Page 28

Chapter

Eighteen

LUST

S he’s going to kiss me .

It was the only thought in my head, and kept cycling around and around, running a hundred miles an hour. Near the window, moonlight dripped through branches like splashes of silver blood on the floorboards. She leaned in, bare feet silent on the wood. My breath caught.

I never knew Hazel as a mortal, but I couldn’t get Juniper out of my head.

Juniper wasn’t delicate, like a fledgling bush or fragile flower.

She was wild like a strong tree. Power curled around her like mist, and I could feel it pressing against my skin before her lips hovered near mine—warm, insistent.

She tilted her head, a fuzzy strand of hair falling across her face.

“You’re dangerous,” she murmured. “You know that?”

“And you’re not?” I countered, my voice lower now, my eyes flicking to the side to indicate the swirling strands of burnt amber magick around us.

Our eyes locked, and for a moment neither of us breathed. She reached out, fingers grazing the collar of my shirt. Sparks shot through me, sharp and real. I caught her wrist, not to stop her, but to feel her pulse thrum beneath my thumb.

So alive. So real.

“I can’t believe it myself,” she murmured against me, her breath a warm puff of air against my face. “Did he only do it because of this...fated thing?”

I didn’t have a good answer, but needed to come up with one.

I didn’t have a good answer for anything, lately.

Maybe it was seeing the new power she’d displayed—bottling up emotions and harnessing them like they were fucking berries.

Maybe it was the fact that her power didn’t frighten me—it fascinated me. Was that why Pride had done it?

The distress in her eyes was real.

“That was likely part of it,” I began. “But the truth is we are all enraptured by you . And we never agree on anything.”

Her lips thinned, but the glimmer of amusement in her eyes was real. It faded a moment later.

“Does that scare you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But every time I try to stay away, I end up here. With you.”

Her lips curved slowly. “Then stop fighting it.”

She pulled me closer, and I didn’t resist. Her body pressed against mine, warm and soft and real. The air between us snapped, charged with something old and hungry. Her hand slid up my chest, over the curve of my throat, and settled at the back of my neck.

I barely had time to breathe before she kissed me.

It was not gentle.

Her mouth claimed mine with the confidence of a woman who knew her worth, who knew exactly what I wanted—what I needed. Her lips were soft, but her kiss was fire. I groaned against her, my hands gripping her waist, feeling the heat of her skin beneath the thin fabric of her top.

She tasted like cinnamon and heat, like danger, like magick brewed just for me.

My back hit the pantry door, her body pressing fully against mine. The handle dug into the middle of my back, grounding me, the only thing reminding me of who I was and where I was.

Otherwise, I’d be convinced this was heaven.

The air itself seemed to bend subtly, magick humming in my veins. Bottles clinked softly on the shelf above me, sensing the shift as well. The walls of the cottage were lined with ingredients—roots, petals, bones, threads of memory—and a few little glass bottles filled with different hues.

Juniper’s new magick.

The vials above me rattled again, as if sensing my thoughts, and eager for more.

Her fingers tangled in my hair as our mouths moved in sync, feverish and desperate. I could feel her magick curling into me, threading through my veins like a second heartbeat. And for the first time, I was entertaining allowing it in.

“You feel it too,” she gasped against my lips, breathless.

“I feel everything with you,” I rasped.

She smiled like a sin made flesh. “Good.”

My eyes flitted up to the shelf above me, and back to hers.

“Are you going to try and bottle me?” I teased, grinning.

Her eyes were two pools of melting chocolate.

“I want to taste you,” she whispered. “Feel you under my tongue.” She paused, then hurriedly continued. “And yes, maybe bottle what remains.”

I laughed as she blushed, but a smile peeked from the corner of her lip.

My own grin was slow, and dangerous.

“I’m not so easily contained, Juniper.”

More confident, her smirk stretched across her entire face.

“Let’s find out.”

Juniper lifted her hand and murmured. Wisps of gold and amber lifted from my skin like steam—soft, glowing tendrils curling into the air from the hollow of my throat, from the place just beneath my navel, and from my parted lips.

My body tensed, not in pain, but pleasure almost sharpened to a blade. My eyes fluttered half-closed.

“You’re taking it,” I breathed out. “Greedy little witch.”

“Oh,” Juniper breathed, as she drew the amber-golden vapor into a glass vial with a flick of her wrist, “you’ve so much to give.” She blinked a few times as she stared at the vial, awe and shock on her face.

I couldn’t look away. “That’s...my sin.”

“It’s beautiful , ” she gasped, staring at it, transfixed. My chest puffed out a bit at that.

Yes. It was beautiful.

“Not as beautiful as you,” I said before I could stop it. Heat immediately surged into my cheeks as her head snapped up to me, lips parting a bit in surprise.

Desperate to cover my slip into seriousness, I dropped down beside her, my lips a whisper from her cheek. “Careful. The more you take, the more you’ll want.”

She drew back and smacked my arm, the awkward spell shattered.

“Wouldn’t that be a shame?” she taunted, putting the vial up on the shelf by standing up on her tiptoes. She turned on her heel from the shelf, running straight into my chest. She kissed the corner of my mouth, then pulled away with maddening slowness.

“No. Shame isn’t a sin,” I said seriously. I watched her lips, unable to rip my gaze from them.

Kiss her again.

So I did.

And oh...shit.

I’d kissed people before, but this was so much different. Everything about her was perfect: the warmth of her skin, the sweet pressure of her lips against mine, and the way her small tongue darted nervously forward into my mouth.

I drew away and attacked her throat.

Or would have, if she hadn’t started to glow.

“What?” She asked, confused as light glowed from her chest and hands. The magick was gold and amber like my sin.

My hands hovered near her, not touching—but gods, aching to. Because of the magick? Her? Both?

“Do it,” she whispered, shaking.

My hands greedily grabbed her waist, fire meeting fire.

Hot magick tingled at the pads of my fingers, and I know she felt it too—a rush of heat, an unraveling.

My own magick was pure want, distilled. My hand slid down to cup her hip as Juniper smiled, reaching over me for another bottle above my head.

Without thinking I lifted her by the hips, and she snatched one down.

I set her down easily as she waved her fingers between us.

“Witch,” I growled, not wanting to delay my exploration of her, now that we’d both decided to give into our sins. She saw my hunger, I know she did—how it curled around my heart like vines, how it pulsed through every cell, begging to be sated and stolen.

Still clutching the empty vial and waving her fingers, she kissed me hard and slow. As our mouths met, she pulled another wisp of gold and amber from our lips, catching it between her fingers.

I groaned into her mouth. “You like taking pieces of me.”

“I love it,” she said, breathless.

I gripped her hips, lifting her onto the cluttered wooden table behind her, sweeping aside books and herbs.

She let her thighs fall open for me and despite the black leggings she wore, she left nothing to my imagination.

Her fingers wove into my hair, anchoring me between her legs.

I was hanging onto control of my sin by a thread, and I wondered if she had any control either.

“Then take it,” I grit out roughly. “Take everything.”

Juniper tilted her head back as I kissed along her throat.

Another wisp rose—this time from the hollow of her chest, where my mouth lingered.

She caught it, trembling. Her magick pulsed through her veins now, humming with every draw.

She dropped it into the vial and sealed it in, bending over backwards to put it in front of me.

Twisting, she grabbed my collar and pulled me to her. Her body burned—part with stolen heat, part with her own awakening.

“Are you doing this?” she asked in a whisper. “You’re making me feel things I didn’t think I’d feel again.”

Another laugh bubbled up in me, but I tamped it down, aware of those large, scared eyes on me.

I buried my teeth against the skin of her neck, and heard her little moan. “No, my witch. It is all you. Helped along by me, no doubt, but so irresistibly you . ”

Juniper’s back arched as my mouth dragged lower, tongue tracing the edge of a cut that bloomed like a thorned rose across her collarbone. A scratch from a thorn while working outside? Her own nails?

Either way, both of them were quickly becoming a storm barely held in check, the air around them crackling with the weight of spells and unbridled potential.

I bit her—not hard, just enough to remind her who I was, and who I embodied: lust, and desire itself.

And boy, how I desired her.

Her fingers clenched the edge of the table as I knelt between her legs, hooking the waistband of her leggings and underwear with my fingers and yanking them down over her hips in one motion.

She gasped as the cool air hit her skin, but just as quickly it was over, the heat of my breath teasing her folds. My warm hands spanned the width of her inner thighs–thick and strong just how I liked them.

And I had seen my fair share of thighs.

But I didn’t dive in. Not yet. Instead I lingered, kissing the insides of her thighs like they were my church and I was the penitent begging for salvation. Her hips bucked against mine, impatient.