Cantrips: Volume #1: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain Read online

  “You still haven’t followed my instructions.”

  He would do anything for her, and she knew it. Tyler guided the chain connecting the cuffs over the cool steel, and immediately heard a whirring noise. Before he could consider the idea of freeing himself, the hook had retracted, stretching his body upward. She kept it going until he was fully extended, his muscles taut, though his heels remained on the floor. Barely.

  “Come here,” he said again. A Master’s demand, one he knew would send an electric surge through her blood that matched his own, and create a gloriously unpredictable reaction. The sense of waiting was over. He was ready to handle anything she had to offer.

  Part Four

  Marguerite knew the significance of the tone her husband used. It never failed to send a strum of sensation coursing through her thighs. She was already pushing him and, while that was what she wanted, she knew the danger of it. He could take her over like no one else, and she was determined to give him this. She’d owed it to him for so long and, though he would argue with her about that, she had her own code of honor. She would do this, see it through, even if she was already trembling at the way he looked, his arms stretched up high. She could imagine, too well, how he was going to look when she was done with him, when she did all the things she wanted, all the things he deserved.

  She took her time responding to his command, knowing he would be following every footstep, marking the deliberately provocative saunter. He was the consummate hunter, using all his senses to profile his prey. He didn’t need sight to run it to ground. Testing the theory for her own pleasure, she slid her fingertips down her sternum, into the neck of her blouse to give her breast a light caress.

  He tilted his head. “Want me to do that, angel?”

  “In good time.” She moved closer, inhaling. He’d been in his garden. She could smell earth and rose petals lingering on his skin, as well as healthy sweat. As she came closer, she pushed the tip of the riding crop under the hem of his T-shirt, and drew upward. The cotton gathered and lifted, showing her the diagonal slide of muscle over his hip bone. The temptation to touch was more than she was willing to deny herself. He was hers, after all.

  She placed her palm on that heated expanse of skin, her thumb tracing the waistband and then dipping beneath to find his hip bone, graze over that. Coming even closer, she put one bare foot on the inside of his loafer, aligning their feet precisely so her knee pressed against the inside of his leg.

  “What are you wearing?”

  She had her moonlit-colored hair down, the way he liked it best. She scooped it up in one hand, letting the long mane of it slide over his shoulder and tease his neck as she drew back, carefully out of reach, when he turned his head in the hair’s direction.

  “A white silk blouse, very thin. A pair of riding breeches, very tight. The two grooms got impressively hard, watching me walk from my car to the stables. I had them arrange this area for me and indulged a few fantasies of my own as they said ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘no ma’am.’ Then I sent them to an early lunch so they could go to some quiet place, put their hands into their far-too-baggy jeans and have their own fantasies.”

  “Nothing under your clothes?” A muscle flexed in his jaw.

  She pressed against his chest, a brief, taunting contact, and let him feel the soft give of her breasts, the tight arousal of her nipples. “What do you think...Master?”

  His muttered oath, the overt sensual threat, made her want to push him even harder. When she lifted on her bare toes, she brought her mouth so close, her breath whispered against his face.

  “Do you want to know what I was fantasizing about, when I was ordering those two grooms to do my bidding?”

  “Not if it involves them.” He tried to bring his mouth to hers. She expected that, averting her face so his lips cruised down her cheek to her jaw. He was an excellent improviser, turning that into a slow rub of his lips, a teasing caress of his tongue along the erogenous zone just below the hinge of her jaw, where her pulse beat the hardest. She gave him that, feeling everything below her neck tighten and roll in slow pleasure.

  He said nothing else, waiting on her, his silence a palpable demand all by itself. As he probably well knew, it increased all her suppressed desires, making them push against the boundaries she wanted to maintain. If she were an ocean, she could create another Great Flood by unleashing them here. She could never get enough of him, and she had ceased trying to understand why that was, why he could do for her what no one else could.

  “I imagined it was a couple hundred years ago. You were the plantation owner, lord of the manor, with that sexy Georgian drawl of yours. I had persuaded those two grooms to ambush you on your morning ride, tie you up and bring you here, hang you on this hook for me. You were wearing those old-fashioned, snug, ivory-colored riding breeches.” Her palm dropped and cupped straining denim. Her pulse leaped under his mouth at the size he was already, the heat that blasted from his confined cock. “That feels terribly uncomfortable.”

  “Cruel Mistress. It makes you wet, knowing I’m that hard.”

  “Would you beg me to make you more comfortable?”

  “You know I don’t beg, angel.”

  “Well then, I’ll continue.” Digging her nails into him, she dropped her thumb to idly trace the generous weight of testicles that filled out the jeans so perfectly. And the way these jeans fit his ass...

  Not more than a few days ago, she’d enjoyed that very view while watching him rearrange border plants in the garden. Curled up in the hammock chair reading, she’d come up with an even more pleasant occupation. He’d turned around to find she’d put her hand beneath her gauzy white skirt to stroke her pussy. Rocking back and forth in the hammock chair, slow and easy as the breeze, she’d indulged myriad fantasies about him while the cicada song rasped in the morning heat. She’d known he would notice in his own time, no rush. It had pleased her to be doing it so close to him, without his knowledge. His reaction when he did discover what she was doing had been just as pleasurable, a different form of sharp anticipation.

  He’d punished her for starting without him by threading her arms and legs through the holes in the hammock hemp ropes, which held her thighs open and kept her hands out of the equation. Then he’d knelt and put his clever mouth and agile tongue to work on her pussy, bare because he hadn’t permitted her underwear that morning. He’d commanded her to remain completely still. An exercise for her own considerable control, because it had been an excruciatingly long build up to the climax. When she was on the cusp of orgasm, he’d drawn back and opened his jeans with an impatient hand. He’d pushed that thick, steel and velvet cock with a salty wet tip between her lips, stretching them, filling her mouth while her pussy wept for him. Holding the top of the hammock chair in one strong hand, he’d rocked her back and forth against him, just as slow and easy, as she tried not to beg.

  He could turn a Mistress into a slave. She wanted to give him the pleasure of that kind of surrender. Wanted him to trust her with it.

  When at last he’d pulled free, he’d tilted her up, all those strong muscles rippling across his chest, and driven into her. Clutching her through the rope fibers, he’d used them and the rasp of his fingers against her hips to pump into her, her body entirely at his mercy, the climax pulling her up and throwing her out into waves of sensation that had led to screams she couldn’t bite back.

  Such thoughts wouldn’t help her keep control in the present, but the air of the stable was already saturated with sex, and she’d been contemplating his arrival for well over an hour. If his hands were free, she knew he could make her climax with barely a touch.

  “Isn’t it odd,” she said, keeping her voice low so it would be steady, “how back in those plantation days those breeches so clearly showed the line of a man’s cock, when they were all so supposedly modest and pure in thought...”

  His breath huffed out in a half chuckle. “No man can be pure in thought around you, Marguerite.”

 
Same goes to any woman within a mile of your scent, your power. Your sheer male beauty. She drew back out of range again, though she kept her body close. Allowing both of her hands to slide beneath the T-shirt, holding the crop on her wrist, she spread her fingers and traveled up that terrain that should be so familiar, and yet was always such a new thrill to her sensitive palms, the nerve-rich ends of her fingers. She covered each ridge of muscle, the silken arrow of hair down the center of his stomach, following it up to the pectorals, the fine mat of masculine hair there.

  For so long, at the club, she’d had her share of pretty, pretty boys, like those two grooms. All smoothly sculpted muscle. Tyler’s body was that of a rugged, mature male, the landscape occasionally marked by a scar, a memory of risk that could have taken him from her before she even knew he was her salvation.

  There was a time she couldn’t afford to show tenderness, or her own deep needs, but it was not with this man, not now, not ever again. So she permitted herself to lay her cheek on his chest, over his beating heart and rub there. She intended to make him mindless with lust, but the joy of being his wife, of him being her husband, was that she could also take the time for this.

  He bent his head over hers, his lips grazing the crown of her head. “What is this all about, angel?”

  Lifting her face, she caressed his mouth with her hand, liking how the blindfold emphasized the firmness of his lips and slope of jaw, the fall of hair on his forehead. He kept it cropped short on the sides and back, but she liked it a little longer on the top, and he indulged her preferences.

  “Do you remember when you first started pursuing me—so relentlessly—you agreed to submit to me for one night?”

  “It was a memorable night.”

  “Yes. It was a shameful night.”

  “No.” His head came up then. “It was the night you started learning to trust me, Marguerite. There was no shame in that. If you think that, you and I will have a problem.” Though she couldn’t see his expression beneath the blindfold, his tone left no doubt of his intent. “And if you think I can’t slip a hook, you’ll find out differently.”

  She was a tall woman. Though he was taller, it didn’t take too much of a stretch to follow his arms with her hands, grazing the straining muscles until she clasped his forearms. She took the T-shirt up with her, baring his chest and shoulders, pushing the neckline over his face and then past it, up to the wrists, securing the folds of the shirt in the cuffs, so the garment would stay out of their way.

  She let her gaze travel down again, because it was impossible not to do so. All that bare male skin. An upward stretch like this loosened the jeans’ waistband, made them drop a little lower, hint at the curve of his excellent ass, the architecture of muscle sloping to the groin area.

  He had his sweaty combat and gym sessions where he might lift a couple hundred pounds, punch a gym bag, do grueling reps and sparring matches. But she could do yoga moves that would make the jaws of his fellow weight pumpers drop and their imaginations go wild.

  This wasn’t one of them, but it was a palpable reminder. Lifting her left leg, standing with easy balance on the right, she coiled it high around his hip, letting her calf brush his taut ass and rub a teasing circle on it before she braced her foot on the back of his calf to balance her in the modified tree pose.

  “Tough guy.” She whispered it against his ear and caught it in her teeth. “You know I’m not intimidated by you.” She’d never admit it if she was. There’d been times he’d scared her to death, because of the things he could make her feel and want, but he already knew that well enough. No need to give him a better opinion of himself than necessary. As Violet was fond of saying, Tyler’s arrogance might be fully justified, but there was no need to give a Ferrari an additional wax job.

  She suppressed another soft smile at that thought, but, remembering what answer she needed to give to him, she sobered.

  “That night was shameful because of what I did to you.”

  Whatever he’d been about to say in their escalating sexual fencing came to stillness as his brow creased above the blindfold. “No, angel.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “That night was about something far different, true, but I want to give you what I should have given you that night. I want you to let me take care of you, trust me with everything you are, the way you’ve taught me to trust you. I want to give you that gift, the way I didn’t, all that time ago. Though I know we’re past that, it’s bothered me. I want you to know you can trust me, like this.”

  “I do. And I trusted you that night, angel. I never faltered in that trust. Not once, and not once since.”

  How he could draw tears from her so easily, when she had gone years dry-eyed, was another mystery to her. But she guessed it was understandable. When you were lonely and unable to trust any softer emotions, tears would not come. When you trusted in love, you could celebrate it with laughter or tears. He’d brought both miracles into her life. A woman’s kind of miracles.

  Now she wanted to bring him a man’s kind of miracle. A fantasy that would make him hard whenever he recalled it, whether it was tomorrow or years from now, when he was in a rocking chair, thinking he was far beyond such things.

  “I thought about keeping those two male grooms around. Have them strip you, put you in those tight, tight pants. A pair of black boots. They were fine-looking young men. All lean muscle and hair like horses’ manes. Eager colts. I’d have made them kneel and polish your boots while your muscles gleamed with perspiration. Your shoulders”—her palms grazed over them—“would have been knotted, a Dom’s tension at being touched without permission. I’d have stood back, watched your cock getting harder as you imagined the ways you’d punish me for it. You know that I’d have them do such things to you again and again, just to get the same response from you every time.”

  Her fingers whispered high on his thigh. “They were eager colts, but you’re the dangerous mount in the stable. I’d take care of your discomfort, open your pants to stretch your cock out, but only to put some tack on you. A cock harness with a stimulator, and then I’d put you back in those tight pants so they would get damp in front. Your cock showing your intent to fuck me, to take me down beneath you and prove who’s Master.”

  This time, when he whipped his head around, she didn’t try to evade. She met him, welcoming the hard, open kiss with a sound of helpless desire caught in the back of her throat. His tongue swept down over hers, tangling and shoving, his lips closing over her mouth as if devouring it, letting her feel all the power and lust he had to give to her.

  Marguerite cupped his skull, fingers pressing into hard bone to convey how tightly her own arousal was leashed, how wet for him she already was. She leaned into his body, letting him feel every inch he couldn’t touch with his hands, what she wouldn’t let his cock have, until she did what she intended.

  They had so much further to go. She just hoped his considerable ability to derail her from her plans, sweep her away on a tide of her own personal desires, wouldn’t overwhelm her before she got him there first.

  Part Five

  Catching his bottom lip in her teeth, she held him there as he stilled, his hot breath caressing her face. She gave him a tiny flicker with her tongue, then drew back.

  “I’m going to strip you now. I want to see all of you.”

  “Your voice isn’t steady, angel. Why don’t you let me go?”

  “So you can rob me of speech entirely?” She smiled, but took several steps away to open the cabinet where extra tack was kept, only she’d placed some different equipment there. She was sure he was acquainted with the snick of a well-oiled switchblade, so she wasn’t surprised to see his head come up, a delicious tension running through his upper body at the sound.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From your desk, of course.” Coming back to him, she laid her palm on his chest to feel the thud of his heart. “Hope you’re not fond of that shirt.”

  “I’ll use the strips
to tie your hands when I get loose from here.”

  “Threats, promises.” She leaned into him, using the firm brace of his body to reach up and slice smoothly through the seam and free the shirt from the cuffs. She knew as long as she was leaning against him, he’d hold steady. Taking care of her, as always.

  She’d intended to drop the shirt to the side, but she gave herself a moment. Adjusting so her shoulder was propped against his chest, she brought the fabric to her nose and inhaled. She had all sorts of sexy lingerie that Tyler had bought her, but she’d noticed they both seemed to prefer it when she wore one of his shirts to bed. The sense of claim, and being claimed. If something awful ever happened to him, she suspected she’d just lay all of his clothes on the bed, use them as her linens for as long as she could last without him. Or simply sleep in his closet.

  Because such a thought was unbearable, she pushed it away and let the shirt go, moving to his waist band. Using the tip of the blade, she traced that delectable diagonal line of muscle from groin to hip bone, revealed by the low ride of the jeans. She made a fine red line, just short of drawing blood.

  “Sometimes I’ve wanted to brand you, the way I did Brendan that night,” she mused. “Something that said you were mine, that I could reach over and touch at night, as if it were a magical symbol that would always keep you with me.” She raised her gaze to his firm mouth, the attentive cant of his head. “And sometimes I want to give you pain, as if it’s somehow more permanent than pleasure, like cauterizing a wound to heal it. Does that make sense?”

  “You do whatever you need to do, angel,” he said in a husky voice. “Just touch me.”

  She drew the knife up, then down, a flourish that did draw blood, another thin line. Pressing her palm against it, she felt the essence of him dampen her palm, make it sticky like his other fluids could.