Chapter 14
Crane
I expected Kat to protest when I told her I was going with her back to her house in Sleepy Hollow. But to my surprise, she not only welcomed the idea, but she was insistent I not just walk beside her but ride her horse with her.
A perfect gentleman would have told her that he’d prefer to walk, to keep space between them.
But I am not a perfect gentleman.
Truth be told, I’m not a gentleman at all.
I’m a deviant.
And she knows that too. She knows it and yet invited me to be as close to her as I’ve ever been. As soon as we walked back from the lake and tacked up her horse, I was swinging onto Snowdrop’s back and pulling her up along with me.
“Are you comfortable?” I ask her. I’m sitting in the saddle, and she’s basically in my lap, the heft of her backside pressing against my cock, which is painfully stiff.
I know she can feel it—I’m a tall man, and my cock is equally as impressive—but she doesn’t seem to mind.
Still, I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. “If not, I can dismount and lead you.”
“No, it’s fine,” she says with a small shake of her head. Her voice is small and delicate, but there’s something else there. A rawness. Something carnal that makes my blood run hot.
Is it possible that she not only feels me…but likes it?
I try to adjust myself just in case, but it’s impossible not to be turned on when she’s so close to me and after all the magic we just played with. “Are you sure you’re comfortable?”
“Yes,” she says softly. She leans back against me, and she adjusts her grip on the reins as Snowdrop plods along the path away from the stable. I lean forward slightly and put my hands over hers, holding them for a moment before I move them out of the way and take over the reins.
“I like to be in control, remember?” I murmur against her ear.
She smells heavenly. Like orchids and sex.
I’m sure she’s not even aware that I can pick up on this, but when she was in that other place, her body was in a state of arousal.
It’s not that I have preternatural senses normally, but I feel like having been inside her head—and having her inside of mine—has linked our bodies together.
I can smell her provocation, feel the heat coming off her body.
I figured it wasn’t her father she was looking for between the veils but someone else, someone who made her aroused.
I want to find out who it was she was looking for, who she was thinking of.
I want to make her forget them.
“You don’t need to remind me,” she says, her voice a little breathless.
I move my nose to the nape of her neck. “Are you sure about that?”
Her breath hitches slightly, and I grin.
I enjoy toying with her like this, playing these games, pretending that the energy we have when we’re together isn’t capable of becoming something powerful.
I remember the dark feelings I saw in her head, that lust and arousal, and I want that from her.
I want it to swallow us both. I can only pretend to be a proper teacher for so long before the urges come out to play.
The urge to be her teacher in other ways.
I guide Snowdrop along the path that heads to the gates, and with each moment we approach them, I can’t help but fear what might happen once we pass through.
What if I don’t remember her at all? What if all my memory goes, not just of the magic I learned while at this school, but of the ritual tonight, and Vivienne Henry, and how Kat has been making me feel?
What if it doesn’t let me leave the school at all? What if there’s an invisible force that will hold me back and only let her return home?
I don’t want to lose her tonight. I don’t want to let her go.
“Who were you thinking about in the veils?” I ask her.
“W-what? Why?” Her body stiffens against me, which in turn makes my cock stiffen against her backside even more.
“Because I’m jealous,” I admit, my voice dropping. “I know you were thinking of someone you’ve lain with. Someone who has touched you, made you come.” I whisper the last word.
She swallows audibly, shifts in her seat. The friction against my cock makes me let out a hiss of breath, my eyes closing for a moment, and I take one hand off the rein and reach for where the petticoats of her dress are bunched up at the front of the saddle.
“Does this disturb you?” I whisper into her hair. “That I know this? That it turns me on? That I want to do that to you?” I run my lips along her earlobe, and she shivers. She tastes like sunshine and flowers. “Would you like me to do that to you?”
She lets out a needy yes, so faint that I barely hear it. But I know her body wants it too; it’s in her smell, the way she’s both tense and soft.
I slide my hand under the layers of her dress, my palm coasting over her drawers, up her thigh, until I meet where the fabric splits apart, lined with lace. “You can tell me to stop,” I murmur, my fingers inches away from her bare skin. The heat that’s coming off her is like an inferno.
“I won’t,” she says, leaning back against me, and I place my mouth on her upper neck, my lips kissing and sucking at her skin, reveling in the taste of her.
She groans, and when I slide my forefinger along where she’s so slick and warm, her groan deepens, her chest rising and falling with heavy breath. “God, please.”
I moan, my cock begging for release already. Just hearing those words, I feel close to coming in my trousers.
“You know I love it when you see me as God,” I tell her, biting her earlobe. “Let me rule you as one. Let my power revel with yours.” I slide my finger farther along her wetness until it’s plunging inside of her.
She lets out a breathless cry, a sound I’ve only dreamed of hearing from her lips. These past weeks, I’ve watched her and wondered what it would sound like when I made her surrender to me. She clamps around my finger like a vise.
“Yessss,” I hiss in her ear. “Let me rule you. Let me teach you, my vlinder. Let me set you free so that you can fly.”
Let me make you forget that other man existed.
I plunge another finger inside her as the horse walks on toward the gates.
I feel like I’m racing against the clock, that I’ll remember none of this when I cross over, and what if I don’t remember what happens on the other side?
I want to remember the feel, the sound of her coming on my hand, coming because of me.
“Will you let me make you come?” I whisper to her as she starts to buck against my hand.
“Yes,” she says shakily.
“Ride my fingers, not the horse,” I tell her, and I start driving my fingers in and out as she writhes against me.
We’re at the gates now. They slowly swing outward, as if ushering us off into the night. I want to remember this.
I want to remember this magic.
This power.
I slide my thumb over her wet, swollen clit, and then she’s crying out, her voice rising in a steam of breath and echoing into the night sky.
“Oh God! Oh my God!”
She’s loud enough that it carries across the lake, and I’m sure someone in the dorms is looking out of their windows now, wondering who is up to what. But we’re in the dark, and no one can see us, and even if they could, I wouldn’t care.
Her body spasms and jerks, and the energy that moves through her and onto me is unlike any I have felt before. I don’t see into her mind, I don’t see her memories, but I feel her, every inch of her, like a current runs from her to me, connecting us. It brims with power and destiny.
I only felt connected to one person like this before and never had the chance to explore it more. But with Kat, I do.
Lord, I hope I do.
She’s still writhing against my hand, grinding against the saddle and my cock, and it’s hard not to come myself.
I want nothing more than to shove her forward so she’s lying against the horse’s mane and pull up her skirts, thrust my cock into her as deep as it can go.
She’s already so wet she’d be able to take me.
But before I can do any of that, we’re riding through the gates, through a cold sheet of air that makes the pressure in my head build until it feels like it will pop. It feels like being doused with ice water.
“Fuck,” I grumble, making a fist around the skirt of her dress. “What was that?”
“I think that was the wards,” Kat says in a small, strained voice, still sounding breathless. “I suppose you’ll forget everything that just happened, won’t you?”
I brace myself as the horse walks on, the pressure in my ears alleviating until finally it clears.
I try to hold on to the memory of her coming on my hand moments before: the sound of her cries, the way her desire dripped through my fingers, how she let me blindfold her at the lake, the way she trusted me to hold her hand, to give and not take.
And then…
Nothing happens.
I feel the same as before.
I haven’t forgotten a thing.
“I still remember,” I tell her, placing my lips at the back of her head.
“I remember the soft, wild noises you make when you come. How you made me feel like a god, whether my fingers are inside you or you’re in class, gazing up at me with those hungry eyes of yours. What a good sweet witch you are.”
I can’t see her face clearly, but I know her cheeks are burning. “You remember,” she muses softly. “And I remember you. We remember each other, no matter what the coven has protecting the school. What does that mean? Why us?”
She twists in her seat to try to face me, but I drop the reins and reach for her face, holding it back toward me as I kiss her. She’s so sweet and hot, her lips and tongue like a taste of heaven.
“I want you,” I murmur against her lips. “I want to come inside you.”
I want to know what happens when the energy we create inside of each other explodes.