She couldn’t wait any longer. Barely able to acknowledge the fact that Clark had gotten on his hands and knees to watch, Nelly rubbed herself hard, her fingers lubricated by Clark’s come.
His mouth was so close to her that she could feel the hot puffs of his breath as her orgasm finally snapped the tension holding her body taut. Nelly cried out, her legs quivering, as Clark murmured praise between her thighs.
“Perfect,” he whispered, the very picture of satisfaction. “Now rub it in for me, sugar. That’s my girl. So sweet for me. Yes. Just like that. Now everyone will know who you belong to.”
She’d never imagined enjoying the feeling of smearing a partner’s release into her skin, but the look on Clark’s face and the pleasure in his voice made it one of the most intensely erotic experiences of her life.
By the time she was covered to his satisfaction, she was wrung out, her muscles loose and her mind fuzzy with the golden aftermath of her orgasm. After carefully drawing a blanket back over her, Clark settled onto his side of the bed with a pleased groan. Into the dark he murmured, “You good?”
Nelly turned on her side and curled up into a loose ball as close to him as she dared. It wasn’t the same as cuddling, but she could feel a little bit of his body heat. It would have to do.For now.
“Yeah,” she whispered back, drowsy. “I’m good, cowboy. Real good.”
His teeth flashed bright white in the semi-darkness. “Sweet dreams, sugar. I can’t wait to wake up to you tomorrow.”
Nelly’s heart, treacherous, hopeful thing that it was, skipped a beat. Almost too quiet to hear, she replied, “Me too.”
ChapterTwelve
Two days passedin the blink of an eye.
The storm wound down on the afternoon of the second day, but with the snowdrifts piled as high as his shoulder, there wasn’t much else to do besides sit tight. Not that he minded. Clark loved being with Nelly, and he was growing increasingly confident that she loved being around him, too.
His mate wasn’t nearly as skittish as folks in town thought. All it took was a little bit of respect for her boundaries and she bloomed into a soft, funny, energetic woman almost incapable of sitting still.
After their first night in the nest, he’d woken up to a new witch peering at him from under her blankets. Gone was the cagey thing he’d been chasing for months. In her place, he discovered a mate who teased him for his bedhead but didn’t complain even once when he spent half the morning rearranging her bedding into a proper nest.
She chattered happily as she built a fire and he made them coffee, her short brown hair pulled back from her face in a messy knot. When she got bored of being cooped up, she plopped his ass on the couch and playfully strongarmed him into a board game, then helping her sort her yarn collection by color, fiber, and weight while a series of increasingly ridiculous holiday entertainment feeds played in the background.
They swayed to slow holiday music in front of the fire, swapped stories while they cooked their meals, and cuddled — cautiously, with no skin contact — as they watched a classic movie.
The only speedbump was when he caught Nelly staring into space one afternoon, her expression pinched with a feeling he couldn’t quite identify. After a few increasingly concerned attempts to get her attention, she’d shaken herself and given him an apologetic look.
“Sorry, I was talking to my sister. I haven’t spoken to her since I found you outside, so she was worried something had happened to me.”
“Talking to her?” It took him a second to work through his confusion. When he did, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. “You can speak with your sister telepathically fromthirteen hundred miles away?”
He’d always heard that witches could be damn spooky, but Nelly was so soft and colorful that he’d hadn’t thought much of it until then. It wasn’t that other beings couldn’t do magic, but that witches just did it… differently. More. With an intention and honed focus that no other beings could match.
It was easy to forget, but now he understood what it meant when folks said that witches had alook,as if they knew more than you could ever hope to.
In a word, it was uncanny.
His mate gave him that long, knowing sort of look. Then, speaking in the halting way he’d come to associate with her imparting something deeply personal, she said, “Yeah, cowboy. Em has an automatic telepathic range of twenty-five miles, but she can reach familiar minds when they’re a lot farther away. Alotfarther.”
It took him a few seconds to wrap his mind around that, and then another few to digest just how much trust telling him about her sister must have taken. Instead of asking a million follow-up questions likedoes she hear every single thought in those twenty-five milesorwhat exactly did your parents do to end up with you two,he gave her a slow smile. “Did you tell her all about me, sugar?”
He watched as she went all pink again. “Oh, she already knows about you.”
Sidling up to her, he gripped her hips and swung her in a slow circle until he faced the couch. Walking her backward, he teased, “You’ve been gossiping about your hot neighbor?”
Nelly’s lips twitched as she fought a smile. “More like I complained about the jerk who keeps leaving passive aggressive notes on my door.”
“Did you tell her I was hot, though?”
She let him guide her down onto the couch. Gently spreading her legs, he got on his knees so he could press kisses over her shirt-covered shoulders and the top swells of her breasts. Gloved hands ghosted over his hair before they settled on his arms. “I might have.”
Gods, he loved how breathy she got when he touched her. It made the yearning toreallytouch her, to know the taste of her skin and the silk of her hair all the more powerful. While he seemed relaxed and playful, in reality he was strung tight with tension, fighting to keep himself in check and her boundaries safe.
