Chapter Twenty-One
ALEX
*
I opened my eyes, yawned, stretched. Something seemed a little different, but in the half-asleep haze that came when I awoke, I couldn't think of what exactly might be off.
I pulled the pillow back under my head, frowned a little. The pillow was different, I thought sleepily to myself. In my bed, I had pillows stuffed with goose down, covered in silk. This one felt a little different, a little scratchier and uneven. Had I gotten a different pillow somewhere, or had my housekeeper bought the wrong ones by mistake?
I shifted, and felt the bed sag a little more under me than was normal. This wasn't the right mattress.
This wasn't my bed.
I sat up a little, opening my eyes in confusion as this thought made itself heard inside my head. I would have sat up all the way, but a soft weight across my chest kept me from rising fully. I looked down at a delicate arm, cute little fingers twitching slightly as they pressed gently against my bare skin.
I followed the fingers up the arm to its source, to a naked Paxton.
That was enough to deserve its own paragraph.
Paxton was naked, in bed next to me. Or rather, I was in her bed next to her, I corrected myself. I was lying beside her, both of us half-tangled in her sheets. They clung to her curves, not hiding anything but somehow making her look incredibly seductive, a goddess reposing in profile. I couldn't pull my eyes away.
She looked... well, perfect probably wasn't the right word. I'd slept with supermodels, some of the hottest rated women on the planet. The kind of women who were instant centerfolds in any magazine. I'd seen their bodies on full display, without a single hint of cellulite, without a single tan line.
Paxton wasn't perfect, not in the same way. Her belly wasn't totally flat, her arms and thighs not completely toned and tight. Her breasts sagged down a little, pooling thanks to gravity.
But she looked more real than any other woman, and I drank the sight of her in, a man dying of thirst in a desert now faced with an oasis. My eyes danced on the curve of her round ass, an ass that I itched to grab and pull against me, to squeeze and pinch and slap and jiggle and hold. I wanted to be the bra that held up her breasts, to feel those incredible curves wriggle against me as I kissed her, as I took her again and again, as I made her scream out my name with pleasure until she was hoarse, to lose myself in her...
I didn't need to look under the sheets to know that my cock was rock hard. This wasn't just morning wood; this was the work of Paxton's body. How could she not realize that she was a sexual goddess? I replayed a few choice scenes from last night, and actually sagged back in bed at how amazing they'd been. All that teasing, all that time she'd made me wait before we slept together – it had all been worth it for the payoff.
I lay beside her a few more minutes, but my brain didn't seem inclined to go back to sleep. She wasn't yet up, so I figured that I'd surprise her with some coffee.
And then after the coffee, maybe I'd eat pastries off her naked ass, then lick off the crumbs. God, she was hot.
Not bothering to pull on my boxers, I strolled into the kitchen, looked about for any breakfast items. There was an ancient looking drip coffee maker, but that was about it. Paxton didn't seem to have much in the way of cooking amenities, and I gave up my search in vain.
Not that I needed to find pastries in a cupboard, after all. I closed my eyes for a moment. "Full breakfast spread, laid out on the counter – pastries, coffee, fresh espresso, the works," I murmured aloud as I wrote the words in my head.
I opened my eyes – and looked down at the empty counter, curiously bare of any sort of pastry, any kind of coffee.
What? Why wasn't my power working? Sure, I was near Paxton, but I wasn't trying to do anything to her. Frowning, I repeated the command inside my head – and this time, when I finished writing out the words, I felt a strange sort of... resistance.
I don't know how else to describe it. Have you ever tried to walk through an alley that serves as a natural wind tunnel, and you find yourself getting pushed ten inches backwards for each foot that you advance? Have you ever tried to push against a door while someone is pushing back from the other side, so that you need to groan and strain just for each inch of progress?
That was how it felt when I wrote that command in my head for a second time. I could do it – but barely, and only by pouring more effort into it than I'd ever had to exert before.
I finally opened my eyes, breathing heavily and feeling like I'd just sprinted half a dozen blocks to catch the last bus ride of the night. I looked down at the counter, and found two cups of coffee sitting there, along with a pair of small, rather sad looking muffins.
All that effort, and this was the most that I'd been able to produce?
For a minute, I just stared down at my meager results. What in the world was happening?
"Try something else," I panted out loud to myself a minute later, hating how my voice made me sound desperate. Not that I'd ever had performance problems before, not until-
Not until I met Paxton, and discovered that my powers didn't work on one person.
Could her apartment have the same sort of negating effect on me? Maybe, because she'd lived here so long, it also canceled out my ability to make the commands in my head come to life and impose themselves on reality. That seemed like a reasonable explanation...
"Not so fast," my brain pointed out a second later. "What about last night, when you ordered pizza?"
"I did that by calling the place on the phone," I countered. My theory still held up-
"Except that you didn't have your phone on you," my brain went on. "It was still in your pants, which you took off somewhere between the entrance to the apartment building and the foot of the bed, and you didn't want to go searching around to find them. So you snapped your fingers..."
Now I remembered. "...and my phone magically appeared in my hand," I finished my brain's thought. "And besides, I summoned cakes for her."
Damn. So I'd been able to use my powers in this apartment last night. Could it be related to time, perhaps? My powers weren't as strong in the early morning? Or maybe it had just started, and if I got away from here, it would work?
I started towards the front door of the apartment, intending to run down to the street and try my powers out there – but hesitated as I realized that I still wasn't wearing nearly enough to consider myself decent. And if my powers weren't working in here, there was no indication that they'd actually do any better out there. I really didn't want to make Paxton need to come bail me out for public indecency.
I glanced over my shoulder at the door to her bedroom, still half-closed. She was still asleep in there, still gloriously and deliciously naked from all the fun that we'd shared last night, twisted in the sheets together...
Wait a minute.
No. Please, no.
I suddenly had a guess what might have happened to my powers. It was horrible, almost too terrible for me to consider, but I needed to think of every option. All this time, when I'd hung out with Paxton, my powers worked on everything except on her, like she had some sort of field inside her body that nullified my abilities when they tried to reach out and touch her to reshape or alter her.
What if... what if after we slept together, I'd somehow managed to submerge myself in that field of hers that canceled out my ability? What if the act of sleeping with her had stripped me of my powers?
What if it was permanent?
I stopped for a moment, reached out and grabbed onto her counter with both of my hands. I leaned my head forward, concentrating on just taking deep breaths, in and out, trying to cling to my last little scraps of calm. Don't lose control and freak out just yet, Alex. It's only a theory.
A theory that made sense, though. What had changed between last night, when I'd still been able to use my powers, and this morning, when I couldn't?
I'd slept with Paxton. Repeatedly. What if each time we came together, I'd been stripping more of my power away from myself?
No sex was worth that, worth losing everything that I had. Not even with Paxton.
I opened my eyes and looked down at the pitiful excuse for breakfast I'd summoned up. Without much hope, I checked in the fridge, hoping that I'd find more food. No such luck, however. I picked up the two coffees and the pair of muffins, juggling them a little to hold all three items in my two hands.
Paxton stirred a little as I settled down on the bed beside her. She reached up above her head with both hands, stretching and yawning. Despite my concern that dominated most of my mind, I still had to take a second to appreciate the way that her whole chest swelled when she took a deep breath, the way that her nipples stood out so temptingly against her pale skin. I almost felt distracted enough to put the coffee and muffins aside and reach out to pull her into my arms. After all, if she'd already stripped me of my powers from our previous sexual sessions, could one more really hurt...?
"No!" I muttered to myself, shaking my head and trying to fight down the swelling occurring between my legs. "Bad libido!"
"What?" Paxton yawned again, blinked her soft brown eyes at me. She looked so soft and adorable, and I had to keep on continually reminding myself that she might be deadly to me. "Did you say something?"
She leaned in, looking like she wanted a kiss, and I hastily thrust the coffee at her as a distraction. "Here. And there's muffins, too." I dropped them on the covers, not bothering to take one for myself. My appetite was currently nonexistent.
She took a sip of the coffee, smiled at me. "You know, I wasn't planning on waking up next to you."
"Yeah, me neither," I said. "Listen, you said that you did some research on King Arthur, right?"
"Sure," she said, her smile fading a little. "Hey, are you okay? You look a little pale."
"Yeah, fine," I answered shortly. "Did he ever lose his powers?"
She didn't answer, instead sitting up a little further, setting her coffee cup aside on the bedside table. The motion made the sheet fall further away from her bare chest, and I fought another surge of lust. Stay on target, Alex, I reminded myself.
"What's going on?" she asked, turning to face me. Her face looked serious, now, and she brushed her hair back with one hand as she looked up at me.
Please, I prayed, let my hypothesis not be true. Please don't let her be the cause of my loss of powers.
"I think something's happening to me," I said, after a minute. "This morning, when I woke up, I tried to use my powers to summon up a full breakfast. I could barely get coffee and a couple of muffins. Something..." I reached up, rubbing my aching head. "Something is wrong."
Paxton opened her mouth, looking surprised – but then, a second later, closed it again, and I saw something that looked like recognition dawning on her features.
"You know what's going on," I read from her face, a huge wave of relief rising up to take over me. "Oh, thank god. What is it?"
She bit her lip, not replying for a minute. "You'd better put that down first," she said, nodding at my cup of coffee.
That wave of relief, such a balm on my anxiety, evaporated in an instant. I set my own untouched cup of coffee aside and tried not to hold my breath as I waited for her to reveal what I most feared.