Page 102 of Which Witch is Willing?
Her arms wound around his neck, bringing her warm body against him, threading their limbs together. She smoothed her hands down the straining muscles of his back as if they struck her with awe and wonder, before she pressed her lips to his ear.
“You are mine and I am yours,” she whispered, and he thought he heard tears thicken her voice. “I am given.”
He said her name like dying men pleaded for mercy. It was both a war cry and a prayer. An invocation of forever. Warmth spread through him making way for his release. It lasted for an eternity, seizing not just his body, but his soul, his spirit, the very essence of him. Just as his body fit into hers, so was she a piece of his puzzle. Only she made him whole.
And an eternity without her would be a hell like none other.
After, he pulled away from her and carried her to the bed, cleaning them both before dragging her up his chest to settle over him as he reclined against the headboard.
“I don’t want a gentle woman,” he murmured as he traced the brackets of her spine with idle fingers. “I want you. The perfect complication. The incredible dichotomy of strength and a softness you reserve only for me.” Catching her chin in his hand, he lifted it so she could look into his eyes.
He knew that she could detect a lie, that it was part of her powers, but he still wanted her to read his veracity, to see the undying fervency of his love. “No matter what happens tomorrow, know that I love you. That if we are to be unmade by evil, the torment will be worth it if I am at your side.”
She swallowed, her auburn lashes sweeping down to hide a rare glimmer of vulnerability. “Are you not afraid?” she whispered, “Are you not afraid to lose this bliss, afraid to hope that we might be able to keep it?”
He shook his head, a celestial sort of tenderness gripping his heart. “How can I fear anything with a woman as fierce as you to protect me?” he teased, thumbing away a tear as it streaked from the corner of her eye.
“I’m not as strong as they all think,” she murmured.
He gathered her to him, wrapping her rather too tightly in his embrace, pressing her ear against his chest so she could hear the heart that beat only for her.
“You’re strong enough to save us all, Aerin de Moray. I don’t doubt that. You and your sisters are the most extraordinary creatures to ever grace this planet, and I can say such things. I’ve been here since the beginning, I think. I’m starting to remember…”
Her hand settled on his chest and she yawned greatly, tucking her knee up between his legs. “Remember what?” she murmured.
What the world had been like. What it could be again.
What they were fighting for.
Mortals. No matter the damage they’d wrought. No matter what prophecy contained. This capacity for love was worth fighting for.
Especially with this woman at his side.
48
If someone had asked Aerin a year ago where she thought a battle for the future survival of the human race would be held, she certainly wouldn’t have answered “Port Townsend, Washington.”
She might have thought somewhere ancient and meaningful. Someplace closer to the cradle of civilization than the last bastion of it.
Why not Stonehenge or on top of various and sundry biblical ruins? Or like, one of those places where comic book movie battles went down like downtown NYC or LA or London. Not bumfuck USA, this town of ten thousand people surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, a stone’s throw from Canada.Canada! She’d be willing to bet her life that no one in the history ofeverwould have thought the Devil would venture this close to Canada. I mean Georgia, sure, but—
“Aerin!” Claire snapped her fingers in front of her eyes, startling her. “What is wrong with you? Where did you go?”
“Canada,” Aerin muttered, opening the door to their mother’s attic.
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.” She was losing it. Here, standing in her mother’s secret room, the portal to Siren’s Cry a shiver on her back, she was realizing she didn’t really wanna go do the Apocalypse. She wanted to crawl back into bed with Julian. Or go for a ride on her broom somewhere far, far away.
But she couldn’t, even if her conscience would allow it. Because if she didn’t stay and do what her birthright demanded of her, there would soon be nowhere to fly to.
The world as she knew it would be lost, and any hope for a better one, an impossibility.
Aerin would have also expected a little weirder pomp and ceremony or… something. Some sort of celestial heraldry or harbinger of hell. But she’d arisen this morning and done what spells she could with her sisters to strengthen and protect the mortals and earth in their care.
Then they did a spell to strengthen and protect Moira’s vagina because she’d just given birth, and no one wanted to ride a broom or fight evil with their lady business blown out by an entire tiny human.
After that, they’d made breakfast burritos and ate them with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse around their dining room table.
