Page 87 of A Witch in Notting Hill

When I turned to face him, he was already looking at me. Pushing the mask gently off my face so he could see me clearly, tucking me hair behind my ears and letting his hands linger on the side of my neck.

“Oliver.” The lantern light flickered across his face, illuminating the hope in his eyes. The searching, pleading expression that I was certain matched my own.

“Tell me you’ve been feeling what I’ve been feeling,” he said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, and you’ve got that bloke and you’re going home, but at least give me this. If you’re feeling even a fraction of what I am, tell me the truth.” I exhaled, long and slow, and he threaded his fingers through my hair. “Put me out of my misery,” he said, but his expression was anything but miserable. Even behind the mask, he was optimistic. Longing.

So I did what he asked.

In a moment of weakness, chaos, desperation, lust—I put him out of his misery.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his, throwing my arms around his neck and leaning into him. His surprised quickly disappeared, and his kiss was just as hungry as mine. Moreso, even.

He dropped his hands to my waist, walking me back a few steps until I was leaning against a nearby tree draped in lanterns, which hung over us like spotlights. When he pushed against me as he deepened the kiss, I felt every inch of him in a way that made me desperate to get out of the woods and back into my flat. Back into that moment in the shower. Anywhere but here.

He tilted my head back by my hair, pressing kisses against my neck and mumbling into my skin. “I’ve been thinking of nothing but this for months,” he said. “Every day... and every night.” A kiss behind my ear. At the hollow of my throat.

I laced my fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck, relishing the low sound that escaped his throat when I pulled. “Now I’ll be thinking of nothing butthisfor months,” I whispered, bringing his lips back to mine. He tasted like beer and cinnamon and the best, worst decision I’d made in as long as I could remember.

When he hiked my leg up around his hip to press harder into me, I let the hem of my dress fall to my waist so I could feel theheat of his hands on my thigh. I could feel how hard he was even through his pants, and it was making me desperate. I ground against him, and he broke away and sucked a breath through his teeth.

“Fuck.” He exhaled, long and slow, pressing his hands against the tree behind me and dropping his forehead to mine.

“We shouldn’t have started this here,” I said, looking around at the sound of rustling in the leaves and trying not to cringe at the state of us in such a precarious position.

“No,” he agreed. “We definitely shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t mean we can’t end it somewhere else, does it?” Another kiss to my neck, my jaw, my throat.

“If you keep kissing me like that we’re not going to have much of a choice,” I said.

“That’s the plan.”

I pulled back to look at him just in time to catch the devious grin spreading across his face, turning his whole vibe from innocent librarian to filthy professor, and I couldn’t get out of the woods fast enough.

The whole ride back to my flat, I waited for the lightning strike. Waited for the train car to explode, for a delay that would leave us trapped for hours on end, for a serial killer or someone with a speaker to get on and ruin our moment. I waited for whatever catastrophe was bound to follow, however my magic was going to backfire, whatever drama was going to unfold because I was doing something romantic. Or at the very least, highly sexual.

And yet, nothing came.

The train didn’t explode, the skies didn’t open up on the walk back to the flat, my keys didn’t disappear. Vera was even out on a late-night prowl around the neighborhood, judging by theopen cat door and her tendency to snoop at this hour. Things were... working out.

I should have known better than to think it would last.

But I was greedy, so I let Oliver in anyway.

I thought it was only in the movies when people went back to kissing before the door even closed behind them, but when Oliver pushed me up against the wall the second we crossed the threshold, I was reminded there’s a reason people say life imitates art.

Thank god Vera wasn’t in the flat, because things were escalating at a dizzying pace. It was like we pressed fast-forward on every desire from the last few months and tried to rip through them all at once. Hot, open-mouthed kisses, handfuls of hair, skin on skin.

He ran his hands over my ass and scooped me up off the ground, and my legs wrapped around his waist as he carried me in the direction of my bedroom.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

“It’s a flat, Willow, not a maze.”

He kissed me again before I could respond, which was probably for the best. At this rate, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to form a coherent sentence again as long as I lived. So much for my acting career. Unless someone wanted to cast me as a character who only said,Yes, more, please, Oliver, I was useless.

I pushed his jacket off his shoulders, finally giving in to my vision of undressing him. I’d seen him without his clothes before, but nothing compared to being the one to take them off. He hiked my dress higher over my ass as I undid his buttons, both of us fumbling to get closer to each other.

“Your skin feels incredible,” he mumbled against my mouth, sinking his fingers into my hips. “You’re even better than I imagined.”

“Oh, you imagined me?”