Page 49 of Pirate Witch

I grab a pair of knee-high boots and start lacing my feet into them, bending over as I do so.

“Careful, someone might get the impression you’re starting to care for me,” I tease. “Lunars don’t feel the cold so much.”

I finish with my boots and turn around to find Val still staring at me, heat lingering in the depths of his dark eyes.

Somewhere between Cirio’s Cove and this point, the tension between us had shifted from suspicious and dark to something lustier, more intimate, and just as antagonistic.

“See something you like?” I taunt.

He smirks a second before a rope appears out of nowhere and snaps across my ass with a loud crack. The sting seems to travel straight to my clit and I gasp, eyes widening in shock.

“Get moving,” he retorts.

“Kinky fuck,” I mumble at his back, rubbing my butt to ease away the sensation.

“You have no idea.”

I nibble my bottom lip, trying not to think too much into those words which were said so quietly I’m not sure I was even meant to hear them. Instead, I grab the crystal from where I left it. Following him out of the enormous cabin and along an unfamiliar corridor until we reach the galley. Setting the crystal on the table, I take a seat beside it and watch as he rifles through the drawers, grumbling.

“If I get us some stuff, can you do that thing where you make it edible?” he finally huffs.

I chuckle. “Don’t you feel like cooking?”

“I didn’t think you wanted food poisoning,” he retorts. “But I can—”

“I’m just messing with you. Give me the stuff and I’ll do it.”

Val hands me a bowl filled with stale biscuits and salted pork and I groan. “I thought you were using the charms I made? Why do you still have this stuff?”

“It’s a good backup.”

I roll my eyes and reach for my connection to the Moon, only to hesitate when She answers. My magic feels different than before. More… intense.

My mind flashes back to the moment I felt cold lips on my forehead, and I shiver.

Did something happen then? Something that’s messed with my magic?

“Everything alright?” Val asks.

Damn perceptive mage.

“I think it’s just the aftereffects of the ritual,” I mutter, before whispering a prayer that turns the bowl of random ingredients into two plain sandwiches on a plate.

I almost expect it to go wrong. It doesn’t. If anything, it goes better than I expect.

“Didn’t have to transfigure the crockery,” the mage grunts.

I turn my nose up at him and roll my eyes, trying to disguise the fact that I hadn’t meant to do it. “I’ll turn it back later.”

Goddess, are all of our conversations going to be like this? Snipping and flirting in equal measure until one of us breaks?

ChapterSixteen

VALOREAN

I’m fucking this up. Slowly destroying my chances with my mate. Why is it so hard just to talk to her and share a meal? How can it be so hard to benice?Not even nice. I’d settle for pleasant.

Instead, it seems I’m an asshole through and through. I can tell something is bothering Nilsa, but instead of just outright asking her—like a normal person—I poke and poke, hoping she’ll just explode and tell me.