Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(60)
“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about!” he exclaimed, turning around in my arms, the light of the dozens of candles I had lit around my living room reflecting in his eyes. I was a hopeless sucker for bougie scented candles, the same as for perfumes. My loft smelled like the Neiman Marcus cosmetics floor, exactly the way I liked it. “On the one hand, ravages a turkey leg and blooming onions like there’s no tomorrow. On the other, requires her windows so pristine she resorts to magic. It’s confounding.”
“I mean, I washed my hands very thoroughly after the turkey leg and the onion,” I said with a shrug. “I really don’t see the problem.”
“But if you were to imagine the opposite of Castle Camelot, this would be it,” he said, twitching his chin toward my cool-toned, low-profile furniture, the angular glass cabinets and silvered console tables, the mirrored wall hangings that shimmered like artfully arranged shards, reflecting the night outside. Even the variety of wineglasses hanging above my bar looked like a thoughtful installation. “You have to admit, it’s a little dissonant.”
“Castle Camelot is its own thing. I like my personal spaces clean and open,” I replied. “And I like a lot of light. In Manhattan, I actually lived in a penthouse, and it was . . . well. Spectacular.”
I thought about describing it further for him, but I wasn’t even sure I could properly articulate those memories. Cars like beads of light threading through the streets far below; my own reflection in the glass hovering in the dark beyond, like a ghost projected onto the light-pricked night. As much as I’d missed Thistle Grove and Lady’s Lake, I’d adored that penthouse, felt like the essence of myself there, streamlined and distilled.
This loft was the closest I could come to approximating that feeling, that sense of pervasive airiness and light that felt the most like home to me.
“I could see the sky all the time,” I said, giving it a shot. “And I really loved that. It was like watching a constantly moving Rorschach blot, right outside your windows. Getting to see cloud patterns changing all day, sieving through each other. Swirling like vapor, reconfiguring into other shapes, like something alive. It made me think, you know, of course the ancients saw gods and devils and monsters up there. It’s an ever-shifting canvas.”
More than that, even. The sky was like the world’s constant dream, never settling, never waking up.
“Mmm, weren’t you supposed to be studying or something, instead of sky gazing? Cracking those law books?”
I shoved him a little against the window, none too gently. The bespelled glass could take it. “I’m poetically rendering my penthouse experience for you here, and you’re going to be a dick? That’s your move?”
His mouth twitched. “I’m sorry, you’re right. If I was going to bust your stones about it, obviously some kind of eat-the-rich joke would have been the superior play.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” I said, and I could hear the sudden sizzle of invitation in my tone, feel that beautiful, unfamiliar brazenness stealing over me again, the flicker of that inner fire. “But if eating the rich is what you’re aiming to do . . . well, I’m right here. Not sure what you’re waiting on.”
“You know what?” he said, his voice dipping a little lower. “I’m going to take that as a very literal invitation.”
“Good. Because that was how I meant it.”
The next thing I knew, we’d stumbled our way over to my couch—me banging my shin hard on the coffee table as we staggered past it entangled with each other, because real-life passion didn’t come with stage blocking or choreography—and I was on top of him. Straddling his lap with my arms wound around his neck, his hands buried in the fall of my hair. I’d somehow forgotten what a perfect kisser he was, exactly what I liked. All soft lips and little nibbles and the light but searing graze of tongues, intense and intimate without being too deep or too much.
But the free-flowing, back-and-forth current of sensation was just like it had been in the bar, keenly overwhelming. Feeling every touch mirrored back, the rising surge of lust growing alongside mine, as if I had two people’s worth of desire inside me at once.
Then he was unbuttoning my cream blouse, letting it slip off my shoulders, his gaze roaming my snow-white-and-gold Agent Provocateur bra, a gorgeous, flimsy thing with way too many tiny straps, and a little halter that wound around my neck but hadn’t been visible under my demure Peter Pan collar. I could feel the swell of his admiration, the rush of heat that pooled at his middle. The way he went rock-hard under me as he saw me blush under the intensity of his gaze.
Or saw my chest and neck flush, in any case; both of us still had our face paint on. Neither of us had been particularly moved to wash it off when we got to my place, and now the uncanniness of his galactic swirls and my phoenix mask felt weirdly sexy, compelling instead of ridiculous. As if we weren’t just Nina and Morty, but something different, rarely seen roaming this realm.
A pair of unusual, quixotic creatures, magical and untamed.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he murmured on a breath, trailing a hand down my neck, over the hollow at my throat, before reaching down to cup both my breasts with his palms. I let my head fall back at the warmth of his touch, the insistence of it as he squeezed and stroked my nipples through the thin fabric, attuned to the flare of my every reaction. “Look at you. I don’t remember you wearing anything like this last time.”