Page 14 of Bonded By Tea and Tarot

I huff a soft laugh, trying not to make my headache worse, and pinch my lips together.

“A month?” Aury says, and I shake my head the tiniest amount. “Two months?”

I giggle. “So much more.”

“A year?”

I roll my lips between my teeth, and slowly shake my head again. Aury sucks in a breath, the playful grin falling from his face.

“Are you saying…” he says, his voice dropping an octave, “that I could have had you all this time?”

I twist my lips to the side, all my recent card pulls flashing through my mind. New beginnings, leap of faith, dream big, be patient, take a risk, embrace my inner boldness, mutual attraction.

The potential for love.

“Yes,” I whisper.

Aury stares at me, dumbfounded, and I bite my lip, wincing at how much I’ve abused it in the last few minutes. His eyes drop to my mouth, and I wonder if this time… but then he leans back, seemingly bracing himself against the couch.

“Siobhan,” he says, soft and quiet. “I’d love nothing more than to kiss you right now. But do you think we could save that until you’ve healed a bit? I don’t quite…” He scrubs a hand up and down the back of his head, mussing up his hair even more. Then he makes some sort of low grumble-grunt sound before he drops his gaze back to the card between us and continues with a gravelly voice. “…trust myself. Right now. With you injured. And me…”

He trails off again, and I wait, but he doesn’t finish his sentence.

“With you, what?” I finally say, begging him in my head to tell me. My breath catches in my throat when he raises his dark eyes to meet mine.

“Desperate for you.”

Chapter Ten

Jayce

I’m rinsing off in the shower after work when Hayden strides in and strips off their dark blue paramedic shirt. They ball it in a fist and bury their face in it for a moment, eyes closed, before dropping it to the counter. I tilt my head. Did they just sniff their scrubs?

When I move my eyes down, it’s to a boner straining at their boxer briefs, then bouncing free as they strip those off too. Baffled, I open my mouth to ask what the hell is going on when they step into the shower with me. Before I can so much as get a word past my lips, they’re shoving me against the shower wall and slamming their mouth to mine.

“Hewwo to ooou too,” I mumble against their lips.

Hayden grunts in response, nipping at my bottom lip, and their hands fall to my ass, kneading it and then pulling my cheeks apart to finger me. I groan, my cock hardening for them already, but then they duck their head to my shoulder and I get a whiff of…

My cock jerks to attention and I groan again, instinctively tugging Hayden closer and sucking in a deeper breath. Their woody Palo Santo and sharp rosemary scent surround me, but something else wafts faintly from their hair and the skin along their neck, where the collar of their shirt rubs.

That scent.

Something spicy? But with a warm sweetness, too. My cock twitches and my knot starts to swell, then Hayden is slipping two thick fingers into my ass and scissoring me open.

“Why…” I gasp when they stroke along my prostate, but I can’t be distracted from this, and their intensity is only feeding my urgency. “Why do you smell like…” I trail off, trying to figure it out. It smells like warmth and comfort on a crisp fall evening. Fresh and earthy, warm and spicy.

“Like that,” I finally gasp out, unable to put it into words.

“Cloves and cardamom,” Hayden groans, then fists his free hand around my cock and tugs hard.

I hiss in surprise, my brain ricocheting from one sense to the other. Then they pull me from the wall and spin me around, slamming their chest to my back and grinding their cock between the globes of my ass. I slap my hands against the cold tile to steady myself while my thoughts try to catch up to whatever chaos Hayden is dishing out.

“Found her,” they rasp out. Then they sink their teeth into the curve of my shoulder. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to set my instincts clawing for release while their words sink into my lust-hazed brain.

My mind blanks at the implication.

“Found…” I trail off, at a loss for words. Found her. As in…?