Page 128 of A Witchy Spell Ride

And I saw a woman reborn. Hair wild. Lips red and swollen. Eyes fierce enough to set a city on fire. Glitter dusted across collarbones like a constellation I could finally name. And behind her, a man who looked at her like he’d never stop wanting her.A man who had learned the difference between possession and devotion and chose the latter like it was oxygen.

“Mine,” he rasped, lining his body behind mine, cock hard against the curve of my ass.

“Yes.”

His hand slid between my thighs.

No teasing this time.

No games.

Just heat.

Claiming.

Power I’d given, not ceded.

My hands braced on the mirror as he thrust into me, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, sure enough to give it back. And I watched. Watched myself fall apart and rebuild. Watched the pleasure break across my face like a storm over warm water. Watched the place where we joined become the center of my whole damn world.

“You feel that?” he growled against my neck, teeth ghosting the place that always makes me answer with a sound.

“Yes.”

“That’s what love looks like.”

It wasn’t poetry. It was truth.

When I came, shaking and gasping, he didn’t stop. He turned me to face him, lifted me like I weighed nothing, and fucked me into the mattress like the devil had finally come to collect.

But when it was over, when the room smelled like sweat and leather and sugar-bourbon and me, he kissed my forehead.

Held me close.

And whispered, “No more fear, Red. Not ever again.”

The words settled where old nightmares used to curl, filling the corners like light.

We dozed for a while in a tangle of legs and promise. I woke to the city’s late-night hum, river talking to barges, a horn three streets over trying to be important, Bones’ laugh ricocheting down the hall at something Vex said. The club had quieted but not died; this place never really sleeps. It purrs.

“Water,” I murmured, voice gone gravely-sweet from overuse, from claiming my own throat.

He kissed the crown of my head. “Kitchen.”

“I can walk,” I said, grinning when he didn’t let go right away.

“I know,” he said, and that sentence might’ve been my favorite.

I slid into one of his shirts, ours now, dog tags cool against my sternum, the chain pooling between my breasts like a promise. The floorboards were warm under my feet. The hallway smelled like sage and gun oil and the last of the party, and my mouth tipped at the memory of hanging my crown over a cheap tarot card like punctuation.

No more altars in my name unless I build them myself.

I stepped into the kitchen and stopped.

Reaper stood at the counter. Bare chest. Tattoos like a story you only get to read if you’ve earned it. Whiskey in one hand. He looked like a statue someone forgot to put in a museum. And Briar? She stood close.

Too close.

Her palm flat on the counter beside his; his wrist not moving an inch to make her shift away. The air between them was a tightrope.