Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(26)
My stomach growls. I can’t blame it. Eli’s muffins are absolutely mouthwateringly good. I have no idea what he does when he makes them, because the fates know my version never turns out the same even if I use the same recipe, but his are all-caps DELICIOUS. However, I am not about to give into McSmirky McSmirkerson and his astral projection of broad-shouldered, slightly-mussed-haired, I-bet-if-he-turned-around-great-assed smirkdom.
“The muffins are okay.” I grab one of the square throw pillows by my headboard and hold it over my still-growly stomach to muffle the sound of “Gimmie!” it’s emitting.
He starts to peel the paper wrapping from around the bakery miracle. “So you don’t mind if I eat this in front of you?”
“It’s not like you can since you’re just body walking.” I surreptitiously check to make sure I’m not drooling over the projected muffin or man.
He tears off a piece of the crumbly muffin top and pops it into his mouth, closing his eyes in ecstasy the minute he does. This is torture—the kind I cannot look away from because muffin eating seems to be my kink tonight.
“I got you one as an I’m-an-asshole apology.” He motions with his head over to the left. “Look over by the lavender bush.”
Yeah, I’m off the bed and across the room to my window in an embarrassingly small amount of time. There it is, right where he said. I snatch the muffin in its plastic sandwich bag from the bush’s spindly branches. Do I act all cool and carry it back to my desk and leave it uneaten to make a point? No. No, I do not. I stand there in front of my open window and unzip the sandwich bag, taking a deep inhale of cinnamon, vanilla, and candied newt, and then plucking it out and biting straight into the crumbly muffin top.
“Why does this feel like a bribe?” And gastronomical heaven.
Gil takes a few steps closer. “How about thinking of it as a peace offering instead? I’m sorry for what I said before.”
“You didn’t mean it?” Ugh. Why do I sound so damn hopeful? He is a jerk! An asshole! The worst witch ever—well, if you don’t count me. I mean, at least he can cast a spell. “Then why’d you say it?”
I should be moving farther back into my room, but here I am, a bump on the log of life. It’s not like he can physically touch me or throw a curse or charm on me while he’s body walking, but it still seems prudent.
I, however, am very imprudent, turned on, and suckered completely by the fact that he brought me an apology muffin. You gotta watch out for the ones who come bearing pastry. Dangerous people.
He finishes his muffin, balls up the paper wrapper that had been around the bottom of it, and tosses it away into what I’m assuming is a trash can at his house. “I can’t explain why I said it right now, but I had my reasons and I’ll explain them all as soon as I can.”
I shouldn’t accept such a lame-ass excuse, but there’s a ribbon of sincerity winding through his words that I feel all the way down to that bullshit meter that’s never done me wrong.
“The whole mysterious thing is highly overrated.” But hot, oh so damn hot. He’s all broody, annoying, smirky hotness that has obliterated my otherwise impressive vocabulary.
I shouldn’t forgive him. I don’t forgive him. All the warmth in my belly is from the sweet, sweet carbs.
Uh-huh, sure, Matilda Grace.
Fates help me, I am so screwed in the head—but unfortunately not the body—when it comes to him.
No man should have a jaw that square and covered in what looks like the softest brown beard ever that I want to pet and have scratching against my inner thighs. And his lips? Fates alive, the things I have thought about those lips doing to me while I was in the bath angling the jets to hit just so should have turned the water to steam. Even his nose is hot—and that’s something that shouldn’t be allowed. Noses? Who in the hell thinks nostrils can be sexy? Apparently me when it comes to Gil Connolly. I can’t look at the man without getting worked up, and even now while I’m holding a half-eaten muffin, I’m all horniness and dirty thoughts while he . . . Well, he’s glaring at me and a vein in his temple is all bulgy, and his hands are closed into tight little fists at his sides. What the hell? He’s the one who showed up—uninvited, mind you—at my house.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
He all but growls at the question as the brown of his eyes darkens with an intensity that has me second-guessing the astral projection part of him not really being here.
“Like what?”
Look, I’d like to say that extra sandpaper in his tone doesn’t make my core do a happy clench, but I’d be lying, and you and I are closer than that.
“Like I’m pissing you off.” I step toward him to show I’m annoyed and standing up for myself, and oh-my-fates because I just can’t help it, I need to be closer to him. “I’m just eating the muffin that you poofed here and you look like you want to yell at me for it.”
“I don’t want to yell at you,” he snarls.
And there he is, the big jerk I know and lust after like a total fool.
If I could have grabbed his shirt and yanked him closer at that moment I would have. “Then what do you want?”
His gaze drops to my mouth, and it’s fucking fire—not literally, thank the fates, but little sparks of want and need and gotta-have dance across my skin, and I drop the muffin. That’s right. I drop bakery gold right on my floor because my whole body is buzzing with anticipation that has my belly tight and the rest of me going loose and bendy and desperate to wind myself around him.