Page 99 of Night of the Witch
That overwhelming wash of control that I’ve become enraptured by.
“I’m thinking,” I start, moving my lips down the side of his head, to his temple, to his cheek, until our noses align, and his mouth is so close I can taste the spice on him, “that I want you to throw me against the wall of this castle and make me see that god of yours.”
“Verdammt, Liebste, thatmouthon you—”
And then he takes that mouth.Devoursit, his lips as bruisingly brutal as his fingers, crashing into mine with such force that I rock backward, only saved from falling by his arm sweeping around and clasping me against him.
The building desire erupts through me in a wave of sensation, shooting out to the tips of my fingers, which wind in his hair, to the center of my core as his tongue delves in to curl with mine. The kiss is every argument we’ve had, fighting for the other to feel pleasure; he advances, I push back; feel this first, feel this most—
He takes my head and roughly tilts it to the side, exposing my neck to glide his mouth down in such expert work that I’m on the edge of falling apart just from this. My whimper liquifies into a moan, and I relent, going limp in his victory.
I let him win because I cannot fathom why he lets me touch him, much less that hewantsto touch me. All I have upended in his life, all I have broken in my clumsy grief, and this man wraps me in his arms and presses his lips to my skin with the reverence of a liturgy, as if in this moment, he sees something holy in drawing a moan from my body.
I’m given over to the power of his size, helpless but to fall open for him now, ride the motion of his tongue on my skin. But I need to taste him again, I cannot get enough of that sweetness, and I grab his face and guide him back. This is my own sort of worship, too, driving against him, savoring the beat of blood in his neck, the way he stumbles when I suck his lip.
“Fritzi?” comes Liesel’s voice from the castle.
I stop, gasping into him, hand clenching into a fist in his hair. My skin is too tight, sensation everywhere all at once. He holds, too, just as breathless, one hand on the back of my neck, the other tangled up against the ridges of my spine.
“Fritzi,” Liesel calls again. “I don’t want to sleep alone.”
I clear my throat, knowing it will still sound gravelly. “I’m—I’m coming,” I shout to her.
“Liebste,” Otto whispers again and presses another kiss to my jaw.Sweetheart.
I am unworthy of him. But I am selfish. And he has carried the weight of his own grief every moment since we met, but he looks at me like the world has gone silent. If I can be that for him, bring an end to his internal war, then I will, I will, I—
“I’m not done with you,” I tell him, so wholly unwound that when he lowers me to my feet, I have to use my grip on the hair at the back of his head to hold myself right.
“We will find time,” he promises, and I nip his lip again, because I can, because this moment has unleashed a torrent and I am at its mercy as much as I’m at his.
I take one last breath against him, gathering myself, and then I push around him.
He grabs my wrist and yanks me back, cupping my face in his hand. In the moonlight, I see his eyes shift through mine, the initial crash of need ebbing in this brief respite, the way he glides his thumb across my cheekbone, cradles the shell of my ear.
I don’t expect him to say anything. There is an understanding in this look between us, a weight on both of our souls—unworthiness, guilt, shame. But somehow, we are here, undeserving of each other though we may be; and when he kisses me again, it is soft, his rough lips now like satin as they coax another whimper from the depths of me.
My hand doesn’t leave his as I pull him back into the castle, into the permeating warmth of this small haven we’ve carved out in our world of stalking danger and flames.
30
OTTO
When the girls are safely curled up on the floor, I take a long walk in the cold December night air just to get my mind thinking of…anything other than the feel of her in my arms, on my lips. My mind replays all we did, all Iwantto do, and I grab a fistful of snow off a broken castle wall and scrub my face in the cold, trying to shock the lust from my body.
No priest would ever take a vow of chastity if he tasted a kiss like hers first.
And I am no priest.
By the time I return to the room and carefully step over the warding spell Fritzi laid to protect us, snow evaporating from my cloak, I find that the fire burning inside me, ignited by her touch, has not cooled in the least. I wrap my cloak tightly around me and lie down about a meter away from Fritzi, trying to put some distance between us, but still close enough to the fire that I won’t freeze. I need sleep. We both do. Tomorrow we’ll venture into the Black Forest and find God knows what—although, hopefully, also my sister—and we need our strength and our wits about us.
I count to a hundred. A thousand.
And eventually, I sleep.
When I wake up, she’s in my arms.
Despite being asleep on the dirty stones of an abandoned castle, my entire body is relaxed because she lies beside me. Therightnessof it, of this woman in my arms as I awake—it leaves me breathless. Fritzi is curled up with her back against me, her hands tucked under her face, the length of her body pressed against mine. Her hair spills over my shoulder, and my left arm is under her waist, my right draped over her side.
