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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  About This Story

  Water & Air

  Free Gift for Readers

  Books by Janelle Reston

  About Janelle Reston

  Published by:

  Hot Drinks Press

  Madison, Wisconsin

  USA

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher. All persons depicted on the cover are models used for illustrative purposes only. All trademarks and wordmarks used in this collection of fiction are the property of their respective owners.

  Water and Air

  Copyright © 2015, 2017 by Janelle Reston

  Cover illustration by Terrestrial Press.

  Scene dividers made by Daniel Bruce from www.flaticon.com and licensed by CC 3.0 BY

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Janelle Reston at www.janellereston.com.

  First edition

  October 2017

  Originally published in Like a Spell: Volume One under the title “Water and Air,”

  Circlet Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017.

  ABOUT THIS STORY

  MIRANDA IS AN ORDINARY YOUNG woman resentful of the magic that runs in her family but has skipped her generation. If she had such powers, she certainly wouldn’t be like the witches who descend on her lake resort town every summer, wasting their powers on stupid party tricks.

  But when Miranda meets a water witch named Hazel, she starts to wonder if the practitioners of magic aren’t so bad after all. And if reconciling herself to the world of witchcraft means she has a better chance of sleeping with Hazel, well, so much the better.

  WATER & AIR

  AT THE LAKE WHERE THE water witches gathered, there lived a girl who didn’t know her own power. I was that girl.

  Or woman, rather, by the time this particular summer came. I was fresh out of my first year of college and back home for the break. I’d grown into independence in the previous year: living away from home for the first time, working two jobs to pay rent and utilities, making my own curfew and household rules. In all honesty, my rules weren’t much different than my parents’. But they were mine, and that made all the difference. I was starting to feel like an adult.

  I worked the concession stand at the lake that summer. The lake was always quiet the first few weeks of the season—just locals and a few random tourists who started trickling in around Memorial Day.

  But then the witches would descend. They’d begin arriving a week or so before the summer solstice and kept coming in droves until the fall equinox.

  I never really understood the attraction of our lake to the water witches. Anywhere they were, they could draw water vapor from the air and force it to condense—so why they needed a lake to hang out in was beyond me. I’d heard something about the lake being sacred, or a source for rejuvenating their powers, but I wasn’t sure how accurate any of that was. They mostly seemed to be there to have fun.

  Swimming at the lake as a young girl, I’d watch them with fascination as they formed bright, clear spheres of water from seemingly nothing, then pop them over each other’s heads like water balloons. Shrieks and giggles always followed, and then a game of one-upmanship with miniature waterfalls appearing out of thin air, elaborate fountains suddenly springing up in the middle of the lake and—the locals’ least favorite trick—the occasional impromptu thunderstorm.

  The double and triple rainbows that came afterward usually made the inconvenience of unpredicted rain worth it to me. Not that I ever would have admitted that to a water witch.

  Like most of the locals, I had a love-hate relationship with the water witches. They made our summers more interesting, and kept our town’s economy from tanking into a permanent depression.

  But they weren’t us.

  And I’d spent most of my childhood bewildered by their levity.

  My grandmother had been a fire witch, but she didn’t use her gift to goof off. She was constantly making emergency trips out west to Colorado and California to help manage the wildfires there.

  In high school, I finally asked her what she thought of the water witches’ constant partying.

  “That’s only the part you see,” she said. “So you think they don’t care about anything serious. But that’s how everyone is when they’re on vacation. The rest of the time, they slog through like the rest of us.” She pulled out a box of photos from her trips out west she’d never gotten around to organizing. She showed me a group shot of about 40 people—half were ungifted firefighters, the other half witches. I’d seen the photo before, and had always assumed all the witches in it were fire witches.

  “Of course not,” she said to me, rolling her eyes. “Sandra over here was a water witch, and Janie and Becca and these two whose names I don’t remember. They helped make the fire breaks. Stacy and Jenna over here were earth witches. They smothered fires with dirt, and sped up the decomposition of kindling so it wouldn’t catch—that sort of thing. And we even had an air witch. Now that’s powerful magic. She could still the winds to keep the fire from spreading. She could even do stuff with electricity and remove oxygen from air, but we never used those gifts much.”

  I wanted to be like my grandmother. From my earliest childhood, I would focus my energy on sunbeams and try to will them into sparks of flame. When it was time to snuff out the candles at winter solstice, I’d just stare at them, hoping I could extinguish them with my thoughts alone.

  “Staring won’t put a fire out,” my mom would tease. She knew exactly what I was doing, because she’d done the same as a girl.

  “Believe me, Miranda, I’ve tried. But we can’t all be witches. Your grandmother is the only one we’ve had in this family in generations. Magic is a crapshoot that way.”

  I finally accepted my mother’s admonitions and turned my energies to studying instead. If I couldn’t engage with the natural world by magical means, I would do it the old-fashioned way: science.

  Everything I took outside of freshman comp my first year at college fell within the sciences. Chemistry turned out to be my favorite. I became obsessed with it. It could do many of the things that magic could, but without requiring the chemist to have any special gift.

  I decided to get ready for the organic chemistry course I’d be taking in the fall of my sophomore year by reading the textbook over the summer. It’s what I was reading behind the concession stand when the first water witch of the summer strolled in.

  She was an attractive young woman about my age, with an appealing smile and long natural hair that radiated from her head in tight black curls. “I could just die for a blue raspberry slushie right now,” she said when I asked for her order. “Extra-large. It’s so freaking hot out today.”

  “You could make it rain,” I said.

  “I wish. But I’m not that powerful. Besides, you know how the locals would feel about that.” She winked at me. I wondered if she was flirting. I went to grab a cup from next to the slushie machine and immediately dropped it. My face flushed red. I turned my back to her and grabbed another cup, successfully getting it under the dispenser this time.

  I willed my cheeks to cool down as the cup filled. I wasn’t a blushing
virgin, and I didn’t want her to think I was one. Not that it should matter what she thought. She was just another water witch out for a self-indulgent summer on the lake, with no interest in the townsfolk. The fact that she was smoking hot was irrelevant.

  Fortunately, a breeze blew through the stand, just cool enough to dissipate the heat from my cheeks. I turned around and gave her the slushie. “Three-fifty,” I said.

  She got out her cash and handed it to me. “I’ve never met an air witch before,” she said. “Not a lot of those around.”

  Well if that wasn’t the non sequitur of the year. “Me neither,” I said. I handed her the change.

  She frowned. “That must be hard for you. How do you learn to develop your magic?”

  I stared at her. “Sorry, I’m not following?”

  “You just did that thing with the wind. You’re an air witch, right?”

  “The wind?” I said incredulously. “The wind is a natural phenomenon caused by changes in air pressure. I had nothing to do with it.”

  She looked down at her hands, busying herself by putting her wallet back in her purse. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “My mistake. I just got this vibe from you. I could have sworn you were a witch.

  Not that you can tell by looking at a person, it’s just....”

  I felt bad for her. She was cute and sweet, and even if she was an outsider—well, that wasn’t her fault. Besides, I had a soft spot for attractive ladies. “I think your witchdar and your gaydar crossed wires,” I said. “I’m queer. But no magix.”

  She burst out laughing. “Oh, silly me. My first day ever at the lake and I would make a mistake like that.” She hung her purse back over her shoulder and smiled at me coyly. “Sometimes when I find myself talking to a lovely lady, I get all confuddled.”

  I blushed again, but this time I didn’t mind if she saw. Which was good, because no breeze came to my rescue. “I’m Miranda Peterson.” I reached out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  She shook it. Her skin was as smooth as a plum. “Hazel Green,” she said. “Enchantée.”

  We started hanging out, Hazel and me. We’d walk around in the shade of the forest on the lake’s edge, or just spend time out on the beach, watching the other witches playing in the water. Sometimes we would swim. Those were always my favorite afternoons, because her skin shimmered like dark chocolate ganache when she came up out of the water, and her nipples made tight little peaks against the fabric of her bikini when she got cold.

  She didn’t do much magic around me at first. She was self-conscious about it, having been a late bloomer who only discovered her gift a few years earlier, her junior year of high school.

  This was her first time at a gathering, and she had so much practice to do before she could accomplish anything that really mattered, she said. “I’m not like the water witches your grandmother worked with,” she said, and I immediately regretted telling her about Grandma’s adventures out west. “The things I can do feel frivolous in comparison to what I want to achieve.”

  I squeezed her hand. “We all feel like that sometimes. That’s how it is in chemistry lab when I’m trying to separate hydrogen peroxide into water and air. It’s been done before, and it doesn’t really help anyone. But we all have to learn the basic steps before we can really dance.”

  The next day I brought my organic chemistry textbook with me to the beach. I plunked it down between us on the blanket. “If I can do chemistry in front of you,” I said, “you can do magic in front of me.”

  It helped her loosen up. As the days unfolded, she’d practice making bubbles and balloons and tiny little rain clouds that would hover inches above my head and break open when I complained too much about the heat.

  “No you don’t!” I squealed the dozenth time she attacked me with one of those rain clouds. “Not unless you get wet, too!” I pulled her close to me as the cloud burst over our heads.

  “You devil!” she said with absolutely no malice. Her eyes were level with mine, her amused lips not even inches away. Her breasts were pressed against mine, and I could feel the breath move in and out of her, each a little faster than the one that came before.

  I kissed her then for the first time. The rain stopped, evaporating into a double rainbow.

  We made love soon after. It had been too long in the waiting. I’d been spending a lot of time watching her move in her body: the way she tilted her hips just so when she crossed her legs, and how when she uncrossed them, her bikini hem would reveal the tiniest hint of pubic hair at the crux of her mons and thigh.

  I had watched her move in her body, and now I wanted to move in it, too.

  And yet— “Are you sure you want to do this?” I said as she reached her hand into the front of my bikini bottoms, teasing her fingers along my pubic bone. We were on the beach at night. It was quieter then, with most of the witches having retreated into the woods for moonlight rituals. Hazel had created a curtain of rain around us to give us privacy from the few people who remained on the beach.

  “It’s okay if I don’t go to the rituals every night, if that’s what you mean.” She kissed up my shoulder to my neck. “I learn a lot there, but it’s good to take a break every now and then. Especially if it’s with you.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, though it was hard to get the words out with her body moving against mine. “I mean I’m not magic. I can’t do what you can.” I’d heard vague stories of what witches could do in bed. The magic was part of their bodies. Using it to fuck would be as natural to her as licking or fingering would be to me. Compared to every tool she had at her disposal, my repertoire seemed rather limited.

  She nibbled at my ear. “I’ve been wanting to make you wet in a way that has nothing to do with water witchcraft ever since I met you. Haven’t you wanted that too?”

  I nodded my head and dropped my thighs open. “So much.”

  “Good.” She reached down farther, sliding her finger into my wet vulva. “Because you make me so hot. I don’t care if you can’t do magic. I want your body on me.”

  “But I wish I could—” I started. My breath hitched as she pushed her finger inside me—though pushed hardly seemed the right word. I was so hungry for her, it might be more accurate to say I was the one who was moving: taking her in, enveloping her, swallowing her whole.

  “Can you use your hands?” she whispered, curling her finger and brushing it against the front wall of my vagina.

  My eyes rolled back in my head. “Yes.”

  “And your mouth?” She bent down and tugged at my bikini bra with her teeth, exposing my nipple to the warm night air. She took it in her mouth, sucking on it lavishly.

  “God yes,” I said.

  “Good.” She kissed up my throat to my lips. “You use what powers you have to get me off, and I’ll use mine on you.”

  I didn’t argue with her anymore. I pulled off her bikini top and kissed her breasts—small, pert little mounds, each just the right size to fit in my mouth. She lay down under me, letting her thighs fall open against the beach blanket, and I worked down her body.

  “Take these off.” I tugged at her bikini bottoms as my mouth reached her navel.

  She looked down at me. “You take them off. And then eat me. I want you to taste how wet you make me.”

  That was all I needed. I tugged at the strings that tied the bikini in place over her hips. The skimpy piece of fabric fell open, revealing her glorious thatch of dark pubic hair. I combed my fingers through it, pushing it back to reveal the seam between her fleshy mons. I pressed my tongue in, licking up the soft ridges of her vulva, smooth strokes from her vagina to her clit and back.

  “Oh Miranda,” she gasped. “That’s all the magic I need.”

  I pressed in closer, my lips and tongue dragging over her in tandem. Her taste was slightly sweet, reminiscent of honey and persimmons. This was the drink I’d been craving for weeks.

  She moaned and pushed her crotch into my face as I worked her over, a pleasingly
steady pressure of flesh against flesh as she oozed wetness into my mouth and down my chin. I went from long, flat-tongued licks to hard, probing ones, pushing past her vulva and into her sweet, throbbing cunt.

  “Oh yeah, Miranda. Like that.”

  The curtain of rain that surrounded us began to pound down harder, steady drumming that matched the volume of her cries. I growled into her cunt, sending vibrations deep into her body. She arched her back off the ground, began to beg, “Yes, Miranda, more.”

  She was soaking now, not from her magic but from me. Her juice mixed with my saliva as it dripped down between her thighs and into the humid furrow of her ass. I followed the trail with one finger, slid it around in her lubrication before teasing it over her clenching asshole.

  “This okay?” I said.

  She nodded, pulling her knees up to her shoulders to give me better access. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I like that. Give it to me in both ends.”

  I pressed my finger more firmly and her asshole winked, sucking my finger in. Inside was all slick tight heat, her muscle squeezing with every lick I made into her swelling cunt. The rain around us turned into a downpour.

  I wanted to eat her out for hours. My own crotch was soaking, my clit throbbing, but I didn’t care. I was getting off on her taste and the way she moved and moaned, the way she responded to my ungifted touch.

  And then I felt it. A soft lick at first, tentative and experimental between my legs. And then, more firmly, a warm wet pulse against my mons. I parted my legs. The pressure increased and the touch widened, washing down from my ass to my clit. I pulled my knees under my body to expose more of my erogenous zone to the unexpected touch. As it surged against me, I realized what it was: water, summoned by Hazel out of the elements as an extension of her body. She was giving me what I was giving her.

  The water kept changing forms as it moved against me. Sometimes it was structured and exploring like a tongue. Other times it spurted against me in quick, steady bursts like water from a shower head, relentlessly bringing me further toward climax. It wiggled soft and exploring up my cleft, caressed the mounds of my ass and the sensitive dip above my tailbone. It took the shape of hands—not just a pair, but an army of them, massaging my breasts and my anus, tickling the soft skin at the back of my knees, exploring the contours of shoulder blade and thigh. It kissed me, too, with as much passion as her lips would have. It licked me wet and open—probing, prodding, urging me to spread my legs wider and to take more as it slipped into my cunt—a smooth shape that was both liquid and solid, stroking the walls of my vagina like a thousand tiny tongues, expanding and stretching me as far as I could open, sliding up the length of me to tickle my swollen cervix.