“Oh yes. There we are,” he whispered hotly against her ear. “So beautifully snug. Would you like my cock here?”
Yasra could hardly speak. She didn’t even know him, yet here she was allowing him intimacies with her body no one else had discovered quite like this. She felt as though these few intense touches had made her feel more sexual than anything else previously in her life. She was not a stranger to her own hand on her body, but pleasuring herself had never felt like this.
He worked his finger deeper into her and she gasped in another breath. It seemed every time he moved she grew wetter and wetter. Almost embarrassingly so.
“No. Never be ashamed of your unbridled response to my touch,” he said, his mouth brushing the lobe of her ear. “Touch me,” he invited her. “Touch me and see what your lustful ways have done to me.”
Suddenly curious about him and his body, she did as he asked. She started with his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin stretched taut over defined pectoral muscles. She scraped her nails over his left nipple and she heard him hiss in the softest of breaths.
Growing bolder she let her hands travel down to his stomach, riding the bumpy waves of his defined abdominal muscles and on down to the root of him, which lay hard and thrust out from the vee of his hips. He was long and thick, the head of his cock deeply colored and veins running along the outside of him too tempting to resist. She began tracing them, first one down his length, then another up it. Once she reached the head of it she wrapped her hand snugly around him and stroked him again. Clearly unable to help himself, he gently thrust himself through the circle of her fingers.
And all the while he continued to stroke his thumb over her clit and thrust his fingers inside of her. She began to moan in soft hitches of breath.
“I’m going to make you come,” he whispered in her ear. “Would you like that?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Say it,” he coaxed her. “Say…Dendri, I want you to make me come.”
“I can’t,” she breathed, color burning on her cheeks.
“Say it, Yasra. Say my name and tell me what you want me to do to you,” he pressed her.
“D-Dendri…” she said, feeling strange that this was the first time she had spoken his first name and yet he had his fingers deep within her. “I want you.”
“What do you want?” he asked, his breath so hot in her ear. She closed her eyes, thinking it would make it easier.
“I want you to make me come,” she said in a rush.
He drew back and smiled for her again.
“I will. But not here. Not now.”
“What?” she asked in confusion, opening her eyes.
And just like that, all in a rush, the white room zipped away from her and she found herself standing in a field, gasping for breath, the entire world staring at her.
Chapter Three
She felt Dendri up against her back, his hands gripping her shoulders, his breath coming hard. Shocked, she broke away from him and whirled around to face him.
How dare he? How dare he use sex majic on her in front of all these people! It was a violation, pure and simple. As her face burned with embarrassment she looked at him with angry eyes.
But something in his expression kept her from laying into him right away. There was something shuttered and confused there.
“How dare you do that to me!” she hissed at him then.
“Yasra, calm down,” he said softly.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! What you’ve done is violate me!”
“Keep your voice down, Yasra.”
“I will not! I want everyone to know what a perverted jerk you are!”
“Yasra…I’m not the perverted jerk here. I didn’t initiate the connection.”
“HA!” she cried. “Then who did?”
“You did,” he said simply.
“I did no such thing!” she cried, astounded at the gall of the man. “I have no majic!”
“Yasra, turn around and look at the tables.”
Yasra hesitated. Then, slowly, she turned around and looked at the tables.
A tree now stood where the earth table had once been. The fire table was just that, on fire. And the water on the water table had frozen into a large block of ice.
“This is a joke. Someone’s playing a terrible joke on me!” she said, near to tears. “This isn’t funny!”
“Yasra, I assure you it is not a joke,” Dendri said quietly.
“No one can do all the house majics by themselves!” she cried. “A tree of that size takes a Padoni of at least level three! A fire that size…and the ice! That’s not me!”
“No. It’s not you. It’s us. We are Gestalt. We are two halves of a whole. A whole that can encompass every house of majic.”
“Gestalt?” She had read of such things, but there had not been a Gestalt couple in a hundred years. Maybe more. And didn’t Gestalt couples have to be in love? Share a love of such depth one could not live without the other? Dendri Adiron was a stranger to her. She was a stranger to him. And what’s more, she didn’t have any majic!
“No. No!” She backed away from him, looking wildly around at the two tents of people staring at them in utter disbelief. Her gaze landed on Esmo and she saw pure jealousy in his eyes. Jealousy and contempt.
Yasra bolted. She ran off the field as fast as she could, given the encumbrance of her dress. She ran all the way around the school and into the street. The ankle boots she wore skidded in the hard-packed earth of the roadway and she barely missed being run over by a horse and cart. She caught herself in the nick of time, avoiding getting trampled by a hair’s breadth. She then ran down the streets until she reached home. She bolted up the stairs and burst in through the door to see a startled Bess looking at her.
“Oh dear,” Bess said upon seeing her frazzled state. “Was it truly that bad? Well, never mind,” she said as she came over to her and put a comforting arm around her. “It’s all over now. No one will bother you to take those tests ever again.”
“Bess…oh Bess…it was horrible! They were so mean! They played a joke on me!”
Yasra burst into tears.
“There, there,” Bess soothed her, hugging her close. “We won’t let them bother us ever again. Listen, I think I found the perfect place for our little bookshop. It’s right off of Grace street. You’ll love it! It has shelves aplenty and it’s right on the main bank of shops of that area. I spoke with the landlord and the rent is really quite reasonable I think. But you must tell me what you think of it.”
Bess’s chatter soon soothed her frayed nerves. She once again talked of Velufio’s flirting behavior, imitating the young man so perfectly it made Yasra crack a smile. Bess made them tea as she talked after seeing Yasra seated in her favorite comfortable chair. Before long the traumatic events of the morning seemed to have happened to someone else.
Except…except she couldn’t quite shake the feel of a firm mouth at her breast and long probing fingers in her body. She blushed as the hot memory invaded her time and time again. Of course, it had to have all been part of the practical joke they had played on her…they must have gotten a real laugh at the expense of the pathetic non. She had not realized just how cruel majji could be. The expression of contempt on Esmo’s face had been only that, contempt that she was such a fool that she came back year after year to embarrass herself. When word got back to her parents of her humiliation…
It didn’t matter, she thought, fighting back further tears. She would eventually live down this embarrassment and ultimately fall into obscurity as the little non who ran a bookshop.
The little non who was the butt of a big joke.
“Oh Bess,” she said, weeping, “it was so awful.”
“It couldn’t be that bad. Tell me what happened.”
Yasra did. She wanted to leave out some of the intimate details, but it was impossible to tell the full impact of the shame she had suffered without them.
“Oh Yas. How horrible for yo
u,” Bess said, sympathetic tears in her eyes. She hugged Yasra tightly, holding her as she cried a little more. But then, after a few minutes, Bess pulled away and began to brush her up. “Okay,” she said, “The best thing to do is to move forward and forget all about this. Let’s go look at that shop. Then we’ll get something to eat.”
“All right. Let me wash my face first,” Yasra said.
She washed up and they headed out to visit the shop.
Dendri was stunned. So stunned that he didn’t react when the pretty young thing he’d been touching ran away from him, picking up her skirts and fleeing at top speed. There was dead silence all around him as people stared at him and at the evidence of the tremendous power that had been used.
Dendri looked up at the teacher’s tent and began to walk toward it in ground devouring strides. He went straight to Goran Meso, the school’s principal, and ignored the gawking expression on his face.
“Who was she?” he demanded to know.
“I…I…she’s Yasra Desro,” he said, stammering.
“I know that!” Dendri bit out. Then he checked his temper, reasoning with himself that he was just feeling a little raw because of the state she had left him in. He was still hard from the way she had felt in the sex majic she had drawn him into. He had never felt anything like it…and he was twentieth level Aspano. Then again, it had been a while since he’d engaged in sex majic with anyone.
“Who is she?” he repeated, a bit more gently.
“Yasra is a non …or…rather…we thought she was a non. She is well past the age of showing skill. We’ve been tolerant however because she is Illa and Orto Desro’s daughter.”
Dendri knew Illa and Orto only minimally. He could barely recall their faces.
“You thought she was a non?” he asked. “She’s shown no aptitude at all?” Dendri asked him.
“Well…she always does extraordinarily well on the written part of the exam. Too well. She always gets everything right, not showing any particular aptitude in a specific house.”
“So she is learned,” Dendri said.
“Yes. Quite. She always has her nose in one book or another.” The principal cleared his throat. “Is this real? I mean,” he said, growing flustered at Dendri’s sharp look. “Are you really Gestalt?”
“So it would appear,” Dendri said a bit absently.
This was quite an extraordinary development. Whether it was a good one or not remained to be seen. Not that he had any doubts or worries about the connection itself, any wrinkles between him and Yasra could be ironed out, but the triumvirate might not take too eagerly to the existence of a Gestalt couple.
But he would worry about that later. Right now he had more important things to deal with.
“Where does she live?”
Yas couldn’t escape the sensation that people were staring at her, talking about her. She felt that everyone must know of the big joke that had been played on her. But she realized this was probably just paranoia.
The shop was adorable and Bess was right, it would be perfect for their little bookshop. It had many shelves and was right where a great many people would come to shop. There were also rooms upstairs for the shopkeeper to live in. There were two bedrooms and a living area. It was perfect. Wanting to get on with her new life as soon as possible, Yasra told the shop owner that they would rent the shop as soon as possible and they would move in within the next few days. All she had to do was come up with the money for the first month’s rent.
That was easy enough. She needed only to get to one of her small stashes of gold coins. Then they would pay the man and begin to move out of their current bedsit and into the rooms above the shop. They would fill the shop shelves with Yasra’s books and see about getting a sign to hang outside of the door.
Feeling lighter than she had in a while and feeling full of purpose, she and Bess bought some groceries and made their way back to their old bedsit where they would get the money they needed to pay to the landlord.
But as they reached the landing it was very obvious someone was there waiting for them.
Dendri Adiron.
He seemed to dominate the small landing in front of their door, and he had been leaning against the door and now straightened to greet them. Yasra felt her face burning with her embarrassment at seeing him again, all the memories of their intimate sex majic washing over her.
“Can we help you?” Bess asked in a friendly tone. As a non, is wasn’t surprising that Bess didn’t know who he was. But Yasra dragged on Bess’s arm and whispered his name in her ear. “Oh!” Bess cried. “You…you, cretin! How dare you show up here after what you put my friend through!”
“I didn’t put your friend through anything,” he said in that calm, quiet tone. The tone that made everyone else sound like they were hysterical. “Rather, she did something to me.”
“I didn’t do anything to you!” Yasra cried. “You’ve had your joke at my expense. Why can’t you leave me be?” Yasra pushed past him and dragged Bess through the door. She had every intention of slamming the door shut in her wake, but his strong hand reached out and held the door open.
“Invite me in, Yasra, so we can talk about this like rational adults.”
“I’ll do no such thing!”
“So you’re going to spit in the face of the one thing you’ve wanted all of your life?” he asked.
That made Yasra hesitate. “How do you know what I’ve wanted all my life? You don’t know me!”
“But I would like very much to know you. And I know you’ve wanted majic all of your life or you would have stopped trying to test out years ago.”
“I was only doing it to make my parents happy. I’ve known a long time now that I’m a non and it’s time everyone accepts the truth of that.”
“Yasra, you are as far away from being a non as I am,” he said. He took a step further into the room. “Invite me in Yasra.”
There was something so compelling about him. Something that was so hard for her to comprehend. He was a total stranger, and yet they knew each other on that intimate level. She had been exposed to him and he had taken her like an offering.
“You and I have unfinished business,” he said, his tone low and sensual. She knew immediately what he was referring to.
She stepped back away from him and he took that as an invitation to move the rest of the way into the room. He shut the door after him and moved in toward her. Before she could stop him, he reached out and snared her by the back of her neck. He drew her in close as she panted for breath. Then his mouth sealed to hers, in a first kiss that reached so deeply into her soul she could hardly see straight. His lips were like fire against hers, burning out of control, his tongue tangling hotly with hers almost instantly. Yasra felt as though her spine had melted and it was only his grip on her that was keeping her upright. As he kissed her, he drew her up tight to his big body. She could feel him, every inch, every muscle. All of his heat radiating into her.
When he finally lifted his mouth from hers she was lost for breath. Their eyes clashed and she saw heat and promise in his gaze.
“Don’t do that again,” she whispered. She had meant for it to be a shouted protest, but it didn’t come out that way at all. So, of course, he wasn’t impacted by it in the least. He pulled her up and kissed her again. Kissed her until she moaned in acquiescence. His hand went to her back as he pressed her hard to his body, his other hand was buried in her hair, holding her head to his kiss.
When he lifted away this time she was completely supported by him, her body lax and open and wanting.
“Unfinished business,” he said again, his voice a husky rasp.
“But…I hardly know you,” she protested half-heartedly.
“You know enough. Enough for now. The rest will come later.” He drew his hand from her hair and brushed a thumb over the rise of her cheek. “You’re quite beautiful. Do you know that?”
She blushed and dipped her head. “Don’t tell me lies,” she said.
r /> “I won’t,” he promised. “I will always deal honestly with you. So when I say you are beautiful, I mean it. I am not a man accustomed to having his word questioned.”
“Well I’m not accustomed to compliments like that,” she said shyly.
“You will become so. For I will give them often.”
“Why are you here? Why me?” she asked him, unable to understand.
“Gestalt is not something to be taken lightly…or to be ignored. It takes two very powerful majji to create a Gestalt. Your majic has lain dormant a very long time. It has been dying to be set free. It has been waiting for me. When I touched you it was like breaking a dam. Now you can do anything you set your mind to. As can I. Whenever we are in contact with each other we can access all the houses of majic. Separate…I am Aspano and you are…”
“Non,” she said.
“I don’t believe that. I think you will find now you are of a particular house. You only needed to relax. Let loose. I touched you with the intention of getting into your mind and relaxing you to the point of letting your majic out. It worked. Far better than I had anticipated.”
“Why were you at the school today?”
“I don’t know. Something inside of me told me to go. Told me to proctor the test. Told me to find you.”
“But you’re the most powerful Aspano in the world. I’m just…I don’t know what I am. Up until today I thought I was non.”
“Let’s find out what you are then, shall we?” he said, moving away from her only slightly. “But I am loathe to let you go. I am afraid you won’t let me back again.”
“I’ll…I’ll let you back again,” she said softly…shyly.
He smiled at that and just as she had remembered from their sex majic, it altered his entire face. He looked so easygoing that it was hard to shut him out. But she didn’t want to shut him out. Not any longer.
“Come. Let’s try a few things.” He looked around the room and spied Bicky. He moved over to the cat who was usually shy of strangers, and Bicky tipped her head back for a scratch beneath her chin. “Try and see if you can figure out what she is thinking.”