Page 83 of Homegrown Magic

She reaches over, pulling Yael into her lap. Their legs slip around her hips, Margot’s breasts pressed to Yael’s chest. Their kissing becomes more insistent, and Margot is all need, bone melting and desperate.

Yael’s hair frames their faces as their kiss deepens. Margot shifts on the rock so her fingers can move along their thighs.

“I can do that too,” Yael murmurs against her mouth, breaking the kiss.

“Show me.” Even as she says it, Margot slips her hand up their leg, letting one thumb graze Yael’s center.

They moan, the noise nearly undoing Margot.

“With pleasure,” Yael murmurs. They cup her breasts in their hands as they lean down to take one of her nipples into their mouth. Their tongue traces a circle around it, and heat floods through Margot’s whole body.

Then, as Margot’s fingers find their way into Yael, they match her move for move. Each touch bringing her closer. Each kiss pushing her toward the edge. Yael’s skilled fingers working her with intent and good care.

She falls without warning, and a cry of pleasure. Yael tumbles with her a moment later, their body pressed against her hand, gasping, her name on their lips.

“I love you,” Margot says as Yael collapses into her. She wants to say it again and again, to shout the words to the world. Instead, she kisses Yael’s earlobe, letting herself relax into the comforting shape of their body against hers.

“I love you, Daisy,” Yael manages, stealing another kiss. “And I love this.”

Margot looks at Yael as the waterfall pounds the stone all around them. “Shall we do it again, then?”

“Always and forever,” Yael says, their voice far more serious than the wicked gleam in their eyes.

When they leave the hidden grotto several climaxes apiece later, the sun is setting. They dress themselves and make their way back to their mechanical steeds, Margot twining her fingers through Yael’s. “Ready to go?”

“To your cottage?” Yael asks hopefully.

“To our cottage.”

“I’d like nothing better,” Yael says, kissing her again before they mount their steeds and ride toward home.

Epilogue

Yael

Autumn, one year later

The garden tub was the best idea Yael’s ever had.

It’s one of the few changes made to their cottage over the past year and a month, though there’ve been changes aplenty around Bloomfield. In the greenhouses, Margot’s private workshop has expanded twofold, and three new houses have been added for medicinal plants so that Margot might bring Greenwillow Remedies back to life—renamed as Greenfern Remedies, to begin something new while honoring the best parts of her past all at once. And the manor house just up the wooded path has been transformed entirely now that Margot’s parents have woken thanks to the magical remedy that, without the constant pressure and need to pour all of her time and talents into a Natural Caster Potion for the Claunecks, Margot was finally able to crack. They’ve taken up residence in the house; Margot’s idea, as she preferred to remain in their cottage, the home that she and Yael have made together.

But the tub was all Yael’s doing. They alone hooked the cart up to Sweet Wind and hauled in flat slabs of stone from beyond the old outpost walls to support the iron clawfoot tub they purchased as a surprise for Margot. Yael planted daisies and gardenias, spicy-smelling pink dianthus, star-shaped nicotiana for night bathing, and sweet pea to climb the wooden trellis they built for privacy. Not that the Greenwillows leave their house to visit the cottage often; Margot’s parents largely keep to themselves, recovered but subdued. Still, Sweet Wind and Gloom Stalker have a habit of standing unblinking at the garden fence for hours at a time now that they’ve been kept on, allowing birds to perch on their wooden saddles. While a happy sight, it isn’t especially romantic.

And that just wouldn’t do.

Shielded from view by the sweet pea, Margot reclines in the tub, unfurling like a blossom herself to rest her back against Yael’s chest. They kiss the crook of her neck and reach around to slide a palm down the wet silk of her skin.

While Margot’s garden blooms nearly year-round as though in perpetual summer, the world beyond their gate is heavily spiced with autumn, the leaves in the forest and in the orchards colored cinnamon and turmeric and saffron. In the community garden, pumpkins and butternut and acorn squash are so ripe on the vine, they nearly glow, like little suns grown from seed. Along with baskets of beets and radishes and lettuce, they’ll be picked and ready for the harvest festival this afternoon.

Speaking of which…

“There’s a lot left to do before the festival.” Margot reaches up and back to cup a hand behind Yael’s neck. “We should get moving.”

“We’ve a few hours before it starts,” Yael protests.

“Yes, and a few hours’ worth of work.” But she sinks even farther down into them as she says it.

They smile into her damp, floral-smelling hair. “Just rest another moment with me before we need to go.”