Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(32)
This time, he couldn’t conceal the flare of interest sparking in those vivid eyes. He moved closer to the bar, leaning across it again—but this time the way he extended his hand to me was slower, more languid, his eyes latched on mine. The atmosphere between us seemed to thicken into something darker but softer, as if the air were gaining material substance, gathering like swagged velvet around us.
“Will you show me?” he said, a huskier note whispering into his tone.
Even with all the martini flooding my blood like a buffer, my heartbeat kicked up, ratcheting into a thrum that I could feel in all my pulse points. For all the awkwardness and mistrust between us, that initial spark of attraction, the intense jolt I’d felt back at the Moon and Scythe when we’d first hugged, clearly hadn’t been snuffed out.
I slowly rolled up my sweater sleeve and rested my bare forearm on the bar, palm up. I’d worn an ivory angora sweater that slipped invitingly off one shoulder—which was, now that I allowed myself to consider it, more the kind of thing you’d wear for a second date than a difficult, mind-bending conversation about magic.
Maybe my witchbound subconscious had already been entertaining other . . . notions.
“When you touch me,” I said, looking up at him, my cheeks pulsing with heat. “Think about me. Think about what I’m feeling, too. And while you do that, I’ll be doing the same thing, but with you.”
He nodded, swallowing so hard I could see his Adam’s apple bob beneath his jaw. Then, without breaking that hypnotic eye contact, he stroked his fingertips up the inside of my arm, tracing a light, shivery path to my inner elbow.
It was a soft touch, silken and skilled, and it would have given me tingles all on its own. But as I thought about him touching me, focusing on the idea, I could suddenly also feel the satiny texture of my own skin under his fingertips—and I could feel him feeling me in return. The bright tingle of pleasure his touch had sent surging up my arm, the sudden quickening of my breath. And below that, I could feel the instant spike of lust this sensory overload induced in him, at every level; the pleasure of my skin under his, his thrill at feeling what I felt, both on my skin and in my response to him.
It was shocking, a delicious deluge of sensory information far beyond what I’d expected, even if I theoretically knew what being witchbound meant.
“Damn,” he whispered almost reverently, lips parting, eyelids lowered. Even in the dim light, I could see how his pupils had flared, engulfing the blue in black. “That’s . . . that is intense.”
“Yes,” I whispered back, biting my lip hard as he continued that trailing stroke, up and down the inside of my arm, up and down, until my head swam. I could feel what seeing my teeth sunk into my lower lip did to him, combined with the sensation of feeling him experience that sharp nip as if it were happening to him.
“Do you . . . want me to stop?” he asked, in a ragged, breathless tone that I liked far, far too much. Because I could feel the hard flare of his lust beneath it, the outsize and immediate surge of his desire for me; how fast this situation was spinning outside both of our control.
And he already knew full well that I didn’t want him to stop, but I liked that he asked, anyway.
“No,” I said, more an exhale than a word. “Don’t.”
With a wordless sound of approval, he slid his hand up my arm; his touch firmer now, fingertips sinking into the toned outline of my biceps under the sweater’s soft fabric. He swept his hand over my bare collarbone and up the column of my neck, sliding his palm up under my hair to cup my nape, all the while never breaking our gaze.
I was breathing so hard it was almost a pant, completely overwhelmed by the pounding intensity of my response. I liked sex a lot, and had had plenty of it in my time—many different flavors of it, in fact, and it had been particularly passionate with Sydney—but I’d never reacted to anyone like this before, especially not before we’d so much as kissed. I hadn’t even thought I was remotely capable of this kind of need. The sudden, hot ache between my thighs felt like a vacuum, like some crucial part of me was missing, and I wanted, needed to slot it back into place.
I wondered, for one totally absurd moment, whether anyone had ever actually died from wanting to fuck someone this badly.
Morty gave a soft, pained groan, feeling exactly what I felt, multiplied and then Inception’ed several times over by our shared sensations. He leaned across the bar and covered my mouth with his, hand tightening around my nape. His lips were plush and perfect, his tongue skimming over mine with the light flicker I liked best—and I felt my own mouth open against his, the delicate outline of my own thinner lips, the slick, silky heat of my answering kiss.
It was just a kiss, not even a very deep one; and still it felt infinitely better, more thoroughly intoxicating, than anything I’d ever done before.
Shit, no wonder witchbound couples stuck together, if even basic contact like this edged so close to bliss.
“Fuck,” Morty gasped against my mouth. “Just, wait just a minute.”
He pulled back—which felt, quite honestly, like some devastating loss, a tragedy I wasn’t equipped to handle—and rested a hand on the bar, vaulting over it in a lithe, almost feline motion to land next to me. Then he stepped in front of me and hoisted me up onto the bar top, standing wedged between my knees, his hands clasped tight around my waist.
“Nina,” he whispered, his eyes shifting between mine, glassy with a need that I felt as if it were my own, curling right alongside my desire. This time my name sounded like a prayer, a supplication.