Magic Man Read online

  Published by Phaze Books

  Also by Wendy Stone

  Beastly Intentions

  A Gamble Worth Taking

  Messages of Love

  Endless

  A Fall from Grace

  Bound by Love

  Pick of the Litter

  Captive of Love

  A Strange New Breed

  Charisma

  The Taming of a Vixen

  This is an explicit and erotic novel

  intended for the enjoyment

  of adult readers. Please keep

  out of the hands of children.

  www.Phaze.com

  Magic Man

  an erotic novel by

  WENDY STONE

  Magic Man copyright 2009 by Wendy Stone

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 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 permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Phaze Production

  Phaze Books

  6470A Glenway Avenue, #109

  Cincinnati, OH 45211-5222

  Phaze is an imprint of Mundania Press, LLC.

  To order additional copies of this book, contact:

  [email protected]

  www.Phaze.com

  Cover art © 2009 Debi Lewis

  Edited by Will Belegon

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-60659-199-4

  First Edition – September, 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Chapter One

  A sly smile crossed his face as he watched her. She was beautiful and radiant, her laughter flowing through the crowded dining room like a melodic song. The man she was with seemed almost stunned to be in her presence, a sign to Brady that he didn’t deserve the woman. She was wrapping him around her little finger.

  Not that Brady wanted her for himself. He just couldn’t deny the little imp that whispered in his ear and suggested his next action. His finger moved on the table, a gentle touch brushing the starched white cloth.

  Across the way, the girl jumped, her hand reaching under the table cloth and over the front of her short skirt, reaching for the hem and pulling it down to where it had been before. Her big blue eyes seemed confused for an instant and then she glared at the man who sat with her. Brady watched as her pouting red lips formed words he could read from where he was sitting.

  “Stop it.”

  The man just sat there, a slightly bemused expression on his lax features. “Stop what?” Brady saw him ask.

  Laughter bubbled inside him as she tossed her blonde hair, an indignant look on her face. And the little imp whispered again. He stared at the thin white blouse that strained across impressive breasts. With a purse of his lips, he blew out a small breath, his finger flicking at the table.

  She jumped again as the top button of her blouse popped open, the sides pulling away from each other and exposing smooth creamy skin. Staring down at the deep cleavage, she grabbed for her blouse as another button gave way. Her companion, his ears turning red, stared amazed at the lovely show being put on in front of him.

  Brady managed to stop the chuckle that tried to erupt from his mouth, instead running his finger across the material he’d just been flicking with his finger, watching as the woman’s blue eyes opened wide as she felt an unseen touch trail across the sleek pale skin of her breast. She stared around the room wildly. Brady dropped his eyes, even as he motioned so that the unseen finger circled her now taut nipple, causing her to gasp.

  She grabbed her purse with one hand, her other holding her top closed. She ran from the room amid a mutter of whispers and some very catty giggles from women at other tables who’d seen the eyes of their companions upon his beautiful victim.

  “Stop that, Brady.”

  Joseph Templeton, his friend and one of the few people aware of what he could do, sat down in the seat across from him. “You could have waited until I got back for the show,” he said, his accusation voiced in a friendly tone.

  “You never let me have any fun, Joseph, you know that.” Brady Knight turned his head, cracking the bones in his neck before rotating his shoulders. “Besides, she was showing off so much in front of all the men in the restaurant, I thought she might want to give a much better show. And that cleavage was pretty spectacular.”

  “Very true,” Joseph sighed, letting his chin fall into his hand, his elbow on the table. “I just worry that one of these days you’re going to use these powers of yours in front of someone you shouldn’t. Then I’ll end up visiting you in a cage while you’re waiting to be dissected. And they’ll bring your parents in and do all these tests to see if maybe they’d been taken into some space ship and transported into the future...”

  “Stop!” Brady laughed. “I know where you’re going with this; we’ve been over it ten thousand times since you found out about me. I’ll behave.” He waited a second and then said beneath his breath, “Spoil sport.”

  “How far would you have taken it?” Joseph asked suddenly.

  “What?”

  “How far would you have stripped her of her clothes if she hadn’t run?” Joseph picked up his coffee, taking a small sip of the lukewarm brew.

  “Not far. I was having more fun running my finger over her nipple.” He laughed as Joseph spit the coffee back in his cup. “Are you okay?” he asked, laughing as his friend coughed.

  “You’re incorrigible. I don’t know how we stay friends.” He sat down the coffee and picked up his napkin to pat his lips dry, running his finger across the starched white collar that denoted his rank.

  “And you were a lot more fun before you became a priest, Joseph.” Brady laughed. It wasn’t the first time they had this conversation and probably wouldn’t be the last. Their friendship had started when they were both boys, ten years of age. They’d met at school, Brady’s first day. The school bully had tried to make an example of Brady and Joseph had helped him kick the boy’s butt.

  In the principal’s office afterwards while waiting for their parents to show up, Joseph and Brady had shown off their battle wounds to each other and had forged a bond that had withstood fights and girls, vacations and age. They’d even managed to stay friends when Joseph had quit college in the middle of his second year and joined a seminary.

  Brady’s gifts, as his parents called them, had made themselves known when he was twelve. They started small, like being able to move objects and people with his mind and then grew and got stronger every day. Now there wasn’t much he couldn’t do with his mind, including conning any girl he wanted into bed.

  But that wasn’t all. Joseph had never seen everything he could do. Brady had hidden quite a bit, not only from his friend but from his parents and his teachers. Even from his fiancée.

  “I don’t know how Renee handles you,” Joseph said, lifting his spoon and taking a bite of the chocolate cake he’d ordered. It was decadent, a sin that Father Joseph enjoyed.

  “I haven’t told her.”

  “You haven’t told her what? You haven’t mentioned your penchant for molesting strange women in restaurants?”

&n
bsp; “I haven’t told her any of it.” Brady ducked his head, sensing that Joseph’s infamous temper was going to blow. He’d delayed telling Joseph his deception, knowing he would be mad as hell.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  The words startled Brady. He looked up, narrowing his eyes. “You wanna run that by me again?”

  “I said I don’t blame you. Damn, Brady, Renee is beautiful and sweet but she’s not the most understanding woman in the world.”

  “I thought you liked her,” Brady said, still amazed.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Renee that would make me dislike her,” Joseph said, shrugging. “I just don’t know what she’d do if you were to walk up to her and show or tell her you have magical powers. Think about it.” He took another bite of his cake, determined to enjoy every ounce.

  “I know. I’ve thought of telling her I don’t know how many times. I even set about showing her once. Every time, I chickened out.”

  “Have you ever used your powers on her?” Joseph licked the back of his spoon and took a sip of his now cold coffee.

  “Oh come on, how can you think I’d do something like that?”

  “So you have,” Joseph said with a sigh. “I thought as much.”

  “Jesus Ch...” he stopped when he saw Joseph narrow his eyes at the blasphemous curse. “Sorry. What is this, confession?” He glared at his friend who sat across from him, calmly folding his hands on the table.

  “Yeah, right,” Joseph scoffed, “like I’d ever get you to go to confession. I mean, I can’t even get you into one of my masses.” He shook his head. “No, Brady, we’ve been friends forever. You helped me get over my first crush. I know you.”

  “What the hell does that mean? You know me?” Brady smacked his palm against the table with a dull smacking sound that made some of the china clink together. “Sometimes you confuse me more than you’re worth.”

  “Yeah, but you love me anyway,” Joseph laughed. “What that means is that Renee isn’t going to satisfy you. She doesn’t have what you need if you can’t even tell her about your magic.”

  “I love her, Joseph.”

  “You think you love her, Brady. If you truly loved her, you’d be willing to share everything with her.”

  “I just haven’t found...”

  “The right time,” they finished together.

  Brady glared at him. “Nobody likes a smart aleck priest, Joseph.”

  “Yeah, the Bishop tells me that every time I see him.” Joseph smiled, completely nonplussed. “You know I’m right, Brady. Getting pissed off about it won’t do you any good.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t hit you any more so I have to do something.” He jumped when the phone hooked on his belt went off. Picking it up, he looked at the display. His expression turned to annoyance before he forced a smile and flipped open the phone.

  “Hi, Renee.”

  Joseph smiled, a knowing smile that made Brady want to reach out and punch him. He lifted his hand, wiggling his fingers at his friend and waiting for Brady to tell Renee hello from him.

  “I’m having lunch with Joseph.”

  “Okay, Father Joseph. Jeez, Renee, I’ve known the man since he was ten, we used to have camp outs in my back yard, I can call him by his first name. He says hi, by the way.”

  Brady grimaced, glanced at Joseph and then down at the leftover sauce on his plate. “Yeah, I’ll ask him. I said I would.”

  Unconsciously, Brady began stroking the table cloth with his fingers as he talked and Joseph stared in amazement as the silverware on the table next to theirs stood up, dancing as if dangling from the end of a wire. He reached over and pushed his hand down on Brady’s. The silverware dropped, half of it falling to the floor with a crash.

  “I’ve got to go, Renee. Yeah, me too.” Brady flipped the phone closed and stared at the silverware. “You really drive me nuts sometimes, Joseph.”

  “Only when I’m right and you don’t want to admit it,” Joseph said, waving to their waitress. She brought them their bill. “Now the only thing you have to figure out is what you want to do about it.”

  * * * *

  Brady said goodbye to Joseph and left the restaurant in a strange mood. He usually enjoyed their weekly lunches, an event he looked forward to since he’d come back home. After college, he’d become involved with a bad crowd while searching for people like himself, people who could do magic with their hands and mind.

  He’d gotten into the occult, finding himself surrounded by wannabes whose skills with magic were contrived, done with smoke and mirrors. None of them had what he did, the power of telekinesis, the power to conjure, the power to teleport. Even the power to change the shape of his body, though he had never told anyone he could do that. That power freaked him out a little too much to use. He also had the power to control others.

  He sighed, wondering if he was going to hell for the things that he had done in those days after college. He had been wild; sex, drugs, alcohol and more sex until his brain had seemed to float, permanently pickled. The day Joseph had come looking for him, in that strange house that he and three other guys had rented out, the walls covered with pentagrams and other magical symbols, the air perfumed with the smell of marijuana and sex, spilled beer and burnt macaroni and cheese, had changed his life. Hell, Joseph had probably saved his life.

  He’d found Brady in bed with two women. He couldn’t remember meeting them or coming home, let alone know their names. The last thing he’d remembered was finishing off his second pint of Jack Daniels while his friends tried talking him into going into the new strip joint that had just opened across town. He could vividly recall the embarrassment he’d felt when Joseph had walked in and he’d been lying in that bed, the room smelling strongly of sex that he didn’t remember having.

  “Get up, Brady, and get dressed. We’re going for a walk.”

  A walk had been the last thing Brady had wanted and he’d almost used his mind control on Joseph, the one thing he’d always promised he wouldn’t do. Instead, he stood up and threw on clothes that smelled of alcohol, tobacco and cheap perfume.

  Joseph had walked until Brady, tired, hung over and out of shape, had collapsed at the foot of a fountain in a park he couldn’t remember ever being in before. He’d dropped his head into his hands and wept.

  And Joseph had picked him up, gotten him out of that life and back in contact with his parents. He helped him get straight and get rid of the miscreant friends that had littered his life for the past two years. He’d helped him and Brady owed him for it.

  But he was wrong about Renee. He did love Renee. She was perfect for him. Polished and sleek, a petite blonde who never left the house with a hair out of place. She was ordered and structured. She kept him grounded and in command when these “gifts” of his tried to push him out of control.

  Had he used his powers on her? Yeah, though he wasn’t proud of it. Ordered and structured got boring. Sometimes he wanted her to strip for him, or to become aggressive and knock him to the bed, tear at his clothes and take him. He always rearranged her memories afterward, letting her think that the lovemaking had been sweet and gentle, the way she liked it.

  So what if he hadn’t told her about his secret. She didn’t need to know everything about him. And besides, they had their whole lives to get to know each other. He’d wait until...”Hey, watch it!”

  Brady reached out and grabbed the small figure that had just barreled into him. His hands grasped slender arms; his body shook in shock from the small but perfectly curved body that had slammed into him. He stared down at the petite figure, catching a glimpse of bright green eyes.

  She was wearing a bright red dress, the long skirt flowing around her slender ankles. Her hair was a shade darker than her dress, curled and long, silky against his hands as it covered both them and her arms. Impressive cleavage was artfully displayed by the scooped neck of the dress, baring a tiny gold pendant in the shape of a pentagram.

  “I... I’m sorry,” Brady stamme
red, lost in the startling green of her eyes. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “No,” she said softly, her voice smoky and a little deeper than he’d expected from someone of her diminutive stature. “I’m fine, Brady.”

  He did a double take as he heard his name come from those soft, sensuously lush lips. “Do I know you?”

  She smiled. “You probably don’t remember me. It was a while ago and I’ve changed a bit since then.” She stepped back, making him realize he was still holding her.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” he said, his cheeks flushing. “Who are you?”

  “I have to go,” she said, looking around suddenly, her eyes darkening. Without another word, she turned, her skirt flying up around her as she hurried away.

  “Wait!” he called, his hand coming up to stop her.

  She didn’t stop.

  Brady squinted, intrigued by her, wanting more time with her. He sent out the thought, a tingle that would be irresistible to her, to turn back to him.

  She didn’t even slow down. Instead, she waved a hand in front of her, four fingers spread out, her thumb crossed across her palm and kept running.

  “Whoa,” he breathed, realizing she had deflected his power with an ease he’d never seen before. “That’s not possible.”

  His phone rang again and he picked it up, not bothering to check the caller ID. “Yeah?”

  “Is that how you answer your phone when it’s your fiancée calling?” Renee’s voice said.

  “Oh, hi, honey.” He ran his hand over his face, his nerves tightening. “I didn’t look to see who it was. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accept, Brady bear,” she crooned.

  Brady could feel his head begin to pound. “What did you need, sweetie?”

  “I just wanted to know what Father Joseph had to say. Will he do it for us?”

  “Honey,” he said, trying to stay patient with her. “Neither of us are Catholic. Why would you want a Catholic priest to perform the ceremony?”