Page 20 of The Witch's Cottage
I always resist.
“Why lonely?” I ask, tearing my gaze from her hair and trying to distract myself by staring at a distant pine tree.
Silence stretches between us, but it’s not uncomfortable. I like that about her—she never makes me feel obligated to fill the pauses, the moments in between.
“I’m not sure. Maybe because when everything goes to bed—the animals and the people and the sun—it can make me feel like I’m alone in it all. I know I’m not, of course.” Her laughter is quiet and twinkling. “But it’s just how I feel.” She lets out a light sigh and lifts one hand from the water. The droplets roll across her skin before dripping back into the spring below. “I told my sister about it once, but she’s a lunar witch, so she didn’t understand. She’s most alive under the moon. Funny how we’re so opposite in that way.”
I take a moment to turn her words over in my head, then offer a subtle shrug. “I understand.”
She looks up, her green eyes catching mine. “You do?”
Nodding, I flick my fingers in the water, watching the drops shine in the late-afternoon light. “I know all about loneliness.”
The expression on her face changes. It makes my stomach tight; it would be just like me to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and ruin whatever...thisis. Assuming there’s even something to ruin.
That tightness in my stomach gets more intense when Aurora shifts closer to me. I’ve got the natural urge to move farther away, but with my back pressed against the bank, there’s nowhere for me to go.
“You don’t have to be lonely anymore,” she says, voice low, eyes holding me pinned in place. “Not if you don’t want to be.”
Trapped against the bank, I can only hold my breath as she drifts closer. This time when I glance down, she’s near enough to me that I can see her tiny round breasts through the water, so milky white that I can only imagine their softness were I to reach out and touch them.
The thought makes me start to harden.
And if she keeps moving closer to me, she’s going to feel it.
“Well?”
Her voice makes my gaze snap back to hers. For the life of me, I can’t remember what we were just talking about.
“What?”
A smirk curls across her pink lips. “Do you want to stop being lonely?”
It feels like a trick question, but I’m not so sure she means for it to. I’m just so used to things being offered and then snatched away, promises being made and then broken, that if she weren’t right here right now, reaching out to wash the paint from my brow with one of her dainty hands, I would think this all a figment of my imagination.
As the hot water runs down my face and drips off my chin, I can utter only one word.
“Badly.”
A spark catches in Aurora’s eyes, turning them into green fire. Then her hands are on my bare chest, snaking up my neck, and she’s pulling me in for a kiss.
Chapter 12
Aurora
ALDEN’S SCRUFF IS PRICKLY AGAINST my skin, but his lips are soft and warm beneath mine. My eyes drift closed as I twine my arms around his neck, and I let one hand slide up into his dark curls. Almost as soon as my fingers press through his hair, he lets out a rumbling sigh, and then his strong hands are on my bare hips, pulling me closer.
I’ve dreamt of this moment, of what it would feel like to have his rough carpenter hands on my body, and finally, that dream has become reality. And it’s so much better than I thought it would be.
As Alden pulls me in, something hard presses against my belly button, and with a start, I realize it’shim. I break our kiss, hands still around his neck, and look down into the steamy water. Though I can’t see through it with any clarity, there’s a long dark shadow pressed up against me, and it makes me tingle with excitement and a dash of nervousness.
It’s been years since I was with a man. In fact, I haven’t been with anyone since my first semester at the academy a few years ago. So feeling Alden’s cock pressing against my stomach, hard and wanting, I can’t help but to feel nervous.
He’s looking down at me, brown eyes narrowed, a concerned wrinkle in his forehead. There’s still a smear of yellow paint crossing his brow, so vivid against his brown skin. When I reach up to wash it away, he closes his eyes and presses his face into my hand, just like he did that day at my wobbly kitchen table. But this time, I cup his cheek in my hand and lean in to press my lips to his forehead, then to the bridge of his nose, and then to his mouth.
His hands tighten on my hips as I deepen our kiss. Beneath the water, his length twitches against me, begging for attention.
I pull his bottom lip into my mouth at the same time I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock. He lets out a gasp, shuddering at the contact. It makes me wonder if his body has gone untouched for as long as mine has.
