Page 30 of Sweet Silver Bells
Maybe he did.
“You shouldn’t be able to remember. Not this soon.”
“It looks like I do,” he lied.
“When I sing, you forget. You come to me or obey my heart's song, as does the forest, as do the plants.”
Hunter cocked his head.
“A siren,” he said.
“I don’t know that word,” she admitted after a beat of silence.
“A witch,” he clarified. “Who lives in the water, singing to sailors.”
Her smile and the ease of her posture disappeared as her eyes narrowed, the energy around them threatening.
“I am not a witch,” she said, enunciating every word clearly, quietly. He had struck a nerve. It was too obvious with the darkening of her eyes, the start of a snarl on her upper lip.
Dangerous. She’s dangerous. She’s real.
She stepped forward, moving fast, a panther jumping on its prey. Hunter flinched, leaning away, but she didn’t let him. Instead, her hands found both sides of his neck, pulling him down towards her.
Her lips pressed into his. Hunter could have collapsed into her, his body so tense, so unsure.
Trust, it seemed to be telling him, urging him. The contact seemed to break the spell that he was under, the haze lifting as his memory came flooding back. It crashed down hard, and his heart ached. His body hardened while he opened his mouth to let her tongue find his. The first time someone else's lips had touched his since Sarah.
She caressed him, both with her hands and with her tongue, as her touch fell from his neck and moved down to his shoulders. Hunter kissed her back, but his hands were awkwardly by his sides. She fixed that as hers slid down his arms, fingers intertwining. His hands were so large and dominating over hers. Despite how powerful he thought she must be, Olivia fit into him so well. It was like she was made for him, and he was made for her.
He pulled away, gasping for breath.
“Olivia,” he said, memories trickling back in.
She smiled, not a hint of viciousness. Hunter wished he could interpret that smile, decide if there was sadness or true happiness behind it. It was neither, but something that existed in between. An utter mystery in the battered, powerful goddess he stood before. A woman who was so goddamn terrifying, but also endearing.
She was in his arms. Her skin wasn’t soft, but she smelled of earth mixed with root beer, like the inner bark of a sassafras tree. It put him at ease, her scent, and he had to remind himself not to close his eyes and fall into her hair, the cold tying them together, a blanket of fate.
What her mind must be thinking, feeling, with him on her breath was something he was dying to know. One hundred years in this forest without companionship had to make her challenging.
“I call you Hunter, then?” she asked, the hint of a threat, the hint of the gaze he’d seen when he had uttered the wordwitch, swirled to the surface of those eyes, the color of a deep abyss, the dirt found at the bottom of ancient volcanoes.
It was easy to look past that threat this time, upon hearing his name on her lips. He nearly lost his breath, as if he had been sprinting here to get to her, sprinting to the forest only to listen to her voice do him the service of acknowledging him.
You can’t leave her here.
Hunter opened a hand to her, and she stared at it, confusion evident in her furrowed brow.
“It’s my hand,” he said. “Please take it, and I’ll guide you to my home.”
She sighed, another strike against him evident in the sudden slouch of her shoulders, the skin around her belly button pinching together, creating a cute pouch that accentuated her womanly figure. A figure he couldn’t ignore a feral attraction toward, one that had him walking on eggshells as he spoke toher, as he looked at her. It was the first time he had truly wanted someone, needed someone, since Sarah.
Sarah.
An overwhelming, heart-aching sadness hit Hunter, an arrow piercing him clean through.
“Sing that song,” Olivia said.
“What?” Hunter wasn’t there anymore; the fantasy had broken. The spell was overshadowed by the betrayal that now felt very real to him, his betrayal of Sarah.
