Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Goldie was still in her robe. The robe, the good velvet one with feather-lined cuffs and a sash that could make the gods weep if tied just right. The scent of eucalyptus bath oil clung to her skin, sharp and green, threaded with undertones of candle smoke and leftover lust.
She stood barefoot in the kitchen, lazily spooning honey into her tea, her hair pulled into a loose knot that still carried the memory of fingers tugging too hard.
Ezra emerged from the bedroom like a man recovering from war. His dark hair was damp from the shower. A linen shirt hung open over his chest, half-buttoned with the kind of deliberate chaos that suggested he’d forgotten how clothes worked after what they’d done to each other.
The claw marks across his collarbone she’d given him were barely hidden by the fabric. His pants were slightly wrinkled. He looked gloriously wrecked.
“Morning, babe,” he said, voice still husky with sleep and satisfaction, and leaned in to brush a kiss against her mouth.
His lips tasted like toothpaste and smugness. Goldie let him kiss her, but didn’t kiss him back. Not really. Just a soft hum of acknowledgment, the way you might nod at someone who held the elevator.
“Last night was fun,” he said, reaching past her to snag a slice of toast she’d made for herself. “I’ve got some stuff this weekend, but I’ll hit you up next week, cool?”
He winked. Of course he did.
“Totally,” Goldie said, her voice bright as a bell, already steering him gently toward the door with a hand pressed to the small of his back.
Ezra turned, catching her by the waist and pulling her flush against him. His other hand rose to cradle her jaw, thumb brushing the soft spot just beneath her cheekbone.
The kiss he gave her this time wasn’t lazy. It was real. Deep and slow and meant to linger.
When he pulled back, he studied her for a beat too long. His brows furrowed, just slightly. “You okay?”
Goldie gave him her best cat-in-the-sun smile. “Of course.” She rose up on tiptoe to peck the corner of his mouth. “You know me. I’m a walking good time.”
Ezra chuckled, clearly satisfied with that answer, and turned to go. As he stepped through the threshold, she gave his ass a playful swat. “Don’t be a stranger,” she called.
“Never am,” he said, winking like a bastard.
“Asshole,” she responded fondly as the door clicked shut behind him.
Goldie slumped against the door and let herself breathe him out. A forgotten sock lay curled by the coffee table. She considered picking it up, then didn’t.
“Well,” she murmured, finally pushing herself away from the door. “That’ll do.”
Maeve and Oberon sat side-by-side at the kitchen threshold. Oberon, a study in dark stillness, pinned Goldie with a flat, unblinking stare. Maeve, ever the dramatist, let out a soft, wounded sigh and began to meticulously groom a perfectly clean shoulder, refusing to even look at her.
“Oh, don’t you start,” Goldie warned, her voice lighter than she felt. She tried to step past them, but Maeve didn’t move, forcing Goldie to detour around her. “Is it so wrong to have a little fun?”
Oberon’s only reply was a slow, deliberate blink. Maeve flicked the very tip of her tail against the floorboards. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Goldie rolled her eyes with a theatrical flourish of her own and made for the kettle. “Fine. Hate fun. See if I care.”
She busied herself with the water, moving with a practiced ease that didn’t quite reach her shoulders.
They were drawn tight, a familiar tension.
Her muscles still held the pleasant ache from Ezra’s attention, yes, but a colder, deeper strain was setting in—the exhaustion that came from playing the part of the “walking good time” just a little too convincingly.
Her body had been in overdrive. She’d almost called Jonah, her thumb hovering over his name, pulse racing with the thought of what it might mean.
But in the end, she’d called Ezra instead, swallowing the flicker of disappointment as she did.
Not because he was right for her, but because he was easy: broad shoulders, warm body, and the emotional availability of a bar tab: fine until it’s time to settle up, and then suddenly it’s your problem alone.
Complicated, yes, but in the most uncomplicated way.
And he’d come over. Of course he had. Ezra never turned down a mess with good legs and an open door. He’d shown up in thirty-seven minutes flat with a bottle of Pinot Noir and his signature smirk, as if he were granting a royal favor.
And godsdamn it, he had been. Because he was good. He knew the exact, wicked rhythm she liked, knew how to push her buttons until she sparked. By all accounts, it was fantastic. It should have done the trick.
But it had only made things worse. It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a glass of wine. The act itself was glorious, but the source of the heat remained untouched. The fire inside her hadn't been quenched; it had been fed.
At least, she consoled herself with a sip of tea, she wasn’t currently sleepwalking into the Grove Core. Sig’s sigils on her door held firm. Apparently, whatever was propelling her was no match for the magic of a former Harbinger.
So, yes, she was a horny, buzzing mess. But at least she was a horny mess safely confined to her own apartment, instead of one staggering through the midnight streets of Bellwether. That would’ve been a disaster of truly epic proportions.
A knock on her apartment door split through her thoughts.
Goldie groaned, setting down her teacup with a theatrical sigh. She padded to the door, tugging the velvet robe tighter across her waist as if she could cinch her own chaos.
“Do you miss me already?” she called, plastering an amused smirk on her face as she swung the door open. “Or did you forget your—”
It wasn’t Ezra.
Splice stood on her entry mat, his silhouette sharp and utterly wrong against the ordinary frame of her door. He wore a deep green coat over a gray shirt, the dark fabric doing nothing to diminish his supernatural intensity.
Goldie reflexively yanked her robe tighter, but the velvet only slipped against her nightie, highlighting all the places she wasn't covered and dragging her attention right back to the insistent, unmet pulse between her thighs.
Splice’s gaze swept down her for half a heartbeat, then jerked back up as if he’d been scorched. He looked, for all the world, like a sentient tree trying desperately not to look at the axe swinging toward him.
“Have you uncovered anything?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he stepped over the threshold and into her apartment like gravity itself had seized him and would not let him stop.
“Hey, wait a second!” she protested, the words catching in her throat as he moved past her. She spun, waving a hand in exasperation. “Oh, okay, sure, come on in. It’s not like I’m half-naked.”
He turned on her, words grinding out sharp and uneven. “I went to the lawyers, but the clause is binding. No loophole.” His hands flexed, restless, vines twitching at his collar.
“They told me I can name an inheritor, but that won’t solve it. It’s the magical clause itself. It bleeds him. It strangles him. If I can’t break it—” He cut himself off, jaw working, as though the rest was too dangerous to speak aloud.
A harmonized pair of yowls rang out. Maeve and Oberon came strutting from the kitchen like twin feline socialites arriving fashionably late to the main event.
Maeve, who had treated Ezra with icy disdain, immediately twined herself around Splice’s leg.
Oberon bumped his head against Splice’s shin with a reverence so forceful it was nearly a tackle.
Splice flinched, a sharp, full-body recoil.
“Oh,” Goldie said, one brow rising slowly. “So they like you.”
As if to prove her point, Maeve began to purr, the sound loud enough to vibrate the air. Oberon, not to be outdone, launched himself at Splice’s trouser leg again, determined to merge with his calf.
Splice finally tore his gaze from the cats and looked at her.
His nostrils flared. His pupils, already the color of dark secrets, dilated until they swallowed the green of his irises.
He wasn’t just looking at her; he was reading the story of her morning in the air—eucalyptus, honey, her own arousal, and underneath it all, the unmistakable trace of Ezra.
A low, guttural sound rumbled in his chest, almost too quiet to hear, like distant thunder or a warning from something ancient and territorial.
Goldie’s breath caught. Wetness bloomed between her thighs, a hot, shameful, instantaneous response to his silent fury. She locked her knees together, hard, to keep from swaying.
And beneath the hum of want, anger began to boil.
She wasn’t dressed. She was still marked by last night’s spectacularly wonderful yet unhelpful session with Ezra. And now Splice was here, striding into her apartment with that look in his eyes. Not horror, not the recoil she remembered, but possessive. Like he had a claim.
Goldie drew a breath, sharp and grounding. When she spoke, her voice was steady only by sheer, practiced will. “And you decided you needed to barge in here… because?”
That stopped him. Splice turned and looked at her fully, as if he’d just registered the temperature of the room.
Confusion flickered across his face. Then recognition.
Then a wave of pure panic, the look of someone who knew he’d just broken every rule of etiquette and maybe a few laws of physics on his way in.
“Because,” he stammered, throat working. “Because you were there.”
Goldie snorted and tossed her hair, finding a sliver of comfort in the familiar drama of it. “So? I’m not the police. I’m not on the council. I’m just a witch with amazing fashion sense and a knack for showing up at the worst possible time.”
“I felt you.”