Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter
Twenty-Two
As I lie in bed, staring at the shadows dancing along the ceiling, I try to find my courage.
My mind is a battlefield of memories. Two decades of being treated like I wasn’t good enough, years of carrying shame about how I lost my family, have shaped how I see myself. Yet each memory is starting to take on new meaning, filtered through the way Xander sees me. The way Ellie sees me.
You have a family. You have me.
And me, too. Elle’s firm addition to the people who care about me feels like a promise, one that I want to accept. One that I want to exist beyond tomorrow when I drive back to Windsfell and the life I’ve built there. I need to get past the worry that she might not feel the same and go talk to her.
I was so worried about you, Pip.
My heart aches to remember the emotion in her voice, how deeply she meant those words.
No one I’ve dated has ever truly worried about my well-being before.
Not like this. After I told her about what happened with my family, she didn’t tell me I was reckless with Grayson.
She didn’t tell me I should have been careful. She defended me.
Your girlfriend should care more about you than the family that continually hurts you.
I bolt upright in bed as a surge of understanding washes through me. Girlfriend. That’s what I want. To be claimed as hers. This new feeling of certainty doesn’t take away the fear, but it makes it matter so much less.
We haven’t defined what this attraction is, but I know what I want. I want her. I want to try. I want to figure out how to give us a chance at being a couple. To be together beyond my time at the manor. To be able to hold hands in public without worrying that Xander, or anyone else, will see.
If she doesn’t feel the same, fine, but at least I’ll know instead of lying here missing someone a few rooms away.
I slip out of bed and run my fingers through my hair. It doesn’t need to be perfect, because with any luck, Elle’s fingers will make a mess of it soon anyway. I reach for the door handle, give myself a moment to catch my breath, and then open my door—
Only to find Elle already standing on the other side.
She smiles when she sees me, a flash of hunger darkening her gaze. “Oh, thank god.” And then she’s stepping in close, raising up on her tiptoes, and claiming a kiss that shivers all the way down my back.
I drag her into the room, closing and locking the door behind us. “So Xander can’t interrupt this time,” I whisper against her neck as I press her back against the door and breathe in lavender and spices and everything Elle.
“You were coming to find me, right?” Elle asks, her breath hitching as my fingers skate up the inside of her barely there pajama shirt. “I didn’t interrupt a trip to the kitchen for dessert?”
There’s a vulnerability to her question that has me swallowing the joke that she’s the only dessert I need.
I step back. Brush the hair out of her eyes.
Cup her face in my hands as I let my thumbs caress the curve of her cheekbones.
“You are the only reason I’m out of bed right now, sweetheart.
I was lying here missing you, and I couldn’t sleep until you knew. ”
“Until I knew what?”
I tip my forehead to hers and remind myself to be brave.
“I like you, Ellie. I like you so much it honestly scares me a little, because I know this was supposed to have an expiration date. I know I’m moving out tomorrow and things will be different.
You’ll be busy with the manor, and I’ll have my own business to deal with.
I won’t be down the hall anymore. But I don’t want this to be over. I don’t want this to end.”
When I’ve run out of words, I hold my breath, waiting for her response. Elle presses me back a step to search my gaze, and it takes everything in me to stand firm in what I’ve said. To keep myself from taking it back and suggesting one final night of physical connection, instead.
Finally, she offers me the gentlest of smiles. “Getting to know you these past few weeks has been the best part of my year.”
My heart sinks. “But?”
“Oh, love.” Elle wipes away a rogue tear that has slipped down my cheek. “There is no ‘but.’ You are the best thing that’s happened to me this year. Full stop. And I’m not ready to let you go, either.”
This time, when she kisses me, it doesn’t feel like goodbye.
It feels like hello and I missed you and this is the beginning of something great.
Her hands are greedy and certain and worshipping as she explores the curves of my body, pulling me close until our legs are tangled and each rock of her hips makes me desperate for the bed.
“We’ll have to tell Alex,” she says, peppering kisses along my exposed throat. “Not tomorrow. There’s too much to do. But after the opening. Soon.”
I murmur my agreement, ignoring the jolt of fear at how Xander might react.
But then Elle is pushing away from the door, guiding me back, back, back until the mattress presses against my thighs.
She guides me onto the bed and straddles my lap.
I grip the curve of her hips, rocking into her touch, and she bites back a moan.
“None of that.” I pull at her already plunging neckline, exposing more of her throat and the sensitive skin there. I hover with my lips poised to taste her. “I want to hear you. I want you screaming my name.”
“But Alex—”
“Witch. Remember?” I raise a hand to trace a concealment sigil in the air around us, but she stills my arm before I can begin to cast.
“Are you okay to do magic right now?” Elle brushes my hair behind my ears and kisses me softly, warmth and concern replacing the charged heat from a moment before. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
The bloom of heat that fills my chest feels dangerously close to love. But…it’s too soon for that, isn’t it? This feeling has to have a different name. A less scary one.
“I can do this,” I promise, tracing the concealment sigil in the air behind her and expanding the boundary to fill the room. When it’s done, I cover the slight strain with a confident grin. “I maintain this isn’t serial killer magic.”
Elle raises that single eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
I nod and nuzzle against her neck, nipping at her until she lets out the moan I’ve been desperate to hear. “But I do intend to make you beg for mercy.”
Her laughter dances between us as she slips out of my lap and settles against the pillows. The cocky smirk on her face, the stubborn pull of her brow, might be the death of me. “Do you worst, Ainsley.”
My chosen surname shivers across my skin.
“Just for that,” I whisper, hooking my fingers under the waistband of her shorts and inching the fabric down her hips, “I’m going twice as slow.
” When she’s bare below the waist, her shorts discarded on the floor, I kiss the valley of her right hip, then her left, as she squirms against me. “Ticklish?”
“A little,” she admits, arching into my hand as I trail my fingers up beneath her shirt. Elle pulls the shirt over her head, but I stall her when her hands are trapped by the fabric, twisting it tighter around her wrists as I press the makeshift cuff on the pillows above her head.
“Leave your hands there.” I kiss my way up her torso and pause, hovering over her lips. “Let’s see how patient you are when all there is for you to do is lie there and let me devour you.”
Her gentle gasp draws my attention back to her eyes, and the mix of need and desire and trusting vulnerability that shines in their green depths sends a rush of heat coursing through my veins.
I strip away my clothes, tossing them to the ground, and begin a journey of a thousand kisses.
Every touch, every taste of her a promise and a delight.
I map the contours of her body, guided by each subtle change in her breathing, each gasp, each shuddered exhale.
I learn all the places that make her squirm and the places that draw a deliciously whining keen from her throat.
I kiss every freckle. Trail my fingers along her ribs until she’s shivering, her hips seeking pressure I deny again and again until I make my way back to the gentle jut of her hip bones and begin my descent down the inside of her thigh.
“Pippa, please,” she rasps, her voice breaking. “I can’t—I need you to touch me.”
“Is this not touching?” I tease, pressing a kiss above her knee.
“Pippa.”
“Begging already?” I run my hands up her thighs and finally, finally widen her legs to make room for me to settle between them. “I haven’t even truly tasted you yet.”
Elle lifts her head to meet my gaze. “Baby, please.”
No one has ever looked at me the way she is now, has never been so compliant and eager for my attention, and I lose what restraint I have left. I want to grant her every request, and the sound she makes when I run my tongue across her swollen clit shivers through every atom of my being.
And thank god for concealment magic. Elle’s reactions were easy to read in the subtle shifts of her breathing, but she becomes a woman unleashed as she finally gets the focused attention she deserves.
I am a dedicated student, learning all the combinations of speed and pressure and movement that drive her to the edge, only to retreat before she can tumble into release.
It’s the most delicious revenge, after she did the same to me in her bed.
“I wish…” Elle says, panting as I back away for the fourth time, pressing kisses along her thighs to give her space to come down. “I wish you could feel how amazing this is.”
A shiver of possibility draws my gaze to hers. “Actually…I could.”
“Really?”
I nod and work my way back up the bed, pressing kisses along her abdomen, her chest, her jaw, before capturing her lips.
“That magic goes beyond physical sensation,” I warn, letting my fingers find the warmth between her thighs, gentle, barely there touches that leave her hips searching for more.
“The bond would share every emotion, every desire. You would feel yourself against my tongue as strongly as I would feel the tension coiling inside you, demanding release.”
“Do you have enough magic for that?” She scans my face, worry creasing her brow. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“So you’ve said.” I reach for the magic in the air around us and draw it into my body. It comes willingly, and I rest my fingers along her breastbone. “Do you trust me?”
There’s no hesitation. “Yes.”
I trace the soul-binding sigil across Elle’s chest and then repeat the process against mine. A moment later, I can feel her desire pulsing beneath my skin, nearly overwhelming with its intensity. And beneath that, the steady heartbeat of something that feels suspiciously like love.
Elle sighs, a shuddering sound that I feel echoing in my own lungs. “I can feel how much you want me,” she says, and the note of awe in her voice tugs at my heart. “God, Pip. I…I need to touch you. I need to hold you.”
With my free hand, I pull her shirt the rest of the way off her arms, and then her hands are cupping my face as she drinks me in. Our bodies fit tight together, my arm the only thing wedged between us, my fingers busy at their task, bringing her every pleasure she desires.
And I feel it. The shudder rocking through her body. The tightening of her core echoing inside me as if it were my own.
Her hands fist in my hair, the sting against my scalp drawing a gasp from my throat. Before I can ask her to grip tighter, the bond between us sends the message for me. Her fingers twist in my hair, tipping my head back to nip and suck down the column of my throat.
There’s an emptiness in me—in her—that craves to be filled, and I adjust our positioning, shift my hand until two fingers slide inside her while my thumb keeps attention on the bundle of nerves directing her pleasure.
And then we’re both careening over the edge of a cliff, crashing into dual orgasms that the magic between us amplifies and reflects back at us in a glorious feedback loop. We cling to each other like life rafts in a storm, neither of us loosening our hold as the soul bond fizzles away.
We don’t speak for a long time. Eventually, I slip my arm from between us and shift to the side, pulling her with me.
Our bodies prickle with cold as the chill of the late hour settles over us.
Forehead pressed against mine, Elle sighs with such deep contentment that a thrill of pride washes through me.
She chuckles, pulling away to meet my eye. “How do witches get anything done when you can have sex like that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never used that sigil before,” I admit, and I can feel the moment Elle’s surprise turns into a deeply satisfied type of appreciation. “It takes a level of vulnerability…it’s not something I’ve felt safe enough to try before.”
Elle’s green eyes shine bright in the half-light of the moon that gently illuminates the room.
“I feel safe with you, too.” She leans in and kisses me softly, meaningfully, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I love this woman.
That no matter what happens after tomorrow, she has my whole entire heart.
And maybe, just maybe, she feels the same.
“Will you stay?” I whisper, my fingers making a lazy trail up her spine. “I don’t want to watch you leave.”
A playful smile quirks up the corner of her mouth. “As long as I get to be the big spoon.” She shivers. “And we get under the covers.”
I laugh. “We should clean up first.” Leaning in, I press a kiss to the tip of her nose. “But the rest can absolutely be arranged.”