Page 75 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“Do you think last night was a mistake?” he asked, his face pained.

“No! I didn’t mean that. Last night was great…lovely…but…”

“But what?” he asked, taking his arm from my shoulder and leaning against the wall. “Do you want to be with that man?”

“Duncan?” I shuddered. “No, I don’t. But it’s complicated. There’s history between us that I can’t completely ignore.”

“Oh, I see. Complicated. Too complicated for the likes of me, I guess. It seems pretty simple to me. That man hurt you.” He reached out and touched my face. His blunt, calloused fingertips felt like balm on my bruised skin, like a warm breeze. While Duncan’s touch had chilled me, Bill’s warmed me. Where Duncan had felt wrong, Bill feltright. He started to take his hand away, but I grabbed it and held it to my face.

“You’re right,” I said. “Itissimple. I want you, not Duncan Laird. Would you …? Could you …?”

Bill didn’t wait for me to figure out the words for what Iwanted. He already knew. He pulled me into his arms and pressed me hard against his chest and bent my head back. He kissed the bruises on my face gently, then sank his mouth down to minenotso gently. He pressed me up against the door until I felt the hard length of him pushing between my legs. I moaned and went weak in the knees. He scooped me up and started for the stairs, but I wrapped my legs around his waist and bit his ear.

“No. Here.”

He lowered me onto the polished oak floor of the foyer and crouched over me. Keeping my eyes on his face, I slid out of my skirt, half afraid that if I didn’t keep my eyes on him he’d vanish. The rain lashing against the windows cast speckled shadows across the foyer, painting Bill’s body with a dappled tattoo. When I reached for him, my own arms dipped into the rain shadows as though into a waterfall. For a moment we were caught in the same current and I thought,Good, if he vanishes so will I, and then he pressed the length of his body against mine and the strength of him anchored me. His skin against mine awoke a heat deep within—another coil of the wards that had bound me unwound as I pulled him inside me. As we moved together, our eyes locked on to each other’s, I felt it coil around us, wrapping us in an endless spiral of desire.

“I could do this forever,” I whispered in his ear.

“We have done this forever,” he answered.

At some point, we made it up to the bedroom. We made love again and then slept. I awoke in the middle of the night to a room filled with moonlight. My head pillowed on Bill’s chest, I saw the profile of his face etched against the silver light.

“It’s stopped raining,” I said.

“No,” he said, turning to me, his eyes flashing silver. “It’s witchlight. The woods are flooding. All the lost creatures are making their way back to the door before it closes.”

“Bill, how do you know about all that?”

He smiled and traced his fingertip along my lips. “I don’t. You’re dreaming. You’re also dreaming that I’m about to kiss you. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” I said, my heart fluttering. “I suppose that would be…”

He pressed his mouth against mine, his lips spreading mine open. I felt the heat of him pouring into me, warming every last inch of me. I pressed against him and felt his heart thud against mine. My heart beat in answer to his. I heard an answering thud from deep in the woods. The door, linked to my heart, was opening wide, beating so loudly I could hear it…

I startled awake in the empty bed to the sound of pounding. Bill sat in a chair beside the bed, his face dark in the rain-shadowed room. I saw by his posture that he was alert.

“Bill? Was there moonlight a minute ago? And were you…”

“It’s still raining,” he said, getting to his feet, “and there’s someone at the door. I’ll go and tell them to leave. You shouldn’t go out in this rain.”

He left the room before I could stop him. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge for a moment, trying to reconstruct my dream. I went to the window. Through the rain, I saw the woodswerefilled with an eerie light: a white, glowing mist that rose off the wet ground and flowed along the forest floor like floodwater. It was full of shapes. Dream-Bill had been right. The woods were full of creatures heading toward the door. But how did Bill Carey know that?

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