Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(62)

“Oh, babe,” he breathed, rocking his head from side to side. “Oh, please.”

Apparently I liked “please” just fine, I thought with a spike of lust, as long as he was the one saying it to me.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d gone down on a man, but apparently you didn’t lose that particular muscle memory. I moved slow and steady, with control and intention, even though I could feel every high-pitched sensation scorching through me, too, as though his own hand and mouth and tongue were between my legs.

It felt phenomenal, better than just good. A rising ecstasy like a fierce spiral that kept tightening on itself, clamping down.

I didn’t draw back until I felt like both of us might legitimately die of overstimulation, our hearts hammering furiously in tandem, his moans a delicious clamor in my ears. Both of us dizzy and drowning, adrift together in a sea of desperately urgent need.

“Condom?” I demanded thickly, reaching behind me for his discarded jeans.

“Back pocket,” he directed, gritting his teeth. “Oh, fuck, hurry.”

I fished around in his pockets until I found it and passed it up to him—then clambered back up on top, all unsteady, trembling limbs, to straddle him again. Foreheads tilted together, mouths a breath apart, I slowly lowered myself on him; catching my breath hard at the sudden intense pressure, the sharply compelling sweetness of his girth inside me.

“Okay?” he asked, catching my lower lip in a sucking kiss.

“Oh, yes,” I assured him, sweeping both hands through his hair, taking long breaths. “Just need a beat.”

I paused for a second, let myself acclimate, then slowly bore down the rest of the way. Leaving him buried deep inside me, the length of my upper body pressed against his.

When I began to move against him, in long, slow rolls of the hips, the colossal shared pleasure of it, both of us feeling not just our own sensations but also the other’s, felt almost like a separate entity. Something that lived between us, bright and molten. A fire we’d kindled together that now roared like something sentient and ravenous, a self-sustaining blaze of light and heat.

And it wasn’t even just sensations, this time. This time, I could feel Morty’s wonder that this was even happening, his admiration and enjoyment of me not just as a sexual partner but as a human being. A wondrous and fascinating and precious person he was only beginning to understand.

When I drew back enough to look at him, my hands laced behind his neck, I could see that tender gaze again. The one that made me feel like I was overflowing with light, maybe even made of it.

It felt incredible to be seen like that, after everything; after the way being with Sydney had eroded me, torn me down, terraformed me into something that I was never meant to be. But Morty felt and already knew me, better than any other partner ever had—and still looked at me in that awestruck way, like I was blindingly bright, so full of stars. Exquisitely flawed and flawless just the way I was, with all my rules and hang-ups and confounding contradictions.

Perfect nonetheless, the way I’d come to him.

It felt so deeply good and right that it nearly brought me to the sweetest kind of tears, and I was not the sort of person who cried during sex.

And I could feel how much he wanted to tell me that he loved me as I moved faster against him, that relentless pleasure bucking between us; the same wild, unreasonable urge uncoiled inside me, too, straining hard against the confinement of my ribs. It was much too soon, and we both knew it, no matter our unusual circumstances. It wouldn’t mean as much as it might one day in the future, when the enchantment wore off a little, and we could decide how much we meant it.

How real it actually was, without magic ushering it in.

So neither of us said it, though I could practically feel the words jostling against one another in my mouth, overeager to be released. Instead we stared into each other’s eyes until the crest of the pleasure came to break over us, never unlocking our gaze—until I started to feel like I’d never even really looked at anyone before, seen them the way I was now seeing him.

I still didn’t understand why any of this was happening; why my power had grown by such orders of magnitude, why the witch bond had ensnared us without either of us agreeing to it. But as I writhed in his arms, head flung back, caught up in a keener ecstasy than anything I’d known I could experience, I felt an equally immense surge of gratitude, accompanied by new understanding.

Whatever else Morty was going to be to me, I suddenly knew his presence in my life—his mind and heart braided with mine through the bond, his body ensconced in me—was intended to be a gift. Something to enhance, to protect, to bring joy.

Something meant to heal.

And maybe, if I let myself, I could be the same for him.





20





A Deity’s Favor



Well, you’re useless today,” Gareth proclaimed, petulantly shoving a book away, sending it sailing across the polished table toward me. “You’re not even really reading any of that, are you? Just pointing your eyes at it, occasionally.”

He wasn’t wrong. Technically speaking, I was reading the words, but none of them were even close to sticking. Instead, I was dreamily dwelling on the afterglow of Morty lounging diagonally across my bed last night, his head propped up on my lower belly, my fingers running through his hair while we told each other stories about ourselves.