Chapter 20 What If I Kiss You First?
Tilly cursed under her breath and sent Theo an apologetic smile. "Can we just keep walking? I cannot do another confrontation tonight."
Ronnie was holding the ball in both hands, a backward baseball cap on, as he watched them walk.
Anxiety crept in as their last interaction played in her mind. Jen had not held back.
The feeling of something sparking hit her and she knew without a second thought that what she was feeling was coming from the man beside her, standing broody and tall.
"Uhh," her uncertainty could have been partially her thoughts, but mostly it was battling the sudden wave of emotion from Theo. The shock of it, juxtaposing the calm and stoic man on the outside. "You should know, nothing is going on with him," she said softly.
He looked down at her. "I know."
"So, you don't have to be jealous or anything.
Not that you'd be jealous. But you know," she was rambling, words filtering through her brutal experiences with her ex-husband, who would turn this into something to blame her for.
"Jen took care of him. I think she hexed him," she added with a scrunched-nose look that endeared her to him.
"Tilly," he said gently, pulling them to a stop. "You do not need to worry about me acting as though I have any rights to you. What you're feeling from me is an understanding of what kind of man he is."
She tilted her head, the question of what kind of man was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't need him to answer. Because she knew.
"Okay." Her smile was relief.
Then a large hand curled around her waist just before she was pulled and turned into Theo's body. The move didn't require much, but the intimacy of the move, like two dancers who had practiced, was expressed.
She wasn't looking in Ronnie's direction; she couldn't because her wide eyes were captured by Theo's. But she could feel a smarting anger, pulsing from across the street.
Her eyebrows popped up under the fringe of her black and emerald hair when the solid body next to her moved until she was fully turned in his arms, one of his hands having smoothly slid up the back of her head as he lightly dipped her.
The suddenness of it made her catch her breath as her arms instinctively reached for him, looping around his neck.
The feeling of holding onto him, being held so on purpose, and yet gently, was heady. She looked up into his ink eyes, beguiled and waiting for whatever was next, completely content and excited to do so.
"I don't want the first time I kiss you to be in front of anyone, especially him. And I don't want the first time I kiss you to be to prove a point. And that is what I would be doin'." He kept his voice low, and deep, dragging across her exposed nerves like a soft scraping of nails on one's back.
"What point?"
He dipped lower, and she closed her eyes in anticipation-turned-surprise when his nose brushed along hers, the delicate touch making her catch her breath, forgetting what she had asked him.
She'd wanted his lips, had hoped for them, but the way that this man could touch her in such a calculating way like he had planned it out beforehand, her body felt brutally on edge and primed.
She could feel Ronnie watching them, the discomfort and anger a mere speck trying to compete with everything she could feel from Theo and her own pulsing needs.
"The point I would have made is that if he had wanted to, he should have.
And I want him to feel what it is like losing you.
A long time on this earth, and I still want to choose petty," he mumbled.
It made her laugh. Because he was a controlled man.
A man who wouldn't do anything without careful thought of consequence.
But here, with her in his arms, he lost a fraction of that and she could see the frustration in his eyes, hear it in his voice.
His words touched with healing hands a wound inside of her.
To be wanted in this way...there was no room for her to question his earnestness.
And without hesitation, as those words worked a magic inside of the place she'd long buried never hoping to revive, she pulled chief Theo Landry down as she reached up to touch her mouth to his.
It was the most forward thing she'd done in so long that it felt like she was about to free-fall after not having spread her wings for so long.
But then her body was pulled up and into his in such a tight hold, his own hand fisting in her hair as he let her kiss him gently, slowly, until he needed to take over.
She tasted his low growl, swallowing it like a piece of cotton candy dissolving too quickly before he spun them in such a graceful move that she barely registered her back being pressed against a two-hundred-year-old oak tree.
His hands were on her waist and cradling the side of her face as his mouth took over what she had started.
She felt the age of the tree hold her, its solidness bracing them for their moment. It was like being cloaked from the world.
He was urgent but thorough. He didn't rush anything, this man.
And perhaps for one of the first times in her romantic life, she thought there could never be enough time with him like this to satisfy her.
She already regretted when this would end, the melancholy thought adding a sweetness to the taste of him.
By the time he pulled away, both of them were like creatures coming up for air, their lungs having been forgotten in the midst of passion.
"I've thought about kissing you."
She felt her heart pick up. "You have?"
His nod and his eyes looking into hers as he leveled out his breathing was something she could forget time with.
"You make me want to be more still with myself. And you make me want to make you more quiet in your mind."
Her head tilted and she looked at him with a smiling curiosity. "You think my mind is loud?"
His large hand smoothed her hair down gently in a tingling pet that was both comfort and passion as his eyes ran over her face before he answered.
"I think your mind learned how to survive, and is struggling to remember how to live. And through that lens, everything is something to survive, rather than experience. I want you to be able to release that and live. With me."
Her eyebrows shot up and she smiled with a joke tucked into the corner, "You want me to live with you? But don't you think that's a little fast?"
His slow smile reached his eyes, which were on her mouth before he tugged them away to look into her eyes. "Cheeky," he chided softly as he playfully tugged her long hair.
She laughed. And she enjoyed being held by him, not worried that she lingered too long. Then she enjoyed him holding her hand as he walked her home slowly.
She thought to look over her shoulder when she felt what had been anger burn to sorrow.
Ronnie was bending to pick up the basketball, his friends getting into cars leaving for the night.
His baseball hat fell to the ground as he bent, and she quickly swiveled her head back in shock.
Jen's hex had worked and she couldn't help but smile.
She talked about her sister and what she'd discovered before the vandalism incident.
And then she asked him what he was reading. He talked easily. Never using too many words, but the perfect ones so that she felt like she was a part of his story. She could feel that connection being woven between them.
She was about to walk up the porch steps of The Lost Souls when she heard laughter around the back.
"Want to say hi to Ursula and Eloise? And probably two cats, a huge dog, and a few raccoons." One corner of his mouth lifted when she held up a hand and added, 'Oh! And possibly a hawk and my newest friend, a crow I named Portia."
"That's an interesting animal-to-human ratio.
Is that Portia?" he asked nodding to where the large black bird sat on the rail of the porch watching them.
When the black ears of a cat poked through the railing the bird looked down before taking flight to land in a tree nearby.
Sulphur watched like a hunter, her head going low, her shoulders up, her tail lazily swooshing behind her.
"Hi, honey."
"Hi, Portia. She's been following me around for a few weeks.
Pretty sure when you join a coven, you get some kind of animal friend assigned to you.
Ursula already had Casper. Eloise got Cleopatra, that's the hawk," he nodded.
"And she accidentally adopted a pregnant raccoon when she was drunk a couple of months ago.
Oh," she snapped her fingers. "You saved her life. "
"I remember," he replied. "Makes sense with witches. Your magic is tied to the earth and living things."
She tilted her head narrowing her eyes. "Do you know a lot about witches? I mean, you're like two thousand years old-"
"I'm two hundred," he corrected with a straight face as he'd told her that before.
"Whatever. Same thing."
"Not the same thing at all. Those numbers are very far apart."
She waved his words away. "But you must know about witches."
He nodded slowly. She raised her eyebrows and gave him a well? look.
He took his time, along with a large inhale and exhale, before he replied,d surprising her. "I'd love to say hi to your friends and the zoo."
"You would?" A brightness filled her chest. He wanted to say hi to her friends. She pulled him around the side of the black victorian house where fire bushes grew tall along the side and would go from green to fiery red and orange in the fall, the contrast against the black house striking.
They rounded the house and the string lights over the patio and the perfectly wild garden lit up the space. The sound and smell of the bonfire made her smile.
Ursula and Eloise sat in chairs with a bottle of Tilly's newest batch of honey wine, each with half a glass in their hands and an empty one on an empty chair. She knew it was for her, and something inside of her bloomed.
"Hey guys."
"Tilly!" Eloise greeted then her smile morphed from excited to intrigued when she saw who was with her. "Chief Landry, nice to see you. With our friend. Who looks like she's had the hell kissed out of her."
"Eloise!"
Ursula kicked her as she laughed and Tilly, while blushing, shook her head and rolled her eyes at the playful smile Eloise was beaming at them.
"Ladies," he greeted kindly with a dip of his head. She thought of a quiet cowboy whenever he did that, could imagine a cowboy hat on his head. "I've seen what's going on around town. Let me know if you need anything."
"Thank you, chief. Want to join us? We can grab you a glass." Ursula, always the welcoming host, was about to get up when he held his hand out stopping her.
"I appreciate it greatly, but I just wanted to say hello as I dropped Miss Nguyen off."
Eloise's smile grew somehow larger.
He turned to Tilly and pulled her closer by a mere inch, but enough to close off the world.
Ursula and Eloise had the good manners to talk quietly amongst themselves giving them their space.
"It's a rook."
She frowned, confusion on her face.
"The bird, crow, that you named Portia. It's a rook, not a crow. The whitish beak," he explained and she turned to where the object of their discussion perched in the large peach tree that took up a fourth of the backyard, ripe peaches hanging heavy.
"Oh. I suppose I owe her an apology." She looked back up at him and his mouth turned up slightly on one side.
"I'll pick you up for coffee tomorrow. Seven-thirty, yeah?"
"Yeah," she replied, a bubbling sensation at his making plans with her.
He kissed her forehead, the warmth of his lips sending tingles down the sides of her neck and over her shoulders.
Before he pulled away, he whispered darkly, "And know that now you've kissed me, your mouth is fair game.
" He took her lips with a nip and a slow kiss before he pulled away and left her there with her overcharged body and floating mind as she tried to gather herself.
"Well, I guess vampire making out does that whole leaving you fuzzy and unsure of your middle name thing," Eloise called out.
She made her way over to the fire, taking the empty seat and the offered blanket rolled perfectly until she spread it out over her lap.
Amber wine was poured into her glass, the fire glinting off of the golden color.
"Yes, how was Mr. Vampire Police Chief in the kissing department, Tilly Firefly?"
"Ohmygod I forgot your middle name was Firefly!" Eloise shot forward with wide eyes. "Details."
"Well, my sister was incredibly angry that my parents decided to have another child so to appease her they let her give me my middle name and at the time she was obsessed with fireflies."
Eloise and Ursula stared at her in awe.
"Seriously?" Eloise asked.
"The evil sister?"
Tilly nodded, taking a sip of wine, looking into the fire.
"Wow. But I was asking for details on the kissing," Eloise smirked.
Tilly smirked back. "I know."
Lady Macbeth jumped into Eloise's lap as Sulphur sauntered over to curl her feline body into the curve of Casper's wolfhound body, where he lay at the edge of the patio. Stars dipped and shimmered over them as they talked.
Tonight they didn't speak of the trouble that had befallen Salem or their coven. They didn't speak of the small groups of people gathering in town and at houses to talk about the coven as though they were a troublesome problem to fix.
They didn't talk about Cora's seat being challenged and how Jen was losing business and nerves as she tried to be there for her friend.
Eloise didn't speak of the extreme drop-off in sales at The Black Cat and Ursula didn't mention that she had lost five standing orders from nurseries and stores in town.
They talked about the new espresso blend that Eloise described as the perfect warm caramel that made flavors like vanilla and dried violet sing.
They talked about the crisping air that felt like fall yet still like summer, creating a new season of nostalgic fireworks, sunscreen outlined in crisp edges, apples and cool welcome.
Tilly recounted kissing the chief first, the thought whispering through her mind before she pulled him to her lips, what if I kiss you first?
Eloise smiled into her wine glass, not saying it out loud but reliving in her mind just that morning Taylor reaching over to brush off latte foam over her top lip and his smile turning into something honest and serious just before he told her he loved her.
And Ursula offered an unspoken hope, that Jenson was the one, something she felt it in the most safe way a woman could.
So they left alone the dark things out there and spread out in the good pieces, languidly allowing the goodness to baptize them.
And they sat there needing to breathe together, knowing in the back of their minds that a fight was coming.
But for now, wine by the firelight and laughter was filling their souls.