Page 87 of The Witch is Back

“Let’s just say, this one’s been coming for a while.” Before she could decipher that, he added, “And she shouldn’t treat you that way.” He lifted a hand, caressed her cheek, the shell of her ear. “Nobody should. And you shouldn’t let them.”

His eyes were so navy in the dim light of the garden lamps, they were black. She breathed in his familiar scent, went giddy for another reason. “I know. I’m working on it. I have a list.”

His mouth quirked. “Practical Emma. What’s step one?”

“Talk.”

His smile grew. “You talk to me.”

“You’re easy.”

“Don’t spread that around.”

She tried to hold back the smile, but it wouldn’t be contained. “You’re ridiculous. And sweet. Thank you for standing up for me.”

He cupped her cheek, the action startling her. “I’d do anything to make you smile.”

The humor of the moment drained, leaving behind stillness and a growing tension that was darkly sexual. Amidst the lush flowers that hummed around them, they were alone. Away from the world.

Just the two of them.

Giving her plenty of time to say no, he leaned toward her and brushed his mouth over hers. Unlike last time, it wasn’t a race for pleasure or a desperate need for each other. This was a sampling, an intimate tasting that made Emma hum in her throat.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said against her lips. Each small movement made tingles chase across her skin. “We said we’d forget the past, right?”

She managed a nod.

“I think we need to really wipe the slate clean. Look forward.” He pressed his mouth to hers briefly, enticingly. “Let our mistakes lie.”

That got to her. She inched away to stare at him. “All our mistakes?”

His smile was faint. Knowing. “Keep your secrets, Em. For now. I’ll make you trust me again.”

The idea tantalized as much as it terrified. To be unleashed...it was a heady prospect. Guilt faded under the patience she saw, desire rattling at the chains. Still... “I don’t know what you mean.”

His response was to capture her mouth with his again.

As he kissed her, Bastian wound an arm around her waist, slid her willing body the last few inches. She leaned heavily into him, lost to the slow dance of lips and tongues and little nips. Her skin hummed along with the flowers, and a ball of need twisted in her stomach.

“Bastian,” she murmured. Her fiancé. The man who’d apologized to her, who was making amends, who’d faced down Clarissa. Who made her laugh. Who made her feel joy. Who made her feel so many other things.

“You’re projecting,” he murmured back. His lips kissed along her cheek to her ear as she reactively stiffened. “Some of the images...well, Emmaline Bluewater, I’m shocked.”

Her muscles relaxed. Her secrets stayed hers. Just as he’d promised. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” She caught his mouth again, a little harder, a little needier. Her free hand slid down his chest, sensitive to the muscles that jumped at her touch. When she dragged his shirt out from his pants and slid her hand underneath to graze bare skin, his hand on her back flattened and pressed hard.

Despite the urgency that wound between them, they kissed like they had days to spare, weeks. Long, lazy kisses that fueled the need boiling inside both. Or inside Emma anyway, she thought, faint as her body writhed against Bastian without permission.

He dragged his mouth away. His eyes glittered, his breathing as heavy as if he’d got an extra job working at a phone sex company. “Emma.”

And Goddess, with that voice, he’d make millions.

Then: “We shouldn’t.”

At first she thought she’d heard him wrong. Because the man who’d just been kissing her so ardently, the warlock who’d been sliding an invisible hand up and down her thigh, would not have said that they shouldn’t keep going. He would have created a portal and whisked them to her apartment, where they’d fall onto her bed.

But he had said it. And he was serious, if his creased brow and flat lips were anything to go by.

“We shouldn’t?”

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