“Caused by you,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and I’m trying to help. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to make this into something romantic or meaningful.”
His reply was gently arid. “What would you like me to do?”
Justine thought for a moment. “Tell me the worst things about yourself. Make yourself so unappealing that there’s no way I could fall for you.”
He gave her a dubious glance and pulled her from the bed.
Justine followed him to the bathroom. “Tell me some of your bad habits,” she persisted. “Do you leave wet towels on the bed? Clip your fingernails in the living room?”
“No.” Jason stepped into the shower and gestured for her to join him.
“Then what?” She stood beside him, shivering in comfort as the hot water streamed over her. “You’re not perfect. There has to be something.”
Picking up a bar of soap, Jason lathered his hands. “When I get sick,” he ventured, “I have the personality of a rabid bull terrier.” He began to wash her, his big, soap-slick hands moving over her body. “During a movie, I always point out plot holes while everyone else is trying to watch.” Noticing the growing smile on Justine’s face, he bent his head to steal a kiss. “Sometimes during an argument, I’ll pull out my cell phone to look up information to prove I’m right, and break back into the conversation when it’s no longer relevant.” He paused. “I leave empty containers in the fridge. Whenever there’s a dish of mixed nuts around, I eat all the almonds and cashews and leave the peanuts for everyone else. And sometimes when I can’t sleep at night, I randomly correct other people’s Wikipedia pages.” His mouth swiped over hers, absorbing the sounds of her laughter as if he could taste it. “Tell me yours.”
She went behind him and began to soap up his back, admiring the powerful contours. “I whistle while I’m mopping floors or vacuuming. Usually the beginning of that Black Keys song on the commercials. One day I whistled it so much that Zoë actually came after me with a spatula.” She paused as she heard him chuckle. “When I’m bored,” she continued, “I shop for stuff I don’t need on the Internet. And I can stop playing a game, any kind of game, right in the middle, and never go back to it.”
“Really? How can you do that?” Jason sounded genuinely mystified.
“Short attention span. I also love to give advice to people who haven’t asked for it.” She reached around him, her soapy hands coasting over his groin to grip the taut, heavy shaft. “And as you’ve recently discovered, I give aphrodisiacs to unsuspecting guests at my inn.”
He was fully erect, his breathing sharp-edged. “You make a habit of it?” he managed to ask.
“You’re the first, actually.”
“I’ll be the last.”
Her fingers tightened and slid along the length of him. “How should I do it?” she whispered against his wet back. “Like this?… Or that?”
“That’s…” He was forced to take an extra breath. “God. Yes. That.” Lowering his head, he braced his hands against the wall, his chest heaving.
Justine curved herself to his back and caressed him while water rushed over them both and white steam curled through the air. He muttered a few words, endearments, curses, and she drank in the sounds of his excitement. Her hold on him became urgent, her hand pumping and priming the sensation, the heat gathering hard and fast. He came with a low, helpless sound, and she crooned and pulled the pleasure from him, relishing his rough masculine shudders.
Jason turned off the shower and dried them both with a thick white towel. “Now you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need anything.”
Jason gripped the nape of her neck carefully, and bent his mouth to her ear. “You need what I’m about to give you,” he whispered, and every hair on her body lifted. Taking her back to bed, he pulled the covers down and stretched her out on the sheets.
He loomed over her, drawing his fingertips over her body, mapping the most sensitive nerves. She writhed and whispered for him to go faster. But it would be done at his pace, slow as summer twilight. He persisted until she was still and quiet, breathing deeply. Heat danced up to the surface of her skin wherever his lips touched, wherever his body pressed her.
He had already learned too much about her, and he was using it, playing her. Moving down between her thighs, he licked between the lips of her sex, tugging at the soft flange, and when the desire turned too raw, she whimpered and pushed at his head. But he grabbed her hands and held them tightly, and made her hold still, made her take it. The sensation went right to the top of her skull. She jolted with every melting stroke, the pleasure racing through her veins, sparks snapping and colliding. Her legs spread and her toes curled as she felt the beginnings of release, but he stopped and lifted his head.
Deliberately he pinned her with his weight, entering her with a low, heavy slide. He trapped her arms over her head and stared down at her with those intent dark eyes, while he circled his h*ps in a deliberate grind, teasing unmercifully. She thrashed and squirmed in an agony of tension, gasping out incoherent words … oh please now please … and she heard his quiet laugh as he made love to her with wrenching slowness, sending her into helpless spasms.
Later in the night she awakened with his hands on her again, his mouth at her breast. She moaned as he slid inside her, her head rolling back against his supportive arm. Sensation rippled through her, and the ripples became waves, and the waves surged without stopping.
The hours blended into a long, dark fantasy. She had never suspected that pleasure could be so varied, so dazzling. And then there were the drowsy conversations in between, when they lay together and savored words as if they were kisses.
“What was it like in the monastery?” Justine whispered, wanting to know more about an experience that was completely alien to her. “Did you like staying there?”
His hand stroked slowly over her back. “No. But I needed it.”
“Why?”
“I was tired of feeling like nothing mattered. Of going through the motions. Zen teaches you that everything is important. Even a task like washing a bowl is worth doing well. It helps you to be aware, so that entire days and weeks of your life don’t slip away.”
Justine rested her head on his shoulder, her hand splayed gently over his heartbeat. “Did you have to do a lot of meditation?”
“In the evenings. The day started at four in the morning with a communal lecture. After that we had breakfast followed by work like weeding the garden or chopping wood. In the afternoon each disciple would have a private meeting with the temple master, the Roshi. And then meditation was after dinner. The Roshi assigned a question to each of us. While you meditate on it, you try to quiet your mind and understand its meaning. Some people struggle for years to find the answer.”
His fingertips discovered the fine chain around her neck, tracing over it gently as he continued. “One night I had a vision while I was meditating. I was in a temple, walking toward a shadow that was shaped exactly like me. I realized that I was the temple—and the shadow was the empty space where a soul should have been.”
Justine felt a chill of uneasiness mingled with sympathy. “Did you tell the Roshi about it?”
Jason nodded. “He didn’t think the lack of a soul was anything to worry about. He advised me to accept it. Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy. Part of the path to enlightenment.” Jason’s voice turned wry. “Unfortunately I turned out to be a lousy Buddhist.”
“I’d make a worse Buddhist than you. I hate questions with no clear answers.” Justine raised her head to look at him. “So you never came to accept it? Not having a soul?”
“Would you?” he asked wryly.
She hesitated and shook her head. No. She would probably be exactly like him … trying to fill the soul-shaped void inside.
* * *
The morning after was wretched, of course.
Justine awakened early by force of habit, and managed to dress and sneak out before Jason had opened his eyes. She was sore, and clumsy from exhaustion, and nearly sick with worry. Swearing and stumbling, she went to her cottage and took the hottest shower she could stand.
An inspection in the mirror revealed that her eyes were dark-circled and bloodshot. A faint whisker burn was emblazoned on her throat. Groaning, she pulled her hair back in a high, tight ponytail and covered her face with tinted moisturizer.
After downing a cup of coffee along with a couple of ibuprofens, she picked up her phone and dialed Sage. There were few people she would have called at this hour, but Sage was a habitually early riser.
“Good morning,” Sage said in her usual sprightly tone. “How are you, Justine?”
“Okay. How about you?”
“Splendid. We spent yesterday picking elderberries. The next time you visit, we’ll have pancakes with elderberry syrup.”
“Sounds nice.” Justine rubbed her forehead wearily. “Sorry to bother you so early, but…”
“Oh, no bother at all.”
“… I have a question I was hoping you could help me with. Yesterday I brewed a potion that didn’t work, and I need to figure out why.”
“Tell me all about it.” Alchemy was Sage’s specialty—she loved nothing more than brewing and mixing magical formularies. In the past, she had taught classes on oils, powders, elixirs, salves, and washes. She was knowledgeable about which ingredients might be substituted, or which ones could be added to augment a potion’s power.
“It was a discouragement potion,” Justine said. “I decided to give it to Jason yesterday.”
“What a good idea.”
“I thought so, too. But it didn’t work.”
“Are you sure? You should allow sufficient time for it to take effect.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Justine said, squirming a little as she recalled the sexual gymnastics of the previous night.
“Are you confident in the quality of the ingredients you used? Did you ritually cleanse the workspace first?”
“Yes.” Justine described exactly what process she had used, and listed the elements of the formula. “Is it because I gave it to Jason in a shot of vodka? Would alcohol ruin it?”
“No,” Sage said thoughtfully, “that shouldn’t have made any difference.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not a maiden…?”
Blank silence.
“It called for maiden’s tears,” Justine said, “but I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference if I wasn’t, you know … innocent, so I—”
“Justine: Are you saying you put literal tears into the potion? You made yourself cry?”
“Well … yes. I’ve seen weirder ingredients in potions. I didn’t think much about it.”
Sage’s tone was gently acerbic. “Maiden’s tears is a plant, dear.”
“A plant?”
“A weed also known as bladder campion. It’s listed in the book on herbology I gave to you. You promised you would read all of it.”
“I skimmed parts,” Justine admitted. “It’s hard to stay awake when I’m reading about plants.”
“If you intend to practice magic even at the most basic level, Justine, you must study and prepare thoroughly. No skimming. No dabbling. The potion didn’t result in adverse effects for Jason, I hope?”
Justine was too tired to put it delicately. “Other than making him as randy as a three-balled tomcat, you mean?”
“Oh, dear.” A disconcerted pause. “Are you going to brew another batch?”
“No, Jason’s leaving tomorrow morning.”
“Praise Hecate” came Sage’s immediate response.
“Yes. I should never have broken the geas, Sage. I had no idea I would be opening a Pandora’s box.”
“It wasn’t your fault. After some soul-searching, I’ve come to regret the decision we made on your behalf so long ago. It was a mistake—done with the best of intentions—but still a mistake.” Ruefully Sage added, “The Circle of Crystal Cove is a talented coven, but I wouldn’t say that the study of magical ethics has ever been our strong suit.”
“You’ve always said magic is fine as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. You told me that’s why so many spells end with ‘An harm ye none.’”
“Yes. But how are we to know when a spell will harm someone or not? We can never be certain of all the repercussions. That was the dilemma we faced when Marigold asked us to bind a geas to you. But she persuaded us that it would spare you suffering.”
“She may have been right,” Justine said mournfully.
Sage let out a slow sigh. “Oh, Justine. All day yesterday I kept remembering how it felt to lose Neil. Even now, there are times when it takes my breath away to remember that he’s gone. But there are gifts that we receive only through grief.”
“I don’t want to think about the possible benefits of grief,” Justine said. “All I want is for Jason to be safe.”
“Will he be?”
Justine knew that what Sage really meant was, Are you in love with him? “I don’t know.” She gripped the phone tightly. “I’m scared. I’m not sure how far it’s gone. I keep telling myself that it can’t happen this fast. I mean, I can’t fall in love with someone I’ve only just met.”
“Of course you can,” Sage said gently. “Some people’s hearts are very efficient that way.”
Justine’s throat clenched. “If I’ve put him in danger, I have to fix it,” she said. “There must be an answer in the Triodecad. There has to be something I can do.”
“My poor darling girl, don’t you think I tried anything and everything to save my Neil? Don’t you think your mother sought to have your father spared? Whatever you do will only make things worse. The nature of the bane is sacrificial.”
A human sacrifice. Was that the price of love for someone like her?
“You once told me that nothing is impossible in magic, only improbable.”
“Yes. But I also told you that we must never attempt the improbable. No meddling with matters of life or death. That is the spiritual realm of high magick, which is beyond our power. It’s trying to assume a godlike role for human purposes. And that will never end well.”