The Affairs of Wizards - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Wizards are supposed to have great long beards," she said, her eyes an inch from his short, square one. "In all the story books they have great long beards."

He stroked her back fondly. "How many wizards at this convention have you seen with great long beards?" he asked her.

"Hardly any," she admitted, "but that's not the point. Wizards are supposed to have great long beards."

"Very impractical, in this city, where all the best restaurants specialise in great bowls of soup. But the choice of a long beard is open, of course, and to a wizard an open choice is an easy tool."

She watched dreamily as his neat beard grew longer, slipping like a wild red rope into the space between them.

"That's better," she said. "Hey, that tickles."

"That's another problem, when you're reading in bed," he said, "or if you roll over at night with it trapped under your elbow. You see why I don't make a habit of it."

"Hey, that really tickles!" She looked down suddenly, to where two strands of the beard were teasing away the softness of her nipples. "How do you do that? No, don't stop." She straightened her arms for a clearer view, and watched fascinated as the beard used the open space to form a russet cloud against her, in which waves moved up her skin like the spiral stripes up a barber pole, vanishing yet endless. "Can you feel what you do with it, like with your fingers?Like with...?" giving a little wriggle where he was still stiff against her.

"Not exactly, but with the link between us strengthening I can feel something of what you feel, which guides me well enough."

"It guides you wonderfully," she said, her sensations leaping up like flames in a sudden wind at the idea that the wizard knew them with her. "Can you describe what I feel? Pass a test on it?"

"You would remember it as though I told you what to feel, and there would be truth there; describing feeling always changes it, for feelings are not words. But it is a wisdom tool to describe it for yourself. Ania, bright angel, what do you feel?"

"I feel fond of you," she said promptly. "You have nice eyes."

"Describing emotions is close to describing words," he said, "with words. Only a great sage learns wisdom that way. Most who try it end up as Literature professors, and vanish up their own...never mind. And describing my eyes is vain, when they can change as easily as my beard, or your friend down there who rose to greet you." She giggled, and blew a kiss to return the greeting. "The acyclic tantra is to describe your direct feelings, your bodily feelings. Do you want to try that?"

"How can I describe anything while you tickle me so?"

"Don't just be tickled; feel tickled. What is the feeling?"

"It's all down the front of me, like pain, but it's not pain."

"How is it different?"

"I don't know -- yes, I do, pain always feels under the skin, this is like a hundred points of pain dancing just outside, not coming in, but my muscles feel as if they must move, to fight pain, more and more ready to move, but I don't move, do I, Thomas? I don't think someone running could be tickled, though they could itch. I don't move, my hands are holding the muscles of your shoulders, I can feel the firmness of them, and my feet can feel your waist, a bit softer and looser, I'm holding you there too, and down there I can feel -- of course, that's John Thomas -- just the end of him, pressing a little where the feeling is like burning cold ice, only soft, and melting, and trying to dissolve him, I want to hold you there too. Oh, now I can feel my own hair on my back -- my hair isn't that long, Thomas, ohh, magic -- and it's stroking me like your hands, not tickling, smooth, in front I'm fire and behind I'm the sand dunes, and I feel your long fingers against my eyelids, your hand smells of me, your other hand is with John Thomas, a finger just under him -- he's nibbling at me again, like a fish -- and your finger feels like bubbles bursting in me, and it is just inside me like a bubble that can't burst, and it's moving and I'm squeezing and it won't burst, and I have... to stop... talking..."

"Thomas, I have not kissed you," she said dreamily. She pulled towards him, and began to lick his lips. His mouth opened as it touched hers, and she moved the tip of her tongue along his gums, as his tongue slid over hers and curled up to the roof of her mouth, dabbing delicately behind her front teeth and tasting the shape of her, back near to the throat. Then it curled flat around her own tongue, holding it in place as their mouths opened wider.

He began to hum. An old melody from somewhere the tall ships traded, that all knew and none named, it filled her mouth and echoed in her throat, her own voicebox sounding with his music, the vibration filling her. Slowly she joined the music with her own breath, and slowly he quieted his own, until she was singing his throat, controlling a bass resonance that felt strange and natural at once. The music passed between them, sometimes driven by one, sometimes by both, winding through their bodies like the murmur of the sea.

His tongue drifted out of her, and as their mouths separated he turned upward to lick her eyelids, then as she moved upward with the slight pressure of his hands beneath her he was licking the hollow of her throat, his beard moving against her chest. His tongue moved downward -- no, she had moved upward -- his tongue coiled around a nipple, his teeth pulled at it, while the palm of his hand passed around, around on the other, or sometimes she felt his separated fingers move, one, two, three, four across it before the rubbing palm, slippery from its time between her legs, resumed its slow circling. For a still moment she was held between finger and thumb on her left, between teeth on her right, teased by a finger and by a tongue.

Downward, as his tongue caressed her belly and his hands the back of her thighs, until she could look down and see the red hair of his beard mingle with the black of her mound, and feel that tongue circling, flicking at the sides and her stub of flesh, tunneling into her, sipping at the flowing juice of her, while his fingers worked behind, and the silky hair of his armpits was against her knees. Her body felt about to dissolve when she pushed away from him, pulled down, so that his tongue made an undeviating trail up, past her navel with a little flick inside, between her breasts, to her throat, and she was balanced, sitting on the hardness of him like a rail, her legs back beside his waist. Gradually she pushed backwards,sliding to the end and squirming gently against it, until she was around the bronze tip.

She looked down at that golden bar holding them apart, pressed against her open lips, and pulled tightly with her legs against his waist. As her calf muscles pulled, harder and harder, the pressure into her became intense, but she hardly moved.

"Help me," she said. "Force a way."

"This is difficult," he said, "with so much desire for you holding that shape firm, but... watch." He changed under her eyes, the blunt bar becoming a tapered cone, the swollen tip no wider than her finger.

She pulled again gently, and he was a thumb's length inside. She pushed herself back, saw him slippery with her juice, pulled with a great jerk and had him half inside her, stretched tight as a needlework canvas, hurting but holding the pain as tight as she held him. Back again, the wet of her now shining on half his length. Another pull, further, tighter.She moved into a rhythm of forward and back, never now all the way out, each time a little further in, and now his hands behind her were strengthening each pull, and at last her mound slammed into his, the golden bar invisible, and she rested against him, red hair tangling with black.

Impossibly tight, impossibly full, she felt his full thickness come back, deep within her. Wrapped around him, pressed against him, holding him inside her, with a shout that came from the bottom of her spine and uncoiled through her lungs to a sound that left her throat raw and her ears ringing, she felt every muscle in her body go as fuel to an exploding flame.

"Ania, what do you feel?"

"I feel soft. I feel you against me, and sweat running down the edge of where I'm against your chest." She stirred her hips against him. "I feel John Thomas inside me."

"How do you feel him inside you?"

"Just the way I feel your shoulders, in my hands. No, wait." She stirred again, slid a little back from him, and pulled herself back against his groin. "At the mouth I feel you, just like that, through the skin. That hair's much stiffer than your beard, do you choose it that way? But inside it's not like that. How do I feel you? Can you go very thin just at the entrance, but stay thick inside, so I can concentrate? Yes, I can feel you're in there, but it's not through the skin, it's in the muscles, in whatever stretches -- like when I'm carrying a weight, I know it inside my arms as well as by my fingers. Thicken out again...yes, even just behind the entrance, it's the stretching I feel. Like something big in my throat,but it's a good feeling. As though I was hollow before, and now I'm solid." She twisted against him. "The muscles get tighter, just by my noticing them, and having something solid to tighten on is like the good feeling in my jaw of biting solid bread -- teeth don't feel, either, do they, I'd never thought of that -- only the goodness spreads wider, my hips feel right,they're balanced around you. But how does it feel from the inside, to you?"

"When I first go hard," he said, "I feel my skin stretched like a pig on tiptoe, unsafe, vulnerable, until -- John Thomas, you called him? -- until he is held and supported as you hold him now, like being safe on four legs. You make my body complete. All along him, the pressure of you balances the tension from inside, he's your `bubble that can't burst'. The skin on most of him doesn't feel the touch nearly as much as that pressure, that holding you give him. Around the tip he does feel through the skin,and when you wriggle your muscles like that --"

"I didn't know I could do that until you made me feel them."

"---or slide along me, it is like having my tongue in bitter honey."

"Can you show me how it feels? You said there is a link... ohh, when I do this, you...and when I squeeze...and, my muscles won't stay still,I can feel it both ways, and... Thomas, you are holding tight, holding your own muscles, it's *hurting* you, what are you doing?"

"When you came in, wondering if a wizard could see through cotton, you had no thought of having a child."

"I might have a baby, mightn't I?"

"Ania, you would have a baby. Your body is at its most ready, and the seed you have made is close to your womb." He pushed gently against her, to slide her off, but she held him tightly with her legs.

"Wait a little like this, if you can...?"

"I can wait, if you hold very still."

She settled against his chest, and against his groin. Thin muscular tremors ran through both of them, both holding still against a force that pushed towards wild movement.

"Thomas, if I have a child, will he be a wizard? Can you see the future?"

"I can see some futures. An open choice is a powerful tool." He paused for a long moment, his body trembling like a sheepdog waiting for a word of command. "Healthy...and a wizard. She will be a very powerful wizard."

"She? Will she be beautiful? That is important, for a woman."

"She will be beautiful when she chooses. As you are beautiful."

"You are teasing me...no, I don't think you do that, do you? Will she be happy?"

"That depends on her own choices. Her existence depends on our choice; on yours, for I will abide by yours. I cannot be with you at her birth, but if you want her, she is yours."

She pressed her forehead into his neck, wondering.

"The choice is now," he said, "for strong magic like hers can hold a child in the womb, long before she is a person. Healcraft cannot eject her before her time, only hurt her."

"How can I keep her out, then? Is that fair to her?"

"You have joined me to your body, and I have learned much of it. May I speak of what I know?"

She nodded against him.

"You are nineteen years old. You have denied birth to... forty-seven of your seed, by remaining virgin. Once, when you were sixteen, you would have had twins. There is no justice to them, no injustice. The choice is free."

"I am filled with you," she said, "I want to overflow with you. I want my belly round with her, I want to feel her kicking at me, I want her born and sucking at me. I want our child."

He turned and walked toward the chaise longue, twisting himself inside her with each step he took. At the head of it he leaned forward and placed her buttocks there. A little weight returned to her. Grasping her wrists he lifted her hands at last from his shoulders, and lowered her gently through the increasing downward pull, until she rested with her head looking up at him, her thighs still holding him. He raised her ankles against his shoulders. As he bent forward to touch her breasts, she found her bottom curled into his thighs, her hips upward around his now vertical flesh.

"I am the earth," she whispered, "you are the seed, the plough, the gardener, planting me, what are you?"

He began a steady vertical movement, almost out of her and in again, which carried his hands up and down her slippery chest, her small breasts moving with deeper and deeper breaths and the passage of his fingers, and her hips twisting and pushing, the muscles inside her jerking and squeezing and tightening wildly as he came down, came down, came down.

"You are the rain, that turns the earth liquid, you are the thunderstorm, you are the l-i-g-h-t-ning, you are the l-i-g-h-t-ning, you are the l-i-g-h-t-ning, you are the l-i-g-h-t-ning,..." the rhythm peaked as her legs went rigid against his ribs and he stood over her, coming in pulses that spent their momentum deep inside her, welling up around him like a pale grey flood, brimming over, but unspilled.

Slowly, he pulled out from her, a little of his liquid draining back off the length of him, rejoining the pool that receded into that narrowing opening as he softened and slid from her once distended grasp. Moving to her side he eased her along the chaise lounge until her hips were still upward, on a pillow, but her legs were now held up by its head. He raised her back gently, sat down, and laid her head on his lap.

"Lie here a little, if you want to help my seed to join yours, though it is active stuff; already searching for your womb. A little would be lost if you stood up, but the child would still be almost certain."

"I do not think I know how to stand up. I am warm butter, I am as soft as... why, as soft as John Thomas." She turned her head toward his belly. "I want to kiss him. How is he so silky smooth? Why do these lips notice that, I didn't feel it before." She pushed at him with a lazy tongue. "A drop there, that came too late. I thought it would taste stronger, being so strong, making babies. Making babies. I'm going to have a baby. Thomas, I'm going to have a baby."

He lay his hand on her belly. "Already my seed is swimming upwards. At... yes, at midnight, our seed will join. From midnight, you are her mother. Is it well?"

"Thomas," she said, "it is very well."

Continued in Chapter 4

---