Bright Familiar by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 18 ~
Though her sex clenched at the command, her familiar nature rousing in eager welcome, her brain was still apparently jogging down the tunnel, perhaps locked outside with silver nails, because she was not catching up to Gabriel’s urgency. “Why?” she demanded.
He set his jaw, fulminating silver and steam. “Now you balk? All this time you’ve been wheedling and exhorting me to exert control over you, to take and have, and now, when we have no time to dither, you want to question me?”
“Dither?” She raised her brows, tempted to laugh, but he glowered at her. “I just want to know why we’re having arcanium sex when there are crises to address. Surely that answer won’t take long.”
With a growl of impatience, he spun her around and released the trigger on the gown, efficiently stripping it off of her. With a little thrill, she discovered she liked that, too. She might have to refuse to undress for him more often.
“We’re going to figure out how to transform you into your alternate form,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “How is that not obvious to you?”
Ten different replies leapt to her lips, none of them quite equal to the moment. Also, Gabriel pulled the gown off over her head just then, muffling any response she might give. He swiftly relieved her of her lingerie too, leaving her naked. She kicked off her slippers, glad she’d changed out of her muddy boots when they returned to the manse. “Gabriel—”
“Kneel,” he ordered, cutting her off.
Obeying without thought, she did, aroused excitement flooding her, which did not help to kick her brain into action. Quite the opposite. It would be so easy to yield, to let the eroticism of submitting to his control sweep her away, but that wouldn’t solve their very real problems.
“May I speak, wizard?” she asked pointedly, looking up at him. That didn’t help the thinking part of her either, as he was so dizzyingly gorgeous standing over her like that, his emotional storm intense and overwhelming. And in the arcanium at night, you can release all that pent-up fury and passion upon my helpless body. She’d only been half teasing when she said that. Less than that, because the prospect had her body singing in delight, longing for that very thing with every fiber of her being.
She couldn’t believe she was going to stop him.
“No,” he said. “We don’t have time to talk. Take your alternate form.”
Rolling her eyes, she stood. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do I have to do?” he demanded. Before she could answer, he strode across the domed room, seizing the silver bed and wheeling it to under the moon window. “Chain you to this?” he nearly shouted. “Whip you? Force you to submit to my will so we can prove to your precious Convocation that you belong with me? Because I’ll do it, Nic. I’ll hate myself for hurting you, but I’d rather that than turn you over to them. Now get over here and get on this vile thing!” He finished on a near roar.
Oh, he was in a mood.
Taking her time, she sauntered over, shivering under the feral intensity of his wizard-black gaze raking her nakedness. His magic billowed around her, amplified by the arcanium, the silver struts glowing with brilliant moonlight, dispensing the gloom of the lake water under a rain-leaden sky. She paused by the silver bed and looked at it pointedly. “Still no mattress,” she noted.
His expression momentarily blanked, then he glared at the offending naked bed frame in betrayed fury. With a howl of rage, he kicked it, sending the thing spinning across the floor to bounce off one thick glass pane.
Nic watched it go with a raised brow, then turned back to her enraged wizard. “Feel any better?”
He glowered at her, fists clenched. “How can you be so calm?” he snarled. “Work with me here.”
“Oh, now you want me to work with you?” Moving slowly, she closed the distance between them, laying her palms against his muscled chest, his heart thundering beneath. Rigid with tension, he thrummed under her hands. A storm about to break. “Darling,” she said smoothly, “this isn’t something I ever thought I’d say to you, but you need to calm down. Take a few deep breaths.”
He fulminated under her touch, his magic so sharp, so boiling, as he glared daggers at her that for a moment she wasn’t sure what he’d do. Seizing her by the waist, he lifted her into the air, and she clutched at his ridged forearms, her feet dangling helplessly in the air. Her sex slick with anticipation, she’d welcome whatever he might do to her. Take. Have. She should just yield and let him—No. That wouldn’t solve their problems.
Maybe he sensed her newfound resolve. Or glimpsed something in her eyes, because sanity returned to his. Setting her carefully on her feet again, he dragged in a long, deep breath. Then another. On the third breath, his set expression crumpled. Very deliberately, he released his grip on her waist. Her body ached, missing him already, but only for a moment because he wrapped her in an embrace, pulling her hard against him as he buried his face against her neck.
“I can’t lose you,” he groaned, voice breaking, his words muffled against her skin.
“Oh, Gabriel…” Her heart turned over, wrung out, body throbbing with unfulfilled arousal, mind dizzy from being crowded with too many thoughts and feelings. “You won’t lose me.”
He stiffened, raising his head, fixing her with that wizard-black gaze that penetrated to the most intimate corners of her soul. “Can you promise that?”
“I—” She closed her mouth on the lie. She’d been determined to promise that, but in the face of his earnest vulnerability, she simply couldn’t. “Gabriel, I don’t know. There’s so much stacked against us. If only I hadn’t—”
He stopped her with a little shake. “Don’t you dare apologize for that again.”
“So commanding,” she purred, giving him a sultry smile, and he snarled in frustration. “Don’t snarl at me. I’m trying to think, but it isn’t easy for me, being naked with you, here, with your hands on me and your magic coiling through me.”
With a curse, he pulled off his long coat and wrapped it around her—it was big enough on her to almost go around twice—then rubbed her arms briskly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not cold,” she chided him with a smile. “I just need to clear the erotic haze from my brain.”
He smiled in wry sympathy. “I know what you mean.”
“All right, let me think.” She stepped away from his heady presence, hoping that would clear her head. Glancing around the mostly empty room, she went to the only place to sit, perching on the edge of the silver bed. He frowned at her. “What? There is no other furniture in here, and it’s not conducive to rational thinking for me to be on the floor with you looming over me so enticingly.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I never thought furniture would matter so much to me.”
Smirking, she crossed her legs, arranging the coat to cover her naked thighs when his gaze fixed there. “You asked how to push me into my alternate form, and the short answer is I don’t know. It’s in wizard training. Familiars aren’t taught it.”
He studied her, rationality returning to his fevered gaze. “The proctor knows I don’t have a Convocation Academy education. She was betting that I don’t know how to do this.”
Nic inclined her head. “It was probably her fallback all along. Even if your cursed reciprocal bond hadn’t befuddled the oracle head, she would no doubt have required this final demonstration. She wants me back at Convocation Center very badly.”
“Vengeance?”
“Probably in part. It galls her that I escaped on her watch,” Nic imitated the proctor’s pedantic complaint. “But… I suspect there’s more to it. The Convocation wants me back for some reason.”
“All the more reason not to let you go.” Gabriel stalked to her. Then, as if suddenly aware of his looming, he settled his weight onto the bed frame beside her, glaring at the thing when it creaked, as if it offended him.
“Even if we accomplish finding my alternate form, I doubt that will end things in this case. The Convocation won’t stop.”
He shook his head. “Let’s apply the breakfast table rule here.”
She blinked at him. Yes, her brain was fogged from arousal on top of the tumult of the day—it killed her to think Selly felt Nic had betrayed her—but she wasn’t following. “Breakfast table?”
He smiled and laid a hand on his muscled thigh, palm up in invitation, so she wormed out one of her own to lay her hand in his. “Let’s not worry about the next crisis until we at least survive the threat currently before us.”
“I’m pretty sure I was asking to forgo philosophy in favor of current threats,” she replied with a wrinkled nose, “but point taken.”
“You told me that taking your alternate form is something you want?” He made it a question, searching her face for the truth.
“I do want it. It’s just not easily done. I wanted us to practice and work our way up to that level.”
“Hmm. So not all wizards can push their familiars into alternate form?”
“No. It’s one of compelling reasons to bond with a powerful wizard, beyond wealth and status, if one has a choice.”
“That’s why you insisted on us using the arcanium, because it takes a lot of power.”
“At least the first time, yes. But I suspect some wizards are only able to do the trick while in the arcanium. That’s why you don’t see it all that often.”
“But I saw your father do it.”
“Yes.” She made a face for that. “Powerful, as I mentioned.”
“And near his arcanium.”
“True.”
He gazed past her, thinking hard. “You told me once that you didn’t know what your alternate form would be, that you might not become a cat like your mother because these things don’t run in families.”
“Your memory, as always, is excellent.”
“That implies that the form is already a part of your magic, that it simply needs to be unlocked.”
“I agree with the first part,” she replied, thinking it through. “There are multiple theories on why familiars take the alternate forms they do. Some think it’s born of the familiar’s magic. Others think the wizard’s preferences and needs shape the form. Others say it’s a combination of the two. I have never, however, heard the process referred to as ‘unlocking.’ It’s always framed as pushing or…”
“Forcing?” he filled in with a raised brow. “How unlike the Convocation to cleave to a metaphor that implies force.”
“Now who’s employing sarcasm?”
“I’m just trying to speak your language.”
“Ha ha. Seriously, I feel I should point out that you not listening to me on traditional methods for magic rituals is, at least in part, what has landed us in this particular problem.” She shouldn’t have said it, because his face and magic clouded with guilt. But before she could retract or mitigate her words, he shook his head.
“You are, of course, correct,” he replied, “but I wouldn’t change it. You and I accomplished something special between us, something that even that revolting, but obviously powerful and ancient oracle head couldn’t parse.”
“We don’t even know what we did, if anything,” she protested. “It could be just a faulty bonding.”
“It seems to me that the oracle head would’ve been definitive about a faulty bonding.”
She wanted to argue the point but couldn’t. “Maybe,” she said, giving the most ground she was willing to concede at that point.
“Does it feel faulty to you?” he persisted, wizard-black eyes full of glittering intensity. “Because I can feel you,” he continued when she hesitated, “in my head and in my magic, like you’re a fundamental part of me. Like I’d die without you.”
“Yes, well,” she temporized, a bit breathless from that declaration. “That’s because I’m indispensable.”
“Nic.”
“Fine.” Trust, she reminded herself. Behave as if you trust him and you’ll get there. “The bond is real,” she agreed. “There’s nothing faulty about it. Regardless of whether the Fascination comes from me or some… manipulation.” She shook her head when he squeezed her hand, a concerned frown on his face. “You’re right. We’re connected. I don’t know if the bonding feels this way to every familiar, but I know what you mean—in my head, in my magic. In my heart,” she added, giving him a tender smile, feeling kind of silly saying that, but rewarded by the warm glow of love surging between them.
“I’m sorry for the bind we’re in,” Gabriel said slowly, “but I can’t regret that our connection is something the Convocation and their tools don’t understand. It will make it harder for them to fight us if we’re an unknown quantity.”
“Unknown even to ourselves,” she remarked drily.
“We’ll learn. Isn’t that what you keep telling me? Practice and learning to work together.”
“I don’t recall mentioning making it up as we go along.” She had to smile, though, for his grand ideas. “Though if anyone has the ingenuity to do this, you do.”
“We do,” he corrected. “I know you’ve been going around suggesting radical ideas to other familiars, despite all your Convocation talk.”
That actually took her by surprise, reflexive guilt stabbing at her. “Quinn?” she asked hesitantly.
Gabriel nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Sage spoke with me. Stop looking like you’re guilty of a crime. I’m proud of you.”
She had to roll her eyes at that. “I’m not a puppy.”
“Maybe you are,” he teased. “Maybe that’s your alternate form.”
Daniel the Spaniel.She grimaced at how they’d made fun of her awful cousin Jan’s pitifully cringing and puppyish familiar. The epitome of everything she never wanted to be. “Alternate forms are always adults,” she informed him loftily to cover the very real fear of that eventuality. “Never juveniles.”
He nodded, seeing more into her than she’d said. Always understanding more about her than was comfortable. Trust.
“We don’t have to do this,” he offered. “You know I understand any trepidation you might have about your alternate form. I’d understand if you’d never want to take it, to lose control of your very body to someone else, even me.”
Even him.Only him, more like. Funny to realize that because she apparently did trust him more than she’d known until this moment. “No, you were right to begin with. We do have to do this.”
He shook his head emphatically. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“We can’t stay in the arcanium forever,” she pointed out.
“Our bones will lie curled together, undisturbed, for eternity,” he replied solemnly, only a hint of a smile curving his beautiful lips.
Unable to resist that mouth, she kissed him. “Such a romantic.”
He returned the kiss, the emotion in it quickly turning urgent, and he cupped the back of her neck, holding her close as he drank of her like a man dying of thirst. Breaking the kiss with a gasp, he leaned his forehead against hers. “I will never make you do something you don’t want to do. But you’re right that we can’t stay in the arcanium forever, as romantic as our tragic death would be.”
“They’d write novels about us,” she agreed. “The new Sylus and Lyndella.”
“Spare me that fate,” he replied with a dry laugh. “Sylus doesn’t come off well in those stories.”
“He’s brooding and driven,” Nic protested, stung into defending the hero of her adolescent fantasies.
“He’s an ass,” Gabriel declared firmly. “Controlling, self-absorbed, and oblivious to Lyndella’s suffering.”
Nic narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you been reading my novels?”
“I had to do something while not sleeping in Vale’s stall. He has a sneaky tendency to step on you if you’re not watching him every moment.”
Absurdly touched, Nic trailed her fingers over his cheek. “Then you know Lyndella understood and loved her tormented wizard.”
Gabriel was silent a moment. “Maybe she shouldn’t have.”
Nic rolled her eyes at him. “I wonder if Lyndella had to kick Sylus out of his funks occasionally…”
“Lyndella was far too sweet to do anything like that,” Gabriel countered.
Nic snorted, and he laughed. Lifting their joined hands, he kissed the back of hers. “What do you want to do?”
“Well, I think we’re agreed it’s too early in our personal story for the tragic ending to our epic romance, so starving here in the arcanium is a no go.”
“We can go out and fight. That proctor should be easy to kill.” Gabriel simmered with silvery rage. “I’d enjoy that, in fact.”
“And you’d doom House Phel. Murdering a Convocation proctor in cold blood will have them permanently yanking your house status and dividing Meresin up between your neighbors.”
Gabriel looked mulish, so she added, “They’d likely kill anyone with your bloodline, to prevent anyone from Phel popping up again to cause them trouble. They probably already regret they didn’t salt the earth, which allowed you to appear to dig your thorny self into their sides.”
“A daunting thought.”
“You’ve come so far, Gabriel. Don’t give up now. Don’t give the Convocation an excuse to get rid of you before you accomplish your goals.”
He cocked his head. “And which goals might those be?”
“I know you haven’t spelled it out, but I assume you want to infiltrate the highest levels of power in the Convocation and either change it or bring it all down.”
“Both outcomes have their merits,” he admitted.
“All right, then.” She could do this. They could do this. “That leaves unlocking my alternate form.”
He gave her a long look. “Except we still don’t know how.”
“I think you make me do it.” It made sense, really. As much as she looked forward to discovering her alternate form, the idea of contorting her flesh into a new body made her skin crawl. Maybe it wasn’t something one could make oneself do.
“I haven’t had much luck making you do anything at all,” Gabriel observed wryly.
“You make me do some things,” she purred. “And we both like that.”
He didn’t take the bait. “I wish we could find a way to make this reciprocal.”
“I don’t think it’s physically possible for us both to be tied up and whipped at the same time.”
Not flinching, he gazed at her steadily, but she could tell it took effort on his part not to immediately respond with his usual arguments. “Is that what you think it takes?”
“Maybe?” She thought about all the bits of gossip and innuendo, the romantic tales. “Probably. There are certainly broad hints about interludes like that between Sylus and Lyndella, and others.”
“Why whipping? That’s a serious question,” he said before she could come back with a sarcastic retort.
“Mortification of the flesh? At least the first time, I think you have to take control of my will, then cause me enough pain that I want to leave or change my body.”
His expression tight, he considered that. “I don’t like this.”
“Pain can be erotic, too,” she soothed him.
Depthless black eyes on hers, he shook his head slowly. “Causing you enough pain that you want to leave your body isn’t erotic. I won’t do it.”
“What if it’s the only way?” she demanded. “I’m willing to do this, so you should be, too.”
“Not necessarily,” he shot back. “This would be far from the first time that I’ve cared more about your well-being and happiness than you do.”
Well, that struck her mute for a moment. She had no argument against that. From the moment she met him, she’d known she’d do anything for this wizard. Any amount of suffering, and she’d be happy to offer it to him. And he knew that all too well.
“Care and Feeding of Familiars 101,” he said with a grim smile. “I’m going to protect you, even from yourself.”
“Fine,” she bit out. “Then I’m out of ideas. What are yours?”
“I think that if a familiar can take alternate form without pain, forcing them into it on other occasions—as we’ve both witnessed is true—then it should be possible the first time. Maybe you wanting it is enough.”
“Maybe,” she replied, doubt heavy in her tone and heart.
“Let me ask you this: Why don’t wizards take alternate forms? If our magic is fundamentally the same, except for that singular ability to activate it, why isn’t that in the wizard repertoire?”
“Probably they’d need another wizard to do it to them. That occurred to me also,” she admitted. “It would make sense that our connections to our own bodies is too strong to override through our own will. We need someone else to push us there, otherwise maybe some animal instinct kicks in to keep us human. A kind of self-protection.”
He nodded slowly. “That makes sense.” Then, abruptly, he grinned. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to override my animal instincts and push me into my alternate form.”
“I’m not a wizard.”
“No, but you have a stronger will than anyone else I’ve known. You make me do things I don’t want to all the time.”
“Ha ha. Besides, I thought you found the idea of changing form abhorrent.”
“I did.” He looked thoughtful. “Not anymore. The prospect is interesting.” He gave her a wry look. “Part of my decline into monstrosity, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
He stood, pulling her to her feet. “I think I know what to do. Give me the coat and kneel.”
With a surge of wicked trepidation, she obeyed, handing over the garment, then kneeling naked before him. He nudged her knees with his boot, making her spread her thighs, instructing her to clasp her hands at the small of her back. Tremulous with rising arousal, curious, nerves on a keen edge, she did as he told her.
When he grasped her chin in his hand and lifted her gaze to meet his, he stared her down with all the silver-sharp command a familiar could wish for. “Do you trust me?” he demanded.
Not exactly what she expected. “Yes, wizard.”
He tightened his grip, eyes obsidian hard. “Don’t lie. I’ll know it. Do you trust me?”
“Yes, wizard.” She shuddered, realizing it was true. This wasn’t compelled, not forced. She was choosing this.
“Do you yield yourself to me?” he asked softly, implacably.
“Yes, wizard.” Her body swayed toward him in its own affirmation, yearning.
“Do you submit your will to mine, utterly, without reservation?”
It shouldn’t feel so chilling, but the question struck hard. Her will was all she’d had when she lost everything else. She searched his eyes, not knowing what she looked for.
“Do you, Nic?” he urged.
“Yes, Gabriel,” she sighed, feeling the deep truth of it. Not always. But here, in the arcanium, with Gabriel, she could submit her will to his and trust him to use it well. Not just any wizard, but Gabriel. Her love.
“Accept my control, then.” His eyes, already blacker than a starless night, darkened. His magic swirled around and through her, then settled over her like a silver net. Captive, she instinctively struggled against it, and Gabriel gave her a warning look. “You promised, familiar,” he crooned. “Submit. Yield.”
“Yes, wizard,” she whispered, trembling with need and desire. She let go, giving herself over to his magic, surrendering to his will, and the silver net layered itself into her skin, settling into her nerves, penetrating her muscles, bones, heart, mind, and soul.
“Ah, yes.” His black eyes flared with fire, face ridged with his own fierce desire. “You belong to me, don’t you?”
“Entirely,” she agreed helplessly, yearning toward him, desperate to be taken.
“Not yet,” he tsked. “Don’t move. I think you’ll find you can’t.” He followed that astonishing declaration with a kiss, hungry, deep, and devastating.
It was true. She couldn’t move. She could only receive the kiss, her mouth opening of its own accord—or of his—the sparks of excitation running wild in her immobile body.
“Wait here,” he instructed, chuckling wickedly at his own joke. And she did so, helpless to do otherwise, the sexual tension building with leaps and bounds, pressing against her skin from the inside.
He wheeled the bed to beneath the moon window again, aligning it so the foot of it sat at the focal point, then busied himself with the silver chains. Finished, he pointed a finger at her, then curled it. And she crawled to him, drawn by the invisible leash of his power, trembling with the heightened eroticism.
Drawing her to her feet, Gabriel positioned her against the bed frame, his hands roving freely over her, stimulating and caressing. She wanted to writhe against him, to push her nipples into his stroking palms, to pump her hips in wordless plea, but she could only take what he chose to give, only submit to what he desired of her. It was frustrating and freeing. She could do nothing, so she had no choice but to accept. The sensation of simultaneous constriction and freedom had her mind surging against its boundaries.
She couldn’t even moan, in approval or protest, as he stood her against the foot of the bed and chained her arms above her head, outstretched to each bedpost. The silver cuffs fastened around her wrists made contact with the silver net Gabriel had laid into her body, conducting magic through the silver bed to the arcanium, to Gabriel, and back into her own body. By the time he chained her ankles to the bottom of the posts, so she stood spread-eagled and beyond vulnerable, the magic pulsed into, through, and out of her. She’d become a pump, a human-shaped heart circulating magic. Taking in the moon and water magic, heating and growing it with her own and breathing it out again.
Gabriel inhaled deeply, as if sensing it, too. His eyes lit from black to shining silver, his hair flowing in unseen currents of magic, his skin glowing with it. Standing before her, he caressed her body, releasing just enough control to allow her to whimper, to struggle against the chains, to lean her body into his hands.
“Here are the rules,” he murmured, sounding as overwhelmed as she felt. The magic gave a resonance to his voice that made her want to drink the words from his mouth. “I’m going to torment you with pleasure. You will not be allowed to climax. When you can’t stand a moment longer, I’ll release you—into your alternate form.”
She cried a wordless plea, not because she couldn’t speak, but because she had no words. She only partly understood what he was telling her.
“Shh, my heart.” He kissed her softly, lovingly. “Trust me to take care of you. You don’t have to understand, because I do. You asked me to take. You asked me to have. Give yourself into my hands.”
The giving was a letting go. Untying the final bits of will, she gave herself into his caresses. The sweet torment became an agony that seemed to last forever. Teasing her with lips, hands, nails, teeth, and tongue, Gabriel played her like an instrument, drawing sensation from every fingertip of skin. Though she undulated, writhing and pleading, he paid no attention, his attention focused on her body’s responses. The arcanium echoed the ebb and flow, the relentless build of pressure, his magic twining inside her with otherworldly intensity. She went mindless, riding the waves of erotic extremity, aware only of how he touched and tormented her, until she was taut with the need for release, sobbing with raw desire, begging him to let her go.
Framing her face in his hands, he kissed her, the magic churning in a frenzied cycle between them. Pulling his head back, he used his magic to release the chains, taking her wrists in his, holding them in place as his big body pinned her against the bed frame. He stared into her eyes. “My familiar, my lover, my heart. Be released.”
The magic seized her all at once, the orgasm ripping through her and tearing her apart at the seams. Her mind fragmented, her identity blown into trillions of silver sparks. She came apart in every way, shivering and shattered.
Then remade.
