Page 72 of His Whispered Witch

“I hate how painful, like, existing is for you. I hate that, but it’s because I don’t want you to suffer, not that I’m afraid of… What? You’re going to drag me down with you? Life is going to get hard? It’s hard alone.” She thought of the gaping empty roads. “I’ll take this hard.”

“You should have easy. You should have happily ever after.”

“So should you!”

He smiled a little, a devastating facsimile of happiness.

Penn was the one to close her eyes, this time. There was just too much, and it was too close. “And it’s totally possible, right?”

He snorted. “You mean reversing a couple thousand-year-old spell to create shifters?”

“I didn’t say easy. I said possible, and we also don’t have to. I will take you like this, happily. You’re, like, the best thing.”

Asher cupped her face, and she melted at the contact. She wanted the connection but was a little afraid to touch him. She knew hour by hour that there were moments he could barely breathe, but it was just unfathomable to her that it could ever be a reason to walk away.

“Welcome home,” Asher said and kissed her. It was a chaste, dry meeting of lips, but it felt like a benediction.

He stepped back and let her go, and she laughed. They’d been talking about sleeping arrangements.

“I could’ve just said, no thank you, this room is good,” she said.

He snickered. “There is more room?—”

“Ash!”

“For us. If you really want… There are suites. Hell, the lizard could have his own room.”

That piqued her interest. SheknewOz was happy, and she knew that was a privilege that few people on earth received, to know for certain how the loves in their lives were doing, but she had always dreamed of a much larger enclosure for him.

She closed the distance between her and Asher again and sealed her lips to his, deepening the kiss immediately and licking her tongue along his lips.

She backed up until her calves hit the edge of the bed, coaxing him after her with her kiss. She let her knees fold and lay back, and he followed her down until he crashed on one elbow, and she giggled.

“Wait—”

“Let me?—”

She shimmied until all of her was on the bed, and he lay along her side.

She looked up at the ceiling and the immense window above them with another shiver. Would this be her view for the days, weeks, and years of her life?

She burrowed into his arms. She would be damned if she let anyone take this away, even him. Especially him. And she hated that his wolf might not give them a choice.

They’d found each other. They had a home. Was it way too fast and ridiculous? Absolutely. She didn’t care. They should be setting out on a honeymoon loud enough to embarrass everyone within a square mile of them.

Instead, they were planning a desperate, insane spell that could kill him as much as help him.

“I hate that you’re hurting for me,” Asher murmured.

She pulled back. “Is that why you left in the first place? They were hurting for you? Even with all your faking it?”

“I suppose so? I haven’t thought about it like that.”

“I would do just about anything in the world for you,” she said, and then wanted to take the words back immediately, even though they were true. They sounded permanent. She bit her lip rather than take them back. She couldn’t start pretending, or their blissful honeymoon would turn into a hell of false smiles and hidden truths in a hot second. “Just about anything, but I won’t not hurt for you.”

“So you find your fated mate and get pain for your trouble? This is a horrible bargain,” he murmured into her skin.

He was talking about himself. He was the horrible bargain.

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