The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(52)

“Would’ve been worth it,” Rhys said, and then his smile faded even as the look in his eyes grew warmer. “I was mad about you, Vivienne,” he said softly.

Sincerely.

“Utterly mad.”

Vivi swallowed hard, her arms tightening around herself. She wanted to find a joke to throw at him, something that would puncture this moment like a balloon.

Instead, she told the truth. “The feeling was very mutual.”

“Was?” Rhys pushed himself off the cabinet, moving closer to her. It was late, so late by now, and Vivi had been up for nearly twenty hours, but she felt like she had when she’d touched those runes in Piper’s cabin.

Electrified. Alive.

“Because the more I consider it,” he went on, still moving toward her, slowly, his hands in his pockets, “the less I think I should’ve used the past tense. Shall I try it out?”

He stopped, watching her, and Vivi knew if she told him not to, if she said they should leave, he would, without question. It was one of the things she’d loved about him so much all those years ago, how easily he put the power in her hands. She could stop him in his tracks right now.

Or she could let him come closer and hear what he had to say.

Not sure if she trusted herself to speak, Vivi just nodded, and one corner of Rhys’s mouth hooked up. “I am mad about you, Vivienne Jones. Again. Or maybe I should say still, because I’m gonna be real honest with you here, cariad. I don’t think it ever went away.”

Cariad. He’d called her that, that summer. She could still feel it, growled against her ear, whispered into her skin, murmured between her thighs.

He still stood a few feet away from her, still giving her the opportunity and the space to put an end to this if she wanted to.

She didn’t.

Closing the space between them, Vivi rested her hands on Rhys’s chest. His skin was warm through the material of his sweater, his heart thudding steadily against her palms, and as Vivi leaned in, she could smell the outside on his skin, the woodsmoke from the forest, the scent of night air clinging to him, and it suddenly seemed so stupid to have pretended she didn’t want this.

Lifting her face, Vivi brought her lips to his.

The kiss in the library had been frantic, a match touched to gasoline, anger and frustration fueling it as much as lust.

This was different. Slower.

His hands came up to cup her face, thumbs rubbing soft circles against her jaw, and Vivi found her own hands resting low on his waist, opening her mouth under his, sighing as his tongue stroked along hers.

“The taste of you,” he muttered when they parted, his mouth dropping to her neck as Vivi closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “Can’t get enough of it. Never fucking well could.”

Another memory. That first night at the Solstice Revel, tangled together in his tent. Vivi had never gone to bed with anyone so fast, had always gone through what felt like the appropriate number of dates for each stage. Kiss on the second, little further on the third and so on. She’d only had sex with one other guy before Rhys, and that had been after a solid year of dating.

But within two hours of meeting Rhys, he’d had his mouth on her, her thigh draped over one shoulder as he’d kissed and licked and sucked and driven her completely out of her mind, telling her over and over again how good she tasted, how gorgeous she was, and she’d felt gorgeous. Powerful, even, unashamed, uninhibited.

Sometimes she thought what she’d really fallen in love with that summer was the version of herself she was when she was with him.

But as lovely as that memory was, she didn’t want to think about the past when the present was right here in front of her, hands skating over her sides, fingertips brushing the skin just above the waist of her jeans.

“Vivienne, if you’ll allow me to make you come tonight, I’d consider myself the most fortunate of men.”

The words were muttered against the place where her neck met her shoulder, and Vivi felt her entire body clench in response.

Suddenly, there was nothing more she wanted in the world than to let Rhys Penhallow make her come in the back room of this store, and she didn’t want to look too closely at it, didn’t want to think about all the reasons she shouldn’t.

It had been a long night, she was feeling powerful and good, and a handsome man wanted to give her an orgasm.

Why shouldn’t she have that?

Her hands clasped around the back of his neck, Vivi leaned in to kiss him again, letting her tongue stroke along his, loving the low sound that came from his throat as she did.

“Please,” she whispered against his mouth, and then they were stumbling back against the ancient velvet settee by the fire. Some distant part of Vivi’s brain reminded her that it had belonged to some famous witch, that Aunt Elaine was really fond of it as a result, but she couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t think about anything except Rhys and his hands on her.

They fell back onto the couch, Rhys reaching out to make sure the full weight of his body didn’t land on her, and Vivi cuffed a hand around the back of his neck as he nuzzled her jaw, her neck.

Rhys was tugging her shirt out of her jeans, shoving it up over her breasts, and when his mouth closed over her nipple through the lace of her bra, Vivi gasped, fingers tightening in his hair.

His tongue made lazy circles, the drag of the fabric plus the wet heat of his mouth making her writhe underneath him, needing, pleading.