She lingered near the door. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Charm me.”

She stepped close to me. She smiled and said my name. The charm held for two, three seconds, and then I shook it off. I grinned at her, triumphant, with some play at dominance. She smirked in response. “I see you’ve done some learning since I saw you last.”

“I have.”

“It’s a shame.”

I wanted to lash out at her. I wanted to scream at her and tell her how terrifying it had been to realize what had happened when she’d ambushed me months before. I wanted control of the situation this time. I wanted to take it without asking the way she’d taken it from me, and that scared me. I took a step away from her. “You can go if you don’t want to.” I said it careful, measured, reading her just a little to make sure she saw it as an offer and not as a challenge or a threat. “You can go any time you like.”

She shook the hair out of her face. She grinned. “But I can stay, too, eh?”

“Yes, Fallinal, you can stay.”

She chose to stay. I chose to let her. It was a slow, drawn-out thing. It was an exploration of my body as much as it was an exploration of hers. I let her tell me what to do, when to do it, and where. I took her direction well. I reveled in taking her direction. I was well and thoroughly stoned when she’d arrived, but some residue of the gift must have been coaxed out during the act itself. The longer we stayed locked together, the more I fell into the rhythms of her body and lost sight of the rhythms of my own. But I remember it. I remember every caught breath, every shudder. I remember the way her hands felt against me and the way her sweat tasted. When we lay side by side on the floor afterward, both naked, both slick and panting, I laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing. I pressed my hands against my face, but it did no good.

“What the hell?” she asked.

I was too spent too care. I was too boneless to have any dignity left. “Well, that was something,” I said. The laughter grew softer, more sporadic.

“Not bad,” she said. “Not like it was before, but not bad. You’re new at this?”

“I am.”

“Aye, you seem it. Now, you seem it. Seemed an old hand before.”

“That wasn’t me. That was the magic.”

“You are your magic.” She rolled her eyes as she said it.