Chapter Thirty
She and Eli hadn’t talked about whether or not they’d contact each other. Previously, it had been radio silence between random hookups. Is that what he’d prefer? Would he be bothered if she sent him a text?
Rolling over on the lounge - it was Zita’s turn in the bed that night - she punched her pillow into shape and tightened her fingers around her phone. It was late. Would he be sleeping? Working? Out with people? Maybe she should wait until morning to message him.
She rolled again, setting the phone on the floor beside the lounge, just to have it light up. She snatched it up again and opened the message.
Eli had sent her a picture of a plane window. In the foreground, his arm rested on a table by an open laptop and a glass of wine, shirt rolled up to the elbow. Beyond the window she saw the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the sprawl of the French capital laid out like a spider’s web. Another message came through.
- Just landing. Goodnight, my lovely little witchling.
Grinning from ear to ear, she returned his goodnight message before finally finding a comfortable spot to sleep. Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
Two nights later, she found herself waiting nervously outside Luie’s place for their weekly family dinner.
She knocked quickly before she could second guess herself, then stood back and waited for her cousin to answer the door. She and Zita, who was down on the drive finishing her cigarette, had agreed not to tell anyone that Soph was a black witch until after the wedding, but Soph still had some news to break.
She still had to tell them about Marco.
Luie flung the door open and Soph could tell by the look on her face that the family already knew. She flinched, even though no one had spoken yet.
“Nona is fucking pissed, Soph!” Luie hissed, wrestling to keep Hash inside with her foot. “And I am too! Marco’s whole family is coming to the wedding! Do you know how awkward it will be now?”
Soph opened her mouth to apologise, but Zita appeared at her side. “Leave her alone, Luie, she loves who she loves.”
Luie looked between them, bewilderment dipping her brows. “Loves who she loves? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sophia?” Nona’s voice was like thunder rolling down the hallway, and both Soph and Luie cringed. Zita patted Soph’s shoulder, then brushed past Luie to go inside.
“Charge your crystals, ladies. It’s going to be a rough night.”
Soph trailed her mother and cousin to the kitchen, wondering if it would be better for her to just turn tail and run. If she called Eli, maybe he’d be able to secure her an emergency ticket out of the country. It felt as though she’d have to flee across borders to escape Nona’s wrath. Raw, angry power crackled in the air as she peeked meekly around the door frame to find Nona sitting at the dining table, wineglass in hand.
“Sophia,” Nona said again, and Soph crept towards her like a kicked dog.
“How are you, Nona?” She asked lightly, kissing each of her grandmother’s cheeks, feeling Nona’s furious tremble. The old witch didn’t answer, instead pointing to the chair in front of her. Soph sank down on it while Zita and Luie went to join Stefan by the kitchen bench.
“Marco is a good boy,” Nona told Soph, and she was shocked to hear her grandmother’s voice wavering. Anger, she’d expected. And disappointment. But not sadness.
“I know he is, Nona,” she assured her, taking her old, weathered hands in her own. “And I’m sorry I’ve hurt him.”
“Then you’ll take him back?”
Soph stilled. Had Marco put Nona up to this? “No,” she said slowly and watched the anger creep into Nona’s expression. “I’ve met someone else, Nona.”
The entire room was quiet enough that a pin could have dropped and they all would have heard it. Over Nona’s shoulder, Soph saw Luie exchange a confused glance with her fiance, and Zita smiled.
“I’m disappointed, Sophia,” Nona told her, frowning. “Marco is a good Italian boy.”
“This man is Italian too,” Soph said quickly. “In fact, he was born in Italy. His parents still live there!”
Nona’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly and for once she had no words. That didn’t mean they weren’t brewing.
“He’s rich too, Ma,” Zita said from the kitchen bench with a smirk while Soph shook her head profusely, trying to shut her mother up. “He’ll look after our little Soph.”
Soph cringed. She didn’t want her family to focus on Eli’s money. She never intended to ever rely on it, but Nona’s interest was piqued.
“What is his name, Sophia?”
“Eli,” she whispered.
“Eli? Eli Damiani?” Luie blurted, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Soph shot her a scathing look.
Nona smiled, however. A gesture that showed too many teeth to be sincere. Soph’s heart ratcheted against her ribcage and her amulet warmed against her chest, warning her to flee. Nona’s next words were as smooth as an athame through butter. “I want to meet your Eli Damiani. Bring him to the wedding.”
“What?” Soph and Luie said in unison. Soph quickly shook her head. “No, Nona. I think it’s too soon for that. We’ve only just started seeing each other and Marco’s family will be there. It might create drama.”
Nona continued to smile, though her ferocious witch energy crackled about them. A warning. “Bring him, Sophia, or he is dead to me.”
* * *
Thursday night. Soph scrubbed her teeth, pressing her weight from one bare foot to the other as she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Eli would be home in the morning.
But he hadn’t answered any of her messages tonight.
Busy, she reminded herself. He probably had heaps of work to do before he could leave. Her stomach still catapulted in worry at his silence.
Spitting the toothpaste down the sink, she braced her hands against the countertop and sighed. Not all that long ago, she’d hated the idea of commitment, of being tied to someone, of placing her heart at their mercy.
How the tides had turned. Barely a week had passed, and she was desperately obsessed with her vamp- witch. Her Gaian Founder Witch. Who hunted other Founders like it was a sport.
Another heavy sigh as she looked down at her shirt - his shirt - which was all she wore to bed these days. It was losing his smell and gaining hers now. She needed to have him wear it again to rub his scent off on it.
Her phone screen flashed and her heart kicked off. Finally.
Eli sent her a picture of a door. She squinted. It was a familiar door. The door to her apartment building. Another message.
- Stay with me tonight, Witchling?
Holy fucking Founders. He was downstairs.
Tearing from the bathroom, she raced into the bedroom where her mother was lying on the covers, reading a book.
“Are we evacuating?” Zita queried as Soph found a duffle bag and started shoving clothes into it.
“Going to Eli’s,” she said quickly, racing back to the lounge room to grab her handbag as well. “Don’t know when I’ll be back!”
She heard her mother laugh, then she was out the door, racing down the lift, flying across the foyer and out the door to the waiting Audi.
Eli caught her as she threw herself across the centre console and peppered his face with kisses.
“I missed you too,” he said with a deep-throated chuckle, catching her face in his hands so he could plant a proper kiss on her lips before nudging her into her seat.
“Why are you here?” She asked breathlessly, “how did you get back early?”
He smiled, gaze raking down her body. His eyes flashed possessive green as he took in the shirt she was wearing, then they turned to thunderous mercury as they fixed on her bare legs.
She appraised him similarly, noting the casual jeans and t-shirt that he wore. The muscles in his forearm flexed as his fingers tightened on the leather steering wheel and the wild light in his eyes told her he wanted to tear out of the parking spot and take her home as quickly as possible, but he waited until her seatbelt was on before he pulled out at a normal pace.
“I moved tomorrow morning’s meetings,” he finally answered her question. “And this afternoon’s meetings. I crammed them all in this morning.”
His hand found her knee as he took the on ramp to the freeway, thumb swirling over her knee cap before grazing higher up her thigh.
“When do you have to go back again?”
“Next week,” he told her apologetically. “Probably on Wednesday. It will be like this for a few -”
His words cut off with a choke as his wandering hand reached the apex of her thighs, slipped beneath the hem of the shirt and found her pantiless and wanting. The car swerved and Soph gripped the seat, eyes slamming shut as her heart pounded against her ribs. “Eli!”
“Sorry, sorry!” He said quickly, righting the car back into its lane. His hand rose, knuckles grazing her cheek before it dropped back to her leg again. She opened her eyes, exhaling slowly. His fingers dug into her flesh as he suddenly hit the brakes, pulling off the road into an emergency bay.
“What are you -”
“Come here,” he commanded, voice gravelly as he tore at his belt buckle. With one hand he shoved his jeans down, freeing his throbbing, veined cock, while the other gripped her arm, pulling her across the centre console.
Headlights flashed by, illuminating the savage hunger in his eyes as she straddled his lap, palming his cock to line it up against her entrance.
He groaned, gripping her hips as his head dropped back against the headrest. “Don’t make me wait, Witchling.”
A groan of her own passed her lips as she sank down, his cock stretching and filling her in the most glorious way. His rich, earthy scent filled her nostrils as she claimed his lips in a desperate, breath-stealing kiss. She was addicted. More addicted to this man, his body, the way he made her his, than she had ever been to vampire blood. And this was an addiction she would never try to kick.
She rode him with a ferocity she’d never felt before, gasping his name like a mantra while his fingers dug into the flesh of her ass and his mouth claimed her breasts through her shirt, sending jagged bolts of electricity into her core. She didn’t care that they were on the side of the freeway, that cars slipped past, their headlights splashing over them like heartbeats.
They came as one. Her rolling rhythm against his lap became quick and forceful as his cock thickened and twitched inside her. He grasped her face, smothering her cries with his lips as he jerked beneath her.
“Soph,” he groaned hoarsely as they fell still, only the sound of their heavy panting filling the car. He didn’t need to say anything else. She could feel it; that thread of twine he’d looped around her heart now spanned between them. Taunt, unwilling to give, binding them in such a way she was sure it must be fate.
And this was a fate she would willingly follow to the ends of the earth.