He nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning a hip against the table.
“Excellent.Now… Do you have any metal on you?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key.“This.”He reached into his other pocket.“And this.”The lump of gold.
She stared at the lump.“You’ve been tested?And your metal is gold?”Her face looked fragile, as if it might break into a million pieces.
He nodded and rubbed at his chest where it felt a bit knotted.
“Let’s use the gold then.You’re more likely to have success with that.”
He pocketed the key and held the gold in his palm, closed his fingers over it and closed his eyes.
“As you seek the heat,” she said, “imagine what is hottest to you.Build that image and do not let it go.And do not force it.It is not something you beat into submission but something you befriend.”
“How do you know this if you’ve never trained?”
“Books.Listening to my father and brothers talk.Now concentrate.”
He did.In the dark behind his eyelids, two bodies converged.Him and—why not use the inspiration currently under offer—an alchemist princess with yellow hair.She’d be a hellcat in bed, demanding and passionate and—hell.Even if he couldn’t conquer hard metals, he could make himself hard, couldn’t he?Hard for a woman who would scratch with her nails then soothe with her palm, who would tug his hair and punish his mouth with soft lips and stroking tongue.
He needed a good fuck, was too poor to buy one.
“You’re strangling it!”Her hands came out of nowhere in the dark to cradle his.She tugged at his fist, loosening his fingers.“Be gentle.The gold is not part of you, but the heat that can shape it is.You need the metal’s acceptance, not its submission.”
That heat poured through his veins like honey, slow and coating every inch, pooling particularly in two places—his cock and the small strips of skin where her hands cradled his.He imagined the two places combined.Her hand.His cock.
“Yes!”The note of victory in her voice made him even harder.“You’re hot.”
“You have no idea, princess.”
“Imagine the gold melting.”
He’d paint her skin with it.He’d crush it into dust and shake it over her hair so each strand glittered like the gold it was.Would her hair look that way in sunlight?Golden and glittering?He’d never seen her in the sun.Wouldn’t that be a sight?Just the image?—
She gasped and jerked away from him.
His eyes popped open.
She cradled her hands against her chest.“You… you were too hot.I-I… I couldn’t… Open your hand.”
He did.His gold lump was now a disk, smooth and wavy like a distorted coin.
Their gazes locked over it.
“You can survive a fire,” she said.
At the same time he said, “Let me see your hand.”
She refused, reaching for a candle and tinder at one corner of the table.Stubborn wench.
So he pocketed his gold and left the room.
“Where are you going?”she called after him.
But he was already down the stairs.Where was it?He’d seen it earlier.Ah—there.In shadowed corner of the shop, amidst an array of plants, was one with long sleek branches, cushiony, green.He snapped one branch off.“Sorry, darling, but I’ve need of you.”Then he trotted back to the still room.
She had a candle lit in the middle of the table, and she lowered her cupped palms over the steady flame, drawing her hands upward, coaxing the flame higher.“Come here.Shut the door first.”
