Chapter Twenty-Six
Maggie slept better than she had in weeks, even with the hard ground and roots beneath her. In Arthur’s arms, sleep was easy. He held her to him like she was precious. Like she was his.
But when she woke, she couldn’t help the familiar anxieties bubbling to the surface.
Arthur may have held her like she was his, but she wasn’t.
Was she? Had she made a mistake? Was she about to make another?
She watched him sleep, all his hard edges made soft in a way she’d never seen.
She liked to see him like this and liked it even more when he stirred and his face brightened with a joyous smile when he saw her.
Some of the knot in the pit of her stomach unraveled as she smiled back.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead and shifted the morning hardness of his cock away from her.
She was wet at the memory of what they’d done, but she didn’t kiss Arthur back.
It would be opening a door to what she truly wanted—to drag him back down to the sleeping bag with her.
To fuck him again. To invite him back to her apartment.
He was a distraction. And sleeping with a colleague went against every rule she had made to protect herself.
They were supposed to be working together, not falling into bed with each other.
After the campsite was packed away into Arthur’s interdimensional bag, they walked back the way they came. The silence between them was thick with so much unsaid, and just when Maggie was wondering which one of them would break first, Arthur asked, hesitating, “How long have you known?”
Maggie bit her lip. She didn’t know what, exactly, his hesitation meant, and she was too chicken to ask. She ducked under a low-hanging branch. “After I collapsed in the pall.”
“What unraveled the spell for you?”
She thought back to that moment that had tugged at the rune, breaking its power over her, and she was glad they had the distraction of their walk to hide how her cheeks burned.
“Your heartbeat,” she admitted, her throat feeling tight.
This felt too personal, too intimate, but she owed him honesty for once.
“On Beltane, I felt it while we danced. How fast it beat for me.” He had stopped walking, and now they were close enough on the narrow path for their fingers to brush against each other’s.
“After I collapsed in the pall, I was in and out of consciousness, but I remember your heartbeat so clearly as you carried me to safety.” She grimaced at the memory.
It had all been so confusing, but that had been clear.
“When I woke in my office with you watching over me, I knew without a doubt who I had kissed.”
She looked up at Arthur expectantly, but he looked down at their hands where their fingers still touched.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded, pulling away and walking again, like they were doing some sort of strange dance. “When did you know?”
“The day of our bargain.” He walked around her, lifting a large stick that had fallen on the path overnight and tossing it in the brush so her way forward was clear.
“Do you remember on the beach when you stood up and held your hand out to me? It was an invitation. Almost…” He paused, searching for the word.
“A dare. And when we shook hands in your office, when we became part of something together again, it all came flooding back.”
It wasn’t what she expected, but now she remembered the look of wonder he’d given her on the beach and the dazed expression he’d had in her office, the one she’d thought was pall sickness. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked again, her words sharp as points. “Why didn’t you trust me?”
“I thought you hated me, Maggie.” She was surprised how much it hurt to hear him say that. Her skin flushed hot with shame. Had she ever truly hated him? Maybe she had, but it hadn’t lasted. “I thought, once you knew the truth, I’d lose whatever tiny piece of you you’d let me have.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said quietly. “I find you maddening.” She searched for the words to explain how things had changed, but it was too much, too fast. “But I was wrong. About a lot.”
“I knew longer than you did. You’ve had plenty of chances to tell me the truth. Why didn’t you?”
Maggie opened her mouth to lie. To tell him some semblance of the truth that would be easier than how she really felt, but she couldn’t do it.
Not after they had exchanged half-truths for weeks.
She was tired of it. Her voice was so small and quiet that she wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear her over the birdsong.
“Because I’m afraid of how good it feels.
” After a pause, she added, “Aren’t you? ”
“No.”
Heat curled in Maggie’s stomach, but she didn’t know what to say back to him.
If she stopped to think about the way he made her feel for more than a second, she knew she would run from it.
But when she thought about returning to her life as it had been after summer came to an end—the pall gone, her office her own again, classes starting up once more—she couldn’t quite imagine it without Arthur at her side.
He had wormed his way into her life so completely, and she didn’t want him to leave.
And now, they had spent the night together…
The walk out of the Wilds seemed much quicker than the way in. Maybe because Maggie and Arthur moved with determined steps after their confessions, eager to get to Arthur’s car and put what happened in the forest behind them. At least, that was what Maggie told herself.
Parts of the path had become overgrown in the night, and Arthur walked ahead, clearing room for them to pass through.
With his back to her, she let the images she had been trying to ignore come to the fore—his fingers on every inch of her, his tongue flicking against her nipple as she writhed against him, the way he had come completely undone as she stroked him.
She wanted more. And she couldn’t have it.
Then her traitorous mind thought of Evan, and she wondered if there was something wrong with her for making the same exact mistake again.
She had created one simple rule for herself, and she had broken it—willingly, happily—when she’d let Arthur kiss her again.
She tried to find it in her to regret their night in the tent, but she couldn’t.
The silence and tension spun tighter between them until they were both pulled taut like guitar strings.
Maggie opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it a dozen times.
Did he regret it? They had crossed a line, there wasn’t any doubt about that.
Above and below, they were colleagues. Research partners.
Office mates. Sleeping together was not on the list of acceptable team-building activities.
It was a good thing Arthur had the wherewithal to focus on getting them out of the Wilds as Maggie’s head spun.
She would have led them straight into a ghoul’s nest. If he was dwelling on what they had done, it didn’t seem to be driving him to distraction.
The only indication at all that he was worried about it was the quiet between them.
When they finally crossed out of the Wilds, Maggie looked back at the strange expanse of trees and brush.
One night had changed so much of what was between them.
What would it mean for their work? For everything they still had to do to cast the pall out of Ilex Hall?
For that minuscule office they shared? She had no idea how they would even begin to handle being that close together again.
“I know it isn’t far, but let me drive you to your apartment.” Maggie didn’t have the heart or the muscle strength to argue.
She let Arthur lead her as her mind continued to race. He opened the truck door for her, helping her up into the cab before getting behind the wheel. Arthur pressed his palm to the key rune, and the car hummed to life.
The drive to Maggie’s apartment was short, but, gods above, did it feel long. She didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know what he wanted to hear. She wasn’t sorry they fucked. She never would be. But that’s all it could be.
She looked over at him as he drove. It was safe this way. He couldn’t stare back at her with those kind amber eyes, wanting to know more about how she was feeling. Not when she couldn’t tell him because she hadn’t sorted through her own tangled mess of emotions.
Arthur relaxed as he put distance between them and the Wilds.
Invisible tension that she hadn’t even known was resting in his shoulders disappeared, and he tapped on the steering wheel as if he heard a song Maggie couldn’t.
She watched as the arms that, only a few hours ago, had held her as she came rippled as he turned the steering wheel.
If Maggie were smart, she wouldn’t let the desire shimmering just below the surface of her skin come back to the top, but she couldn’t help it.
It had been a month and a half since that kiss on Beltane, and she’d thought of little else until Arthur had crowded her thoughts.
And last night had been better than Beltane, better than any shared kiss or dance beneath the stars, because last night she had known who touched her.
And Arthur knew it was Maggie, and he wanted her.
And she wanted him. Not just because of the way he kissed her, but because of everything else about him. And, gods above and below, why did it have to be Arthur Taliesin? Nothing between them could ever be anything serious. She had her rules for a reason.
“Maggie,” Arthur said, cutting through her spiraling thoughts. “We’re here.”
Maggie looked up at her apartment, at the withering fern on her balcony that needed water.
She didn’t know how long they’d been sitting in the parking lot, and she couldn’t bear to look at him.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to jump out of the truck and slam the door behind her, lock herself in her apartment, and never leave.
She wanted to pull him into the back seat.
“Arthur…” she began, unsure what she was going to say next.
“Do you regret last night?” he asked, his voice full with a softness she hadn’t heard before.
“Oh,” Maggie said, her face crumbling. “No. Above and below, no.” She tried to convey in those words how much she had wanted what happened in that tent.
The rest of what she had been holding back tumbled out of her.
“But I completely understand if you do. We don’t ever have to talk about it if you don’t want—”
As she rambled, Arthur’s fingers were on her chin, turning her to face him, and she realized what a relief it was to have him touching her again.
But she kept trying to find words to say.
“We can pretend it never happened, if that would make it…” He tilted her chin.
“Easier,” she finished, trying to swallow but finding her throat was still too tight.
They were a breath apart, Arthur leaning over the center console of the truck. “Tell me,” he began, a raspy edge to his words. “Tell me you never want to kiss me again.”
Maggie knew she was gone. She wanted nothing more than for Arthur to close the distance between them. She couldn’t remember a single good reason why it made sense to never kiss him again. If there was a small voice in her head telling her to retreat, she didn’t want to listen to it.
“No,” Maggie answered. “I’m done lying to you.”
And the fingers that were at her chin were then at the back of her neck, firm and insistent, pulling her toward him so he could kiss her deeply.