Page 130 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Moira searched inside herself for the stillness she had felt earlier that afternoon, looking into Justine’s tear-stained face and knowing the answer. The same blessed peace found her again, warmed her chilly heart and expanded in her chest, filling her with light, and lightness.
Nick did not urge her out of the car, didn’t so much as speak a word until she turned to him.
“Okey dokey,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the car door handle. “Let’s go.”
He reached across to block her exit. “Keep your ass in that seat.”
Her heart fluttered within her chest. After all this, was he truly going to try and stop her?
Did she want him to?
“The least I can do is open the car door like a motherfucking gentleman before I shoot you through the chest,” he said.
“Oh,” Moira replied, unable to summon any other cogent response.
She remained seated until Nick walked around to her side of the car and opened it, offering her his hand, which she accepted.
He didn’t drop it as together they made their way the final steps over the dew-dampened grass, through the trees and out into the clearing where the stones stood tall beneath a sky full of stars.
Stars.Praise the Lord for a night without clouds so she could die beneath a moonlit sky with stars wheeling overhead.
She resisted the urge to count every blade of grass beneath her bare feet, capture a handful of leaves and smell them. To roll and glory in every last sensual detail she could greedily drink from these last few moments.
Moira allowed herself to reach out and place her palm flat against the nearest stone, feeling beneath its cooling surface the sunlight it had absorbed. She rested her cheek against the gritty warmth, looking at the lights of Port Townsend across the bay. Moira had no spells memorized for this moment. Instead, she resorted to an old-fashioned prayer of the kind Uncle Sal had always insisted on muttering over their steaming plates of dinner.
Please, watch over them, dear Goddess. Please, keep my sisters safe. Let this be the end. And let the end be good.
She turned to Nick and nodded, beginning her final trek toward the edge of the cliff.
Scarcely had she taken two steps when she was hauled backward by a hand grasping the back of her cutoffs, dragged into violent collision with the body of Nick Kingswood, hard and unyielding as the Standing Stones.
His mouth crushed hers, his lips a brand that would send her to her death marked.
Claimed.
10
Moira opened to him like a flower drinking the rain, drawing what nourishment it could of the last of its little season. Nick moaned into her mouth, his tongue sliding over hers not with conquering force, but with urgent need, unguarded passion, painful longing.
She answered him in kind. Tasting him as she had their first time on the dock. Their first kiss and their last pressed together in a memory more voluminous than the ocean backdrop to both. Moira took all he was willing to give in the velvety exchange, hands twined around his neck, binding her to him now because there was no forever. No next time. No tomorrow.
He deepened the kiss, one hand plunging into her hair, fingers curling into a fist in the sensitive strands at the nape of her neck. Moira relished the miniscule darts of pleasure firing from her scalp down her neck, tugged by the hand of Conquest, fully alive in her body and devouring every sensation as it came, desperate for each second she could steal.
Her breasts flattened against his chest as he palmed the round swell of her ass before sliding down her thigh, lifting it over his hip. His desire pressed against her, the very throb of life itself.
Somehow, Moira knew Nick did this not for his own pleasure, but so she could feel, this one last time, just how much she was wanted. Just how much she was needed.
And she did.
Not just wanted, but wanted by a force as old as the world itself. Wise as he was impulsive, arrogant as he was tender, brutal as he was gentle. Ruthless as he was considerate. Nicholas Kingswood was as beautiful a death as Moira could imagine, and at last she ended their kiss, knowing the time had come for another deadlier part of this immortal to be buried inside her.
They both came away panting, but Nick did not release her, opting instead to hold her face in his cupped palms so she couldn’t look away even as she struggled to hold the tears at bay. Her hands remained planted on his chest and she shut her eyes tight to memorize the sensation of his wild heart leaping beneath her fingertips.
“Brave Moira,” he whispered, running the rough pad of a thumb over her swollen lower lip. “Are you ready?”
“I am.” She looked up into his eyes, darkened to burnt umber by night’s veil. “Question is, areyou? Or are you going to pull me back for another bout of tongue twister?”
“Don’t.” Nick spoke through a tightened jaw, his forehead creased in concentration. “Don’t tempt me, Moira. I could take you again. Right here, right now, this second and every second after it. I could fuck you while the world burned around us, and the only thing stopping me is knowing that you’re strong enough to walk toward that cliff.”
