“Hmmm…” she moaned in agreement and arched up in encouragement. “More than okay.”
He parted the shirt to lightly cup one of her breasts in his palm. He rolled the nipple beneath his thumb, and she arched back toward him. Their tongues dueled as he gently kneaded her breast. Calli tugged at his T-shirt, and he let her pull it up off his body before he came back down on her.
“I want to taste you,” he murmured against her lips. She knew what he meant, and nodded frantically. His lips moved down her body, enjoying the lushness of her breasts before he kissed his way down her belly to her jeans. Malcolm couldn’t get enough of her, her taste, her scent, the sweet sounds she made when he explored new territory that now belonged to him, she just didn’t know it yet.
He unbuttoned her pants and tugged them off her legs, along with her underwear. She lay spread out before him, her dark hair pooled around her head in a gleaming halo, the flannel shirt wide open, ready to be utterly ravished. His cock strained against his pants, but he willed himself to stay in control. It had never been this hard before with any other woman. He’d been hungry with desire before, but never mad with it. Everything about Calli stirred up a madness in him, one that no witch could brew in any cauldron.
He parted her legs, settling himself between them. He kissed the inside of each knee with sensual reverence before working his way down to the center of her. She reached down and fisted her hand in his hair as his mouth kissed the top of her mound. A faint bite of pain when she yanked on his hair did something electric to his body. Driven by the need for her to feel that same wildness, he licked her core, tasting the sweetness of her arousal.
She arched, her breath hitched, and her fingers tightened in his hair, He groaned as his body hardened all over as he struggled to control himself.
His exploration of her bore fruit as she cried out, “Malcolm!” in a way that he was starting to obsess over. How many different ways could he get her to call out his name just like that? Or better yet, make her scream it?
He had never been more turned on in his life. His cock throbbed so hard it felt bruised.
“I’m not done yet, sweetheart,” he growled as he lifted his head long enough for their eyes to meet. “I want to see what happens when my little hedge witch comes apart with pleasure. You want to show me?”
She nodded frantically, beyond words as she whimpered and lifted her hips toward him again.
He licked her over and over, then used his fingers to pump into her. She came hard, fast, and with a shout that bordered on surprise. The trees above them suddenly turned from a bright orange and red to a brilliant healthy green.
So that’s what happens when a hedge witch orgasms.
“Oh my my—” She tugged his hair. Malcolm crawled up the length of her body again, but didn’t get rid of his jeans. This moment was about her, for her. He wanted to savor her without being blinded by his own pleasure. He didn’t want to just jump straight into bed, Calli mattered too much for him to rush this. He nuzzled her neck and then kissed her softly, relishing the dreamy way she cuddled up against him. His naked little witch.
He chuckled. Malcolm never imagined he’d be doing this with a witch.
“Do you want me to um…” She raised her eyebrows. “You know… for you?”
“I do, but not yet,” he said. He had to be honest with her, and he hoped it didn’t make him sound like a fool. “You’re starting to mean a lot to me, Calli. I don’t want to mess this up. I want to be honest with you. I’ve never really been good at dating. I’ve been with a lot of women and I’ve never taken it seriously. And now I’m so close to bonding myself forever to you. Fuck, this sounds stupid, but… I want it to be right… to be perfect… with you.”
He saw the uncertainty in her face, the fear that maybe he didn’t want her the same way and was just being nice to her.
“Oh, I want you, sweetheart,” he promised. “It would probably frighten you if you knew how much I wanted to fuck you right now, to bury myself in you and keep you pinned beneath me for days. I want to imprint your every kiss, sigh, gasp, and look of longing into my memory until it’s so deep that I’ll never forget you.” If he had to leave someday because of his father’s binding spell which would force him to return to Boston to the Council, he didn’t want to lose this memory of her. And wasn’t that just the cruelest part of this entire situation? That he was in danger of falling in love for the first time in his life, and he might not be able to keep her.
Her fear receded. “Really?”
He gave her another slow kiss, the kind that could melt centuries of ice. “You’re my witch now, Calli Wynter. Mine.” He couldn’t keep the possessive growl out of his voice, because he felt the truth of it in his bones. She was his. Was this how werewolves felt when someone tried to take their mates? This possessiveness and protectiveness that felt like insanity but perfectly natural at the same time? Was it because their magic connected them? Or was this how he would feel when he finally fell in love?
The one thing he knew was that they were close to locking, their magic could join them together at any moment. But rather than be afraid or hesitate, he simply leapt over the edge into whatever this new future would hold.
Calli was still deep in the afterglow of passion as she and Malcolm headed back to her car, their familiars in tow. If someone told her two days ago that she would be cavorting about in the woods with a sexy warlock, stopping time, and having a mind-blowing orgasm with him, she would have thought the person was insane.
But Malcolm had blasted into her life—or at least her pumpkin patch—and she was never going to be the same again.
She got into the driver seat of her Honda and strapped Persephone, who was once more back in her backpack, into the backseat beside Hades. Calli buckled herself in but, instead of starting the engine, she just stared at the golden woods ahead of them.
Malcolm covered her thigh with one large hand. “You okay?” His long and elegant fingers were incredibly strong too. She’d never been so fascinated by a man’s hands before. But then, she had seen what those hands could do to her body.
A sudden memory of her parents flashed across her mind. She’d been so young then, only seven or eight, and she’d seen her parents kissing like teenagers in the kitchen. Their passion for each other hadn’t faded. Being witch-locked must have played a role in that.
“Yeah… I’m okay.” She glanced his way, her throat suddenly tight. “My parents were witch-locked. I should’ve told you before, but it always felt like a private thing between them. I didn’t even learn they were locked until after they were gone. My grandmother told me. She let it slip one day, and I pestered her with questions until she told me to stop.”
“She didn’t want to talk about your parents, or about them being witch-locked?”
“About the witch-locking. It’s not just rare. According to my grandmother, it’s dangerous. I guess in the past, it’s been used against people, like someone kidnapping one of a witch-locked pair to blackmail them into doing someone’s bidding. So no one really talked about it, if they knew, to protect couples.”
“Ahh…” He fell silent for a long moment.
