“Ahhhh… I need… to come…”
I lift my head, smiling. I knew it. With a twirl of my finger, the condom is on my cock, stretched tightly over my girth. I move over her, kneeling between her legs. I lean my elbows into the mattress, hands beneath her shoulders, and pause to look down into her eyes.
They’re dark blue and hazy, full of emotion. “Please,” she whispers.
Oh fuck yeah. I blink slowly, kiss her chest, then rub the head of my cock up and down through her slit, coating myself with her arousal. My balls are so tight, need burning over my skin. When I push in, it’s slow and careful, but she winces.
I stop immediately. “Sorry, sorry.” I smooth her hair off her forehead and kiss her. Christ. The last thing I want to do is hurt her.
“It’s okay.” She tips her pelvis, knees bent, giving me access, and I slide in deeper, cautiously. “It’s good.”
She hooks her heels behind my thighs and I move, rocking against her, still slow, still cautious. She skims her hands up and down my sides, mouths locked together, and we find a rhythm, a smooth, rolling flow of not just our bodies, but more.
Something flows around us, a haze of energy. When I lift my head to peer into her eyes, it intensifies, heating, surging. I’m inside her body, and right now I feel like I’m inside her head, inside her heart.
She lifts into me faster, and I match her movements, thrusting harder into her. Her beautiful eyes fall closed, her head rolling from side to side. I push into her and she comes, pulsing, quivering, her body jerking, sounds falling from her lips. My body tightens against her, my hands in her hair, my face buried against her neck. She squeezes me, and sensation burns and twists inside me, fire racing up my spine. Ecstasy erupts, and I can’t help but shout as wave after wave of heat pours over my skin and I surge inside her.
“Fuck,” I mutter in her ear. “Jesus fuck.” My chest heaves. “I’m flatlining.”
A strangled laugh escapes her. She strokes my back, damp with perspiration, and when I lift my head, she pushes her fingers into my hair, also damp, and plays with it until it stands on end.
“Romy.” I gaze into her eyes searchingly. “That was…”
She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “Yeah.”
I feel like… Okay, this is weird, but I feel like a different person. Like something so important just happened to me that it’s changed me.
Does she feel it too? She seems… shook.
I collapse onto her, but I’m conscious enough to know I need to keep all my weight off her. I shift to the side, holding her against me. Heart-pounding, gasping moments later, I say, “I think that took about two minutes.”
I sense her smile. “This might surprise you, but I didn’t time it.”
“I’ll make it up to you. Just give me another two minutes.”
“Ha.”
“Seriously. I can do it. I’m a witch.”
She giggles. “Oh! Now I’m learning the good stuff.”
“I’m the best, baby.” I roll her onto her back and smile down at her. “Don’t forget it.”
She makes me laugh. In bed. Felise was right. Not that Felise knows we’re in bed. Ah hell, I can’t think about that right now.
She snuggles up to me. “Tell me more about your family.”
Usually that’s a big ugh from me, but I’m relaxed and satisfied and Romy’s sweet and warm. “Well. My dad was larger than life. Huge personality. Everyone loved him, and he loved everyone. He made people laugh, and he was always so curious about what was going on in people’s lives.”
“He sounds amazing.”
“Yeah. My mom was quieter, but she was just as caring. She was a great mother, although I didn’t appreciate it enough as a kid. Or a teenager.”
“And your brother?”
I can’t help but sigh, thinking of Nathan’s life cut so short. “We were glued together. There was less than two years between us, so we played together a lot. We fought too, of course. He took after Dad and was always mouthing off.” I smile, remembering his smart mouth. “He loved to play guitar. Wanted to be in a rock band. We used to pretend to be—don’t laugh—Nickelback and rock out in our garage.”
“Nickelback. I’m not laughing! I don’t get the hate for Nickelback. I love ‘Rockstar.’”
“Right?” I pause. “I miss Nathan.”
“I’m sure you do. I’m sure you miss all of them.” She strokes my chest. “It must have been hard to lose your whole family all at once. Oh, man. That sounds so lame. Of course it was hard.”
“Yeah. It was.” I swallow. The hardest part about it was knowing I was responsible. I’d wanted to die too, just so I didn’t have to live with that guilt. I should have died with them. “It was a hard enough age to begin with. I’d just started at the Academy. I hated going back to school and having everyone look at me with pity. Lots of kids didn’t know what to say. So nobody talked about it. The first year after it happened, I was just pissed at everyone.”
“I think that’s a protection mechanism from the grief,” she says softly. “I felt like that about my mom. In her case, I knew she was going to die, so I was sort of prepared. Except you’re never prepared. I was so lost afterward.”
“What happened with her?”
“She had ovarian cancer. It all happened pretty quickly—her diagnosis, then getting sick, and then… dying.” She takes a breath, in and out. “I gave up my apartment and moved back home with her for a few months so I could help take care of her.”
My chest fills with warmth. “Good for you.”
She hitches a shoulder. “I had to do it. It had always been just the two of us.”
“She never married?”
“No. She never even had a serious relationship.” She goes silent for a long moment. “I still think about what you said about her being part witch. I don’t think it’s possible, but it does make me wonder if that was why she never got involved with anyone. Except… why not another witch?”
I thread my fingers through her hair. “I don’t know, honey. The way she reacted to Joe seems to indicate that she wasn’t comfortable with it if she was a witch.”
“What would happen to someone who didn’t know they were a witch? Who never went to the Academy and learned about their powers?”
“They have soft powers, but usually they don’t know how to use them. I remember my mom talking about a woman she knew—a witch—who gave up her child for adoption, and the boy ended up with a Rucker family. He never knew he was a witch.”
“Really. Huh.”
“It’s possible your mom did know. But maybe she didn’t accept it?”
“Maybe.”
“Were you close with her?”
“We were pretty close. It was just the two of us. She didn’t like showing feelings or talking about feelings, which meant things were pretty buttoned up. When she was dying, I was upset and started crying one day, and she got so mad at me for that.”
“Oh man.”
“Yeah. I knew she loved me, but I always felt she was never satisfied with me. I always wanted to do things that she didn’t like.”