Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(66)

“Must be leftover mantle magic, I guess,” I said, releasing the feeling. It faded just as effortlessly as I’d summoned it up.

“Pretty weird, Emmy,” Talia replied in lilting singsong, lingering over the syllables.

“Definitely weird, Talia,” I sang back at her, my heart bucking at hearing my first name on her lips again.

So here we were once more, circling each other. And no matter what it did to my fragile peace of mind, how it compounded my already-complicated turmoil, I found I couldn’t even imagine wishing myself anywhere besides this close to her.

“Emmy,” she repeated, shifting a little in her seat, gaze never leaving mine. “You look beautiful by moonlight, Emmy Harlow.”

“Only you could deliver such a cheesy line,” I said, pretending like I hadn’t just been thinking along the same lines myself, “and make it sound like grade A game.”

“That’s because I completely mean it.”

She leaned forward, eyes intent, reaching out to delicately trace the outlines of my face. Running her fingertips over the arches of my eyebrows, the space between my eyes; then the long swoop of my nose, philtrum, and Cupid’s bow. And then finally my mouth, her fingers drifting to cup my chin as her thumb grazed over my lower lip.

“You, Emmeline Harlow,” she said, eyes locked on mine, “are so extremely fucking beautiful it hurts my soul.”

“So are you, Natalia Avramov,” I said, half sighing, tipping my head forward to close my lips around her thumb and draw it into my mouth.

She gave a sharp gasp, her eyes dropping heavy lidded. “Emmy,” she said again, in that rasping whisper I liked so much, rock candy rough and just as sweet.

Things happened very quickly after that, in a tumbling cascade I could barely follow even as I was a pretty integral part of it.

Suddenly we were standing by the window all tangled up together, tugging each other’s shirts over our heads. I could feel myself shimmer with heat everywhere Talia touched me, as if she was leaving glowing handprints like some neon rave paint on my skin. Together we half stumbled, half tripped toward the bed in a clumsy dance, awkwardly yanking off shoes and pants as we went, kissing like we would have rather swallowed each other whole.

Every so often we’d pull back a little and pause, hands still tangled in the other’s hair, to just look, and marvel, and grin dizzyingly at each other, that this was really, finally happening.

“Damn, I feel like I could eat you,” I exhaled into the curve of her neck, sliding my hands down the long line of her spine to the neat tuck of her waist.

“Then what, exactly, are you waiting for?” she whispered back into my hair, a smile curled like a secret into her voice.

When we fell onto the bed together, Talia’s seafoam sheets were just as soft as I’d expected—though nothing in comparison to the searing softness that was her skin.

I traced the smooth outline of her with my hands and mouth, my lips on her instep, ankle, and then the tender back of her knee, all the way up to the silken inside of her thighs. I nipped at her lightly before biting harder, sinking my teeth in just deep enough to draw out those moans I’d been dying to hear from her for so long.

Then she was on top of me, with the scented tangle of her hair hanging around us, holding my face cupped between both hands as she kissed me hard and deep.

“Emmy Harlow,” she whispered against my lips. “I want to do everything to you.”

Then her mouth was a blaze down my neck and breasts, teasing out a moan low in my throat when she drew each nipple into her mouth. She trailed a scalding path over my belly, tracing circles around my hips with her tongue and lips, biting down on the thin, sensitive skin pinned taut over the bone. I twitched helplessly against her, caught by the tidal undertow of sensation, until it was all I could do not to outright beg her for more.

“Say it to me, Emmy,” she demanded between kisses, husky and low, as if she knew just how wild she was driving me. “Ask for it.”

“Please,” I said, when I thought maybe I’d implode from the gravity of all that pulsing want. “Talia, just . . . please.”

Then her mouth was between my legs, parting me down the center; her hair sliding against my thighs, and everything inside me surging up to meet her.

I arched my back like a bow, not even caring how I sounded, stars swirling against the darkness behind my closed eyes. I said her name so many times that I lost count.

Talia, Talia, please, Talia.

Then it began to rain outside, just like I’d known it would.

It fell first in a soft, pervasive shush, cattails rustling against one another in high wind; then a loud, cascading downpour, rattling like marbles onto the roof above our heads. The room filled with the smell of rain and gusting cold, but the two of us were such an inferno that the creeping chill felt like a balm. We were pure heat together, a building blaze with no known boundaries. A tangled locus of lips and hands, driving each other wild over and over again.

A fire that felt like madness, like it might never be put out.





24





What You Do Best


I just remembered,” I said, trailing my fingers idly down Talia’s back. She lay pillowed on my chest, my chin tucked against her crown, her head rising and falling with each of my breaths. “You never told me why you don’t have any tattoos.”