Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

She nuzzled the side of his sweat-slicked neck. “Yeah, but in a good way.” But even as she said it, her instincts stirred. That was the kind of thing lovers said to each other, and therein lay danger. This was a onetime thing, a necessary release. Though if that was what it felt like to share sex magic as a mismatched pair, she could see why the magi were all about their destined mates. More, she could see why humans could get hooked on the fireworks and forget about the rest—at least for a while. Not her, though. She had gone into this with her eyes wide-open and full knowledge of what she was doing, and who with, and now it was time to pull back… even if part of her was humming an awestruck note.

Yes, she’d had sex with Sven, fulfilling more than a few of her pent-up, overwrought fantasies from long ago. And yes, it had been amazing, more so than even those fantasies—or anything else she’d experienced since then—had led her to hope. Fireworks, hell. That had been nuclear. But it didn’t change anything.

And if she told herself that enough times, she might even start believing it.

Easing away from him and playing it as cool as she could manage, she tipped her head toward the sealed-shut cave entrance. “Guess that wasn’t what the gods were waiting for, after all.”

A flicker of recognition said he’d made the connection too, knowing that the other sacred chamber had required not just a near-death experience but also the sexual consummation that completed the Godkeeper spell. But he shook his head. “That wasn’t what this was about, Cara. At all.”

Something shifted in her chest, but she didn’t let herself acknowledge the part of her that wanted to say, Then what was it about? She knew the answer, after all. It was just that silly, eternally seventeen-year-old part of herself that wanted it to be something more. “I know,” she said softly, “and believe me, I’m not trying to make a joke out of this. But we don’t need to dissect it either. It was… I can’t… Hell.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Let’s just get dressed and find a way out of here.” Not meeting his eyes anymore, she reached for her shirt. “We’ve got bigger problems than—”

She froze at the sight of a stark black glyph on her inner right forearm.

And. Her. Heart. Stopped.

Oh, gods. Oh, no. Oh, gods, no. The litany beat in her blood as horror hammered through her, chased by pain. She must’ve made some noise, because Sven whipped around and got big, as if ready to defend her from a dozen hellhounds. But there was nothing to fight except the reality of a coyote’s-head glyph enclosed in a round-edged square, with the double dot representing “2” above it, to indicate that the wearer was a coyote with a familiar. Or, in this case, the servant to one.

“Fuck.” He lifted shocked eyes to hers. “I didn’t mean…” He trailed off, no doubt because there wasn’t anything to say.

“It wasn’t you. It was the nahwal.” Because although it was certainly possible that the blood-link or the sex could have reawakened the servant-master bond between them, her gut said it was the nahwal’s doing. Sven hadn’t wanted her—or anyone—as his servant. His ancestors, though, would want things lined up according to tradition. Bastards, she thought, her arm starting to ache.

“You broke it before,” he said after a moment. “Maybe you can do it again.”

“It took months, and I was sick as a dog.” Her voice threatened to crack but she wouldn’t let it. If anything, the mark was a necessary reminder that they were still the same people they’d been before. The vision hadn’t changed anything, and neither had the sex. Or, rather, something had changed, and not for the better. Aj winikin, she thought bitterly. Son of a bitch. If that was the nahwal’s gift, the creature could damn well have it back. “Screw it,” she said, forcing her chin up and her spine straight. “It’s just a mark. It can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.” That was her story, and she was sticking to it. But where she might’ve been halfway to convincing herself that the sex hadn’t changed anything, there was no way she could say the same about this.

“Cara—”

“Don’t,” she said quickly. She didn’t want to talk about it right now. She wanted to be out and moving, wanted to fill her lungs with the fresh night air. The cave walls pressed suddenly in on her, though this time they weren’t moving; the claustrophobia came straight from her soul. “Please… can we just get out of here?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and turned away.

They dressed in silence and headed for the stone slab that covered the cave entrance, their boots squishing in the shallow, muddy river that was all that was left of the flash flood. Even though she knew it was the nature of the magic and the chamber, the difference between before and after made it feel like days had passed, rather than just a few hours.

They paused side by side at the entrance, where the stone suddenly seemed very solid, very heavy. Pressing her palm to it and finding it cool and faintly slimy, she glanced over at him. “You can open it, right?”

He copied her move so their hands were side by side, his bigger and more tanned, hers narrow and fine boned, with one thumbnail bitten down. “Yeah,” he said. “I can open it.”

She didn’t ask how he could be sure, or why his magic would work now when it hadn’t before. Instead, new nerves kindled as her mind skipped ahead to what they might find on the other side. What had Zane and Lora done after leaving the cave? She didn’t think they would have hurt any of the winikin—not when they meant to lead them instead—and she didn’t think they could hurt the magi. But that was about the only thing she thought Zane incapable of at this point.

Letting out a slow, steadying breath, she nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s do this. Open sesame.”

He hesitated, though, and the pause drew out long enough that she glanced over. His face was drawn, his eyes fixed on the stone slab like he was X-raying his way through it and not liking what he saw.

Tension coiled within her. “Is there a problem out there?”

“There’s a problem, but it’s not out there. It’s in here.… With us.” He brought his other hand up, so he was pressing both palms on the stone slab, as if to shove it out of the way. Instead, he let his head rest for a moment between his outstretched arms.

Us… The word tugged at her, as did the strain in his big, lean body, which let her know that as an honorable man—and he was that, in his own way—he was having trouble with the idea of her as a one-cave stand. “Don’t do this,” she said softly. “There’s no ‘us.’ I’m taking the mark out with me, but the rest of it stays here. It has to.”

He raised his head and pinned her with stormy eyes that held a yearning heat that set off warning bells even as part of her leaped with excitement. “What if I don’t want it to stay here?” he asked softly.

Her heart stutter-stepped and the breath went thin in her lungs. She told herself to shut him down, walk away, do something—anything—to keep him from making this more complicated than it already was. Instead, knowing she was teetering on the verge of a huge mistake, she said, “What do you want?”

There was a pause, and the moment hung in the balance. He won’t say it, she told herself. He means it another way. Because there was no way in hell he was going to say—

“You, Cara.” His expression was stark, his hands braced against the stone as if it were the only thing holding him in place. “I want you. I want to know that what we just had wasn’t just a onetime thing. I want to be with you for real… and I have for a very long time.”