Page 28 of Warlocks Don't Win
“Do you want me to grow a beard? It wouldn’t take any effort.”
“I thought you needed your bare face for your acting.”
“I think I’m going to be killed off early in the next season.”
I stared at him, the dim light through the filthy windows making him look kind of soft and blurry. “Why?”
He picked up a roll of clear plastic, a good four foot long, hefting it over his shoulder like it was nothing. Very manly. “I’m a married man. I can’t go around kissing other women, even if it’s only pretend.” He flashed me a heated look as he brushed by me on the way out.
I followed him, tongue tied, thoughts whirling around, fastening on the way he moved, smooth, perfectly controlled energy, but taut, like a compressed spring about to bounce. That’s what I needed to do, bounce before anything even worse happened.
Chapter
Ten
We put up the ladder and started stapling the plastic to the beams over the garden beds, green with moss and other less healthy things. Mold, most likely. I was stretching out to staple the plastic above my head when a shock like getting hit by a defibrillator went through my chest. My body locked up, and I went over backwards, falling off the ten foot ladder like a statue toppling over.
Winston grunted as he caught me, his touch melting away the paralysis and leaving me with this craving for him that hadn’t ever gone away since the first time I danced with him at the ball I wasn’t supposed to go to.
The Sages weren’t invited to that kind of high-class soiree. We’d bring our pet spiders or seduce the life out of all the guests. Such a glorious reputation to try and maintain.
The trouble was, the shock had frozen my brain into the wanting of Winston, but not into the processing of what wanting him had led to in the first place.
“Are you all right? What happened?” he asked, voice concerned, almost angry, like how dare I fall off a ladder when he was the manly warlock who belonged in all the dangerous situations. His voice was so beautiful, low, rumbling, filled with a threat of dire consequences if I ever fell off a ladder again.
I slid my fingers around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him. It was an accident. I didn’t actually want to kiss him, but my brain wasn’t working. It was paralyzed, stuck on the wanting, needing, and then having.
He tasted so good, like hibiscus tea and chlorophyl, green, alive, almost too alive. He groaned against my mouth and pulled me closer, kissing me back like his brain had also stopped working. The kiss went on and on, until we landed on the couch in a cloud of dust.
His lips were so soft, persuasive, intent, like kissing me was the only thing he’d ever done and would ever do, the end. He was so soft, so sweet, so pliable, like he was mine to do as I willed, but he was on top of me. Not really, because his weight was supported around me so I wasn’t crushed. His hand slid over the skin of my side, my shirt having ridden up.
Skin. We needed more of that. Less of everything keeping our souls apart.
I pushed up his shirt and then my hands were all over his chest. Had I ever touched him like this?
He stopped moving, started pulling away, so I rolled us until I was on the top of his brawny, muscular body. It reminded me of the first football player I’d ever sucked the life out of. It was fun to play games with arrogant jerks, but he became obsessed with me, which wasn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be.
It was my turn to pull away, my brain happily back in my skull where it belonged, instead of floating up on the helium of lust. I was filled with his strength and energy. Seemed almostlike he was feeding his strength into me. I hadn’t been stealing it. Probably.
I stood on my legs, fighting against the magnetic pull towards the mage. Cleaning with him was out of the question. Anything with him was out of the question.
I started on the spell I’d learned when I was seven and my mother made me dust the living room. The magic took so much time and effort to do properly. You had to memorize every curve of furniture, every place dust might rest, and then go over all of it in your mind. But I’d gotten very good at it, and I knew this house like the back of my hand. Probably better than the back of my hand. I didn’t really stare at my hands a lot.
A poof of dust gathered in the center of the conservatory, then the house opened its windows and all the dust was sucked out into the surrounding woods and cemetery.
Winston was still reclined on the couch, shirt pushed up over his pectorals. My husband. I took one unconscious step towards him before I turned resolutely and marched towards the door.
“I’ll be in the library researching the curse while you focus on the way door.”
“What about the golem?” His voice was rough, dark, compelling.
Gulp. “What about it?”
“It’s from the show, Jessica’s show. Do you want me to ask her about it, do the investigative work, or do you?”
I shivered at the thought of Jessica, who really, really enjoyed seducing men, in the same room as Winston. Not that she hadn’t bristled with antagonism towards him in the woods, but hate could easily turn to lust, as I so very clearly demonstrated. And I’d married him.
I was full out sweating. Cold sweat. That was the number one problem I needed to resolve, right there. Being married toWinston the Warlock was the absolute worst outcome possible. I guess that meant things could only improve.
