Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(41)
I let out a yelp of surprise and jump back, adrenaline shooting through me like fireworks, sending unheated water sloshing over the top of the open kettle and onto the stone floor. I don’t have to tell you where I land. Yes. Exactly in the right spot to send my feet one way and my ass another.
“Tutum.” He calls out the spell for sending someone to safety, and on the intake of breath I’m hovering above the floor before I can land on it, and on the exhale I’m flying through the air straight toward Gil.
It’s not something I can control, and I doubt it’s what he is expecting, because Mr. Always Cool, Calm, and Collected’s eyes go wide and he has just enough time to brace himself before I’m plastered around his body, hanging on for dear life before I glitch out the spell any more and we end up in Timbuktu. The scent of salty butter wraps itself around me as his arms close, holding me against him so I don’t fall on my ass. It’s all I can do to keep the few pre-tea working synapses of my brain functioning as I look down into his face. His five-o’clock shadow is there even at six in the morning. I want to touch it to see what it feels like under my palm—but that’s not all I want.
In truth, I want so much that it turns me soft and pliant against him as my nipples pebble. Our faces are so close, our lips nearly touching. I swear I can feel his heart beat in time with mine as desire swirls through me, sharpening every nerve until all I can feel is Gil. His gaze drops to my mouth and then back up as he shoots me a look practically on fire with intensity and all I want to do is burn.
My eyes start to flutter shut and his body stiffens beneath me.
Realization hits along with an unrelenting wave of humiliation.
Fuck. Way to get lost in your own head there, Tilda.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, wishing I had any magical ability just so I could poof myself into another room.
His large hand cups the back of my head as he dips his head lower. “I’m not.”
And then he’s kissing me for real, and I forget about everything else except for the fact that Gil Connolly is a fan-fucking-tastic kisser. Hot and demanding, he kisses me like a man who has been waiting his entire life for just this moment. I tighten my legs around his waist, settling my core against his hard length. The gray sweatpants he’s wearing don’t offer a thick barrier, but it’s still too much. I shouldn’t rock against him. I do anyway, because fates preserve us, it’s not just his hands that are big and I can’t seem to help myself.
He breaks the kiss and lets out a groan of frustration before moving his hands to my waist and taking a step back so that I slide down his front and then am standing on my own.
He shoves his fingers through his hair and glares at the floor as if it has wronged him mightily. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
Ouch. That stings, but I do my best to make a jaded chuckle, which sounds more like a squawk, and say, “Weirdness of the moment and—”
“No,” he interrupts. “The last place the magic should have sent you is to me.”
Then, without another word, he stalks out of the kitchen and back down the hall toward the library, where he slept on an overstuffed couch in front of the fireplace.
And that’s when my brain finally translates the activation word of his spell—“safe.” I’m not magic, but even I know that the thread of magic running through the universe that witches tap into is always true. Magic doesn’t lie. It doesn’t falter. It is never wrong.
And the magic powering Gil’s spell to send me to safety pushed me right into his arms. Literally.
A shiver works its way through me, because the fates help me, safe is exactly what I feel when I’m with the last man in Witchingdom I should want.
At least things couldn’t get worse.
Chapter Twenty
Gil . . .
That kiss was a mistake.
A mistake I can’t stop thinking about.
Not during the awkward breakfast where Tilda wouldn’t make eye contact with me while Birdie and Eli kept looking between us and then having a silent conversation with each other as if they knew exactly what had happened.
Not at the briefing in the library, where we got our plan together for heading out tomorrow at dawn, when I kept forgetting the name of The Liber Umbrarum, which is necessary to melt her parents and undo this duíl magic we unleashed at the coffee shop.
Not as we walked the winding paths through the Sherwood herb garden, which has everything a witch could ever want and more than a few varieties of spell-casting ingredients that most of the Witchingdom thinks are extinct.
I wish I could chalk it all up to my duíl magic, but I can’t. That only acts on desires that already exist. I can’t use it to make her want to kiss me like she needs me to be whole. I can’t use it to give her that soft, satisfied look she had after I broke the kiss. I can’t use it to make her want me the way I want her every second of the day.
The smart move is for me to keep as much space between us as possible because I’m not the kind of guy who goes where this is leading. I don’t do commitments. I’m loyal only to myself and my family. Love takes something I don’t have—the heart of a sucker.
And that’s what I keep telling myself while Tilda and I are in her mother’s garden gathering herbs for the trip while Eli and Birdie are moving all the statues to the backyard so they can strip them of the juniper berries without the whole town knowing what they’re doing.