Page 18 of A Touch Charmed

I pinched my lips together to keep from laughing, only because she was so distraught. If she could get a peek inside my head, she’d run screaming from all the ways I wanted to make her moan my name. “It’s not me I’m worried about here. Make no mistake, if we didn’t have magic, I’d still want you. I’ve always wanted you, Thora.”

Her face paled, and that was exactly the reason why I wouldn’t let things go beyond innocent touches. Wes and Audrey said we needed to have an emotional connection before we could get the horny side effects under control, so that’s what I’d be working on first thing. Now if there was just a way for me to form an emotional connection without losing myself to her all over again, that would be fucking awesome.

“I’m going to get ready for bed.” She bit her lip as she stared at her feet. “Thank you again for letting me stay here. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

I wanted to tell her I didn’t know how I’d been doing anything without her. That it felt like I’d been missing half my soul for the last seven years. That I’d never forgotten what it had been like between us. That I’d been trying to outrun how completely and utterly alone I’d been in her absence, even when I was in a crowded room, surrounded by people who cared about me.

I wanted to ask her if she felt that way too. If there were nights where she’d lie awake wondering what I was doing. If she’d missed me the way I’d missed her. If it had ever stopped aching, and if so, how?

But I didn’t voice any of those things. Instead, I said, “Sleep well.”

And closed the door behind me.

The next morning, the sun streamed through my windows, waking me up. I rolled over. And promptly landed face-first on my hardwood floor. “Ow.”

I had Thora in my bed. Yet here I was, waking up alone and licking the dust off my floor. Fate was a cruel bastard.

I pushed myself up from the ground and went into the kitchen to start the coffee. My internal clock wouldn’t let me sleep much past dawn, since the majority of my work needed to happen in the daylight hours, and I’d been so busy the last few years, I couldn’t afford time off to sleep in. Except during festival week.

Last year, I’d gone out on the water with Wes and spent the days getting drunk and catching fish. This year, Wes made it very clear he’d be spending the week at home with Audrey and he’d punch me in the nuts if I even thought about stopping by his place. Not that I would’ve done any such thing. I spent more time over there than my own house lately, but I knew how much he’d been looking forward to her closing her shop while Selene and Ella handled her booth. Plus, I liked my nuts. I wanted to keep them intact.

Carrying a pottery mug shaped like a trout that I’d gotten from Capricorn’s, I tapped on my bedroom door before I eased it open. Thora had always been a later sleeper than me and time hadn’t changed that a bit. She hugged one of my pillows tight to her chest. My heart did a full-body swoop right to the pit of my stomach as the past came rushing back to me.

“I think you cracked one of my ribs last night.” I trailed my fingers up and down her spine. “You hold me in your sleep like you think I’m trying to get away.”

“I hold you like I need you.” She kissed my chest. “Which you love.”

Fuck. No wonder the curse hadn’t tried to drown me in my memories the other day. I was doing a fine enough job of that on my own.

I knocked a fist against the wall and walked over to my nightstand, where I set the mug of coffee. Two creams, no sugar. “Morning, bluebird.”

She blinked and stretched her arms over her head. The tank top she’d slept in rode up, revealing a small slice of skin. I wanted to swirl my tongue in her belly button. She leaned up on her elbows and my gaze dipped to where her nipples peeked through the thin material. Her sleep-mussed hair fell in soft auburn layers around her face and ended in a short swing just above her shoulders. Her gorgeous green eyes were heavy with sleep.

How many mornings had she looked at me just like that? And every time I’d known, without a doubt, that was the only face I wanted to see when I woke up, for the rest of my life. Back then, a lot of people said we were too young, we couldn’t know if that was what we really wanted, but here I was, thirty years old and still pining for Thora Chase.

“Morning.” She grabbed the mug and took a sip, her eyes lighting with surprise. “You remember how I like my coffee?”

“Of course.” I backed up to the door to give her some privacy. “If you want to get up and get ready, we can start practicing our magic out back.”

She shoved her hair out of her eyes. “How do we practice?”

I shrugged. “I know how Wes and Audrey practiced, so I guess we could do what they did. Our magic is quite a bit different than theirs though, so who knows.”

“Okay.” She averted her eyes and fidgeted with the hem of her tank top. I hated this tension between us. Hated how uncomfortable she felt in my home and in my bed.

“We’ll just wing it. Do what works for us.”

“And the side effects?”

“If you start to lose your hold on the magic, we stop. Period.”

When her eyes met mine and I saw the first glimmer of trust there, it was a punch to my gut. Like a parched man in a desert getting his first sip of water, I wanted more. So much more. But I’d settle for that small amount for now and hope we could work our way up.

I took my own mug of coffee out back to my cliffs. Sea-salt air filled my lungs as wild waves whipped against craggy black rocks far below me. Most of my friends were surprised I hadn’t built my home closer to town. As an extrovert, I thrived on human interaction and spent a lot more time at my friends’ houses than I was probably welcome.

But I hadn’t built this house for me. Not really.

I built it in the hopes that one day I’d live here with someone who didn’t mind the company of people, but needed alone time to recharge. Who was now getting ready inside that house, having no idea she had been on my mind with every beam I put up, every tile I laid, every piece of furniture I’d picked out. Every part of my design had been for Thora.

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