“I was just proofing the sourdough.” My eyes immediately darted away to the window as the familiar tightness crept into my chest. I started in the top right of the far window, counting the mullioned panes.
One…two…three…
Maeve, Flynn, and Corbin.
Four…five…six.
The two of them worshipping her body, making her scream and tremble.
Without me.
I gulped, fighting against the rising anxiety inside me. My hands balled into fists. But the compulsion wasn’t having its usual effect. The counting couldn’t rid my mind of Corbin’s eyes rolling back in his head when Maeve wrapped her mouth around his cock. Nor the hitch in his breath as he came. Nor the way he kept holding Maeve even after he was done, caring for her, making it all about her.
And Maeve, her pixie hair sticking up in all directions, her eyes wild with the power she’d consumed.
I dug my nails into my palm, but the pain could not drive out her vision. Our high priestess.
Ours.
Maeve rose from the couch, stepping around the snoring Arthur. I tried not to look at her, naked and radiating power. I turned my head high and continued my counting.
Nine…ten…eleven…
Maeve pinched my chin, drawing my gaze back down to her blazing eyes. Her fingers on my chin exuded sizzling magic. My body trembled, the anxiety ripping open my chest.
I have to finish the counting. I have to hold it back or…or…
“There’s a strange look in your eyes.” Maeve pressed her naked body against mine. I went rigid and so did my cock. My heart thudded in my ears. White lights danced in front of my eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. I had to get out of here. I was too close…too close to Maeve and too close to Corbin. And Flynn had already blabbed to Corbin about the dream. If he sees what I feel…
My secret hung in the air between us. I had to keep it that way.
He’ll find out and she’ll find out and they’ll kick you out and you’ll have nowhere else to go.
I jerked my head up.Twelve…thirteen…fourteen…
“Rowan,” Maeve whispered in my ear, her voice pounding through my skull. “Do you want to come up to my room?”
I didn’t answer. My body trembled against hers. She held me while I finished counting the windows. Then Maeve took my hand.
“Rowan and I are going upstairs,” she said over her shoulder. Flynn said something and Corbin laughed, but I didn’t hear it over the screaming in my ears.
Maeve led me out of the room and up the stairs. Her naked body gleamed in the moonlight pouring through the covered walkway. The warmth of her magic flowed up my arm, and somehow it loosened the vice around my heart. My heart still beat way too quickly, my mind still screamed that I had to finish my rituals or Corbin would hate me, but I couldn’t bring myself to drop her hand.
In her tower bedroom, Maeve lay face down on the bed. She patted the space beside her. It was just like the other morning when I brought her breakfast. Only now moonlight streamed across the globes of her bottom, and a lump formed in my throat that I couldn’t talk around.
I really need a cup of tea right now.
“It’s okay if you want to stand over there,” she said. “I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want. Do you think I’m a bad person, because of what you saw?”
I couldn’t speak, so I shook my head. The vice on my chest tightened again.
You’re perfect. I’m the bad person. I’m the evil one.
“I don’t know why I just did that with Corbin and Flynn,” she said. “The guys didn’t initiate it. I did. I’d never thought that I would want…that. I think this spirit magic is messing with me, making me do things I never dreamed of. But the magic is part of me. I can’t separate the Maeve I knew from the Maeve who can wield power. Now that I’ve experienced it, I want more.”
If Corbin were here, he’d tell Maeve that she was right – it was her power, her spirit abilities that were messing with her head and giving her this insatiable hunger. The power shimmered on her skin, so she appeared luminous, a brilliant crystal under the moonlight.
