Who wouldn’t make that jump?
Alex moaned into his kiss again, and Simon grunted, sliding out of Alex’s body. He caught the condom before it spilled, and disposed of it with a wad of tissues in the can under the bed stand and then turned to cuddle this surprising package of man and wonder who had finally given himself to Simon’s care.
SOMETIMES one of the sweetest parts of lovemaking was the aftercare.
Not this time because the lovemaking itself had been so intense, so real between them—no drifting thoughts, just their bodies, learning the ins and outs (heh!) of an act that could be one of the loveliest forms of expression that humans were allowed—but the aftercare was close.
Alex rested his head on Simon’s shoulder, and they played with each other’s fingers, lacing and unlacing them, talking quietly.
“It was okay?”
“God, yes.”
“Want to do it again?”
“Heh… not right now but, you know, when I see if I can walk again.”
“Heh. Want to top next time?”
Alex looked at him in surprise. “Yes? Can I? I mean, I’m pretty sure I can, but, you know. Younger, smaller—”
“Oh, who cares,” Simon said with a laugh. “It’s about what feels good, and I like both!”
Alex smiled—but not self-consciously. “Good. I… I want to do all the things. Everything. With you.” He bit his lip. “Nobody else.”
“Good,” Simon murmured, kissing his temple. “Me neither.”
“You’ve dated a lot of spectacular people. Not including Audra, who, I guess, you weren’t dating,” Alex added, looking away.
“I like flash,” Simon admitted. Then he smiled in contentment. “Doesn’t get much flashier than a witch, you know. I mean, I like to be interested in my lover. I don’t think I’m going to get bored of you. Of your circle of friends. Of what you can do.” He frowned for a minute. “I mean, what can you do? You’ve apparently been practicing for—what?”
“Eighteen months,” Alex said. “Ever since Helen just sort of willed Jordan the cottage and we all got pulled into it.”
“And you can send your neighborhood into hell and cause a rift in space and time. Not bad.”
Alex laughed, squeezing his hand and bringing it to his lips. “We were doing good with it before then. We found a job for Josh, because he really hated his researching gig, and he swears he’d be a shitty teacher. So we cast a spell to find him a job, and the next day he was chatting up someone in line at the discount liquor store. And he’s a history major, right? And he starts rattling off the history of wines in California, and he’s talking to a wine distributor, and voila! He’s got a job as a wine salesman to most of Northern California.”
Simon pursed his lips. “That’s fortunate, but—”
“I know. It could still be coincidence,” Alex said, nodding. “But it sort of gave us impetus. We started doing things for our friends. A spell for Kate’s bestie who couldn’t seem to find a good boyfriend—and now she’s engaged. A spell for Cully’s drama friends who are trying to get parts. And sometimes you can see that the spell just gives them sort of a lift—the confidence—but sometimes it’s eerie. One of Cully’s drama friends was going up for a part against someone he always loses parts to, and the day of the auditions, half the actors get sent to the wrong place to try out. Cully’s friend was one of the ones who went to the right place, but his rival, who was really mean to Cully, by the way, ended up getting sent somewhere else. Boom!”
“He gets the audition,” Simon finished.
“Yup.” Alex smiled. “And we’ve tried to be really respectful of it. Once, we accidentally accepted a commission from a friend of a friend who turned out to be really vindictive. Wanted his business to succeed and his competitor to fail, spectacularly. We refused to perform a spell that had the level of… venom, I guess, that the guy wanted, so he threw some money at Jordan and took all our stuff and performed his own damned spell.”
“What happened?” Simon asked, fascinated.
“Well, the guy’s theater got… turkey bombed. The day after he performed the spell, he showed up and turkeys had congregated on the roof and crapped so much the roof caved in. And to make matters worse, the show he’d just opened the night before got panned in papers as far away as San Francisco and Portland. He had to move across country to open another playhouse, and his competitor has been giving Cully work ever since.”
Simon chuckled and trailed fingertips down Alex’s sharp-cheekboned face. “What about you? Did you ever cast spells for yourself?”
“No,” Alex said softly. “I had a job I liked, friends I loved. My parents are total sweethearts—they call me once a week and ask me if I’ve met a nice boy yet. The magic wasn’t to get me things. It was to give me something to do with the people I cared about.”
“Until Jordan asked you for a spell for your heart’s desire,” Simon said softly. “And you were so embarrassed to have one that you lied.”
“Maybe I should have asked for a pet,” Alex said, and Simon loved the way his eyes crinkled in the corners. “I love Glinda. I wouldn’t mind a dog of my own. Something a little bigger, maybe. Labs. I adore Labrador retrievers. Maybe I should cast a spell for one of those.”
Simon chuckled and rolled over, sliding between Alex’s thighs and covering his body with his own. “I’ll get you a dog,” he muttered roughly, wanting Alex all over again. “I want you to want me!”
“I do,” Alex said, growing surprisingly sober, cupping Simon’s neck with his palms. He raised himself up to take Simon’s mouth again, and Simon returned the kiss until Alex was boneless against the mattress.
“Good,” Simon told him breathlessly. “Because if I’m your heart’s desire, you won’t be able to shake me. I’ve never been anybody’s one thing before. It’s heady information. It could make me a very possessive boyfriend. You need to know that.”
Alex grinned, eyes hooded. “Bring it,” he rasped. “Possess away.”
And Simon did.
THEY showered again after round two, hurrying because Bartholomew had texted to say he and Lachlan were on their way home with takeout.
“Are you going to need to go home tonight?” Alex asked as they dressed hurriedly in his bedroom.
“I can stay until tomorrow,” Simon told him with a sigh. “Tomorrow afternoon I need to talk to my groundskeeping service—it’s eighty-nine acres, and we’re clearing all the underbrush away for winter. I’d love for you to see the place. It’s huge. I mean, we could probably stash your entire coven there for months before we all got on one another’s nerves.”
“Eighty-nine acres,” Alex mumbled, but Simon was already on a roll.
“God, Alex, we have to find a way to end this. For one thing, you and Bartholomew have, you know, commitments outside the cul-de-sac. I mean, you could both carpool, for heaven’s sake. Lachlan and I can see each other’s houses from our front yards!”