It had started innocently enough, with their hands.

Fingers interlaced.

Not the thing that was expected to lead to...

Brice held Zoë's hand.

And because of the magic of the moment—some metaphorical, some literal—Brice did not let go of Zoë's hand. Nor did Zoë let go of his.

Because they couldn't.

Once they had linked their hands together, they could not let go. Those were the rules.

Zoë looked at him, when they'd touched, an expression of shock on her face. She was an Alterist, she was used to creating these sorts of suggestions, not being affected by them. And he was a poet, not entirely used to their effects, either, though he'd been recommended one as part of his transition, and those sessions had made a lot of changes much smoother. But this wasn't hypnosis, couldn't be explained away with technical jargon and the complex interaction of electrochemical impulses in the brain.

The shock betrayed a certain shyness, it seemed, and when the spell took hold, poetry came to him.

A hand like yours
fingers entwined
linked with mine
pale against dark
long and delicate
with long and delicate
the magic
is more
than just the spell
that links us together

His words spilled out, and he wished for his pen to remember them.

But the look on her face, as she shyly gazed at her feet and hid her expression behind her long brown hair, the reddening of her cheeks like sun-kissed apples, ripe on the tree, told him that his words would at least live in her memory, even if he would never present them on the stage.

He smiled at her, running his free hand through his close-cropped, bleached hair.

I worry that
when I touch you next
and my hand
will be forever held
next to your skin
and the heat of it
will make us
melt together
melt together
melt together again
and again
and again

She solved that problem for him, lifting her hand to brush his cheek, and, as the magic dictated, leaving it there, the back of her fingers held to the fuzz of his beard, the scent of her hand cream, the scent of her lingered next to him, and would until the spell binding them together let them go.

Brice found himself hoping the spell would wait. They sat on the ground, by a large tree, and his leg brushed against hers as she shifted position, and her left knee became fixed to his right thigh.

Zoë laughed and blushed. "It's like a game of Twister in a pot of glue or something. I wonder just how stuck on you I could get."

"Seems like very," Brice replied.

"No poetry for that?"

He smiled and shifted as well as he could. He took a breath.

The scent of you
the warmth of you
makes me hot
and wet
and wanting
and wanting more
to see if our kiss would be locked in place
if our embrace would be eternal
if sealing my sex against yours
would lead to pleasure forev—

She cut him off with a deep kiss and pressed herself as close as she could. His mind slipped deep into the entangled mess of their limbs and bodies, down into the magic that had wrapped them up in the first moments of their awakening, and he felt her dropping deep as well, as their thoughts and ideas and feelings touched once another and linked together inextricably.