<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">As I approached I had eyes for nothing but her. She froze at my entrance, a thrill running through her, and a pause, again like she could taste the very air. When my aura surged forth to envelop her and everything in her place, it included her in a way I’d never felt before. It was like I could feel the hairs lifting on her neck, the rush in her breathing, the goosebumps rippling over her skin, and the tiniest movements of her fingers, but all that and something more: I felt her allow the magic inside her, become a part of her, mesh with her being. My magic was as much me as it was a part of me, and with the complete access she’d given me, her willingness, there was almost nothing I couldn’t do to her. As I witnessed the rapturous shudder running through her shoulders, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do; magic of a different kind.<br/>
<br/>
I saw her smirk first as she turned, then the humor dancing in her eyes. She looked like she had a smart remark to make until her gaze got lost in the spell I wove around us, and then her eyelids lowered, and her lips parted for no words at all but for aching desire. As the distance finally closed, and I took her face between my hands, I felt a completeness that I’d never known I’d gone without. Something about her, holding her, touching her, kissing her, was a balm and a panacea and an intoxicant all at once. She made me feel like I’d finally come home, and that I was welcome and wanted there. I poured the zeal of that feeling into the kiss, brief though it was, and smiled as I realized she was pulling me in closer by my spell-woven jacket. Her kiss was torturously slow, and touched with a patience that thrilled me to my very core. The taste of her passion swiftly became my favorite in the worlds.<br/>
<br/>
My name on her lips and tongue put a pounding in my heart that I could feel through my entire body. I had sudden flashes in my mind of moments in which she cried out my name, to her own in echoed response, and my body reacted to the images as she hooked her leg around me and flipped us around, turning the tables. She was careful about it, like I might want an escape, but she was already inside my magic, inside my coat, inside my heart. The physicality of our position was the easiest to get out of, I was a conjurer after all, but there was no way I was moving from that spot. Putting my coat between my magic and my heart might seem strange, but that coat was my first, second, third, fourth, fifth and final line of defense against anything and everything. Between its spells and its manifold extradimensional pockets, I had everything within it I needed to survive, thrive, and defend myself. Ash was using it to reel me in, and there was nowhere else I’d rather be.<br/>
<br/>
She was close, but not close enough. As she spoke I moved my hands down to her hips, slid them over her flank, and pulled her closer, so her body was pressed against mine. It was the damnedest thing, but somehow I was able to focus better once that contact was made, instead of the other way around. My wits returned to me as I heard her first utterance. “You’ll not be damned if I can help it,” I said, and simply smiled at how she’d named the actual spell I’d used to get through her door. Given that she was spreading my jacket wider, and eyeing my revealed form with predatory hunger, I knew her words bore little need for response other than my darkened gaze and knowing smirk. Then her hand was slipping up my neck, and her lips were taking the advantage of mine as I’d done to her. Ecstatic thrills cascaded through me as her body shifted into that kiss, and a small rumble of passionate hunger and erotic need sounded from my throat as her lips met mine once more. Then she was pulling away again, with a comment that lacked my primary purpose, and she swept her cleaning supplies away as she left to the back room.<br/>
<br/>
There was a sudden chill in the air as she left, or so it felt, and I grinned in spite of myself, realizing that she was the heat I missed. Then she was back, with the second box bearing a bottle of her masterpiece that I’d seen that day. She set it on the counter and leaned over it, eyes alight with teasing humor and full of intent. I was never so happy for the ability to teleport to exactly where I wanted to be as I was in that moment. I vanished from in front of her, appeared behind her forward-leaning form, stepped in close so my body pressed into her from behind, set my hands on her sides and slipped them forward to roam over her belly, and leaned in to plant a kiss in the crook of her neck. I knew if my excitement had not been clear to her before, it was then, and I also knew she had no patience for beating around the bush, as it were. I opened my mouth, and spoke my choice. “I didn’t come here tonight for business, Ash. I came here for you.” I leaned in again, opened my mouth wide and set my teeth against the flesh of her neck and grazed her skin in a slow bite as I slid my left hand up her torso and my right hand down her belly. I kissed her neck where I’d bitten it, and then spoke again. “And before you ask, no, this is not my treatment of ‘all the girls.’ There have been none before, and I’m the kind who’d prefer there to be none after.” I stopped my hands before they got anywhere terribly interesting, and let them rest on her body. “I must say, I’ve been looking forward to sampling your wine from first scenting it.” I started my middle finger at her sternum in a back-and-forth, sliding tickle. “I daresay one bottle may not be enough, for my thirst is great,” I mimicked the motion with my lower hand, “and I’m interested in seeing you…” I kissed her neck behind her jaw. “Quenched.”</span>