Page 37 of A Witch in Notting Hill

Willow

T he festival was going even better than I’d hoped.

We’d done the moon water workshop, meditated, listened to a sound bath, watched a fire show, drunk cocktails with names we couldn’t pronounce and herbs sticking out the top, and danced along to the relentless drummers.

If all I had to do was participate, I was doing a hell of a job.

“Reckon we should take that lantern walk?” Oliver asked, stretching his long arms above his head. “Getting a little batty just wandering through this part of the park over and over. Ready for a change of scenery.”

“A walk sounds nice,” I agreed, hoping I didn’t sound as eager as I felt.

“You guys go ahead,” Lola said. “I need to rest my feet. Min, come with me.”

“But the lantern—”

“Min,” she hissed, and he got the message. There was no question they were leaving us alone on purpose, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. At this point in the night, a little peace and quiet might not be the worst thing. And if that meant time alone with Oliver, well, I wasn’t complaining.

Oliver only laughed and shook his head, and I followed his lead in the direction of the path.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Lola called over her shoulder as they walked back toward the center of the festival.

“There isn’t much you wouldn’t do,” he said.

“That’s the point.”

“She’s too cheeky for her own good, that one,” he whispered to me, guiding me toward the path with a steady hand on my lower back. “A break from her might actually give us a second to hear ourselves think.”

“And what are you thinking about?” I asked, emboldened by the night and the moon and the fact that nothing catastrophic had happened yet.

And it wasn’t exactly like the night was young.

It might have actually been possible all my magic had been channeled into the moon rituals, and I wouldn’t explode anything just because Oliver was close to me.

“You,” he answered easily, falling into step beside me as we made our way.

At this hour, a gentle quiet blanketed this part of the park, and the paper lanterns lining the path cast Oliver in a warm yellow glow.

He looked just as magical as anything else we’d done so far, and it made it hard to focus.

“What about me?”

“Well, first of all, you look freezing.” He shrugged off his wool coat and wrapped it around my shoulders, and I didn’t argue.

It was the middle of the night in November, and I was not dressed appropriately for the weather.

I looked great, but it came at a price. A hefty one.

“And second of all, you look beautiful.”

The back of his hand brushed across the back of mine, and my goose bumps had nothing to do with the temperature.

“Thank you,” I said. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” He adjusted his lapels, and I had a brief flash of wanting to grab them and rip his jacket off. A searing, haunting vision of what it would look like to give into temptation and see what happened next.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, one eyebrow raised like he could read my mind.

“I, uh... you,” I said, and laughed, unable to think of a lie. And it wasn’t like he had to know the whole truth.

“Ah, something we have in common.” He smiled. “I’m grateful you brought me here, Willow.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, not just to the festival but out of the shop and out of my comfort zone. I can get a little complacent when things are easy, and it’s been nice to be reminded of what else is out here in the city.”

I wasn’t expecting that, and it took me a minute to calibrate.

This whole time, I thought this adventure had been primarily an obligation for him.

Something that started as work and might have turned into more, but never crossed the line of responsibility.

He planned to use his industry knowledge to help me find what I needed, planned to help keep me out of the public eye, and planned to let his friends in on a little quest. I never considered it might be benefiting him, too.

“Careful,” I teased. “Keep talking like that and I might think you actually like witchcraft.”

“It isn’t the witchcraft I like.”

When I turned to face him, he was already looking at me. Pushing the mask gently off my face so he could see me clearly, tucking me hair behind my ears and letting his hands linger on the side of my neck.

“Oliver.” The lantern light flickered across his face, illuminating the hope in his eyes. The searching, pleading expression that I was certain matched my own.

“Tell me you’ve been feeling what I’ve been feeling,” he said.

“I know it doesn’t make sense, and you’ve got that bloke and you’re going home, but at least give me this.

If you’re feeling even a fraction of what I am, tell me the truth.

” I exhaled, long and slow, and he threaded his fingers through my hair.

“Put me out of my misery,” he said, but his expression was anything but miserable.

Even behind the mask, he was optimistic. Longing.

So I did what he asked.

In a moment of weakness, chaos, desperation, lust—I put him out of his misery.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his, throwing my arms around his neck and leaning into him. His surprised quickly disappeared, and his kiss was just as hungry as mine. Moreso, even.

He dropped his hands to my waist, walking me back a few steps until I was leaning against a nearby tree draped in lanterns, which hung over us like spotlights.

When he pushed against me as he deepened the kiss, I felt every inch of him in a way that made me desperate to get out of the woods and back into my flat.

Back into that moment in the shower. Anywhere but here.

He tilted my head back by my hair, pressing kisses against my neck and mumbling into my skin. “I’ve been thinking of nothing but this for months,” he said. “Every day... and every night.” A kiss behind my ear. At the hollow of my throat.

I laced my fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck, relishing the low sound that escaped his throat when I pulled.

“Now I’ll be thinking of nothing but this for months,” I whispered, bringing his lips back to mine.

He tasted like beer and cinnamon and the best, worst decision I’d made in as long as I could remember.

When he hiked my leg up around his hip to press harder into me, I let the hem of my dress fall to my waist so I could feel the heat of his hands on my thigh.

I could feel how hard he was even through his pants, and it was making me desperate.

I ground against him, and he broke away and sucked a breath through his teeth.

“Fuck.” He exhaled, long and slow, pressing his hands against the tree behind me and dropping his forehead to mine.

“We shouldn’t have started this here,” I said, looking around at the sound of rustling in the leaves and trying not to cringe at the state of us in such a precarious position.

“No,” he agreed. “We definitely shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t mean we can’t end it somewhere else, does it?” Another kiss to my neck, my jaw, my throat.

“If you keep kissing me like that we’re not going to have much of a choice,” I said.

“That’s the plan.”

I pulled back to look at him just in time to catch the devious grin spreading across his face, turning his whole vibe from innocent librarian to filthy professor, and I couldn’t get out of the woods fast enough.

The whole ride back to my flat, I waited for the lightning strike.

Waited for the train car to explode, for a delay that would leave us trapped for hours on end, for a serial killer or someone with a speaker to get on and ruin our moment.

I waited for whatever catastrophe was bound to follow, however my magic was going to backfire, whatever drama was going to unfold because I was doing something romantic. Or at the very least, highly sexual.

And yet, nothing came.

The train didn’t explode, the skies didn’t open up on the walk back to the flat, my keys didn’t disappear. Vera was even out on a late-night prowl around the neighborhood, judging by the open cat door and her tendency to snoop at this hour. Things were... working out.

I should have known better than to think it would last.

But I was greedy, so I let Oliver in anyway.

I thought it was only in the movies when people went back to kissing before the door even closed behind them, but when Oliver pushed me up against the wall the second we crossed the threshold, I was reminded there’s a reason people say life imitates art.

Thank god Vera wasn’t in the flat, because things were escalating at a dizzying pace. It was like we pressed fast-forward on every desire from the last few months and tried to rip through them all at once. Hot, open-mouthed kisses, handfuls of hair, skin on skin.

He ran his hands over my ass and scooped me up off the ground, and my legs wrapped around his waist as he carried me in the direction of my bedroom.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

“It’s a flat, Willow, not a maze.”

He kissed me again before I could respond, which was probably for the best. At this rate, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to form a coherent sentence again as long as I lived.

So much for my acting career. Unless someone wanted to cast me as a character who only said, Yes, more, please, Oliver , I was useless.

I pushed his jacket off his shoulders, finally giving in to my vision of undressing him. I’d seen him without his clothes before, but nothing compared to being the one to take them off. He hiked my dress higher over my ass as I undid his buttons, both of us fumbling to get closer to each other.

“Your skin feels incredible,” he mumbled against my mouth, sinking his fingers into my hips. “You’re even better than I imagined.”

“Oh, you imagined me?”

“You have no idea.”

He dropped me onto the bed, watching with heavy eyes as I undid his belt and pushed his pants to the floor. “You drive me insane,” he whispered.

“That makes two of us.”