She tasted his low growl, swallowing it like a piece of cotton candy dissolving too quickly before he spun them in such a graceful move that she barely registered her back being pressed against a two-hundred-year-old oak tree. His hands were on her waist and cradling the side of her face as his mouth took over what she had started.
She felt the age of the tree hold her, its solidness bracing them for their moment. It was like being cloaked from the world.
He was urgent but thorough. He didn't rush anything, this man. And perhaps for one of the first times in her romantic life, she thought there could never be enough time with him like this to satisfy her. She already regretted when this would end, the melancholy thought adding a sweetness to the taste of him.
By the time he pulled away, both of them were like creatures coming up for air, their lungs having been forgotten in the midst of passion.
"I've thought about kissing you."
She felt her heart pick up. "You have?"
His nod and his eyes looking into hers as he leveled out his breathing was something she could forget time with.
"You make me want to be more still with myself. And you make me want to make you more quiet in your mind."
Her head tilted and she looked at him with a smiling curiosity. "You think my mind is loud?"
His large hand smoothed her hair down gently in a tingling pet that was both comfort and passion as his eyes ran over her face before he answered.
"I think your mind learned how to survive, and is struggling to remember how to live. And through that lens, everything issomething to survive, rather than experience. I want you to be able to release that and live. With me."
Her eyebrows shot up and she smiled with a joke tucked into the corner, "You want me to live with you? But don't you think that's a little fast?"
His slow smile reached his eyes, which were on her mouth before he tugged them away to look into her eyes. "Cheeky," he chided softly as he playfully tugged her long hair.
She laughed. And she enjoyed being held by him, not worried that she lingered too long. Then she enjoyed him holding her hand as he walked her home slowly.
She thought to look over her shoulder when she felt what had been anger burn to sorrow. Ronnie was bending to pick up the basketball, his friends getting into cars leaving for the night. His baseball hat fell to the ground as he bent, and she quickly swiveled her head back in shock. Jen's hex had worked and she couldn't help but smile.
She talked about her sister and what she'd discovered before the vandalism incident.
And then she asked him what he was reading. He talked easily. Never using too many words, but the perfect ones so that she felt like she was a part of his story. She could feel that connection being woven between them.
She was about to walk up the porch steps of The Lost Souls when she heard laughter around the back.
"Want to say hi to Ursula and Eloise? And probably two cats, a huge dog, and a few raccoons." One corner of his mouth lifted when she held up a hand and added, 'Oh! And possibly a hawk and my newest friend, a crow I named Portia."
"That's an interesting animal-to-human ratio. Is that Portia?" he asked nodding to where the large black bird sat on the rail of the porch watching them. When the black ears of a cat poked through the railing the bird looked down before taking flight toland in a tree nearby. Sulphur watched like a hunter, her head going low, her shoulders up, her tail lazily swooshing behind her.
"Hi, honey."
"Hi, Portia. She's been following me around for a few weeks. Pretty sure when you join a coven, you get some kind of animal friend assigned to you. Ursula already had Casper. Eloise got Cleopatra, that's the hawk," he nodded. "And she accidentally adopted a pregnant raccoon when she was drunk a couple of months ago. Oh," she snapped her fingers. "You saved her life."
"I remember," he replied. "Makes sense with witches. Your magic is tied to the earth and living things."
She tilted her head narrowing her eyes. "Do you know a lot about witches? I mean, you're like two thousand years old-"
"I'm two hundred," he corrected with a straight face as he'd told her that before.
"Whatever. Same thing."
"Not the same thing at all. Those numbers are very far apart."
She waved his words away. "But you must know about witches."
He nodded slowly. She raised her eyebrows and gave him awell?look.
He took his time, along with a large inhale and exhale, before he replied,d surprising her. "I'd love to say hi to your friends and the zoo."
