Page 127 of A Witchy Spell Ride
Selene slid her palm over my ribs and tapped once. “What.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking about donuts.”
She pinched me. “Liar.”
“Thinking about how you looked with a blade to his throat,” I confessed. “Thinking about how proud I am I might not survive it.”
She propped up on one elbow and smiled slow. “Get used to it,” she said. “War paint’s my color.”
I hooked a finger under the chain of my dog tags around her neck and tugged gently until our mouths met again, slower this time, grateful. “Mine too,” I said.
Outside, the city tuned itself back to normal, the hum of tires on wet streets, laughter muffled by brick, a horn downtown that meant nothing to us. In here, the world was small and precise. Leather and sweat and glitter freckles on my pillow that I’d never wash out on purpose.
I’d always thought ghosts show up after the war.
Turns out sometimes they’re the men who come home.
I slipped my hand over the patch in my cut and felt the stitch bite my palm. ENFORCER.A job I could do with my hands and my teeth and, if I’m being honest, my heart for once. A weight I wanted. A weight I’d earned.
Selene’s breath slowed. Mine matched it.
“You’re mine,” I said into the dark, to her and the job and the city and the kid I used to be who thought staying meant dying.
“Yours,” she murmured back, and I knew she meant the same thing I did when I said mine, not ownership. Belonging.
Downstairs, someone, Bones, yelled for the bourbon again. Daisy shriek-laughed. Vex lost at pool because he’s a clown. Reaper pretended not to watch the hallway where Briar eventually fell asleep on the couch and pretended not to be guarded.
Family.
I closed my eyes.
The drum in my chest didn’t pound anymore.
It kept time.
Epilogue
Selene
He didn’t undress me gently.
He didn’t ask permission.
He knew.
Knew what I needed.
What I wanted.
What I was.
My dress hit the floor in a torn heap. Velvet sighed against wood like a curtain closing on a play we’d both survived. My gloves snapped off and were flung aside; one landed on the nightstand like a black flag; the other draped the lamp and turned the room the color of sin.
He backed me to the mirror in his room, our room and turned me to face it.
“Look.”
I did.
