9. Research #2
“But this last one is giving me issues. I’ve traced the glyph to its proto-Mayan roots, and the closest Indo-European root is lingua, like language or speech.
But how can a language be nimble? Does that mean that word is wrong too?
” I twirled my braid around my hand in frustration. “This is why I prefer alchemy.”
His gaze moved over the translation.
“Lingua…that also means tongue, right?”
I froze. “What?”
“Well, look at the whole thing. It’s talking about how the flower only opens for something specific, right? A lot of flowers evolved to suit a specific pollinator. So what if it means tongue here, like an evolutionary match?”
I read back over it three times. He was right. He’d looked at it for all of three seconds and figured it out. I gaped at him.
He watched me, and I felt wariness through the bond. “If I’m totally off base—”
“No, that’s exactly right.” A small, careful pride blossomed in its place. “How did you know that?”
“The lengua thing? Let’s just say I learned it the hard way at a taco truck in North Carolina.”
“No, I mean the whole thing.”
He gave his wings a little flutter. “Part pollinator, remember?”
It was like I was seeing him with new eyes. Of course. Of course!
I’d fallen into old patterns. Extract the value and leave nothing behind.
Stupid. I needed to work with the magic, not exploit it.
I thought I’d learned that lesson a long time ago, but apparently, I was still thinking like my family.
Had that…had the magic called him into my ritual on purpose, knowing I was on the wrong track?
Magic never does anything by accident.
That’s what Gertrude had said. And now here I was, sitting in my greenhouse with a man who looked like the Sims boyfriend I used to build for myself in my teens, whose very nature made him an expert in flora, and who was the first person who could understand me in years. Was he the answer to all of this?
Don’t hope, Lucia. You know exactly where that leads.
But the dried-out remnants of my soul caught like wildfire, and he must have felt it because he gave a shy smile.
“It’s just a theory. I hope it’s helpful.”
“It is. It really is.”
He liked the praise.
His blush spread, and he walked back to the greenhouse wall, loosening one last bolt. But this one snapped under his wrench, rotten to the core with rust. The panel came loose and tilted over him.
“Watch out!” I didn’t have time to think. My magic flared, and the nearby rosary pea shot out a vine that lashed around his wrist and yanked him back as the broken glass came crashing down, a large shard landing point-down exactly where he had just been.
“Are you okay?” I scrambled over to him and dropped to my knees, checking him for cuts, especially his wings.
He sat up. “Yeah…all good. Damn, is everything in this garden out to get me?”
I coaxed the vine off his wrist, revealing an angry red welt.
“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful.”
Again, I expected anger or annoyance. Instead, I was greeted by a flare of arousal as he rubbed his long fingers over the mark.
Did he…like that? Being tied up?
Immediately, through no fault of my own, the image of him on his knees in front of me in the kitchen that morning—the image I had been ignoring—clouded my mind. But now, my vines were wrapped around his chest, forcing his back to arch as they tightened around his wrists behind his back.
His wings fluttered as whatever he could feel of my thoughts passed to him, and the wildfire already burning in my chest turned into something much hungrier. Ravenous.
My head was spinning, and I was drowning in his crimson eyes, the soft curve of his lips, and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked up at me. My hand moved of its own accord, and my fingers traced through the sweaty curls clinging to his forehead.
How long had it been since I’d touched anyone like this?
Stop, Lucia.
But I couldn’t. I had to know. I always had to know. He leaned into my hand as the bond felt like it would explode.
I tightened my grip on his hair and gave it a quick tug. Just enough to sting.
“You need to be more careful, Hawk.”
“Yes, boss.”
I gave him the smirk I used to give the C-suite when I’d outmaneuvered them. “Good boy.”
The bond flooded with heat, and my panties followed directly after. I slid my other hand down his cheek and toyed with his bottom lip. As I tugged the piercing there, he let out the most perfect whimper.
“Lucia…please…”
Both my hands slid into the hair at the nape of his neck, and I pulled him forward. He came easily, our lips met, and everything combusted.
His hands landed on my hips, drawing me down on top of him. My skirt rode up as my legs spread around his hips, and the sweatpants I had loaned him did absolutely nothing to hide the hard length beneath them. I rolled against it, and, oh goddess, was he pierced there too?
I teased the seam of his lips. He opened immediately, and his tongue found mine, hot and hungry. He tasted like honeysuckle nectar, and I wanted more. I wanted him, I wanted…
You know what wanting leads to. Look where it’s gotten you so far. It will only make it hurt more when he leaves.
I snapped back, and he reached for me, his eyes half-lidded.
I stood and backed toward the greenhouse door as he came out of the haze.
“Lucia, what…?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” I pressed my back against the cold glass, trying to cut through the heat that still had me wrapped in its clutches.
“Boss—”
“Stay.”
I walked out of the greenhouse. I did not run.
Running would have been undignified. I walked at a very brisk pace up the gravel path and onto the porch.
When I did, the bond tugged, and I keeled over, clutching my chest. Then the greenhouse door opened again, but I didn’t look back.
As his boots crunched against the gravel, I stood and kept the maximum distance I could between us until I reached my bedroom.
He hadn’t tried to catch me because I’d told him not to, because he was a good—don’t finish that sentence, Lucia—because he was a considerate person who listened. That made it worse. He was good and considerate and caring, and I’d taken advantage of our bond.
The bond that was still pulsing in my heart and between my legs. It made it impossible to think. My skin was burning everywhere, and I couldn’t fucking think. I needed to solve at least one of these problems right now.
I fumbled for my nightstand drawer.
There was at least one man in my life who had never let me down. Mr. Rose Toy lived in the top drawer and kept a magically full charge, and if I could not have the man in the greenhouse, I could at least have five minutes of turning my brain off.
A pulse of pleasure shot through the bond and up my spine like nothing I’d ever felt before, almost like a mini orgasm that had my legs shaking and my chest heaving. It shut off the last remnants of my logical, human brain, and my horny lizard brain took full control.
I ripped off my clothes because everywhere they touched felt oversensitive, the normally soft fabric transformed into sandpaper by the heat in my system.
I collapsed onto the bed and wasted no time suctioning the toy over my clit. I was so turned on I nearly screamed from the first tug, and a few more had me writhing, the muscles in my legs locking up.
Was it the bond? Was I just that desperate? I didn’t know, but images of Hawk between my legs were easier to conjure than ever before, his antennae twirling as I used his face, imagining that tongue I’d tasted instead of silicone.
“Hawk…” His name fell from my lips as I seized up, my orgasm cresting…and then immediately dying.
I groaned, tossing the toy aside in frustration. Tears of hormones and disappointment gathered in my eyes when another wave hit me, deeper…foreign.
Oh, goddess, the bond. I’d been so fucking desperate I’d forgotten about the bond.
He’d just felt all of that, just like I’d felt his injuries. He knew exactly what I was doing and—
Another peak crashed through me, starting at the base of my spine and sending me spiraling all over again.
More. I wanted more.
I reached for the toy again when I heard footsteps outside my door. They paused, and a question passed through the bond. One that years of loneliness and magically amplified horniness couldn’t say no to.