Chapter Sixteen
Senán
Ryder might not possess the quickest wit in the world, but as far as physical reaction times go, he’s second to none.
I’m sure I’ve caught him quite off-guard, but he adapts immediately, gripping my face with both hands as he kisses me back full force.
He presses in close and quick, backing me up against a tree, and I’m so overcome with the sensory memory of our first physical meeting that I moan wantonly into his mouth.
My hands are underneath his shirt in seconds, pushing it out of the way so I can feel his skin against my palms. He immediately pulls it off and tosses it aside, not a thought spared in regard to our locale or the time of day, and something about the unbridled nature of the action pulls me even deeper—in the span of a breath, we’re on the ground with the rolling waves of Ryder’s body underneath mine.
Ryder won’t let my mouth away from his. With an arm around my back and a hand in my hair, he presses our bodies so close together that I’m losing track of where one of us ends and the other begins.
When I’m finally allowed to pull my face away, we’re both gasping for breath as though we might have suffocated under the weight of our own passion.
But Goddess knows I’m not finished with him yet.
I crawl quickly down his body, and Ryder is already unbuttoning his fly before I get there.
He lifts his hips to assist me in pulling his pants down and off, only momentarily hindered as they tangle around his shoes, and then my dear Witchfinder is naked on the forest floor, surrounded by thick, verdant moss and scattered sunlight.
He’s half-hard and panting, eyes full of reverence and desire, and I waste no time in getting what I want from him as I take him into my mouth as far as I can.
Ryder moans, his knees splaying to make room for me between his thighs.
I shift my position, hooking one of Ryder’s knees over my shoulder as I continue to bob my head over his length.
He makes a soft, needy sound and moves his second leg to join the first.
I close my eyes, the better to feel and hear his praises, and his suggestive position and the way his voice has gone quiet with hunger brings the word versatility back into the front of my mind.
I pull my mouth off of him and move lower, dragging lips and teeth over sensitive areas of flesh until my face is buried, tongue lapping at his entrance as his legs shake against my ears.
Ryder keens and roils as I press my hands to the backs of his thighs to push them closer to his chest, opening him up further.
He’s shaking, trembling against me, and I moan into the sensation of his hips grinding against my face.
There’s such a desperate ache in the sounds he’s making, and as much as I want to carry on like this for a lifetime, I also want to feel his climax on my lips.
I reach up and take Ryder’s cock in one hand, pumping it barely three times before his body goes tense, his back arches, and he lets out a long, unhindered groan as he cums, hot in my hand and quivering on my tongue.
I keep my mouth in place for a moment, savoring the feeling of his body quaking under my hands, then finally pull away from him when he seems sufficiently spent.
Ryder’s knees flop to the ground on either side of him, and I take a moment to admire my own handiwork—the body lying sated and breathless on the forest floor, the streak of cum painting his belly.
I lick it off of him, eliciting a pleased hum from his chest, then lay on the grass by his side.
He rolls his head to look at me, eyes dazed and dazzled. I pluck a sprig of mint out of the ground nearby and grin at Ryder as I chew its leaves.
Ryder chuckles breathlessly. “You’re a fucking lunatic, you know that?”
“I’m not the one who’s nude in the woods, love.”
He laughs again and reaches for his pants. It isn’t the result I intended my words to have, but I don’t mind the way his muscles move as he gets dressed, so I let him continue.
“How long until you can move them, do you think?” he asks as he (regrettably) pulls his shirt back on.
“A few days, at the earliest. Until then—”
“Until then, the whole family isn’t safe.”
“We have ways of protecting them,” I assure him gently. “Ways of hiding them.”
Ryder shakes his head firmly. “That’s not enough. We need to find the source. Rotten foundations, remember?”
“Ryder, even if we could find the gunman, we wouldn’t be able to—”
A shot rings out in the forest, a loud crack that ricochets off the trees and scatters birds and wildlife. Both our heads jerk reflexively in the direction of the sound.
“It’s him,” Ryder says.
“We have to be very careful,” I tell him. “We don’t even know how many—”
Ryder is already up and running.
“Ryder, wait!” I shout, clambering to my feet, but he’s already through the trees and headed off in the direction of the sound. I race after him, but he continues to disappear into the morning mist, and seconds later I’ve lost him entirely.
A second shot rings out, the sound bouncing off of every surface around me and making it impossible to discern the precise location of its source. I sigh and shuffle through the maze of chains that I keep around my neck.
“Bloody fire signs,” I mutter to myself as I untangle my dowsing pendulum. There’s no guarantee this will work—dowsing isn’t the most reliable method of finding a person, but it’s all I’ve got for now.
The smooth tourmaline pendant rotates counterclockwise once on its chain before swinging confidently South-Southeast. I’ll have to wonder, later, how it found him so easily, how it connected with his energy with such proficiency one might think he was pulling it in his direction with some kind of magnetic force.
But I’ve no time for that now, so I follow its path into the trees, hoping that I can find Ryder before the gunman does.