CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Skye
After brunch—with Luke eating so much bacon, he might as well call French toast the side dish—we spend the rest of the day in the library, continuing to work our way through the witch collection.
I’ve gotten a lot better at using my magic to detect the topics of books, so we sort as we go.
It makes this aisle look worse instead of better, with piles of books scattered across the floor waiting for us to make enough shelf space to put them back.
But the librarian in me thrills to see organization emerge from chaos, even if this is only a tiny piece of the overall library.
There are other changes as well. The little green shoots sprouting from the bookshelves have grown into short vines, running along the wood without ever touching the books.
Every so often, I catch Luke almost petting the plants, his fingers gentle as he touches first one tiny green leaf, then the next. Pulses of magic flow from him regularly.
“Are you sending magic into the vines?” I ask.
He grunts his negative grunt. “I don’t have plant magic. Yet when I feed magical energy into the library as a whole, it helps it grow these, so in the end, the result is the same.”
Yeah, he’s totally doing it to help the plants, the big softie.
I turn away to hide my grin and reach for a book on a higher shelf, adding it to the top of my to-be-read stack.
But when we arrive back in the reading room and I open it, I can’t read a single thing.
I flip through several more books, each of them incomprehensible.
“Fudging fudge,” I mutter, patting at the pockets in my turquoise capris. The pants are super cute but have annoyingly shallow pockets—pockets that are currently empty. “I lost my translation crystal.”
Luke’s eyebrows slam together, his eyes narrowing as he watches me check my pockets again, and I register it on my new “Luke expression scale” as scowl number one, impatience. He stalks toward the glowing golden portal. “I will retrieve it.”
While he’s gone, I duck under one of the low-hanging wisterias to find Princess Buttercup in one of her favorite new kitty beds.
She stretches and sprawls on her back, showing off her cutie tummy, which is white with dots of black and orange.
My cat only lets me give her belly rubs when she’s relaxed and sleepy, so I take full advantage, my fingers digging into her silky long fur until she purrs.
When Luke returns to the reading room, he doesn’t hand me the crystal—he hands me a necklace.
Thin gold wire loops around the crystal, turning it into a dangling pendant hanging from a gold chain.
The metal gleams with the rich yellow color of eighteen carats, the links so heavy the chain feels lush as it pools in my palm.
“What? Luke, this is too much!” I try to push it back into his hands. “This chain must cost a fortune.”
“You will wear it,” he growls, taking the chain from me so he can put it around my neck himself, his hot fingers brushing my skin and making my whole body light up as a hundred fireworks go off in my chest. “I will brook no argument.”
The metal drapes over me, heavy and warm, the crystal coming to rest between the tops of my breasts. It’s easily the most expensive piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned, and I can’t stop touching it. “Thank you.”
“This way, nothing will interrupt our research.” His tone sounds stern, but his gaze remains latched onto my cleavage.
There’s so much heat in his eyes that my mouth goes dry and I can barely breathe.
I nibble on my lip, trying to find the courage to say something as the tension grows unbearable.
I want him to touch me again, but I’m horrible at flirting, always too shy and self-conscious.
Maybe I could learn how to eyelash flutter?
It sure works well for the heroine in the book.
Then golden sparkles surround us, and the world starts to spin. I’ve never been so glad for my out-of-control magic spell as I am now, because it deposits us in the middle of a dance lesson, where I’m already in Luke’s arms.
We stand, bodies locked together, one of his thighs pressed to mine, my fingers digging into the thick muscle of his shoulder. Heat flames in his eyes, and I can’t stop panting, arousal skittering through my veins.
“Skye! Luke!” Miss Michelle yells from across the room. “You’re here to dance, so dance!”
We jolt into motion, but the waltz we’ve been practicing doesn’t fit the timing of the music. Luke growls with frustration, and after we get Groundhog Day-ed twice in ten minutes, I feel ready to growl with him.
“By the goddess, how are we supposed to do the steps, if we never see the steps demonstrated?” Luke mutters, glaring at the surrounding couples, trying to pick things up based on what they’re doing. “I thought we were going to add turns to our waltz this time.”
“Yeah, that’s what the next lesson was supposed to be.” I shrug. “The author probably isn’t describing every single lesson in detail, or…”
“Or?” he growls.
“We’re obviously skipping lots of scenes. I think we’re…” I bite my lip as I turn things over in my mind. My cheeks flame. Oh, god, this is mortifying! At Luke’s impatient grunt, I blurt the words out, “I think we’re only doing the scenes I’d enjoy most if I read the book.”
The cutest scenes. The super romantic kick-your-feet-and-swoon scenes. The spicy scenes.
Fudging fudgsicles! I gulp, my cheeks burning.
The spicy scenes!
“It makes sense,” he rumbles.
My eyes snap up to his in shock. I expected anger, but instead he looks intrigued. “It does?”
“Your spell wasn’t on purpose, so you didn’t cast it with a specific intent. If you’d said: ‘I want to enact this entire book,’ we’d be in far worse shape than we are now. As it stands, popping in and out of the book gives us the opportunity to research a way to break the spell.”
Go, me! I didn’t do the worst thing.
“I imagine your magic might have been driven by the unconscious desire to make you happy, so it’s placing you in the scenes you’ll enjoy most.” He pulls his hand from mine and pats at the air, instinctively looking for his hidden pocket, without any luck since magic doesn’t exist here.
“By the goddess, how am I supposed to research this if I can’t write it down? ”
We stop dancing for long enough that my magic swirls around us again, dropping us back to the beginning of this scene and making his glare sharpen into scowl number three, which I’m calling his how-dare-you expression.
“I think we need to focus on the dancing for now,” I hurry to say.
He grunts and watches the other couples. “So if this isn’t the waltz, what dance is this?”
“I’m not sure.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t look exactly like any dance I’ve ever seen. It’s not a waltz or any of the Latin dances used in ballroom. Maybe a foxtrot of some kind? I’ve never seen one this fast.”
We fumble along for long enough that Miss Michelle finally makes her way over to us. “Luke, Luke, Luke. This is a freeform foxtrot. You can do what you want, but you need to loosen those hips.” She puts her hands on hers and demonstrates a few steps. “Slow, slow, quick, quick.”
“Slow, slow, quick, quick,” he growls the moment she turns away. “Yet another dance to practice.”
“She did say we’re doing freeform.” I try to smile. “That’s good, at least. That means we can do any kind of foxtrot, and the spell will find it good enough.”
“Are you certain of that?” He lifts an eyebrow.
“Yep,” I lie, hoping I can make my words true. “We can do this. We just need to work together.”
We do okay for a bit, moving too slowly, but getting the basic steps down… until one of the other couples does a surprise twirl into what had been empty space.
Luke leads me in a step, and something hits the back of my knee, buckling that leg. We topple over, one of his arms wrapped around my waist, his other palm slapped to the floor beside my head to keep us from hitting hard.
He’s on top of me, one muscular thigh wedged between my legs, my breasts crushed to his chest with delicious pressure. He lets out a groan of desire so heady I want to bathe in it, let it seep into my every pore, so I can feel exactly how much he wants me.
My hips shift the tiniest bit, and he settles more of his weight between them.
“Skye,” he rasps my name, his eyes locked onto my lips.
Is this it? Is he going to kiss me? My heart leaps against my ribs, a caged thing trying to break free.
Luke’s head dips, his breath brushing over my lips—
The tingling in my body grows and grows… and golden sparkles surround us, whirling us back to the middle of the dance floor, where we have to start this scene all over again.
My body still hums with desire, and it would be so easy to sway toward him, to—
“Goddess, help me,” Luke spits. “We can’t mess up like that again.”
“What?” I jerk upright with a wince. He’s that upset about what just happened? Oh, god, here I thought he wanted to kiss me, but that was foolish. Of course, he doesn’t want to kiss me. Luke didn’t ask for any of this—it’s my spell making all of this happen.
What he really wants is to not be here at all.