Page 93 of Hopelessly Teavoted
He winked and snapped twice. “Washed and dried. It’s done. Did you have any other specific personal pursuits in mind?”
“Actually, yes, but it’s not going to be what you think.” Her eyes glinted.
“I’m happy if you’re happy, Vickie.” He meant it too.
“In the spirit of pretending we are a totally normal couple, want to watch a movie?”
“Yes. Do I get to pick?” He sat down on the edge of the couch, and she shook her head, laughing at him.
“No. My choice.”
“Fair enough.”
“I think you’ll like it, though. It involves a character storming through a misty moor in a see-through white shirt.”
Azrael smiled widely. “Excellent, excellent choice.”
And when he fell asleep, several hours, several drinks, and very little progress on identifying any suspects later, he raised his hand to the wall next to him, pressing it as though he could feel her on the other side, where her bed was.
The magic thrumming under his fingernails and in his wrists told him where she was, and he fell asleep like that, halfreassured by her presence and half agonizing over his inability to get any closer than two hands pressed against opposite sides of a wall.
It was something, though. And something, with love, could be better than nothing.
He hoped.
CHAPTER 30Victoria
In high school once, Vickie had woken up to this same feeling of longing andalmostthat burrowed in her bones and rushed to both her heart and between her thighs. She wanted him not just for sex but for the closeness, and the smell of burnt amber and lemon.
For the home of him.
When she’d woken up, ten years earlier, the pit in her stomach had been from overindulgence, but this felt very much the same.
She’d had too much to drink at a party and Az had driven her home and put her to bed across the king-size mattress from him. The slide of those silk sheets, absurd for a sixteen-year-old to have, had been a cool relief on her sweaty skin. She’d woken up to velvet curtains drawn tight so no sunlight could get in, and to Azrael still sleeping on his side of the bed, but with one hand thrown over her. She’d thought, for a moment, that if she didn’t move at all they could stay there forever in the embrace of the room and the bed. Azrael’s eyes had fluttered and her stomach had twisted. She had wanted to crawl toward him and touch him, but unfortunately, the twisting had not been due to desire alone. She had heaved, and his eyes shot open, fingers snapping a bucket under her head, while the other hand moved to pull her hair back from her face.
Az had shushed her and rubbed circles on her back. He’d gotten her water and reassured her in soft words that the magic had gotten rid of the vomit and the bucket fast enough to avoid any lingering smells, though she had still cried in the bathroom adjacent to his massive room while brushing her teeth.
Vickie hadn’t spent the night again after that, but on more than one occasion, she’d had sweaty, frustrating dreams starring Azrael Hart and those curtains. They turned to nightmares at times, and to something else entirely in the darkest part of the night, when she lay there, guilty over touching herself and thinking of him, trying to think of other things—breasts, whoever she was dating, the best sex scenes in books she had read. Nothing was quite Azrael then, and nothing was quite Azrael now, and it made her fucking furious that she couldn’t touch him.
And when she woke up, before her alarm, body throbbing from the nearness of him, the warmth of her comforter a hug, it was too easy to shut her eyes against the nascent slivers of sunlight drifting through the slatted blinds. To slide into memory and longing, and slip her hand beneath the waistband of her pajamas, and pretend, for a few agonizing moments, that it was his.
The pretending was good enough for now; it would have to be. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, it was almost like being with him, close enough to touch through the wall, and with the door cracked open to the bedroom, breathing the same air. Her fingertips picked up speed, racing against the alarm that would inevitably sound and dictate that she should start her morning. Her hand slipped in and out easily now, and she brought the other upward to her breast, her nipple, thinking of him, wishing it were his, burning for him until she was so close that she swore she could feel him.
A shattering sound tore her eyes open.
Azrael was standing in the doorway, lips parted, coffee splattering his front, the shards of her favorite mug at his feet.
She withdrew her hand, and he swallowed.
“Don’t,” he croaked, and then tried again. “Don’t stop on my account. Sorry, Vickie, I was going to bring you coffee, but I thought you were still asleep. I was going to leave it on your nightstand to wake up to.” A ferocious blush covered him, from the tips of his ears to his cheeks.
She nodded to the puddle of porcelain shards and liquid. “Clean that up. I have an idea.”
Az snapped his fingers, and it wasn’t lost on her that they were shaky, his eyes darkened by desire. They couldn’t touch, sure, but she didn’t get through undergrad and three-quarters of a master’s degree without some ability to improvise.
“I want you to watch me, and then I want you to follow me into the shower.”
“I—yes. Okay. Anything.”
