"In a minute. I just want to tell you something. Last night, around the third orgasm, I suddenly had this epiphany about my powers. I was able to just reach up to Flor and touch him, and I took away all his bad memories of the abuse he suffered under Shaw. Nothing else, not even the fact of what happened, just the...really bad stuff. The stuff that made him not want to get close. And it was really great. So you were right. Letting go...it helped."
"Ha! I knew it. I knew you'd--" I slipped the rubber band around his cock and snapped. "--MOTHERFUCKER. What the hell was that!?" He doubled over.
"I just knew you were going to gloat. It was a teeny tiny rubber band. Here." I put it in his hand. "I'll make it up to you now." I got to my knees and took his cock fully in my mouth right away.
"You little...bitch... Damnit...you're my perfect woman."
It didn't take long to get him off. "So you were into that, huh? I'll remember."
"No!" he snapped, and later that afternoon, I noticed the stash of rubber bands in the kitchen drawer was gone.
I still couldn't stand to watch the news, but the guys had it on all day. One of them was always watching it, and I knew the situation was still tense. When the humans freaked out over rumors of the queens and tried to invade Istara, that was more than enough to light the short fuse.
Uncle Roy called Ian. He was getting the family out to stay with a friend in Vermont.
“He’s beyond pissed at me,” Ian said. “I told him I ran off with some guys in a band. It was the only thing he’d believe.”
"The human media is making a big fuss about how Viktor left his vice president in charge and abandoned his people," Alistair said. "He'll have to fly home, I'm sure, and...he'd bring Mina. Maybe I should go back to New York."
"I don't think so," Waylon said. "You're having control issues. He won't let anything happen to her. Wait it out a little."
"I need her with me. I need to know she's okay."
"Viktor isn't even back yet. Maybe he won't come back. Who knows his deal."
"You don't need me here," Alistair said. "I don't even fit in. The shifters would rather just meet with you, since they know you're of the same kind. I...don't like being here. I need to stay human for now, and it's easier to do that with other humans in the New York office. Then, as soon as I have word of Mina...I'm ready to get back to her side."
"I think that's fair, Alistair," I said. I was starting to feel bad for him, crushed under his secrets, not trusted by the people he was trying to protect. "Just stay safe. And when you do see Mina, for god's sake, try not to act like a possessive dick."
"I will try," Alistair said solemnly. I felt like his brain was just going, Mina Mina Find Mina. But at least he wasn't arguing. And I’d always read that trait was how all mongrels were.
With Alistair gone, Esther popping in and out, and the household staff mostly leaving us alone, it was just the four of us, and I was very happy about that. Ian could drive, and most days he trekked out to train with the wolf militia while Flor spent his days with the birds.
Waylon stayed home studying magic, often isolating himself for hours, other times taking long walks in the woods alone. It made me a little nervous at first, but I soon realized that despite his brazen personality, he was really very careful. He wasn't going to fall into a ravine or anything. He needed the time to hone that sixth sense sorcerers relied on, that Viktor had obviously mastered in a forceful way. After hours outside alone, he would come back with plant specimens for spells.
"Do you want to help me identify them, pussycat? You seem bored."
"Of course! I don't know the first thing about plants, though."
He broke a stem in half. "Smells like it's in the mustard family, don't you think? London rocket...I think. You can eat it, and it's good for curses too. But I want to be extremely sure of everything I gather and not poison anyone."
"You...amaze me a little sometimes. You're a plant guy too?"
"I'm a sorcerer. All sorcerers have to be 'plant guys', as you put it, because spells are largely made out of plants. Nothing that amazing about it."
"Okay, but how do you find the plant in the first place? I mean, don't tell me you smelled it from a distance."
"Sometimes I do. Especially shifted. You would too, if you got your head out of the city mode for a second. But other times it's just by touch."
"How do you know where to start touching?"
He stood up from the table. "Come on. We're going outside. It's like you've never seen a plant before."
"They just all seem the same to me," I said, looking all around at the edge of the forests that started right next to Merrymore. “Except for the flowers." It was getting to be late summer. Stuff was growing everywhere, green leafy stuff, trees, several types of wildflowers…it was nice, but to me it was just ‘nature’.
Waylon led the way, a step ahead; he was using his cane of course, but he'd been walking every day and seemed to know the path pretty well, at least from this point. "Well, I'll tell you one basic sorcerer's piece of advice; there is more diversity at the edges. Edges of forests, paths, rivers--any edge. So that's a good place to start. But why don't you park your ass down there in this clearing?" He pointed me to a spot, still within the view of the house, where we were at the edge of the forest, and it was a little meadowy patch in the sun.
"Looks like a nice place to roll around, I'll say that," I said, getting on my knees and then sprawling out in the sunshine on top of flowers and soft leaves.
He laid on his side next to me. "How many different plants are around?"
"Ugh, I didn't know there would be a pop quiz. Like...twelve?"
"I didn't mean guess, I mean, look around and count them."
"Why?"
"Lesson's over," he said, grabbing me by the hips and running slightly tickling fingers down them to my legs. I shrieked with surprise.
"That--was not a lesson!"
"It was. I just reminded you that you are way, way too impatient when it comes to magic. Like I keep telling you. No discipline. You think it's surprising that I can find plants when I can't see them, and I ask you to use your eyes and you're like, dur, I dunno, twelve?"
"Shut up!" I laughed. "Okay, so the lesson was...a sorcerer is someone who stops to pay attention and your fingers are more talented than my eyes."
"Is that a kiss-up response so I don't tickle you to death?"
"Maybe. Oh god--haha--yes--"
Waylon's fingers teased my skin until I was trying to twist away from him and then he slid a hand under my skirt and stroked my clit, knowing all too well how to keep me when he wanted me.
"But I didn't learn that quickly," Waylon said. "Leif taught me all that stuff. To be patient, mostly. Sorcery takes so much patience that being able to see the plants in the forest would speed things up a little but not a lot, because there are so many steps after that to make a really strong spell."
"Leif sounds like he was a good friend," I said gently, picking up on Waylon's mood changing a little, although he was still running a thumb very slowly along a wet channel of my underwear pressing between my mounds and it was very, very distracting.