Page 36 of Bewitched By the Voodoo King
I blinked. “Light?”
“You usually radiate joy and warmth, but when you came out of the bathroom… I don’t know… you seemed almost cold. Which isn’t something I’ve ever witnessed from you, and that's saying something, especially with the way I treated you when you got here.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t do this here. “It’s nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly before he nodded. “Okay, are you ready to go? I would love to show you some of the decor in the French Quarter as the city prepares for Halloween.”
The night wasn’t humid,thank the ancestors. I wouldn’t have been able to survive another night sweating like I had been. It was nice to be on a date with a guy I wanted to kiss and not worry if I smelled like BO. Rune wove his fingers through mine as jazz filtered through the night, and I felt like my heart was up somewhere above us on cloud 9. No matter what that bitch had said in the bathroom, my heart and my head… and my body were feeling all of the things.
We walked hand in hand down the cobbled streets, the gas lamps casting long shadows across the buildings. Wrought iron balconies were strung with purple and orange lights, and gauzy ghosts danced in the breeze from second-story windows. Somewhere down the block, a saxophone crooned out a haunting version of “I Put a Spell on You.”
Rune gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Do you like it?”
“The decorations?” I glanced around, smiling despite myself. “It’s like a haunted house and a gumbo pot had a baby. I love it.”
He chuckled. “I was hoping you’d say something like that. Halloween is kind of a big deal around here. The veil gets thinner, and even the skeptics start watching their shadows.”
“That sounds vaguely threatening,” I teased.
“Oh, it is,” he said with a straight face. “But also festive.”
I laughed, the last bit of tension finally slipping from my shoulders. The earlier confrontation still lingered in the corners of my mind, but Rune was warm beside me, and right now, that was all that mattered.
“You really don’t know what you are, do you?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“That light I talked about,” he said, turning toward me just enough that his eyes caught the lamp glow. “You think it’s just your personality. But it’s more than that. It’s magic. Old magic. It pulls people in. It pulled me in.”
Heat spread across my chest even though he was wrong. There was no magic inside of me, but I couldn’t admit that, not yet. He made promises that I would never be an outcast in his eyes, but he also didn’t know the truth. So instead of getting in my feelings about it, I made my tone light and playful. “Are you saying I enchanted you?”
“I’m saying I didn’t stand a chance.”
I stopped walking, my heart thundering inside my chest. “Rune…”
He stepped in front of me, and his eyes flicked to my lips. “I know we said slow. And I meant it. But I’m also not going to lie to you.”
My breath caught as he leaned in, just close enough for me to feel the ghost of his lips against mine.
“I want to kiss you.”
A heartbeat.Two.
“Then do it,” I whispered.
Cue intrusive thoughts.And then I panicked. Did my breath smell like garlic? I’d scarfed down an obscene amount of gumbo for a woman my size, and I was sure it was a feat to watch, but now I worried it had made me stink… oh ancestors, then I’d scarfed down the creme brûlée too… Why hadn’t I brought a breath mint? Was my mouth a war zone of sugar and spice?
What if he leaned in and immediately regretted every life choice that led him to this moment?
What if he recoiled?
What if I burped?
Rune’s lips brushed mine, and every single intrusive thought went right out the window.
His lips were warm and reverent at first, like he was memorizing the shape of me. But then his hand slid around my waist, and I rose up on my toes, and the kiss deepened into something far more dangerous. It was nothing like the frantickisses I’d experienced in the woods or under the stairwell when no one was looking.
When he finally pulled away, everything inside me felt dimmer—like he’d taken my light with him.
