“Make me come, Rhys,” she heard herself say, her voice faint against the crackle of the fire and the roaring of her own blood in her ears. “Now.”
She needed the heat to blot out the warmth.
If she could tell herself this was just about sex, just about getting off, it would be easier to watch him walk away this time.
Or at least she hoped it would be.
For the space of a few breaths, Rhys just kept looking at her, his eyes nearly black, his chest rising and falling, and Vivi tensed, wondering if he’d put a stop to it, or try to make this more than it was.
And then his fingers found her again, pressing and circling, dipping into her wetness and using it to slick his touch, dragging his fingertips back over her, and Vivi was closing her eyes, incoherent cries coming from her lips as he touched her, and touched her and touched her.
The orgasm seemed to start somewhere deep inside her, radiating out to her toes, the tips of her fingers, her nipples, and she held him even tighter as sparks exploded behind her eyes, as she lost herself to everything except him, the same way she had that very first night.
It’s different this time, she told herself even as she kissed his neck, his jaw, his mouth, anywhere she could reach.
It has to be.
Chapter 24
“So that’s a Eurydice Candle.”
Vivi hid a yawn behind her coffee mug as she nodded at Gwyn. “Mmm-hmm.”
They were sitting around the big table in the back of the storage room at Something Wicked, the three of them taking in the silver candle lying among Elaine’s piles of herbs and wicks for her own candles. In the daylight, in this cozy and comfy little room, it didn’t seem like something that had a ghost lurking inside it.
But Vivi could still remember watching Piper McBride’s ghost vanishing inside it, and shivered a little. The sooner Amanda picked this thing up and took it off her hands, the better. She was supposed to come by Vivi’s office later that afternoon, but Vivi had wanted to show the candle to her aunt and cousin first, hence the impromptu meeting in the storage room.
As they studied the candle, Vivi focused very hard on not letting her gaze slide over to the sofa against the far wall. Even though it had just been hours ago, last night—well, early this morning—it almost felt like something out of a dream.
A really fantastic, really dirty dream.
But it had been all too real, and at some point today, she was going to have to deal with what had happened.
What it meant.
It meant that you’d had a rough night and deserved that orgasm, a part of her brain that sounded suspiciously like Gwyn said, and Vivi was inclined to agree. For all that she was exhausted and running on about three hours of sleep, she felt . . . good this morning. Better than good. Better than she’d felt in a long time, and even as she searched herself for that sinking sensation that she’d made a huge mistake, she knew she wouldn’t find it.
Because it hadn’t been a mistake. It had been fun. And wasn’t that enough?
Frowning, Aunt Elaine leaned in even closer, pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “It’s not like the college witches to use something like this,” she murmured. One hand hovered over the candle like she might pick it up.
“The witch who came to talk to me was different,” Vivi said with a shrug. “I think they might actually be modernizing over there a little bit.”
Gwyn made a rude noise at that, drawing up one knee and wrapping an arm around it. “That’ll be the day. I think they just wanted you to do their dirty work for them.”
“Maybe,” Vivi acknowledged. “But honestly, it wasn’t that bad.”
Off Elaine and Gwyn’s look, she amended, “Okay, it was very scary and I never want to go back to that cabin again, but it could’ve been a lot worse.”