Page 100 of Demon's Bane

I lean in and brush my lips over his. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“Don’t I?” he murmurs into the kiss. “You may want to rethink that when you learn what kind of thanks I had in mind.”

His hand snakes between our bodies, finding my clit and rubbing in slow, measured circles. I press my hips into the touch, grind down against his hand, and moan into his mouth as he works me.

When I’m nearly there, he pulls away and takes my hips in a firm grip. Lifting me easily, he sinks me down on his cock, all the way to where the swell of his knot teases at my entrance.

Water sloshes and spills over the sides of the tub as I move on him, as he thrusts his hips up to meet me, but I couldn’t care less about the mess we’re making. Not when the stretch and drag of him is just as good as I remember, not when I use the weight of my body and the strength of his arms around me to sink lower, to take his knot in me and bring his hips flush to mine.

Rhett rests his forehead against mine, breathing hard. Our lips bump once, twice, in slow lax touches that aren’t quite coordinated enough to be called kisses, and when I shift on him he tightens his hold and lets out a low growl.

“Be still, witch.”

A wave of near-painful laughter and tenderness climbs up the back of my throat to see him so affected, so undone.

It fades a moment later when he rolls his hips, pressing deeper, stretching me around him. Then there are no more words. Nothing but water and heat and the power of his body under mine, my body moving on his.

It chases away everything else until there’s only this. Only us.

And later, when we finally untangle and drag ourselves back to his bed, we don’t talk about tomorrow or the next day. We don’t worry about our two realms or anything in them that would keep us apart.

We simply exist. Just for tonight. Like that’s all we’ll ever need.

30

Rhett

It’s been three days since Joan and I returned to the village, and with each passing hour of no news and more back-breaking work, I can tell she’s becoming more and more unsettled.

It’s not just her, either. The entire village is on edge.

There have been scattered reports. A set of tracks leading to a secondary cave entrance where someone could have wedged their way in and made it to the main cave to set off this most recent explosion. A camp discovered in the woods with a dead fire and traces of at least two sets of boot prints.

But no wielder, and no concrete evidence to point to. Nothing but rubble and shadows and growing frustrations.

The most recent attack also appears to have been no more than a decoy, a distraction to get everyone responding to the threat, only to have a handful of large, valuable crystals from one of the storage chambers deep in the cave system come up missing the day after.

Even the soldiers sent from court have had no luck in making sense of it all, and with each day the culprit continues to evade capture, tensions grow.

Joan’s been trying, I know she has. With the soldiers as she’s helped them attempt to track down any trace of magick in thewoods, and with my mother as they prepare meal after meal in the square, she’s been trying her best to find a place here.

But the chilly reception she’s getting from the village hasn’t warmed much, and though I’d knock the skull of any demon who’d deny she belongs here, I know it wouldn’t help.

Joan’s place is not here.

It’s waiting for her back in her realm, and I don’t know what to do about that.

She’s been hesitant to say it outright, but it’s been clear with each passing day her continued absence from her shop and her life is weighing heavily on her.

I haven’t pressed her on it, because I don’t know what to say, either.

All of it sits down on my shoulders in a thick cloak of shame and guilt and indecision.

It’s never been more important for me to be here, doing right by my family and my home, stepping up and helping in the only way I can.

But it’s also never been more clear my heart is pulling me elsewhere, away from here, away from my responsibility and everything I’ve known.

I can’t make sense of it, can’t come to any kind of decision about what I’m going to do, whatwe’regoing to do. By the time I leave the mine at the end of my last shift of the day, it’s with a body that’s protesting every step, and a mind that won’t stop racing.