“Your ass is bigger.”

“Unlike you, I believe eating is required to sustain life.”

A complex, powerful spell designed to be harmless fantasy. This was the type of thing that drove Derek crazy when it came to Raina. But Raina was Raina. Sometimes Ruby thought Raina’s mother had chosen her name based on the adage: “Might as well try to stop the rain from coming down.”

She tried to relax, but apprehension still knotted the muscle group between her shoulders when Raina closed the door, leaving her in a chamber the size of a bedroom. Nothing was in it except a polished oak pedestal and the burning candle sitting on it. Though mundane eyes couldn’t see them, Ruby discerned the circle drawn on the floor, the symbols marking thirteen evenly spaced points. Symbols also marked the key compass points on the walls and ceiling. Noting their placement and meaning, she appreciated the elegant craft that had allowed an enclosed space for magic to ricochet and become four-dimensional.

Her apprehension had nothing to do with a lack of confidence in Raina’s abilities. Probably just the opposite. Fantasies weren’t harmless, not for her. That driving hunger came from a black well inside her, and it took very little for it to boil forth. Just being here, in Raina’s house of nonstop fornication, was enough to have it doing a clog dance on her uneasy stomach. Most days she could put a tight lid on it, but then yearning desire, a prettier but no less demanding face of that hunger, would sneak up on her in dreams. Sometimes it chased her through the day. If it became unbearable, she was like an AA-attending alcoholic, overwhelmed by the never-ending craving. A quick trip out of town and a violent binge with Mikhael was followed by the hangover of shame and renewed resolve, couched in the battered lie that it would never happen again.

In short, she spent more time quelling such imaginings than dwelling upon them. So why the hell had she agreed to do this?

She was being a drama queen. This was just a favor for Raina. A test. Like she was in a laboratory, wearing a white coat, very clinical. Of course, it was far more likely she was the lab rat and Raina was wearing the white coat. A sexy, tailored lab coat, made by a French or Italian designer. Cheap synthetic blends had never touched those silken shoulders.

Ruby put her hand on her abdomen, soothing that clog dance. Okay, she could do this. She’d fantasize about a long bubble bath with a good book. The New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys would be serenading her from a corner. A few of them could multitask and give her a foot and back massage. Wash her hair while crooning one of their love songs. That would be perfect. A perfect, safe fantasy.

She positioned herself in one corner of the room. She didn’t have to act as obliviously defenseless as most humans did. It didn’t affect the activation of the spell, after all.

Interestingly, the very moment she decided she was ready, the room darkened around the candle like a movie theater, only this was a deep gray mist, swirling around the flame and outward. It closed in on her, took up all the available space. She could still see the candle’s flame, but she lost her tame fantasy, her mind swiveling toward fearful memory. Things could come out of the mists, things that were far from harmless. Panic drilled holes in her diaphragm.

A breath away from tossing up protection spells that would take out that candle with the force of a Cat 5 hurricane and blast away all of Raina’s painstaking work, she saw the mist start to clear.

The rush of ocean waves reached her ears, the comforting salt aroma filling her nose. Powdery white sand was under her feet. She stood on a moonlit beach, the water stretched to the horizon, the white curve of sand inviting long, romantic strolls. A hammock was strung between two palm trees. On a table next to it was a platter of fruit and cheese, glasses of wine picking up the glimmer of the moonlight.

All it needed was a zoom-in on the wine label and an invisible announcer intoning, “Please drink responsibly.”

But it was okay. This was beautiful, serene. Only the two wineglasses bugged her. One would be better, more aligned with the fantasy she had in mind. Or a stack of the plastic kind, to accommodate both bands if they needed to wet their throats between sets for her private concert.

When her gaze strayed back to the shoreline, her heart accelerated like one of those maniacal cymbal-clashing monkeys. Derek was coming out of the water.

Like that night on the beach over three years ago, he was wearing only a pair of jeans, plastered to his long thighs. He hadn’t had any trunks, and the beach had been a little less private than this one, so he’d stripped off his shirt, shucked the boots and socks, diving in after her in denim. That lack of privacy hadn’t mattered so much in the water. He’d untied her bikini bottoms with deft fingers and then, with a smile made for sin, tied them around her wrists. Linking her bound hands around his neck for an anchor, he’d proceeded to do things that had her clinging helplessly to him, gasping. She remembered the heated strength of his hands pressed against her wet flesh, his husky voice against her ear as he held her so close, all her limbs locked around him because she never, ever wanted to let him go, to let that moment go.

Goddess, he looked so good. The water sluiced down his wide chest. Unlike the hairless boys of the current popular pinups, he had a silken mat of dark chest hair narrowing to that appealing arrow that cut straight down his ridged abdomen. The water weighed the jeans down enough that his hip bones showed, the musculature over them. His lean form had never experienced an ounce of fat, let alone the blasphemy of a love handle. Being a Guardian of the Light meant battles where his life depended on quick reflexes, stamina and a body in top peak form. He took his workouts seriously. He ran, kickboxed, did a dozen different types of martial arts, lifted weights with the dedication of a Mr. Universe.

However, because the magic gobbled calories as fast as she could down a pound bag of M& M’S, he didn’t have a bodybuilder’s thick physique. Instead, he had the build of a quarterback, ready to throw a seventy-five-yard pass to win the game.

She wanted the fantasy to freeze-frame here. She at a safe distance, looking at him like any woman on the beach would, imagining all the things she could do with him. That he could do to her. The moment she touched him, even as illusion, need was going to overwhelm her. But she didn’t have the strength to deny herself, just as she’d feared. As Raina had known. Her gaze followed those drops of water over firm skin she wanted to touch, lick, bite. She wanted to rub herself all over him like an animal, re-marking him with her scent. He’d been hers. He was hers. The power of it rolled up in her, a savage, feral female animal.

His broad chest expanded further, getting his breath back from his swim. His gaze covered the beach like he was seeing it for the first time, evaluating it for threats, things hidden in the shadows. That was so Derek, it almost made her smile, except the pain of memory was squeezing her heart too hard. He found her pretty quickly, standing out there in the open, staring at him with such hunger in her face.

“Hey, girl,” he murmured.

That was what he called her in their intimate moments. It wasn’t the affected “giiirll” of the urban scene, like “Girl, where did you get those earrings?” It was the cowboy, meeting her for the first time at the church social, doffing his hat and giving her a slow smile. When he said, “Hey, girl,” those concentrated blue eyes said he thought she was the prettiest girl in three counties, and she’d always be that way to him, even when she was eighty years old.

She’d been raised in a host of cities and towns, part of her mother’s divination tour. Those travels had always been overpopulated with eccentric wealth and pretentious academics, so she was as country as a New York cab. But her heart had responded to the wide-open-range and quiet-nights-by-a-fire in those eyes the first time she’d seen him, as if that was really where she was meant to be.

She swallowed. “Hi.”

His firm mouth curved, his eyes glowing, taking everything away but this moment.

This was too emotional. She needed to get out of here. The candle was on the table between the wineglasses, somehow undisturbed by the ocean breeze. She didn’t move toward it, though. She wanted the physical, wanted it badly enough that she didn’t have the strength to end this, but it couldn’t happen here. This was where he’d first told her he was in love with her, the words murmured against her ear as he entered her, slow and deep. His fingers had tangled in her wet hair so she met his eyes as he said it, saw how much he meant it.

This wasn’t fantasy; it was a trip to heartbreak. But damn it, she wanted to immerse, purge, pleasure. Raina said she couldn’t use active magic, but she’d implied simple thought could change the setting. Shutting her eyes, Ruby wished for a different venue, fierce as a child following the track of a shooting star. She didn’t have a specific scenario in mind. Anywhere but here would do.

The smell of the ocean disappeared, as well as the sense of being outdoors. When she opened her eyes, she was hell and gone from the beach. She’d let the magic choose, and just as Raina had warned, it had delved deeper into her unconscious. Ruby hadn’t really believed it was capable of plucking a fantasy from the darkest part of the psyche, but she was looking at proof it could.

Like so many others, she sometimes forgot that behind Raina’s sultry Belle Watling– meets-Jezebel routine was an extremely powerful witch. Ruby was impressed as hell— and thrillingly terrified.

This scenario was something she’d never done with Derek, but she’d certainly fantasized about it. She was in a stable. A stable with the smell of fresh-cut hay, warm horses, saddle leather, wood. The candle was a lantern, sitting on a rough-hewn table next to a hoof pick and a few bits of harness. Rain was drumming on the tin roof, so the sound of water was still here. She was entirely naked, except for a red corset that cinched her in like an hourglass and restricted her breathing. Her breasts were pillowed up high, her waist tiny, and her bare ass was braced on her heels. That was because she was kneeling on the ground, her wrists tied behind her, and those wrists were tied to her ankles, so she couldn’t pull against them without the danger of toppling herself over.