“I think... come here.” He walks backward, dropping into a chair. I move to sit beside him, but he grabs me around the middle and seats me on his lap instead.
“Well, I never,” I say.
He plays with my hair, smoothing it back, spiraling it around his hand. I wonder what it’s like for him to watch me walk through his house, touching his belongings. “Well, you should.” He skims a thumb along the corner of my mouth. “Right here? One of my favorite places on Earth. Your smile just tears me apart, you know.”
I smile again and tear him apart some more.
He sifts his hands through my hair. “I like how, whatever the color, your hair twists out at the ends, and you’ve got this cute rumple up here.” He touches a dent in the hair at my crown, then the wayward ends flipped out and inward. “How your eyes sparkle when I touch you.”
“Yours turn black,” I observe. “There’s always been this magnetic energy about you that drives me wild. It’s like you know everybody’s secrets, like you’re going places, on a journey we all want to be part of.”
The corners around his eyes crinkle. His voice cracks just a bit when he says, “Really?”
“And this dimple?” I kiss it, the curve deepening. “When you hit me with that smile?” Hand over my heart. “Makes me die. You showed up after all these years, and I can’t handle it, how you’ve only gotten more attractive. You’re sodirect, too.”
“And you like it?”
“It’s my kryptonite.”
“You’re shyer,” he remarks. “Quieter. But you have that lightning, I’ve still never seen anything like it in anybody else. All I want is for you to zap me and let me in, so that I can be your goner.”
I lay a hand against his chest.“Zap.”
I know that emotion in his eyes when he slowly tugs me forward, hands linking in mine, to kiss him. It makes my body turn to liquid.
Our faces are a hair’s breadth away. “I want you,” I murmur, my lips ghosting across his. “Here. Tonight.”
His eyelids, heavy with lust, spring back open. Alert.
I kiss his neck, delight in how he arches against me. I tug his earlobe between my teeth, then work my way to his mouth, where he’s waiting, kissing me hot and deep. “I saw what else you bought at the gas station, Alex King,” I whisper raggedly, “and it wasn’t just Milky Ways.” His breath hitches; I feel him go hard beneath me. “Take me to your bed.”
“It’s fine, honestly. I don’t mind.”
“I do.” He yanks his shirt over his head on his way into the hall. “I only get one first time with you. I’m not bringing thehot, sweaty, gross day I’ve had along with us.” He pats his cheeks. “Oughta shave, too.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You like the five-o’clock shadow?”
I spread my arms along the back of his couch, chin lowered to my chest. I better appear as seductive externally as this looks inside my head. “Yes.”
“I’ll be five minutes. Make yourself, ah...” He thumbs open the button of his jeans, tossing a glance around as though trying to take the measure of his place through my eyes. “At home. And Romina?”
I pop up from the sofa. “Yes?”
He almost smiles. Fights it back. “Please don’t disappear.”
I stare after him as he enters the bathroom, closing the door behind himself.
I’m stuck on a high, jittery frequency. I bounce like a rubber ball, because holy shit, he just gets better every day, for some reason he wants to be withme, and I have to do something to make this more special. I need ambiance.
Candles!
I scrounge up a few that he apparently ordered online from The Magick Happens and scurry into the bedroom. As suspected, his bedroom lies behind the orchid door. It’s simple; most of his decoration efforts have concentrated on higher-traffic areas like the kitchen and living room.
Everywhere is airy and inviting except for the bedroom, which he’s fashioned into a cave with the darkest textiles invented. Heavy blackout curtains. A thick midnight comforter and charcoal sheets. Soft-as-clouds, cool pillows, and dark gray walls. The temperature in here is colder than anywhere else in the house, with a large metal floor fan left running. This roomis all business, designed for deep sleep rather than aesthetic. Even his bedside light is the softest of shimmers, throwing a halo over a voluptuous navy headboard.
He’s already got a candle on the dresser, pillar lopsided and half melted.Make Her Yours, the tag reads. I am feeling like an awfully powerful witch, to have braided up this die-hard skeptic into so many knots that he’s resorted to using candle magic.
