“I want to take you,” she whispered. “Slowly. I want you to take me.” She eased onto the bed on hands and knees to straddle him. “Slowly.” She seemed to melt over him. “As if there’ll never be an end to it.”

Her lips were warm and soft on his. Seeking. The taste of him slid through her system like a drug. When he rolled to take more, to deepen it, she went with him. But not in surrender.

She ran her fingertips lightly up and down his back, finding pleasure in the ridge of muscle, the ripple of it as she aroused him.

She let herself float on sensation as he gave her, and took from her, the gradual glide she’d demanded. Candlelight shifted, then the flames ran straight and true as spears and filled the air with fragrance.

They rose together, danced on that scented air. They knelt on the bed, centered on it, torso to torso and mouth to mouth.

If it was a spell, he’d have stayed bound eternally without question, without struggle. Witch or woman, a blend of both, she was his.

He watched the way his hand looked against her skin, dark to light, rough to fragile. The way her breasts could be cupped in his palms, and how the tips hardened under the brush of his thumb.

They touched, and tasted. A brush, a sip, a lazy caress, a long, slow drink.

When at last he slipped inside her, the gentle rise and fall was like waves of silk. Magic shimmered as they watched each other, as for each, for that moment, no one else existed. Beat to beat, with an intimacy that was more than mating, that abounded past needs and outraced passion.

It welled in her heart, overflowed in a spill like gold.

Her lips curved again as he lowered his mouth to hers. Their hands joined, fingers linking as they slid off the world together.

When she lay curled to his side, her palm over the steady beat of his heart, it seemed nothing could touch them. Her haven, she thought, was safe, as they were safe inside it.

All of her fears and worries, that creeping dread, seemed foolish now.

They were simply a man and a woman in love, lying in a warm bed and listening to the last of a storm pass overhead.

“I wonder if I’ll ever learn how to manipulate objects.”

“Honey, you manipulate just fine,” he chuckled.

“No.” She gave him a playful slap. “I mean moving things from one point to another. If I could, I’d chant the proper incantation and so on, and we’d have chicken soup in bed.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Does it?” he asked.

“I bet it does for Mia, if she wants it enough. But for lowly students such as me, it takes getting up, going into the kitchen and doing it all the old-fashioned way.”