Page 57 of The Witch They Crave

"Shut up," I say.

He laughs—real, surprised—and his hands move and I stop thinking about anything constructive.

He walks me back to the stone wall. The cold hits my shoulders and he puts his forehead against mine and stops.

"Okay?" he asks.

"You keep asking me that."

"I'll keep asking until it stops being right."

"Yes. Okay."

His mouth curves. Then it goes to my throat, and I forget the joke.

The compass tattoo on his wrist, pressed to my hip. The fact that his skin is cold but his arms around me are warm—actually warm, which rewrites everything I assumed about him. The scar my thumb keeps finding on its own.

And no performance. None. Just him, without all the posturing and I want it anyway. Want more of him than I have any business wanting.

His hands find the buttons of my shirt and stop. A question.

"Yes," I breathe, before he can ask it out loud. "Kage. Yes."

He gets it open and shoves it off my shoulders, and then his hands are on me—both of them, spanning my ribs, dragging up to cup my breasts over my bra like he's been thinking about it for weeks and just got told he's allowed. He pulls down the cups of my bra and his thumbs drag over my nipples and I arch into it before I decide to, and the sound he makes is pure approval.

My magic burns deep inside me, rising to the surface to answer the attention Kage is giving me.

He dips his head and takes one nipple into his mouth, and the wet heat of it punches a moan out of me that echoes off the stone. He works me with his tongue, then his teeth, careful—just enough pressure to make me feel the edge of what he is without crossing it—and the bond throws every second of it back at me doubled. My want. His want. The same chord in two registers, looped so tight I can't tell whose is louder, and it's obscene, feeling how much he wants me while he's got his mouth on me, no guessing, no mask, nothing between us but skin.

His hand drops to the waistband of my leggings. Pushes under. Unhurried, like he's got all night, like he wants to feel me squirm waiting for it—and I do, I push into his hand shamelessly, and he huffs a laugh against my breast.

"Impatient," he says.

"Just shut up."

His fingers slide through me and we both go still for a beat—him at what he finds, me at the first drag of his fingertips exactly where I need them. I'm soaked, embarrassingly so, and the growl it pulls out of him is the least human sound I've heard him make.

"Christ, Hex. You're drenched." His forehead raises to mine, his fingers circling my clit slow, relentless. "This all for me?"

"Yes—yes—" My eyes flutter shut.

He slides one finger into me, the heel of his hand grinding against my clit with every stroke, and everything narrows to this moment. Twelve years of running the math on what everyone around me wants, reading every room for the exit, and here there's no math to run. He knows. The bond hands him every twitch and clench the second I feel it, so he plays me like he's had the sheet music for years—curling his finger just right, dragging that pressure just there, chasing every sound I make and giving it back louder.

"That's it," he murmurs against my mouth, filthy and tender at once. "Let me feel you. Come on my hand, Cal, I want all of it."

Then he kisses me—deep, unhurried, swallowing every sound while his finger keeps its rhythm—and I rock into his hand, chasing it, hips moving on their own because my body's stopped taking orders from anything but him. The heat builds low and tight, a coil winding between my legs, tighter with every drag of his finger, every grind of his palm. I can feel myself clenching around him, feel how wet I am, feel the pressure gathering to a point that's almost too much and nowhere near enough. I whimper into his mouth and he groans back, and through the bond I feel his restraint fraying, feel how badly he wants to feel me let go.

The coil snaps.

It tears through me from the inside out, everything pulling tight and then shattering, my body clamping down around his finger in waves I can't control. He strokes me through every one without slowing, and the bond sings my own orgasm back at me so I get it twice—once in my body, once as an echo—until I'm shaking and gasping his name into his shoulder and my knees have entirely stopped participating.

He eases me down slow. Slides his finger free, and—god—brings them to his mouth, holds my eyes while he does it, and the look on his face is going to live in me for a while.

"Been wondering what you taste like," he says, low. "Wasn't disappointed."

I'd have a comeback if I could remember how words work. Instead I lean into him, forehead to his collarbone, and feel him breathing hard—feel the restraint in it, the want he hasn't done a single thing about, rigid between us.

"Cal," he says, wrecked, into my skin.