Page 55 of Hopelessly Teavoted
In high school once, Vickie had woken up to this same feeling of longing and almost that burrowed in her bones and rushed to both her heart and between her thighs. She wanted him not just for sex but for the closeness, and the smell of burnt amber and lemon.
For the home of him.
When she’d woken up, ten years earlier, the pit in her stomach had been from overindulgence, but this felt very much the same.
She’d had too much to drink at a party and Az had driven her home and put her to bed across the king-size mattress from him.
The slide of those silk sheets, absurd for a sixteen-year-old to have, had been a cool relief on her sweaty skin.
She’d woken up to velvet curtains drawn tight so no sunlight could get in, and to Azrael still sleeping on his side of the bed, but with one hand thrown over her.
She’d thought, for a moment, that if she didn’t move at all they could stay there forever in the embrace of the room and the bed.
Azrael’s eyes had fluttered and her stomach had twisted.
She had wanted to crawl toward him and touch him, but unfortunately, the twisting had not been due to desire alone.
She had heaved, and his eyes shot open, fingers snapping a bucket under her head, while the other hand moved to pull her hair back from her face.
Az had shushed her and rubbed circles on her back.
He’d gotten her water and reassured her in soft words that the magic had gotten rid of the vomit and the bucket fast enough to avoid any lingering smells, though she had still cried in the bathroom adjacent to his massive room while brushing her teeth.
Vickie hadn’t spent the night again after that, but on more than one occasion, she’d had sweaty, frustrating dreams starring Azrael Hart and those curtains.
They turned to nightmares at times, and to something else entirely in the darkest part of the night, when she lay there, guilty over touching herself and thinking of him, trying to think of other things—breasts, whoever she was dating, the best sex scenes in books she had read.
Nothing was quite Azrael then, and nothing was quite Azrael now, and it made her fucking furious that she couldn’t touch him.
And when she woke up, before her alarm, body throbbing from the nearness of him, the warmth of her comforter a hug, it was too easy to shut her eyes against the nascent slivers of sunlight drifting through the slatted blinds.
To slide into memory and longing, and slip her hand beneath the waistband of her pajamas, and pretend, for a few agonizing moments, that it was his.
The pretending was good enough for now; it would have to be.
If she closed her eyes and concentrated, it was almost like being with him, close enough to touch through the wall, and with the door cracked open to the bedroom, breathing the same air.
Her fingertips picked up speed, racing against the alarm that would inevitably sound and dictate that she should start her morning.
Her hand slipped in and out easily now, and she brought the other upward to her breast, her nipple, thinking of him, wishing it were his, burning for him until she was so close that she swore she could feel him.
A shattering sound tore her eyes open.
Azrael was standing in the doorway, lips parted, coffee splattering his front, the shards of her favorite mug at his feet.
She withdrew her hand, and he swallowed.
“Don’t,” he croaked, and then tried again. “Don’t stop on my account. Sorry, Vickie, I was going to bring you coffee, but I thought you were still asleep. I was going to leave it on your nightstand to wake up to.” A ferocious blush covered him, from the tips of his ears to his cheeks.
She nodded to the puddle of porcelain shards and liquid. “Clean that up. I have an idea.”
Az snapped his fingers, and it wasn’t lost on her that they were shaky, his eyes darkened by desire. They couldn’t touch, sure, but she didn’t get through undergrad and three-quarters of a master’s degree without some ability to improvise.
“I want you to watch me, and then I want you to follow me into the shower.”
“I—yes. Okay. Anything.”
Standing up, she let her fingers slide under the edge of her T-shirt. Azrael braced an arm against the doorway, biting his lower lip.
As slowly as she could, she drew the shirt over her head. The delay was agonizing; each inch of fabric set her ablaze, and the rough scrape of it against her nipples made her breath catch.
“Victoria.” He sounded strangled. “You are the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on. Fuck.” He scrubbed a hand down his face and shook his fingers out for a moment.
She tossed the shirt at him, and he caught it, setting it down on a chair.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Mr. Hart,” she purred, cupping each breast with a hand against the chill of the early morning. “Can I get by?”
“You can have literally any fucking thing you want, Vickie.” He flattened himself against the doorway and she ducked beside him, narrowly avoiding calamity, the danger of it thrumming through her veins.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, stopping halfway through the living room, and bending over slowly to slide her sweatpants down, and then step out of them and toward the bathroom. “Care to join me?”
“Yes,” he said, voice solemn and eyes blazing as he strode toward her, stopping an arm’s length away. “I have never wanted anything in my life so much.”
“Good,” she said, walking to the bathroom door and pausing in the entryway to slide her panties off and toss them at him.
He caught them with little effort, running them through his fingers. He groaned. “Damn, these are so wet. You must have been close.”
“I was thinking of you.”
“You know what, how bad can dying be, really? Death comes to us all. I’m ready.”
Vickie laughed. “No dying today, Az. I have a walk-in shower with a corner bench and a particularly strong showerhead that I had to install after a leak.”
“Holy shit,” he breathed, running a hand through his hair, face flickering with understanding of what she meant. “You won’t be late for work?”
“I have to shower anyway, and I know someone who offered to help me cheat and make the baked goods more quickly from now on.”
“Devil damn me, yes, you do.”
Walking into the bathroom, she slid the glass door of the shower back and stepped over the rim of it to turn on the water, running it until it was warm.
“Get in here and take your clothes off, Azrael.” The tension stretched between them, agonizing. Between her thighs, her body throbbed for her to finish what she’d started.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” His eyes bored into her.
“Take your shirt off first. Slowly.” He complied, pulling it over his head. She wanted to lick his stomach, the way the muscles moved when he tossed the shirt to the side.
She sat down on the corner bench of the shower, closest to the water, and reached for her breasts, one in each hand.
“Now strip. Slowly. So I can see every inch of you while I do this.”
He bit his lip.
“Can I—with magic—can I help?”
Shit. She’d forgotten about the magic.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Please.”
Pulling his pants down, Az stumbled a little, and she watched him as he struggled to get the tight jeans down over his socks.
Brow furrowed, he snapped his fingers, and the pants and socks were off, leaving only boxers, patterned with little cats, straining to contain an erection that she wanted so badly to run her hand across.
“Vickie, where can I touch you?” He snapped his fingers, and the magic brushed against her throat. “Here?”
She shook her head.
“Here?” Under her fingers, invisible wisps of power grazed, hardening her nipples. She shifted, and he swore. “Devil dammit, you are so fucking beautiful.” He tweaked them again. “Here?”
“Mmm. Almost,” she said. “Take your boxers off and get in here. Touch yourself the way I want to touch you.”
“How do you want to touch me?” He snapped his fingers, staring at her from under hooded eyes, and his underwear was on the floor, one hand hovering above his erection, the tip of it beading and glistening in the cool morning light drifting through the narrow horizontal window above her.
“I want to touch you so hard you can’t stand it. Like, literally so hard you have to brace yourself. Come here and do it, Azrael.”
Carefully, he walked toward her, and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t stop.
That he would take her in his arms and burn for it, the exquisite feeling of skin against skin.
But he stopped and leaned against the wall of the shower across from her, the water from the larger, fixed showerhead streaming in rivulets down his hard body.
“Use both hands for a moment, Az. Stroke it for me until you’re desperate, and don’t you dare stop watching.”
He slid a hand down the length of himself, groaning a little, adding a second hand, and then leaning against the cream-colored tile. “You first.”
Vickie bit her lip, and stood up, sliding the mounted showerhead out of its holder. Water teased her now from the head, splattering across her body and onto his, almost like touching. At her thigh, the showerhead sprayed a steadier stream.
“Both of us together,” she insisted, sitting back down on the corner seat. Spreading her thighs all the way, and fumbling with the stream adjuster so that the water began to pulse.
Azrael moaned, slapping a hand against the tile. “Dammit, Vickie, you’re going to be the death of me.”
Moving fingers to her nipples and holding the showerhead at a distance for a moment, Vickie shook her head. “No dying. Watch. Do it the way I would, slow and slick and sweet at first, and then harder, rougher, until you can’t stand it.”
“Fuck,” he swore, his face flushed, but he complied, sliding his hand down his dick once more and cupping his balls with the other.