Page 24 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

“This is all sorts of wrong,” I murmured, thrusting my hips up to meet him as I ran my nails down his back anchoring myself to him.

“I don’t care,” he murmured, my words seeming to urge him on and his hips thrust punishingly into me deeper and harder, taking me down a tunnel of sensation where the light exploded over me and birds flew away as we screamed in mutual orgasm.

And in the silence that followed we heard a car door open and close.

“I thought you said it was private,” I swatted him in the chest, giggling as I tried to push him off me.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to stop here. Did you invite anyone here?” Branson jumped up pulling up his pants and tightening them as he reached down and help me to my feet.

I tugged my clothes on. “If it’s someone who stopped here, it could only be one person, Hilda, the lady from the nursery.”

Even half-dressed we moved a little faster than Hilda and we managed to make it to the edge of the graves while she was just coming under the gate. I should have been a little more self-conscious than I was, but the truth was, I hadn’t had that much fun in years and I didn’t regret my tete-a-tete with Branson.

Not one bit.

Not yet anyway.

Hilda walked straight up to Branson. “Where were you taking her without me?”

“You two know each other?” I asked, before realizing how stupid of a question that was. Everyone knew everyone around here.

“I was just going to take her on a tour of the cemetery,” Branson said. “Nothing more, nothing less. If she’s going to be protecting it, seems like the least you should do is take her around so she can look at it.”

“She hasn’t agreed to look after it,” Hilda said, hands on her hips.

“I thought you were coming at five,” I mentioned, even though it seemed the conversation was going to continue to ignore me.

“I just had a feeling I was going to need to show up a little bit earlier.” Hilda eyed Branson.

The two of them were acting really strange and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it; other than maybe just avoid them altogether. Except Cougar Creek was a small town. The thing about small towns is that there were not many people and if some of them thought you were weird, well, it didn't leave you many to choose from. I needed these two to like me.

I looked between the two of them; the hot beastly guy I wanted to jump in the cemetery, and a little old lady I wasn’t sure it was safe to drive on the roads.

But she seemed safer than Branson.

“Did you bring the plants?” I stepped toward her.

“I did.” She grinned triumphantly at Branson as if she had won a battle. “I’ll drive you up to the house and we can take a look there.”

Gleefully she turned her back and waved me towards her van.

I gave Branson a half-wave, leaving abruptly.

Chapter 15

We were back at the house in no time and Hilda was around the back of the van, opening it up and pulling out plants. She was much stronger than she looked, or the plants were lighter than they looked, but she seemed to move them around as if she were forty years younger than she looked. Or maybe it was just that she moved around twenty years younger than I felt.

I looked closely at the plants she brought. I was curious to see what she had selected because I knew she had taken some time in selecting them, and I wanted to give her time and effort my due respect. She was one of those people who really focused on doing each task put in front of her with careful thought.

In the case of the plants, she brought out ten extremely different plants. One was a small palm frond another a money tree, one a fragrant jasmine. But the one that caught my eye looked like a succulent almost, with a red central column spiraling up to the sky.

“You were trying to avoid giving me a type,” I said. “But I think you knew which one I would pick.”

“That’s a bromeliad. You struck me as a subtropical theme.” Hilda conceded. “Practical yet exotic and grows anywhere within reason.”

As I stepped forward to take the plant, my hands started glowing. I tried to ball my hands into fists, but then it was awkward because I was reaching for the plant. But maybe she wouldn’t see it. It was probably just a hallucination.

I opened my hands wide to take the plant, one hand glowing purple and one hand glowing green.

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