Spellbound
Mac Dunn watched San Merida fall back, sated, on her bed, her beautiful, nutmeg-shaded skin slick with sweat in the afternoon sun. She panted, catching her breath. “Not to sound ungrateful for the thoroughly satisfying lunch break, but I should get back to the café soon.”
Mac stretched to lazily but insistently pull her closer to him, unwilling to let the moment go so quickly. “Isn’t one of the perks of being the boss being able to come and go as you please?”
With a chuckle, San swatted him playfully but snuggled all those soft, sexy curves closer. “Only if you want to go out of business.”
Snorting, he caught her wrist, loving the look of the delicate limb trapped in his larger, stronger, darker hand, and kissed her palm. “Faere Trade’s been around forever. It’s an institution. It’s not going anywhere.” More than that, it was a place of community and power and no one was going to fire the ageless witch who’d been running and guarding it for the better part of a century. She was irreplaceable; almost as much of an institution as the café. He stroked her forearm, trying not to be so in awe of her. “You know, at least not for the length of a long lunch.”
He froze for a moment, a cold shudder seizing him, when his pinky brushed the raised skin near her elbow. He hated that reaction, but he couldn’t help it.
As a black man in America, there had been times in his life when his survival had depended on his ability to seem unfazed. When, in the face of danger or even death, he’d needed to project strength and calm, even and especially when those were the last things he was feeling.
But, in countless ways, San fazed him.
Mac found San undeniably beautiful, from head to toe. But there were places on her body — along her upper arms and shoulders, snaking up her thighs and hips, even over the bridges of her feet — that felt off limits to him, where red scars scoured her skin in intricate patterns like delicately woven barbed wire. Most of the time, he didn’t think about them. But, the moment he touched them or looked at them too long, his thoughts felt caught.
And it wasn’t as if they made her less attractive. On the contrary. Everything about them, from the sight and feel of them — even just knowing they existed, so often hidden beneath her clothes — almost seemed to call to him. Some dark, desperate, reckless part of himself he hadn’t known existed until her.
Which scared him.
“You know, it’s ruder not to ask.”
Mac looked down at her. “What’s that?” He tried to force his body to relax. Not for the first time since he’d met her, he wondered if she could read thoughts.
She rolled onto her stomach, putting some space between them. “It doesn’t take a psychic to know what made you tense up. You couldn’t be thinking about my scars louder, if you tried.” She pushed her dark hair off her face and sighed. “You have questions. Ask.”
Mac bit the inside of his cheek before pushing up to sit on the bed. “I don’t want to pry.” He knew a bit about her history. You didn’t get to be where she was, what she was, without seeing some messed-up stuff — without wading in it. Or being weighed by it.
Mac was still, by comparison, new to this whole magic thing. But, even as a newly made immortal, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around what living as long as she had would inevitably mean.
“Yes, you do.” She snorted. “Rather, you want me to be pried; you just don’t want to be the one to do it.”
“Hey now.” Mac may not have her magical resume, but he’d been in the muck of it long enough to know that magic, for all its wonders, could do real damage. In the few years that he’d been involved in it, there’d been memories that he knew he’d never share because sharing meant remembering, reliving. And there were moments he didn’t think he could afford to give that kind of power. “I figured, if you wanted to share, you would. If you didn’t…” He shrugged. There were worse things than wondering.
She tilted her head thoughtfully before nodding. “Not much to tell. All magic requires sacrifice. Be it time, effort, dedication to learn the craft.” She shrugged. “And some spells are fueled by blood, some by pain, some by loss. Some of the strongest ones draw on all three.”
Mac stiffened against a shiver. “What do those kinds of spells do?”
She gave a stiff smile. “Nothing good.”
Mac wanted to ask for more. And he didn’t. He’d heard stories. Myths and legends, fairytales and horror stories, that had their roots in her. Her history literally haunted humanity’s. Looking at those scars now, they almost seemed like ripples in her skin, like echoes of impacts. Part of him might be curious about them, about her. And maybe one day he’d ask. But, for today, she was right; there were parts of her he knew he didn’t have the courage to disturb.
So, instead, he reached out, letting his hands hover over the marked flesh. He couldn’t tell if he was being fanciful, but the space around the scars felt strangely charged. His skin prickled, almost like the start of frostbite, not painfully but not pleasantly either. He wanted to wrench his hand away. Instead, he let himself settle into the sensation. “They look fresh.” He didn’t think they were; she’d had them as long as he’d known her. Or, at least, as long as they’d been having sex. Scars didn’t take that long to heal. “Do they hurt?”
She shrugged, causing her shoulder to touch his fingers. He felt the connection like an icy shock. “Power like that lingers.” She said it so nonchalantly.
He shook his head. “So you just live with the pain?” He tried to hide the horror from his voice, his face. He didn’t think he succeeded.
Her scoff held centuries. “Doesn’t everyone?”
He supposed that was true enough. As an immortal, he’d died many times in many different ways. Some were just to see if it was true; some to prove just how true his immortality was. Each one hurt. Each one, uniquely. Some in mind-breaking ways.
But, once you made your way back from broken… well, nothing put pain, no matter how extreme, into perspective quite like survival. And people like them could survive a lot.
But to live with it every day. It didn’t seem fair.
Closing his eyes, Mac leaned down and kissed her shoulder. He felt power crackle against his lips, felt it reach out to him. Reach inside of him.
It made him want to reach back. He wanted to heal her, to erase the painful parts of her past. He wanted to slip inside her and somehow share her burden, ease it, even just a bit, for just a moment.
So he trailed his lips over the raised skin. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”
*
San didn’t know how to answer that.
It did. It always did. She knew that touching them must hurt him too. Such was the nature of such things.
Yet. “It feels… better.” And it did. It felt strange to have someone touch places on her body most people avoided. She’d carried these scars for most of her longer-than-most life and had more than her share of lovers in that time.
But, long before any of them, she’d let darkness inside her, lost parts of herself to it. She’d been sure, just as her lovers had, that those parts belonged to that dark past and always would.
That was the cost of that kind of magic. No one used it without giving up something of themselves.
But, with Mac, she felt tenderness in every touch. Every brush of his lips or fingers seemed to heal even as it hurt. As if he were leaving a bit of himself on her too.
She’d lived long enough to know that few things lasted. Least of all love, despite what all the songs and stories told. It would take more magic than a few touches to make those parts of her belong to him. But, under the sun’s soothing warmth and the sweet heat of his attention, she felt the cold grip of her past loosen, just a bit.
He made his way lingeringly slow down her shoulders, over her arms, and along her breasts. He made the path over and over, making the sting of his lips over her scars blur and blend with the feel of his hands on her breasts, his tongue across her nipples. It made for a dizzying circuit, overloading her senses as pain and pleasure mixed.
His hands coasted down her waist before cupping her hips. Those hands were gentle, but a constant weight over the scars that criss-crossed there, as he suckled her sensitive breasts. She wanted to squirm, felt her body ache with it, but she couldn’t. Trapped by his hold, unwilling to either give up the pleasure he was giving nor risk pressing too close or too hard against his hands, she stayed torturously still under his patient yet insistent attention. She had no choice but to surrender to him.
It’d been a long time since she’d surrendered to anyone. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d done so willingly. Yet with Mac, she did, giving to him. Safe in the knowledge that, whatever she gave, he might take, but he would give back too. She could give him control in this moment because, once it was done, he would never try to keep it. She could give herself over to him because she could feel, even in this moment, him giving himself to her too.
So when his kisses headed south, she parted her legs for him, grateful when his hands moved with her, followed her every shift as if this was a dance they’d done a thousand times.
And, as if proving this was a deliberate act, he teased her with his teeth, nipping her waist, her belly, her inner thigh, making her jerk and yelp, as much from his playful bites as the sudden press against his palms. It was strange how the controlled shock made the sting different. It hurt, but the pain was quick, a sharp spark that was over before her mind could even fully register it, leaving a sizzling heat in its wake.
It shouldn’t have turned her on. It ought to have scared her, playing with that darkness that lay just beneath her skin, but it didn’t. The sensation of it, just the thought that it was Mac doing this to her, caused this overwhelming whirlwind within her. It was its own kind of magic.
Then his mouth was on her. He licked at her labia, tracing every dip and vale of her heated, swollen flesh, making her slicker as his tongue lapped at her. The tip of his tongue plunged deeper, flicking against her opening in a tantalizing tease. By the time his lips wrapped around her clit, sucking her deep while his tongue laved, she wanted to weep with want. She gripped the bedsheets as desperate sounds slipped past her lips. Her back arched as she sought to press herself deeper into his touch.
When his hands gripped her hips harder to hold her in place like an anchor, the pain of it only added to the sensations threatening to drown her. She cried out, her eyes blinking blankly, while her world exploded into pleasure. Her hand reached out to hold Mac’s against her hip, that touch grounding her while the rest of her world washed away.
*
Mac winced. He wanted to roll his stiff wrist. Wanted to take his hand away from her flesh, feeling the power against his palm like the threat of a stove.
But instead he just lay there between her limp thighs while her body shook with an orgasm that hit her in waves. Her strong body so vulnerable, almost fragile, before him.
Except for her hold on him. Her hand on his gripped him, held him still. He could feel her life in that touch. The pain of her past, sure, he felt that like a blistering pulse against his palm. But also the strength of who that past help shape.
This was who she was.
More than her power, this was why her world trusted her with Faere Trade, with one of the most significant haven places, a space that kept the peace and kept its people safe. For better or worse, she’d seen, done, and been more than most could even imagine. She’d been good, done bad, and managed to walk tall after the dust had settled. She was a woman who had made hard choices and lived with them. And, after all of that, she’d been chosen, and more importantly she chose, to protect her people.
She was amazing.
Stretching forward, he kissed her hand, fancying he could feel that touch travel through her hand, through his, and into her.
He knew it couldn’t. Sex, even great sex, didn’t fix anything. Couldn’t heal. It wasn’t magic and neither was he. The only reason why he was even here, in her world, in her bed, was because magic had happened to him.
He knew that he couldn’t take away her pain, couldn’t change the past that had made her who she was today. Wasn’t entirely sure he’d want to, even if he could — after all, who would anyone be without their past?
Still, with his lips against her skin, he furrowed his brow and wondered if there was anything anyone could do to actually make it better. Wounds were supposed to heal, weren’t they? Even if the scars lingered, the pain wasn’t supposed to. With all this woman had been through and all that she gave back, there had to be something someone could do.
Didn’t there?
He felt her hand, warm and soft, settle over the crown of his head, stroking him reverently. Gratefully. “Thank you.”
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