Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(59)
“It is so strange to me how much you like this,” Morty mused as I yelled myself hoarse for Sir Agravain and his fine steed, looking at me with a mixture of awe and tenderness that I could feel stirring in my own solar plexus. “Just absolutely baffling.”
“Why would it be strange? I did grow up here. Those are my people out there—literally, I know and am friends with half our ‘royal court.’ This is, functionally, my home. And you know it vibes with lots of other things I like. I don’t think, for instance, that anyone’s ever accused Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda of being a classy show—and yet, here we are, with it one of my forever favorites.”
“But you’re so polished,” he said, with a vague wave in my general direction. “So completely smooth, and obviously averse to tackiness in other contexts. And all this is so . . .”
“Cheesy?” I offered, just a little edgily. “Campy? Utterly ludicrous, in the best of ways? I can do both, you know. Be both. Be complicated, like anybody worth knowing. It’s not like we Blackmoores are some entirely different, one-dimensional species of human.”
“I know. Of course, I know that.” I could feel the sincerity of the remorse surging through the bond, almost a little comical against the backdrop of blaring trumpets and whinnying horses. “And I know you . . . or at least, I’m slowly getting there. I really don’t mean for it to offend. Honestly, what I’m trying to say—very poorly—is that I’m more impressed than anything.”
“By what?” I asked, smiling a little at the flattery, because I could feel that it was genuine.
“By you,” he said simply, his eyes shifting between mine. A glowing wonder in them unlike anything I’d ever seen when someone looked at me. As if he could peer inside me somehow, and had discovered in me an entire unexpected galaxy, full of new stars. “That you can be so many things. And be them all so well, so gracefully. Not everyone is like that, you know. Some people are straightforward, simple all the way through—what you see on top is exactly what you get, nothing unusual below the surface. Which is fine, but it’s never been my thing.”
“I get that,” I said, feeling a giddy swirl rush up from somewhere right below my rib cage. I did get it—and what was more, I recognized this feeling, what was happening here between us.
It was falling in love; the dizzying, almost vertiginous drop of it, that initial and absolute enchantment with another person. But with the witch bond in play, the way it conveyed and facilitated emotions—the way it made it impossible to obfuscate or lie—it was not only falling, but falling far too quickly, in helpless fast-forward.
And triple goddess help me, I couldn’t seem to make myself mind.
“I feel the same about you,” I added softly, reaching out to trace a swoop of silver glitter on his cheekbone. “And I want to know much more. I want . . . Morty, I want to know everything about you.”
I could feel the soft brush of my own fingertips on his face through the bond, the intense way he responded to it, everything in him surging to a single point, focusing in on that light touch. The heat of it blew through me, too, so headily intense it made me a little dizzy.
It seemed impossible that we should want each other this way, especially somewhere as cacophonous and unromantic as this amphitheater. And yet there was no question that I’d never responded to anyone else quite like this, not even in that very first blush of new emotion.
“Would you like to come home with me tonight?” I asked, holding his eyes. Not like there was any space for bullshit or pretense between us, anyhow; nowhere to hide. “Because I would really like that.”
“Yes,” he said instantly, covering my hand with his, curling his fingers around mine even as he turned his cheek into my palm. “Yes, I’d like that very much. Especially if we could, maybe, take a car this time.”
19
So Full of Stars
This is more the Nina I had in mind,” Morty said, wandering over to the wall-to-ceiling picture window of my soaring loft, pressing a palm against the cold glass. “You know?”
“Oh, I’m aware,” I said, moving to slip my arms around his waist from behind, dipping my head to rest my cheek between his shoulder blades. It seemed beyond strange that it had been only a week and a half since I’d been curled up on my couch pity-drinking, staring at whirling snow through this same window because he’d upset me so much. It was almost as if the Morty I’d met that night at the Moon and Scythe had nothing to do with this one, the person I was coming to know.
People were like that, sometimes. Like nesting dolls.
“And the Nina you had in mind,” I murmured against him, “would love it if you didn’t leave handprints all over her clean, pretty window.”
“Touché,” he said with a low laugh, immediately lifting his hand away. “My bad. Who can blame me, though? Your place is almost too perfect; it makes me yearn to touch it all over, like some miscreant running wild in a museum. Must be like living in an ice palace, but in the good way. Maybe I just wanted to see if a pleb like me could even leave a mark.”
“You can’t,” I informed him, pressing a kiss against the warm back of his neck. “I was merely fucking with you; the glass is bespelled to stay pristine. It’s actually kind of a tricky casting, and it takes a ton of maintenance, but honestly? Worth the effort. I mean, behold that flawless view. So pure.”