Chapter Eighteen
I wake at dusk with Julia’s arms still wrapped around me and I snuggle closer to her. “Thank you for coming back with me.”
“What do you mean?” Her brows pinch and then her face clears and she holds me tighter. “You thought there was a chance I’d go after the man who killed me and succumb to my wrath?”
“I worried that his pull was stronger than mine.”
“There is only one thing that could make me stay in hell. And that is if you were trapped there, too.”
I shiver and it’s not because her skin is cold. “Let’s never go back there.”
“No more hell,” she agrees. “But let me take you to Heaven.”
She turns over me and sinks through the blankets as if they aren’t there.
But the cotton sheet still brushes at my legs and she doesn’t argue with me when I kick it away.
She brushes my hair back from my forehead, gaze wandering over my face. “I’ve lain beside you in this bed a dozen times before, wishing I could simply touch you… I would have been happy to hold your hand.”
I lace my fingers in hers. “You can hold my hand any time you like.”
Her lips brush the back of it. “I’m yours and you’re mine, aren’t you, Genevieve?”
“Yes.” I slip my fingers through her hair, behind her neck, and pull her down to me. “I’ve been yours for a while.”
When I kiss her, she seems to sigh with her whole body, easing her weight onto me and I free my hand from hers, wrapping my other arm around her waist so that I can clutch her tighter.
I need her.
And I want her and there’s an urgency within me that has nothing to do with anything outside of us.
The rest of the world could have been sucked to hell… I’m not going after them. I’m not going anywhere when I have Julia like this.
She kisses me like she needs me too. Desperate and deep.
Both of us have longed for too long.
I whimper when she slips away from me, but the disappointment is short-lived. I help her when she drags my pajama pants down my legs, and I pull my shirt off, tossing them aside.
She hovers over me, looking her fill, and I lick my lips… waiting, wanting…
When I reach for her, she sinks down to me, but she spreads my legs again, sharp fingers holding my thighs as she opens me for her.
“You’re perfect, Genevieve.” She kisses my knee and sighs against my skin. “No spell for other people, just us.”
I nod, licking my lips. “Just us.”
She smiles, her teeth still sharp, and descends on me.
I grab her head on a gasp, but I don’t try to take control from her.
What was rushed before is unhurried and I bite my tongue as she takes her time, exploring me with her mouth.
She makes me writhe and I prop myself up on my elbows so that I can watch her, meeting her dark eyes as she takes what she wants from me.
The languid way in which her tongue works makes me want to weep and beg, but I only let a whimper go free.
When her eyes flutter closed and her grip tightens on my thighs, I have to drop my head back and screw my eyes shut.
Demands clog the back of my throat. More… Now… Please…
But I don’t let them free.
Nothing passes my lips until that need and pleasure coil into a tight point inside my belly, and I come, hands twisting in the sheets as that pleasure courses through me.
Julia laughs, her breath fluttering against my damp skin. “Perhaps the next time I go to hell, it will be gluttony that tugs at me.”
“I’m certain lust would show me you and no one else.”
Julia kisses me once more and then shifts up to kiss my mouth. I grind myself against the hard column of her leg, forcing myself not to try to turn her.
“Are you fighting me? Or yourself?” she asks as she takes hold of my wrists.
Her grip is tight, her teeth on my neck sharp, and I wriggle against the weight of her hips. But I’m not trying to get away. I want more. I’m always going to want more.
But I won’t take it.
“Too many people have taken from you… I only want to give.”
He smiles and shakes her head at me. “Oh, you’ll take.”
She chuckles as she kisses me and I gasp when her fingers find me again, when they slide through the wetness her mouth left behind and delve inside of me.
“We’ll both take and we’ll both give and I have no doubt the scales will always balance.” She moves over me and her smile is even sharper than it was before. “But this time, I think I’ll give you what you want… and what you need.”
She presses forward with her fingers, catching my lips in a kiss before I can argue with her.
I savor that kiss while she works herself inside of me, two fingers, then three, then…
My eyes fly wide and she smiles at me, even though she doesn’t draw back from that kiss.
The pressure the… perfection.
I moan against her lips as she presses her whole hand inside of me and I tighten on her.
I fight for my breath when she leaves me, moving so that her lips can toy with my clit as she continues to work her way into me.
“Before,” I say, shivering and shuddering at the sharp pleasure her lips pull from my clit, “I had thought to myself that I wanted you inside me. Can you hear my thoughts?”
“No… but I think I know what you want.”
She stretches and fills me and I hold myself as still as I can until the pressure is too great, the pleasure is too sharp. A cry rips from my throat as I thrash and it feels like the whole house shakes around me as my orgasm tries to rip me apart.
Julia’s soft laughter is the only sound I can hear over my own heartbeat.
Joy… That is what I want for her.
That’s what I want for us.
When my heart slows, and my breathing settles. Julia eases herself from me and lays at my side, nose brushing mine. She kisses my lips, my chin, my nose…
“I’d like to be your anchor.” I say in the softness that cocoons us.
“I’d like that too.”
She looks down through the bed and the floor. “The spell requires my heart.”
I hold her hand. “We don’t have to do this today. We have plenty of time. You already haunt my heart. And I’ll haunt you right back. Forever.”
Her hand flickers, but it’s completely solid when she touches my cheek. “Forever.”
Thank you for reading Haunted Heart.