Page 24 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Sixteen

DUKE

I’ve died and gone to heaven. It’s the only explanation for how I feel. Warm. Happier than I’ve ever been. Safe. Cared for in a way I haven’t been in years.

I inhale a deep breath of familiar sweetness before rolling onto my side. I promptly greet the floor.

My moan is her voice.

Fuck.

I struggle to sit up and make sense of my surroundings. A twin-sized bed sits in the corner of an unfamiliar room with butter yellow walls. The furniture is secondhand, mismatched, and not level against the wooden floor. A lone window is off-center on one wall, covered by lace curtains.

Where the hell am I?

My gaze lands on a stack of books on the dresser.

I can’t read the titles, but I recognize the colors. I remember a very particular pair of hands clutching onto these books during high school.

I gasp as an avalanche of memories buries me alive .

It’s more than blurry images and hate-fueled emotion. That thing I’ve been running from for years returns with enough force to steal the air out of my lungs.

I can feel her.

Because this is Cordelia McCoy’s bedroom, and I’m inside her body.

I struggle to rise from the floor, then stumble down the hallway to the sitting room. The only sound is the tick, tick, tick of the cat clock on the wall.

They left me here.

I sink onto the couch.

My own brother, and even Cordelia, who knows what’s going on beneath the surface—they treated me like I was drunk out of my mind and put me to bed.

They ignored me. They scorned me. They cast me aside.

She’s been living like this her whole damn life.

It’s not just that the town has always treated Cordie this way. It’s that I might’ve done worse.

I don’t remember a single one of those stories that the people in town told me. Couldn’t exactly ask Cash about it without giving away that I’m not really Cordelia in here.

I can’t explain how Cordie’s memories line up with everyone else’s.

I know exactly why I hated her. I had no idea she had every reason to hate me back. It’s no wonder unwishing her wish at the well didn’t work.

This is all on me.

I really might be cursed, and I’m dragging Cordie down with me.

Cordie, who has no family left. Cordie, who’s never had a friend. Cordie, who’s been shoved aside her entire life like she doesn’t matter.

She told me she was a virgin until her junior year of college. That would’ve made her twenty-one-years old.

I don’t believe her anymore, not after what I’ve seen through her eyes.

She’s never been touched.

Never felt wanted. Never been worshipped .

Her stomach roils as the truth settles into my mind.

My mind is the only place where I’ve been touching her for years in secret, owning her body, wringing pleasure out of it like it was my goddamn right. Making her mine.

She always is, in my head.

If touching her for the first time started all this, and I can’t untouch her while I’m in her body…

What will happen if I finally give in?

What if I let myself do in reality what I’ve fantasized about?

Only one way to find out.

I pull Cordie’s shirt over her head and finally let myself look—really see—what I’ve been avoiding for the past week. The past twenty-six years.

She’s…beautiful.

My fantasies didn’t do her justice.

She’s paler than I expected, skin as white as a winter moon. The prettiest pink nipples that poke up from the snow in early spring. My mouth waters as I study every inch of her tits. They’re fuller at the bottom, almost teardrop shaped. Nothing like a porn, or my stupid dreams.

She’s real.

This is really happening.

Next, I shimmy out of the fucking tiny shorts she keeps giving me to wear. All the breath rushes out of her lungs when I finally see what I’ve been imagining, since I shouldn’t have known any better.

The carpet matches the curtains.

I blink at the promised land that I never thought I’d see for myself.

Cordie’s my little gingersnap in more ways than one. The tuft of soft curls between her legs matches the shade of red that crowns her head. I spread her soft thighs wide and feel a little sorry for myself. I’ll never be able to reenact all my fantasies from this angle.

This has to work, though. It just has to.

I’ve gotta get her back into her perfect body, then get her the hell out of this town.

Her hand trembles as I raise it to her chest .

The first intentional touch of her skin sends me into overdrive.

The pleasure’s so intense, so fast that I recoil.

How can this woman be so responsive?

The answer stares back at me.

It’s because she’s been deprived for so long.

She deserves this, even if I don’t deserve to be the one to give it to her.

I don’t close her eyes, but white lightning blinds my vision when I cup her tits in her own hands. I’m not inexperienced the way she is, but I swear, I have never felt anything so painfully good.

I’m gasping for breath like I’ve been going at it for hours.

If I’m going to undo this for both of us, then I’ve gotta do it right.

I squeeze one breast, then slide her other hand down her soft, flat stomach.

I don’t know how sensitive she is, so I don’t want to do anything too rough.

Just a tap. Just a test to gauge what my next step should be.

I drag a single finger through her silky soft folds, and I see fucking stars.

A whole lifetime of pleasure wouldn’t fit inside this feeling.

I collapse against the couch, winded, still half blind.

What in the ever-loving hell was that?

Is this woman a witch, too?

A low, hissing sound puts a sharp pause on my worries.

There, sitting on the ground at Cordie’s feet is a black and white cat that I’ve never seen before.

“What do you think you’re doing to my girl?”

“Your girl?” I choke out like it’s the most important part.

“Yessssssss,” it hisses. “My girl. The one I have faithfully watched over all her life. The one whose tears I was unable to dry every time you made her cry.”

I glance at the spot on the wall where a cat clock…

…used to hang.

It’s gone.

Maybe Wallace served me real whiskey after all. Cordie’s small. It was bound to catch up to her body eventually .

The cat stares at me. “Take your unworthy hands off her body, you vile beast.”

Did a fucking clock just call me a vile beast? How does a fucking clock realize that I’m not actually Cordie?

I blink at the cat, not sure what to do next.

It makes my decision for me when it extends one of its paws then makes a show of protracting its claws, one by one.

They look sharper than the average house cat’s arsenal, and longer, too.

The threat is clear. This little demon won’t hesitate to do some serious damage, whether I’m in Cordie’s skin or not.

I raise her hands in the air.

The cat must be satisfied with my surrender, because it pulls its paw back and licks itself. It looks like a regular pet all of a sudden, if pets were stored as household items, that is.

“What the fuck are you?” I whisper. Having a conversation with a hallucination seems about right these days.

I glance around the room, half expecting to see Neveah hiding in the shadows, waving her hand and muttering nonsense.

“The correct question is who am I,” the cat says in perfect English, though it doesn’t sound like the way people speak around these parts. It has a male voice with a strange accent. “I am Cordelia’s familiar. Her protector. Her helper.”

Fuck this guy. Cat.

I shake her head and grit her teeth. “Cordie doesn’t have a helper or a protector. If she did, maybe she wouldn’t have been ignored her whole life.”

“If I hadn’t been spelled for so long, then I would have intervened long ago,” it answers, like that makes any fucking sense.

“You have always been different. I do not know why, but I hardly care after all the pain you’ve inflicted.” The cat licks its other paw as it slides its green eyes up and down Cordie’s naked body.

Its gaze seems more human than animal, which just makes me want to kick it into the next town for being a Peeping Tom.

“Stop looking at her like that,” I grit out, reaching for her clothes to cover her up .

“My, my,” it purrs. “You’re awfully protective of someone who you made cry so often.”

I sigh. If this is my chance to work out half the shit that I can’t understand, then I may as well run with it. This cat might have my number, but it’s not going to get my tongue.

“Let’s pretend this is real,” I suggest. “Tell me what you know.”

Apparently, it knows how to raise an eyebrow like a person. The look it gives me reeks of disappointment.

“I know that you have somehow broken the spell that was cast on me twenty-nine years ago. In gratitude for that boon, however unintentional on your part, I shall humor you for the time being. I know that I am Cornelius Louthy, feline familiar assigned to Cordelia McCoy.”

I furrow Cordie’s brow. What kind of a name is Cornelius?

“I know that you are Duke Castellaw, the sniveling imbecile who broke my girl’s tender heart for years.” It hisses at me again.

At the risk of getting clawed, I make a time out motion. “First of all, Cordie isn’t a little girl anymore. She’s a grown woman. Second, how do you know any of that if you’ve been stuck on a wall in this sitting room for a few decades?”

The cat narrows its creepy, human-like eyes at me.

“Being frozen didn’t make me stupid. Rather, it forced me to bear witness to my girl’s suffering at your hands time and time again.

I have been here every day and every night since she was brought into this home for the first time as a wee babe, just as I have been here the past week.

I know exactly what is going on between you and Cordelia. ”

Makes sense. It’s a weird relief not to have to hide this shit from someone. Something. “Have any other words of wisdom for me?”

The cat’s whiskers twitch. “Yes. Trust no one. The witches are corrupt. I do not know the source of their turning.”

I sit Cordie’s ass back down on the couch. Hard. “Buddy, I need names, right the fuck now.” Neveah for sure. Maybe Betty Lou. Fuck. I knew it.