The Affairs of Wizards - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"This too I will do, and very gladly, since I am bid," he said, "but we are reaching to other kinds of knowledge. You do ask this."

"Thomas, I bid you," she said, "stretch forth thy finger."

"Well, what may follow, may follow; remember that some things can never be turned back. You can still step aside, now or when you choose, but choices are choices. I can give no promise but choice, for tomorrow I must take a Path you cannot follow."

"Thomas, I understand you," said Ania. The space between them was narrow, but it was still between them. He faced her across it like a tower. "Touch me, Thomas."

"Choose touch, first, with your own hands. Reach out, and lay them on my shoulders."

Opening her arms, she reached up and laid first her right hand, then her left, on the plain weave of his robe, feeling the muscle and bone of him beneath, always looking up, into his eyes. As the left hand touched him, their heads straightened, their eyes came level, as though he was smoothly bending his long legs. She looked down, and saw him standing straight, and herself free of the soft carpet where her slippers still lay. Experimentally she lifted one hand, and felt weight pull her softly down, to touch her feet gently against the ground, as if standing in the sea. She clasped his shoulder again, and floated, level with his eyes.

"Whenever you choose, let go my shoulders, and you are free of me."

"Thomas," she said again, "touch me."

His hands held her waist, thumbs where it was narrowest, palms following the outward flare of her hips. Held, holding, she floated.

Silently, after a time, his hands curled around to her back and began to stroke her, with no pressure, through the silk. Her shoulders rose and seemed to spread, and her back felt as supple as a cat's. From the base of her spine to her shoulder blades, she could feel his each individual fingertip. Reaching around from under her arms, he touched each side of her neck, fingers moving downward from earlobes to collarbone, over and over and over. With a nudge from a forefinger at each side, the buttons nearest her collar slid from their places, and his fingers had a longer run, there to the next button, before they met silk.

When the next button was released on each side she felt the dress slip a little over her breasts, drawn down by its feathery weight. She held more tightly to his shoulders.

Two more buttons, left and right, and her shoulders emerged from the dress, and his hands flowed to and from behind her neck before sliding again down her back, to rise again under her arms. Grasping the loosened cloth there at the sides, he pulled it left and right across her nipples, left and right, left and right, until he moved inside the cloth and brought the backs of his fingers slowly down across her breasts, so that she felt the soft tufts of hair between his joints. A ripple ran along her arms as the remaining buttons freed themselves, and the dress moved down her, pulling itself over her belly, clinging for a moment to her buttocks, gathered and drawn like a liquid rope between her thighs. She separated her legs to free it, so that in a parting moment the dress caught, stretched across her knees; then it was free, settling to the floor as if laid out for admiration. Her legs drifted upward, knees gently bent, until her feet met his legs and slid up their sides, coming to rest with her ankles against his waist.

Buoyed up by magic she rested in the air, naked and secure, touching the magic with feet and hands.

Looking down at the parting of her legs she saw her hair gleaming with moisture, and breathed deep of her own scent, mingling with the smell of the wine from the open jug. There was a fainter, ranker smell too, which became stronger as he released a catch on his robe and returned to holding her waist. The robe fell open and she knew it was the smell of male lust, from the bush of red hair around the base of a raised golden bar, as long as his long hands and as thick of two of his thumbs. The tip was darkened to the color of old bronze by the blood vessels swollen inside it; its opening seemed a slit that vaguely echoed her own, starting at the apex and ending somewhere below, rather than the round spout she had always imagined.

"Do you know, now, what I am wearing?"

"I have no doubt, Thomas. Am I in my turn asked to know by touch?"

"I do ask you, Ania, to know me by touch."

She started to lift her right hand from his shoulder, to reach down toward that strange, almost glowing part of him, but felt herself begin to sink away, downward. No; she regained her hold on him, taking the chance now to slip her hand past his lapel, gripping his shoulder directly, under the robe. She thought for a moment, while she moved her left hand also to his golden skin, and as the robe fell way behind him she bent her knees, pulling herself toward him, until the tip of him rested against against the crest of the mound between her legs, flattening her hair. The robe caught where her ankles held his waist until she released it, returning them to touch his golden skin, just above the pelvis, her toes hooked behind his back.

Pushing and pulling gently against him she rested in the air, holding the magic with feet and hands and sex, as his hands began again to move.

His touch could now follow great flowing curves along her skin, from behind her knees to beneath her thighs, his fingertips brushing the base of her mound and following the line between her buttocks, caressing the sensitive muscle between them, rising up her ribs and out along her arms, in again to move over her breasts, finger after finger crossing the nipples, then the right hand supporting her back while the left palm pressed against her belly, round and round, cherishing it, in widening and narrowing circles, up sometimes to sweep over her breasts and down again, round and round, closer to the place where she was pressed against him. Then both hands slid along her upper thighs until the thumbs were beside her mound, pressing a little and pulling aside, and now her lips were open and kissing the tip of him, held open by the roundness of it, and her own little rod of flesh standing straight in the opened space above it.

"A small magic," he murmured, grasping himself to move the tip to meet hers, and then his curious opening -- opened -- and she found herself entering him, sucked by that tiny mouth, pressed by the solidity around it, melting, twisting her body, panting, still holding the magic with feet and hands and sex, buoyed up by the magic, loud gasps of pleasure forcing from her lungs, until a great shudder came and she rested, floating in the magic and the afterglow, pressing her head in the hollow of his neck and shoulder.

Continued in Chapter 3