Page 56 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“This definitely counts as fucking,” she said, turning the showerhead on herself so that the spray pushed against her folds, her center.
She sighed a little, running a hand through her wet hair to keep it out of her eyes, and then down her shoulder, her neck, her nipple, tweaking, before sliding her fingers down, to bracket where the water hit, slipping in and out of herself, angling her hips up to meet the water, forcing herself not to tear her gaze away from Azrael.
He was bracing himself against the wall of the shower now, teeth buried in his bottom lip, hand moving furiously up and down, panting, chest heaving.
“Vickie, this is not going to be an all-day affair,” he moaned.
She was too keyed up to answer, though: starting in bed and then stopping before the agony of almost touching had set her on fire, and the water was pounding, pulsing, just the way she liked it when she was alone.
It was a thousand times dirtier with Azrael standing there, muscles straining in the corded forearm that braced against the wall, the slap of his other arm against his body as he drew it back and forth and back and forth driving her toward madness.
This was more than pretending. This was the kind of love, the kind of lust, that undid people.
And Vickie was coming undone, one hand scrambling at the slick wall, the other pushing the showerhead closer and closer to her body, the intensity of the pressure building in her and against her, until sparks rose, gathering at her core, and heat coiled to a withering crescendo, and she finished, screaming his name.
Azrael watched her, eyes greedy, grip firm, for a few seconds in the aftermath as she writhed on the small shower bench, pounding on the wall once more as he spilled, steady spurts onto the taupe tile of the floor, the water washing the traces of both their pleasures away.
“Damn,” he whispered.
“Right? It wouldn’t be such a bad setup. Living like this.”
“No,” said Azrael, voice reverent. “No, it would not.”
Somehow in the postshower haze, while he was helping her prepare the shop in record time, Vickie agreed to join Azrael after work for that long-promised midnight hike.
Which was how she ended up, water bottle in hand, at 11 p.m., dressed for the outdoors, and facing the haunted knocker of Hart Manor.
It groaned a little when she lifted it, and to her surprise, it was Priscilla who answered the door, dressed in hiking gear next to Azrael, a long dark braid hanging down over her left shoulder.
“Vickie! I thought I owed you an actual hike this time, since, you know, I bailed on yours last time.”
“That was years ago,” said Vickie, looking at Priscilla with suspicion.
A smile quirked up Azrael’s face.
“Where’s Evelyn?” Vickie asked as Azrael shook his head emphatically behind her.
“She went back to England. She’ll be here tomorrow for a few weeks before flying back permanently.” Priscilla stared at Vickie, eyes defiant.
“Oh no! She isn’t coming back after that?” Azrael was shaking his head again, and Vickie realized, a moment too late, what he meant.
“She’s thinking about it,” said Priscilla, and her voice was an octave too high and brighter than it ought to be.
“We’re working through some things. The Council president is back from paternity leave, but only temporarily, and she’s trying to decide if she wants the job when he leaves, but meeting his new baby has made her…
a little more urgent about some of the things we don’t see eye to eye on. ”
“Sorry, Prissy.” The distance between Vickie and Azrael seemed smaller now, compared to an ocean.
“I’ll fly out and work it out as soon as we get things cleared up here, but I don’t want to leave before we solve this business.”
“Oh, good,” said Vickie, though the look on Priscilla’s face suggested there might be more to the story than that. Az shook his head again when his sister turned to pick up a water bottle, and Vickie got the message loud and clear.
This was a friend thing. Which was good. They were friends.
And besides, a mid-October night hike in Vermont was cold enough to warrant gloves and outerwear that would keep them protected. It was the perfect activity, even if it was the opposite of what she would rather be doing with him.
Which involved less clothing, but more danger. And the possibility of death.
The hike was better. Even if the trail narrowed the farther they climbed, and as they had gotten to the tricky part, they weren’t talking to save breath, so when Azrael moved to walk single file behind her, he’d brushed his hand against hers.
She had flexed without meaning to in the glove, a tiny spasm of emotion at being so close to touching, and yet so far away.
“Sorry,” Az said, the gravel of his voice seeping through her layers. Fuck, why did he have to be so hot?
“Hey, guys, I’m going to go pee,” yelled Priscilla unceremoniously.
They paused, Vickie sitting on a rock. She knew this trail like the back of her hand, and they were ten minutes away from the falls. Around this corner, they’d make a steep descent, and then the path would level off. It was always harder coming than it was going.
“Vickie,” Azrael began. “I’ll follow Chet, and then maybe we can reconvene. Go over everything.”
“I see you started the important conversations without me,” said Prissy, emerging from the bushes and rubbing hand sanitizer in.
“The Council still has the wards up around the hospital, and we did determine that if we can figure out who tried to take Connie’s soul out of her body, we have a better chance of setting her right.
The Council thinks that the person may have inadvertently been successful with just a miniscule fraction of it. ”
“Someone stole part of her soul?”
“It isn’t technically possible, because she’s nonmagic, but the thing is, one of our research assistants found this old tome about how most mundanes have small threads of magic in them, so inconsequential that they’d almost never come into play, unless something really weird happened.”
“Really weird like an unknown villain attempting to reap a soul, finding it to be boring and human, and then stuffing it back in?”
“Yep, just like that. Anyway, if the person were to be apprehended, we could probably figure out how to release that scrap of soul without killing them. Probably.” Her smile widened.
“And if that person—a villain, obviously—did end up dying, well, it should solve the problem completely. That would make my life much easier, actually, paperwork and all. Whatever does happen to Madam Cleopatra is my jurisdiction, so it will be my problem.”
“Is there a point at which we can ask the Council to step in and help us find them?”
Prissy frowned. “Maybe. They are already trying, is the thing. So it would be stepping in and saying you don’t think they—well, we , really—are doing a good enough job.
It would be a little messy. I’d give it till the full moon, run a tracking spell then.
” She paused. “The concern is that if they become… irate… with you, the retribution could involve looking into all of your past.” Vickie winced at that.
“If you don’t come up with anything, that gives you two weeks to get the Council involved. ”
Azrael shook his head. “And once they’re involved, they won’t want us involved unless they say so.”
“Exactly,” said Priscilla darkly. “That’s why it would be better if we had new leadership to steer it back in the direction Dad was taking it. A more collaborative community, and less of a hierarchy modeled after the human shenanigans that pass as politics.”
“Until the end of the month,” Vickie said.
They were missing something, and she wasn’t sure if they should force the puzzle if it meant shoving their lives under the microscope of the Council’s scrutiny.
Beside her, Azrael sighed, pushing a curl out of his eyes.
His hair was getting long, and she wanted to catch it in her fingers, to weave it around her hands.
To push her mouth against his and feel with her lips, her tongue, her teeth, what it was to love Azrael Hart. When she looked at him she wanted, she realized, with a start, to bind her soul to his.
Probably. And it was too big of a thing to admit just yet.
For now, Vickie settled for rummaging in her backpack and pulling out a few baggies of homemade snacks.
“Trail mix?”
He took the bag, his shoulders relaxing slightly and the corners of his mouth twitching.
“This is a bag of chocolate candies with a few walnuts on top.”
“What? Trail mix is just chocolate candies with obstacles. Everyone knows that.”
Laughing, Azrael pushed her shoulder gently.
Like they were bros. Like he hadn’t stared her in the eye and told her that he was done pretending.
And then fucked his hand watching her writhe under her showerhead until he came all over her bathroom tiles.
They could always settle on the easy way out.
Be friends at a distance after Halloween.
Phone calls only, sight unseen. Something in her chest twisted painfully at the thought.
“All right, come on, lovebirds,” said Priscilla. “Let’s go see a waterfall.”
This time, Vickie took the rear, and it was all she could do not to watch the back pockets of Azrael’s jeans like the miserable, frustrated creature that she was.
She thought she had known what it was to pine, but this, this was what it meant to burn for someone.