<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">Overwhelming beauty. That was what I saw. It felt like it reached into me, gripped me suddenly and rooted me fast to where I stood. The city, with its sounds and smells and noise of all kinds, was gone, and replaced with a sweeping panorama of life, fecund and teeming, blossoming and blooming, towering and creeping. In Ash’s eyes, I saw wonder, control, and, above all else, I saw joy.  I saw her  coming to terms with the fact that we were, unmistakably, now present in the place she had shown me, but that wasn’t all I saw in the previously unnoticed golden flecks of her eyes. There was something more than just a natural defense against magic working within her, it seemed. Something wild and primal and demanding, inexorable, inevitable, implacable. That in and of itself wasn’t what seized my attention, it was the fact that I could see her actively conquering the drives within her that went against her manifest will. In that moment, I fell in love. She was so strong. Never had I see such a one as her so utterly and completely dominate her supernatural nature, and exert herself so forcefully that she remained in sole control of her actions and reactions. I saw that, in complete awe of her, and then I felt it when the effort drove her to arch her body into mine. Then it was my turn to control reactions, as desires and impulses and pure, unadulterated need pounded through me. <br/>
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I was unshackled. I’ve said before that I always bound and quartered my interest in sex and eroticism. I have a very good reason for that, beyond just the job or distractions, but what I should have expected, and didn’t, was for that need to burst back with a vengeance the moment it had half a chance. With Ash pressing her entire form against me, it had far more than half a chance. The need to take her, taste her, explore her, touch her, seize her, move her, overwhelm her, sate her, sate myself in her, exploded through me, and I went from holding her for closeness and the requirement of the spell, to holding on to her for balance. A small, wise, alert part of my mind labelled that more accurately as relying on her, and took the fact of that reliance into a calculation that went farther than I could see. My heart pounded in my chest, and even though I knew it was racing, it felt as though there were hours between beats. I could feel the gooseflesh spreading over her skin, the small hairs on her body erecting to pull a rushing swath of bumps all over her form. My mind treated me to images of our bodies entwined, with more positions than I could count rushing before my mind’s eye. Never before for me had those images been personal, immediate, and identifiable. They weren’t just images, I was male, and this female right here, right now, had given me the minimum promise of this night to explore each and every one of them. <br/>
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Her movement broke the spell on my mind, bringing me back into the moment. She was flexing, one limb, one appendage, one muscle group at a time, reclaiming her ability to move her body. In that moment my mouth was running, but I could feel the relaxation that followed her intentional exertion of control, and could sense the disarming that came along with the relaxation. I followed her in it, and thoughts of wine and mountain steadily flowed back into my awareness. Once I’d stopped talking, and truly relaxed into the truth of the moment, I could see on her face that my rambling was understood in its importance, but only vaguely relatable in its content, by and large. I smiled, amused at a thought that flickered through my mind: Maybe if I taught her some magic, she would understand better what I was talking about. I was amused because that was ridiculous. Wolves and magic were antithetical, but there was something about the intensity of both her reaction to it and her conquering of her reaction to it that suggested to me something more than just wolf. I knew a secret when I felt one, so I moved my thoughts away from that line of thinking, and mirrored the smirk in her lips for the wine glasses. I saw her look away from my eyes for the first time since we’d arrived and that was when the reality of our setting really set in. The rolling silhouette of the mountains, the treelines on each, the lake, the glory of Ash’s home. It was just like the picture. In fact… the image was precisely the same, differing only in season. The names of the places were matched to the pure majesty of viewing them, and as much as I paid attention, I watched Ash, as I had in the coffeeshop. <br/>
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Where before I had detected a sense of propriety, confirmed by the title on her business card, the sense of ancestral home ran infinitely deeper. The fact that she’d given me exactly what I’d asked for occurred to me, but the fact that I had had no idea what I was asking struck me even more. The sense of her went far beyond propriety in this place, it was as though she was queen of the mountain, and the mountain celebrated her return. The awe of her knew no bounds. I avoided the impulse to activate a series of magical sight enhancements, but it felt as though the mountains pulsed with a primal energy, as powerful as any ley-line, and it thrummed in response to her presence. The mountain didn’t care that magic had brought her home, it cared only that she was home, and celebrated her return. The flowers smelled sweeter, the wind danced with sudden merriment, the trees stood taller, the life of the mountain paused in deference to the presence of its apex upon the highest heights. Ash didn’t seem to notice, not nearly so much as she seemed to simply bask in the glory of it. From behind her, I could see the mountain respond to her, and I felt a certain kinship with the mountain: I reacted to her as well. My blood pounded, and my eyes traced her form, lingering on the proud set of her back, and the flare of her hips, and following the indications of her pointed finger. There was a change in me, now. I wasn’t stealing glances, not when she’d driven my hands deep into the places my eyes would roam. <br/>
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Then she was back at my side, and I slipped my hand around her back and rested my palm on the side of her hip as she leaned in to point out her home. “Rochdale,” I repeated, testing the name on my lips. I saw a tiny smile on her lips and it warmed me from head to toe. I didn’t know what she was thinking in that moment, but I was pleased to see her so happy. Then her hand was sweeping over the clearing we occupied, and my face broke into pure joy at the name of the place. I listened to her explanation, and grinned at her comments. “It’s a perfect name,” I said. I was watching her face, so I saw it when her eyes landed on a particular tree, and I was reminded of the infinite sadness that she’d shown me as part of her knowledge of the place. Then Ash leaned into me, and the smell of her was back in my nostrils. I met her eyes, and answered her question. “I think it’s beautiful.” I looked at her, and thought about how just how apt my words were to describe her as well. Then I smiled, turned to face her, and pulled her into me with my other hand, a gentle tugging on her hip that turned her to face me. Then I slid my hands up her form, gazing into her eyes again, and rested my hands cradling her jaw and neck, and leaned in to kiss her.<br/>
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I moved slowly, savoring the closeness and watching her until I had to turn my head to close the distance between our lips. I parted my own and pressed them to hers, then ran my tongue lightly over the line of her mouth, then closed my lips on her lower lip, pulling it between mine, and holding it captive just long enough to run my tongue across it, to taste her, and her wonder, her joy, the blessed feeling of being right at home. Then I released that lip, and repeated my kiss on her upper tier, this time parting with a nip of the teeth, pulling away to leave a slight sting of sensation. I was breathing heavy, more heavily than after swimming a mile, and my heart was again pounding in my chest. I pulled away from her, and lifted one hand to trace the pattern of freckles in her cheek as I let my eyes roam through them again, then I leaned in on impulse, buried my face in the crook of her neck, and pulled in a long breath through my nose. Her scent was earthy, vivacious, deeply aroused, and had the cool, calm texture of someone perfectly at ease with where they were. My mouth dropped open, and I was about to taste her neck when I decided there would be no coming back from that. I pulled away, far enough to see her eye to eye again, and brushed my thumb over the ridges of her lips.<br/>
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I knew one thing for certain: I was going to use as little arcane magic as possible while here. For one thing, I didn’t want to raise her hackles any more than I had to, and for another, this was her home, not mine. It was a matter of respect. Third, if I used too much power, we could be found. I didn’t want that. I didn’t care who did the finding, I wanted this time alone with Ash. So, I pulled my lower lip between my teeth and sucked the taste of her off of it, then smiled as I gazed into her eyes and backed away from her. The distance, the sudden cold, compared to pressed against her, was a special agony, but it was an agony I was happy to endure. I loved living in desire for her. Rather than use magic to prepare the spread, I knelt down next to the basket, shed my coat, folded it and set it next to the basket, then reached inside for a blanket that I unfolded and shook out flat over the grassy clearing. It landed perfectly, and I was pleased. Then I reached inside the basket for the bottle of wine, the bottle opener, and picked up the glasses in my other hand. I rose, standing to face her again, and smiled, offering her either the glasses to hold, or the bottle and opener. “Would you like to open and pour, my dear?”</span>