uh . . . before . . . uh . . .” He flushed and took a bigger gulp.

She couldn’t help but smile inwardly at his discomfort. Of course, he’d been with other women; she recalled what Daria had told her about male practitioners. All their testosterone, indeed. But he was hers now, so she’d let him off the hook—for the moment—by ignoring the statement.

Then he looked even more uncomfortable and swallowed his bite in a big gulp. “Oh, Lord, I forgot,” he said, with an almost-stricken look on his face.

“Hmm?” was all she could say around a bite of tomato.

“In all this talk about soul mates, did Daria mention the bit about barriers, or did Glori cast any spells on you?”

“Yes, both. That’s been taken care of.”

“Oh, good.” He applied himself to the pasta again.

“This hunger we have?” she said between bites. “Do you think it’s a result of our First Mating?”

“I don’t know. We did expend an awful lot of energy there,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

Francie could feel herself blushing and decided a diversion was in order. “Speaking of energy, I could have sworn different-colored lights, or fireworks, or lightning, or something was in the air. Now don’t get your ego inflated,” she warned in the face of his distinctly smug grin, “I’m serious. Glori and Daria ran a couple of experiments on me, and I could see a little flash of light when Daria cast a spell. It was like that, only much more intense.”

Clay stared at her a moment, then chewed and swallowed. “You know, I did see them. The lights were stronger the second time.”

“I agree. Could it be another manifestation of the imperative?”

“We’ll have to ask my parents. Mother has been doing quite a bit of research into the phenomenon. Daria and Bent haven’t mentioned anything like it.” He took another bite of tomato, then another swallow of wine. “We’re forgetting something else—the notion that the First Mating might increase powers.”

“Daria said something about that. How do you know if it did?”

“The surest indicator is to cast lux. That’s the light-ball spell. Its color will give you an idea. Let’s see.” Clay snapped his fingers.

A six-inch globe of swirling blue with a few streaks of indigo light hovered over the table.

“Wasn’t it just bright blue before?” Francie asked. “What do the different colors mean?”

“Yeah, it was.” He stared at it for a moment. “I guess my potential maximum level has gone up. The colors indicate levels, and levels indicate how much power a practitioner has or can aspire to. The colors match the spectrum and after that go up through silver and gold to white. Someone who can only cast a red ball is level one or two. Blue, where I was, is level nine to ten. These designations aren’t exact because there are so many variables, like the type of talent you have and how much you study. If you don’t study, then you may never reach the potential your color designates.”

“That’s right, you mentioned the ‘practice’ part of practitioner. Glori’s ball was indigo and violet, as I remember.”

“Yeah, she’s up around level twelve to thirteen. The top is twenty. She’s the highest in the family, even higher than Mother. Mother tops out about ten, and Dad about nine. Anything above ten is rare and very difficult to attain. After ten, the requirements go up exponentially with each level.”

“What about Daria?”

“Because she can’t cast lux, nobody knows for sure. She’s worked with some of the masters, however, and they think she’s a five or six.” He looked at Francie with a speculative glint in his eye. “Then there’s you. I wonder what the mating brought you, Francie. How do you feel?”

She blinked, then ran a quick mental inventory of her parts. “Fine. I feel fine. A few muscles are sore, but I don’t feel like anything changed . . . outside of the obvious, I mean,” she hastily added in reaction to Clay’s raised eyebrows and “Oh, really?” look. “Daria and Glori decided I was sensitive to spells. Maybe the mating enhanced that.”

“I have a hunch those lights indicate more than sensitivity, but I don’t know what. Now that I think of it, I felt like we were in the middle of a fireworks display the second time.” He paused, then grinned. “Wouldn’t it be something if you did become a practitioner, though?” An intrigued look crossed his face. “Let’s try something.”

He rose, rummaged around in a drawer, pulled out some candles, and said, “Come on,” as he went out the kitchen door.

Totally puzzled, Francie followed Clay to his barbeque grill outside on the patio.

He pulled the top off the globular grill and wedged a candle into the rungs of the grill rack. “Let’s see if you can light a candle. That’s flamma, the simple spell every practitioner starts with. Here, stand back here with me.” He moved them about six feet from the grill.

“I don’t know about this, Clay,” Francie said. “I feel really foolish, if you want to know the truth, standing here barefoot in a robe, thinking I’m going to cast a spell. Besides, I don’t know how to go about it. What if I start a fire? Assuming, of course, I can make anything happen at all.”

But he wasn’t going to let her off the hook. “You won’t know if you don’t try,” he coaxed. “Don’t worry, novices don’t have much power, and you can’t hurt the grill. Okay, here’s what you do. Spell-casting uses energy, your personal energy. To light the candle, what I do is visualize a small, hot bit of energy, a spark, right here,” he touched his magic center, “and I mentally move it to a spot right on the end of the candle wick. Like this.” He snapped his fingers.

The candle wick glowed, then lit as though a match had been applied.

“You reverse the process to put it out.”

The candle went out at his snap.

“Now, take a deep breath, but don’t hold it, keep breathing, and try it. Concentrate right on the spot where you want the flame. You don’t have to snap your fingers. Mother waves her hand and Dad just frowns at the wick. Just do whatever you feel like doing.”

Francie shot him an extremely dubious glance, but his excitement was inciting hers, so she focused on the candle. She thought about her SMI center, which had begun to itch slightly, and visualized a tiny little flame in there. She tried moving the flame from inside her chest to the outside air.

The flame, the energy bit, the spark, whatever it was, didn’t seem to want to move, however. It just sat there in her center. She did feel slightly warmer there, but she told herself it was just her imagination.

She closed her eyes and tried to play it out like a movie on the back of her forehead. She could see the spark move from herself to the candle and the wick start to glow, but when she opened her eyes, the picture vanished, and nothing happened. Except the itch got stronger.

She sighed. “I don’t think this is working, Clay.”

“No feeling of warmth? No little zap? It’s what happens to me.”

“Nothing. Not really. Except I’m itching again.” She rubbed the spot. “I thought Daria said the itching went away with the First Mating.”

“God, I hope so, because I’m itching, too.” He scratched his chest. “Look, it doesn’t matter, your not being able to cast flamma, I mean. I might not be teaching you correctly.”

“Or, more likely, I simply can’t cast any spell at all. I’ll admit, it would be intriguing to be able to do that, and it’s fun to think about, like daydreaming what you would do with the money if you won the lottery. I do believe you and your family and other practitioners can work magic, but the idea I can, well, that’s pretty far-fetched to me.”

“Yeah, Mother did say she hasn’t been able to find any evidence a nonpractitioner gained the power from mating. I just sorta hoped, I guess.” He gave her a quick kiss. “But enough of this. Let’s shove the dishes into the dishwasher and go take our own shower. We have a First Mating to enjoy.”

Enjoy was the operative word, Francie discovered in Clay’s oversized shower stall. Shampooing, soaping, and rinsing became opportunities to explore each other’s bodies: slide here, rub there, be sure to remember to rinse before tasting. She had never received such a thorough shampoo or had such an attentive shampooer. His large, long-fingered hands massaged her scalp and the back of her neck until she felt like purring. She had never known the delight of running her hands over slick hard muscles and hair-roughened skin. Her own fingers traced the line of his shoulders, measured the width of his chest, and almost satisfied her craving to touch and explore his wonderful body.

But when he bent her backward over his arm to suckle at her breasts, her pleasure turned to hunger and she rubbed her mound against him. When that wasn’t enough, she twisted one leg around his and ground herself against his rigid erection.

Clay needed no further invitation. He had been hard and ready since they entered the shower. He slid his hands from her back to her buttocks, gripped, lifted, braced her against the wall, and with an exultant “Ahhhh!” drove into her. Just where he wanted, was meant, to be.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. His thrusts forced from her little grunts that soon became words: “Yes, yes, yes.”

He took the words from her mouth, sealed them in with his lips, and answered them with his tongue. As he thrust, each time reaching deeper into her hot depths, lights appeared again on the backs of his eyelids. He raised his head and opened his eyes. The lights were still there, around them, intermixed with the water falling from the shower. It was like being inside a rainbow in a rainstorm.

Her eyes shut, Francie moaned, tugged at him to return to the kiss.

“Look, Francie,” he murmured, pumping his hips again.

Her eyes slitted open, but her gaze was groggy.

“Look at the lights,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, yes, yes,” and she brought her ravenous mouth up to his.

To hell with the lights, Clay thought—his last bit of consciousness for a while. He thrust again, certain this one had to touch her womb, and felt her go over the edge. He followed into oblivious ecstasy.

His senses finally returned as her legs loosened from around him and they disengaged. She slid limply down his body. He held her until he was sure she could stand on her own, then stepped back. “Francie?”

“Hmmmm?” she said. She blinked at him sleepily.

He laughed. “Come on, let’s get ourselves dry and go back to bed.”

“All right,” she agreed dreamily, pleasantly, as though he had suggested a walk in the park.

Not until he was rubbing the towel over her did she wake up. “Wow,” she said. “What train was that?”

“I don’t know, the SMI Express, I guess.”

“Is this the way it usually is, the First Mating, I mean?”

“I have no idea. Nothing anybody told me prepared me for this, this . . .”

“Explosiveness?”

“That’s as good a word as any.” He gave her hair a final rub. “There. Enough.”

He gave her a little push out the bathroom door and followed her to the bed. She flopped down and burrowed into the mattress. He thought she was probably asleep before he could get around to his side. Once his head hit the pillow, he was gone, too.