Chapter 36
36
R oma’s lips are so soft.
It’s the first and only coherent thought that Ez’s brain can process right now. Roma’s lips are soft and insistent, and her hand is firm and solid against Ez’s cheek, and it’s just so normal.
No corrosion burns. No ulterior motives.
Just a simple kiss in the fading light of sunset. Ez closes her eyes and frames Roma’s face with her palms, pressing back against her, trying to memorize the warmth of her skin, the shape of her mouth??—
All the little details she could only imagine when Roma’s enchantments were active. All the little details she didn’t want to imagine, because imagining them would make it so much worse when she could never have them.
But they’re kissing now. They’re kissing near the shore of a beautiful lake at sunset, the colors of the sky bathing them in an otherworldly glow, and maybe??—
And maybe Ez really can have this. Reluctantly, she pulls away. “Well,” she says hoarsely. “That was unexpected.”
Something indecipherable flashes across Roma’s face. “I’m sorry,” she stammers, jerking back. “I?—I shouldn’t have done that. I??—?”
“No, you absolutely should’ve done that,” Ez says emphatically, and she leans forward to kiss her again, just to underline her point. “It was?—it was just unexpected. I didn’t think??—??”
Roma is still talking, her words jumbling together with Ez’s. “?—?wasn’t thinking straight??—?”
“?—?never thought it would be possible??—?”
“?—?but with the enchantments gone??—?”
“?—?thinking about doing that a lot lately, but??—?”
“?—?wanted to do that for a while now, and?—wait,” Roma cuts in, holding up her hands to stop their tangled explanations. “Did you just?—did you just say that you’ve been thinking about kissing me lately?”
Ez’s heart flutters. “Um. Yes. Did you just say that you’ve wanted to kiss me for a while?”
“Yes,” Roma says slowly. “I did.”
For a long moment, they stare at each other. Roma looks torn between surprised and confused and maybe even pleased, and Ez’s pulse is pounding an exhilarated drumbeat against her temples, and then??—
And then Roma laughs. She immediately claps a hand over her mouth, hiding her smile, but there’s no disguising the light dancing behind her eyes. “Well,” she says. “This isn’t how I expected tonight to go.”
Ez grins back. “Me, neither,” she says, and she leans in again, touching a kiss to the back of Roma’s hand. “But I think I’d like it to continue like this. Yeah?”
Tentatively, Roma lowers her hand. Her cheeks are flushed, but her smile is bright. “I?—yeah. Yeah, I think I would. I mean, I already told Bryant that I won’t be home until tomorrow, so I have all night, and?—and yeah. I’d like to keep doing this.”
“Good,” Ez says, and she pushes herself to her feet, holding out a hand to help Roma up. “Except we probably shouldn’t be in public for the purposes of continuing this. Back to my place?”
Roma’s grin makes her eyes crinkle in the corners. “Sure,” she says, and she gingerly places her hand into Ez’s, a frown creasing her brow at the sight of the corrosion burns. “Is there anything we can do to heal those?”
Ez’s heart twinges. “I don’t think so,” she says quietly, pulling Roma to her feet. “I’ve been looking for a healing spell that works on them for years, but…”
Roma’s frown deepens. “Well, we know that the corrosion spell stays imbued in the burns themselves, and that the burns only heal as the enchantment dissipates, so…” Suddenly, her eyes snap up to Ez’s face. “Can you cast the deactivation spell on yourself?”
Curiosity twines through Ez. “I mean, there’s no reason why I can’t,” she says, and she takes a deep breath, holding her hands a few inches away from each other. “In the name of Nostringvadha…”
Ez flows through the incantation again, sneaking a peek at Roma’s face. Her eyes are riveted on Ez’s palms and her expression is expectant, hopeful, like she wants those burns off of Ez’s skin even more than Ez herself does.
Because she blames herself for putting them there, maybe. Ez feels a pang.
And then she feels something entirely different?—a cool rush of magic sweeping over her hands. Eyes widening, she watches as the burns slowly fade away, leaving nothing but unblemished skin in their place.
It worked. Two hundred years of searching for a spell to heal corrosion burns, and Roma Gutierrez, a bona fide hunter, finally found it.
Found it in a spell that Ez created herself. “Roma,” she breathes.
Roma looks smugly satisfied. “There we go. Much better.”
Heart pounding, Ez lunges forward and kisses Roma again. “So deactivating the corrosion spell heals corrosion burns,” she mumbles between kisses. “But?—but how does it heal them outright? If it just blocks the enchantment, then you should still need a healing spell for the burns themselves, but??—?”
“Uh, I think it’s because the burns themselves are made of corrosion,” Roma says, and she kisses Ez long and hard again. “The corrosion doesn’t cause the burns?—the burns are made of corrosion. So blocking the spell heals the burns.”
“But if that’s the case, then how??—??”
Unexpectedly, Roma bursts into giggles, tugging the slightest bit away from Ez. “Can we?—can we not discuss the scholarly applications of spellcasting while we’re kissing, please?”
Ez grins back. “Sure,” she says, and she snaps open a rift. “Bedroom?”
Roma’s smile is shy and eager at the same time. “Okay,” she says, slipping her hand into Ez’s, and they step into Ez’s bedroom side by side.
Her real bedroom. The one in her actual house, not the one in her safe house.
She thinks Roma has earned a place here by now. And she wastes no time in getting Roma exactly where she wants her, nudging in close to kiss her again, to loop her arms around Roma’s neck, to guide her back towards the bed and ease her down onto the mattress.
Roma hastily kicks off her sneakers in midair. Ez snorts out a laugh. “I can handle that, you know,” she says, and with a flick of her wrist, she teleports Roma’s shoes neatly to the side of the door.
Roma rolls her eyes. “Just because you’re the most powerful spellcaster on the East Coast doesn’t mean you have to use magic for every little thing.”
“Life would be too boring otherwise,” Ez argues, and she climbs onto the bed, bracketing Roma’s hips with her knees to lean down and kiss her.
Roma lets out a disgruntled noise when they come up for air. “You calling me boring, Laguerre?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Gutierrez,” Ez says, and she kisses her again.
She can barely believe that they made it here. After all the anger and mistrust, after all the sniping remarks and pointed barbs, after all the times they helped each other and vouched for each other, even when they didn’t want to??—
After everything they’ve been through, they finally made it.
And then, all at once, Roma goes still. “Oh, crap.”
Dread lurches through Ez. “What? What is it?”
Anxiety eats away at Ez as Roma frowns up at her. Is she having second thoughts? Does she regret instigating this, regret agreeing to this, regret going this far with a demon? Is this just another wish that Ez is going to have to leave unfulfilled, just a taste of something she should’ve known she couldn’t??—??
“We forgot about the pizza.”
Ez stares down at Roma.
Roma stares back.
“The… pizza?” Ez repeats, squinting at her.
“Yeah,” Roma says, sounding unreasonably put out. “The one you made for us to share, remember? It’s probably cold by now. Ugh.”
“I want you to look me in the eye,” Ez says, “and tell me that you’re seriously thinking about the pizza right now.”
Roma looks indignant. “It smelled delicious, Ez! I was really excited to try it, and??—?”
“I will make you other pizzas,” Ez says, not sure whether to be amused or exasperated. “I will make you many, many other pizzas, okay? Can we just?—can we just stop talking and go back to the kissing, please?”
Roma’s lips twitch. “Sure,” she says, and she slides a hand into Ez’s hair to tug her back down, kissing her long and slow??—
And then Ez pulls away again, feeling unreasonably put out herself. “The damn pizza? Really?”
“I?—?” Roma throws back her head and laughs, the sound so infectious and carefree that a grin jumps onto Ez’s face. “I just got distracted, okay? I’m human! Humans think about food a lot!”
“I’ll show you a distraction,” Ez grumbles, and she ducks her head down to lick a stripe up the side of Roma’s neck, right where her pulse is.
Roma barely stifles a gasp. “Okay, I?—I will agree that that is very distracting, and??—?”
Ez kisses her way back down Roma’s neck, cataloging all the little sounds Roma makes, nosing at her collar??—
“Ez?—?”
“I want this off,” Ez says, tugging impatiently at Roma’s shirt. “Can I take this off?”
“Sure,” Roma says hoarsely, and she fumbles for the buttons.
Lightly, Ez smacks her hands away. “No, no. You’re doing it wrong,” she says, and she slides out just the top button, pressing open-mouthed kisses against Roma’s collarbone.
Roma’s breath hitches. “Ez.”
Slowly, languidly, Ez undoes the next button and the next, feeling the staccato of Roma’s heartbeat under her lips, kissing her way downward??—
“Ez?—?!”
And Ez is rapidly becoming a huge fan of how Roma seems incapable of any words besides Ez’s name as she works her way down Roma’s body. Pressing her lips to Roma’s quivering abs, memorizing the way her breathing stutters, tasting the warmth of her skin??—
Deliberately, Ez tugs at Roma’s waistband. “Yes?”
“Please,” Roma says, and between the two of them, they manage to wrestle her out of her pants. “But?—but I would also argue that you’re severely overdressed right now, Laguerre.”
Ez arches an eyebrow. “You want to do something about it, Gutierrez?”
Roma licks her lips nervously before pushing herself upright. Ez matches her pose, expecting Roma to go straight for Ez’s shirt, but instead, Roma nudges Ez’s knees apart, crawls forward, and settles herself to sit between Ez’s legs, sliding her own legs to either side of Ez’s waist.
A thrill dances through Ez. “I don’t see how this helps with the issue of me being overdressed,” she says, wrapping her hands around Roma’s hips to stabilize her, “but I’m also not complaining.”
“Shut up,” Roma says, and she drapes her arms over Ez’s shoulders, leaning in to kiss her again. Her fingers fumble for the back of Ez’s shirt. “Can I?”
“You’re already taking too long,” Ez drawls, and Roma grins as she pulls it off. Immediately, she ducks her head to kiss her way down Ez’s neck, her fingers tangling in Ez’s hair. Ez lets her eyes slide shut as she revels in the sensations: the gentle tugging at her scalp, the heat of Roma’s mouth against her skin, the way Roma’s free hand is slowly but steadily creeping downward??—
Roma’s fingers hook into the waistband of Ez’s jeans. “I?—I want these off.”
“About time you got there,” Ez says, and she flops onto her side to remove the offending article of clothing.
By the time she sits back up, it’s to see that Roma is taking the brief reprieve to catch her breath, and Ez takes that same brief reprieve to admire the sight of her. Ez’s calm, collected, controlled hunter is utterly disheveled now: eyes dark with desire, skin slick with sweat, muscles trembling with anticipation??—
Hair frizzing out of her ponytail. Carefully, Ez reaches for it. “Can I take this down?”
A faint tremor runs through Roma. “Sure,” she says, and she turns around to face the wall, tipping her head back towards Ez.
Delicately, Ez coaxes the band off of Roma’s ponytail and onto her own wrist, letting Roma’s hair cascade around her shoulders. For a few moments, Ez combs her fingers through the little knots, listening as Roma’s breathing evens out and her shoulders start to relax.
And then, because Ez isn’t about to waste another second, she slides forward, presses her chest against Roma’s back, and braces her legs on either side of Roma’s, letting her hands wander up and down Roma’s sides. “There. Much better.”
“The?—?” Roma’s voice catches on a moan as Ez starts massaging slow circles against her lower belly. “The hair or the position?”
“Well, your hair looks pretty either way,” Ez says diplomatically, kissing the hollow behind Roma’s ear. “And the other positions were good, too. But, personally, I’m beginning to think that every part of tonight is going to be better than the last.” Deliberately, she trails her fingers downward. “Say yes?”
“Please,” Roma whispers back, and she turns her head to kiss Ez again.