As soon as his lips touched mine, the softness in his body disappeared. He was all hardness and need, and I opened to him, welcoming his hunger, for it matched my own.
I tore at his shirt, popping the snap buttons with a single tug and forcing it down over his shoulders. Corbin’s fingers scraped at my back, hunting for the zipper of my dress. My skin crawled with power and desire, desperate to fall into him.
Corbin nibbled on my lip, drawing a yelp of delight. He tugged the zipper, freeing the dress from my body. I managed to shimmy out of it in the tiny space, taking my panties with it. Corbin already had his boxers off and a condom rustling in his fingers. He lifted me, sliding me back against the wall. I lifted my legs, planting the soles of my feet on the wall behind him. Corbin bit my neck as he thrust into me, his whole body tensing.
I breathed out as he slid inside me, sheathing himself in my warmth. His fingers dug into my ass (arse) as he pounded into me. I ground my hips against him, driving every thrust deeper.
Corbin brutalized my mouth with kisses, all teeth and tongue and power. I responded in kind, meeting his thrusts with my hips and his kisses with power of my own. Hard and fast and desperate. Exactly what we both needed.
In the darkness, Corbin stopped being the protector. He didn’t have to keep up a brave face or solve everyone else’s problems or find the answers no one else could understand. He could be anybody or nobody – just a boy who wanted a girl to help drive out the darkness.
And who was I in the darkness? I was the girl who was wanted by the boy, who revelled in the freedom of casting off the mask I’d worn my entire life. I was the one who had the power. That power swelled inside me, rising up through my torso in a cone, filling me with simmering heat. I squeezed my legs against Corbin’s body as an orgasm slammed into me.
My walls squeezed around him. Corbin gasped as he let go of his tension, his whole body trembling as he knotted and unknotted, his release unwinding him completely.
He dropped me and I slid down the wall. Corbin’s chin fell against my shoulder. He didn’t remove his arms from around me.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
My whole body hummed with power, and the depth of our connection both excited and worried me. “Thank you,” I whispered back.
Something wet hit my forehead. It might have been a bead of sweat, because we’d sure heated up things inside the tiny priest hole. But I wondered if maybe, just maybe, Corbin was crying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MAEVE
After we crawled out of the priest hole, I tried to get Corbin to talk more about his parents, but he wouldn’t go to that vulnerable place again. Instead, he pulled book after book from the library shelves, his face lighting up as he showed me beautiful lithographs and exquisitely bound volumes and hidden notes and cunning cyphers.
“How many languages do you know?” I asked, remembering that Rowan had told me Corbin had never gone to college.
“Fifteen to varying degrees of fluency, and several common ancient ciphers. I’m thinking of adding Manx to the list.” He touched a book on the shelf. “This book is a history of witchcraft on The Isle of Mann, and its secrets have so far eluded me.”
The way his voice tilted with glee, his eyes dancing over the pages, he looked like…well, he looked like me when I watched videos from NASA or the International Space Station. I touched Corbin’s arm, and something passed between us, a connection deeper than the one our bodies had just shared. Tears pricked behind my eyes.
Corbin and I – we’re the same. He’s just as big a nerd as I am.
“This is amazing,” I breathed, listening to Corbin translate a poem from Classical Greek, the lyrical sounds rolling off his tongue as though they were perfectly natural. “Corbin, you’re wasting your talent here. You should be in a lecture theatre, boring students to death with endless lectures about Socrates and verb tenses.”
“I took some history classes at your community college.”
“That is not the same thing, and you know it. You were probably bored to death in those classes. You should be at some Ivy League or…whatever the English equivalent is. The Earl Grey League.”
“Oxbridge.” Corbin shook his head and replaced the slim volume on the shelf. A flicker of something dark passed over his face, but it was gone in a moment. “I don’t want to go to university,” he said. “My parents both studied at Oxford and now Dad teaches there. According to them, all the faculty cares about is university politics and puddings. They puff out their chests and get riled up about what some wanker said in 1242, or organize protests if the college kitchen doesn’t serve spotted dick at least once during the term. No one does anythingimportant. Here, I get to see my work make a difference. What about you, anyway?”
I blinked. “What about me?”
“When are you leaving us for MIT?”
His question spun my insides around. I fiddled with the spine of a Latin spell book. “I don’t know.”
“Maeve, you can’tnotgo.”
My mouth hung open. I couldn’t think of what to say. In all the excitement of discovering I was a witch and travelling to the fae realm and hooking up with the guys, the real reason for my visit to Briarwood had been sort of forgotten. Now it all flooded back to me. The place at MIT waiting for me when I returned to America. Learning from the top physicists in myfield. Experiments and equations and dorm rooms and one night stands and frat parties and an astronomy club that conducted actual deep sky research. And at the end of it all, an application to apply for a place in the NASA astronaut program.
All that stood in the way of my dream was Briarwood.
And yet…
