The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(56)

Groaning, Vivienne set her glass on the coffee table and buried her head in her hands. “It’s like it all just keeps getting worse. Just when I think I have a handle on it, or am actually doing something good, I do something like this.”

Lifting her head again, she rested her hands on the back of her neck and took a deep breath. “So now the college witches are pissed, plus they know about the curse, and they’re also pissed off about this, and I just . . .”

Breaking off, she looked at him, beseeching. “Why am I such a goddamn disaster, Rhys? I’ve never done any serious magic in my life, but the one time I did, it cursed an entire town.”

“I did that, Vivienne,” Rhys said, standing up and setting his glass down on the table next to hers before sitting at the other end of the couch, slouching against the corner, his legs stretched out in front of him.

“Okay, but that’s my point,” she replied, turning so that she could face him. More of her hair had come down, framing her face, and Rhys’s hands itched to push those strands behind her ears, to cup her face between his hands, rub his thumb over those soft pink lips. “We are a disaster. Apart, our lives run smoothly. Perfectly, even.”

“That’s a bit of an overstatement,” Rhys objected, but Vivienne was clearly on a roll now.

“And then as soon as we’re together, it all goes to shit. Even that summer. That really beautiful, perfect summer. Where did it end up? Demon plastic skulls.” She ticked it off on one finger. “Poisoned potions.” Another tick. “Library ghost.” Tick. “And now this, which . . .”

Vivienne stared at the finger she’d held up to tick off and scowled. “I don’t even know how to define this. Except disaster.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

Picking up her wine, she drained the rest of the glass before setting it down and flopping back against the couch.

When Rhys didn’t say anything, she raised her chin slightly. “What, not gonna try to argue with me?”

Rhys shrugged. “Why should I? You’re right.”

“I am?” Then she cleared her throat, sitting up. “I mean, I am, yes. I’m right, we’re a disaster.”

“Completely,” Rhys said, lifting one hand off the back of the couch. “The proof is in the possessed candle, as the saying goes.”

Vivienne smiled a little at that. “No one says that.”

“Maybe they should.”

They were both quiet for a moment, watching each other, and Rhys waited to see if she’d leave now. She probably should, but as he looked at her there, relaxed and rumpled, he very much hoped she’d stay.

Glancing around the living room again, Vivienne reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “I can’t believe you live here.”

“I don’t live here,” he said, tilting his head back to look at the chandelier. “I . . . am temporarily residing here, more or less against my will. Huge difference.”

“Hmph,” she sniffed, then picked up one of the pillows on the couch. It was black, embroidered with the family crest, and Rhys wasn’t sure any literal cushion had ever looked less welcoming than that thing.

Vivienne turned the pillow over in her hands, and then looked up at him through her lashes.

“Okay, if this blows up in my face, know my intentions were good.”

Holding her hands over the cushion, Vivienne closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

As golden light began to gather between her fingertips, Rhys’s eyes widened. “Okay, Vivienne, maybe don’t—”

But then the pillow sort of shimmered, the family crest bleeding out to be replaced with a red dragon.

Specifically the red dragon of Wales, but one that was grinning, claws extended in the air and painted the same bright purple as Vivienne’s own nails.

Lifting the pillow triumphantly, she grinned. “Much better.”

And fuck.

Fuck.

She might as well have hit him with a hammer. It was like that summer evening all over again, and Rhys set his glass down on the coffee table with a decisive thunk before sliding across the sofa to her.

The pillow hit the floor, and she reached out for him just as his fingers brushed over her jaw, tilting her face so that he could look at her.

“You bloody gorgeous girl.” He sighed, and her own hands came up to his wrists, not to push him away, as she probably should have, but to pull him closer.

“I’ve run out of ways to say this is a bad idea,” Vivienne murmured against his lips, and Rhys smiled, nudging her nose with his.

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he agreed. “But I don’t think this is one of them.”

And he didn’t. For whatever else had gone wrong with them—and Christ, he could fill up a ledger book at this point—this, her, here in his arms, was not one of them. He knew that as well as he knew anything.

She leaned in closer, her nails lightly scratching the backs of his hands, and if Rhys hadn’t already been so hard he ached, that would’ve done it. So would the way she just barely brushed her lips against his as she murmured, “Are you going to ask to kiss me?”

Rhys grinned. “I’m gonna ask to do a fuckload more than that if you’ll let me.”





Chapter 25