There’s no fight in me this time. No resistance. No bashfulness. I let him feast, let my pleasure build with the tempo he sets, leading me toward the crescendo of a song whose ending I know well.
If I give him what he wants.
I work very hard to compartmentalize everything within my mind: the bond, the glamour, the distraction of Alexus’s talented tongue devouring me. Even though he avoids my clit, only licking over it a few times, there’s a pressure building inside me, making me writhe against his mouth.
Focus, Raina, I think as I close my eyes.
There, in the darkness, with the world shut away, I see magick across the landscape of my mind. If I look to one side, I see Alexus’s life threads, still wound with mine and Colden’s. If I look to another corner, I see the pulsing magick of my glamour. In another floats the threads of Alexus’s desire, his passion, threads I could tangle with my own if the time were right.
Alexus’s end of the bond and the glowing threads of his power linger just beyond my abyss, pulsing like a flaring light. A beacon. Like a lighthouse across the dark shore of the chasm before me. On a leap of trust, I let my mind cross that pit of nothingness.
There’s something there. A presence. A force. It’s almost like the vestige of another bond, a soft shadow hovering behind Alexus’s power. Limned in white light, the shadow is frayed at one end, like a shredded piece of gossamer caught in the wind. I don’t know what it is, but it calls to me, as though it needs me to reach out and touch it.
Magick means connection. It always has. Tonight, this magick is about mine and Alexus’s connection to each other, so I submit.
When I let my mind graze that shadow, Alexus groans into my flesh, and suddenly, his hands are everywhere. Squeezing my ass. Gripping my breasts. Reaching up to fold those long fingers gently around my throat. His touch is a heady thing, and I rock against his mouth, feeling more desperate for this release than any other before it.
In the next breath, I hear his voice, speaking to me the way he did when we were in the wood, harvesting fire threads. Fulmanesh, iyuma tu lima, opressa volz nomio, retam tu shahl.
Fire of my heart, come that I may see you, warm my weary bones, be my place of rest.
I can’t explain why, but something compels me to think those words. I repeat them until bold, fiery threads emerge from Alexus’s power within my mind’s eye.
Bend them to your will. Force them to become light.
Is Alexus speaking to me? Is he communicating through the bond? His voice is so clear, as if he’s whispering in my ear.
He presses his tongue harder to my clit, flicking that tender bud, sucking it, reminding me of the reward that lies ahead. With an image of my will in mind—those glowing orbs of light filling this room—I repeat the Elikesh lyrics in my thoughts, until those blazing threads cool into soft, white light.
The sweetest caress of power cascades over my body, my skin heating with desire and need. Alexus keeps feasting, and his hands keep roaming, rougher and harder, as though learning me anew.
Suddenly, Alexus smacks my ass again, making me gasp and arch my back.
More, I plead through the bond.
In answer, he sends a trickle of magick between his tongue and my clit, the pulsing current growing ever more powerful before fading away.
Needy, I close my hands around the silken sashes binding me to the bed and grind against Alexus’s mouth. If I’d possessed a demure quality before, it is gone from me now.
The throb between my legs pounds harder and harder, but so does Alexus’s magick, trapped within me, beating under my skin, wanting out. My rune heats, and my skin goes taut, drawn upon by a force so strong it’s as though my very soul is being pulled from my core.
Alexus’s magick pours from me, and the room brightens even from behind my closed eyes. When I open them, I’m met with a loft filled with tiny orbs of light. Hundreds—no, thousands—like sparkling stardust.
My excitement floods the bond, and I swear I feel Alexus smile.
He doesn’t make me wait for my prize. He lets his magick thunder into me, vibrating through his tongue into my body, and in seconds, I’m in a state of utter rapture, swept up in the wave of a relentless orgasm that spasms through me over and over and over.
When I come to my senses, Alexus is soothing my swollen flesh with long, languid caresses of his tongue. But he’s also stroking his cock. Hard and fast. I cannot stop watching, especially as a pearl of cum slips free.
I’m still floating in the haze of pleasure, still hungry. My hands need to feel him. I need to taste him. Need to drink him down.
I think of the sashes around my wrists—the knots. And with Alexus’s magick still hot in my veins, I envision those knots untangling. At my command, the sashes untie and fall away, and I collapse forward, catching myself on the bed in sheer surprise.
Alexus catches me too, by the hips, before a laugh escapes him. “Fuck, Raina. You did it. My talented, wicked little witch.”
He has no idea.
Without a second of indecision, I grip his cock, and for the first time, take him into my mouth.
