Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

She was undulating beneath him, eyes blind as she sought the release her body craved. He licked her parted lips, pleased to find her flesh so hot, she nearly burned him. Ignoring her desperate whimper of anguish, he drew back away from her again, settling onto his heels between her sprawled legs. She was displayed for him, her hard red nipples visible through the sheer material of the shift, the skirt rucked up around her waist, her naked loins lifting and rolling pleadingly.

Perfectly able to control his own lust, Varian smiled at her and made a soothing noise that did absolutely nothing except cause her to groan with the pain of her need. He placed his hands on her white thighs, pushing them wider apart and guiding her knees high, then studied the lewd result. At the front of his trousers, a twitch indicated the impatience of his male parts, but Varian was concentrating on turning her into a mindless broodmare constantly in heat and always eager to be mounted.

He stroked her thighs, gradually sliding his hand up until he touched the pale, silky hair covering her mound. She was incredibly soft, damp, and swollen, and he smiled as he touched that heated womanly core of her.

"My Lord!"

"Do you like that, Mara?"

She groaned wordlessly, her hips lifting as she tried to press herself against his probing fingers. He reached up his free hand to rub her quivering belly and fondle her breasts, still through the shift. His other hand was still very lightly petting her mound, his touch teasing. She shuddered and moaned, her legs spreading wider in an instinctive response to the fullness of her swelling sex.

He glided one finger along the gaping cleft, then very slowly and gently penetrated her. She groaned gutturally, her hands grasping fistfuls of the sheet on either side of her hips, and another shudder shook her slender body as the length of his finger pressed deep within her.

"That's it," he murmured, watching her face as his finger began stroking in her scalding hot, wet depths. "So soft… so wet… yes, my little bitch.…" His thumb found the stiffening nubbin of flesh and rubbed it roughly, and she writhed with a muffled cry.

He could feel her tense striving, see it in her wild eyes. Little whimpering sounds welled up and escaped her trembling lips while her hips undulated furiously to his touch. She tightened even more around his stroking finger and he increased the speed and depth of the thrusts, his gaze intent on her face.

She reached the peak swiftly, writhing, sobbing, the spasms of her pleasure shuddering through her entire body. When she at last went limp, he eased his finger out of her and opened his trousers, freeing his swollen flesh. He mounted her, hooking his arms under her knees and hoisting them high and wide as he seated himself to the hilt in her throbbing sheath.

With utter self-control Varian delayed his own release in order to bring her to the peak again and again. It occurred to him almost idly, as he watched her flushed, sweating face and listened to her moans and cries, that he could never let himself find pleasure until the bitch beneath him was totally caught up in an animalistic frenzy, but he didn't stop to examine the realization. It didn't seem to matter.

When he finally emptied his seed into her writhing body, Varian was pleasantly weary but still not ready for sleep. He rolled off her and undressed himself, then returned to the bed and took her from behind with no preliminaries. Not that Mara noticed anything lacking in the union; by that point she was lost in a kind of sexual rapture.

It was several hours past midnight when Varian felt himself able to sleep. Mara was sprawled across the bed, and he tossed a sheet over her limp body before striding naked from her room and down the hall to his own.

He never slept with a bitch in the same room.

Just before he drifted off to sleep, Varian found his thoughts turning again to the stranger, Merlin, and they made him uneasy, just the way thoughts of his own kinsman, Tremayne, made him uneasy. Neither of them belonged here. But he had nothing to fear from either of them, Varian assured himself.

After all, he was the most powerful wizard of Atlantia.

Serena tossed the ball to Kerry and winced when it went wide of the mark. "Sorry, kid. I never was much of a pitcher," she called.

Roxanne chuckled as the little girl chased after the ball. "She could bring it back by crooking her finger, but she seldom remembers that."

"Wizards are odd," Serena agreed, not without a touch of irony.

"Um. What's a pitcher?"

For a second Serena went blank, but then she remembered-and realized another of her words hadn't translated. Dammit, she couldn't seem to remember to watch what she said!

"It's someone who throws a ball in a game," she replied casually. "I've seen it played it Seattle."

Roxanne nodded solemnly. She had regained all her strength in the days since her attack, and seemed hardly affected by what had happened to her; Merlin had done an excellent job. "It sounds like your Seattle would be a nice place to live."

"Yes. It is." Serena was sitting on a low wall that surrounded a small courtyard between Roxanne's house and the one next to hers, while the younger wizard sat on her front step, repairing-by hand-a torn shift. She had told Serena that she enjoyed sewing, and seldom used her powers to repair clothing.

Kerry returned, the ball clutched in her small hands. "It bounced most of the way to Leader's house!" she scolded.

"I told you I couldn't throw straight," Serena reminded her a bit absently, her gaze lifting to study the distant house that was the tallest in Sanctuary.

"Well, I'm not going to run after it again. Roxanne, can I use your sand to try to make a mirror?"

A little amused, Roxanne said, "If you mean the sand in the courtyard, yes. But is my sand so different from anyone else's?"

The child nodded. "It's perfect sand, and Teacher says only perfect sand makes perfect mirrors."

"Very well, but be careful."

Kerry rolled her eyes at the constant adult refrain, then scrambled over the low wall beside Serena and went to select the proper spot for her mirror-making. The one she settled on was several yards away from the two women.

"Teacher says," Serena murmured, still gazing off at the Leader's house. "Can't she create a mirror without sand?"

"No, of course not," Roxanne answered in surprise.

Serena sent her an oblique glance. "But your friend Adina the tailor can create doth without threads. Calandra makes wonderful soup or sweets from nothing but air. And just yesterday I saw your neighbor Heather conjure enough water for those flowers she's trying to keep alive."

Roxanne frowned slightly. "Mirrors are different. We can no more conjure them than we can living creatures."

Serena heard herself laugh, a low sound that was wry rather than amused. She couldn't create a mirror, either, unless she used sand. Nor could Merlin. He had taught her it was because the energies required to create anything from nothing were especially potent, and a mirror conjured that way reflected the energies so fiercely that the mirror always- always -shattered into a million pieces.

Even using sand, it was difficult, exacting work to create a mirror, and it always had to be done with the mirror facing away. Otherwise the reflection could cause a painful jolt.

As for creating living creatures, that was another ability all wizards lacked even in modern times. They could change one living creature into another-an enemy into a toad, for instance-but they could not create a living being except the same way all humans did-by having children.

"I merely wondered," she said at last, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure Kerry was all right. She was, squatting and carefully smoothing the sand she had chosen into a small oval.