Page 66 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Go back down." He doesn't look up. His voice is wrecked from not using it all day. "I can't hold this with you standing on top of it."

I don't move. He stares at the slate between his boots. "I made her strong, Ev. I did that. I had her up here all summer holding more and more, and every time she pulled it off I thought it was me. I thought I was a good fucking teacher. It was the Well fattening her up, and I was helping it."

"I kept her home." Rain runs into my mouth when I talk, and I don't wipe it away. "I made sure she'd be alone in that house. I made the plan, and I put her in it."

The sparks under his hands jump.

He looks up at me then, his face red and raw. "She was family. First person since my mom died in that kitchen who felt like mine. She'd come up that hatch half asleep with coffee for both of us, already bitching about her form before she even sat down, and I'd stand here and think, okay, this is it. This is what I get to have. A house full of people, and I'm the one who shows up for them." His hands press flatter, and the blue crawls up over his knuckles. "She was the first piece of that I ever got, and I trained her straight into the water. And you know what she said to me? Up to her chest in it, she looks right past you and tells me I was a good teacher."

I want to tell him it was my fault and not his, and I know exactly how far that would get me. So I let him have it, because it's his.

He gets up off the slate, stiff with cold, and then his hands are in my wet hair and he's pulling me in and kissing me hard.

He isn't gentle about it. He kisses me like he's angry at me, and part of him probably is. I grab his shirt in both fists and kiss him back just as hard, teeth and all. The charge gets into his mouth and crackles off his tongue against my lips, a sharp sting that makes me gasp, and I keep kissing him anyway. He tastes like rain, and I can taste that I've been crying.

He breaks away long enough to breathe, his forehead against mine. "You should go back inside. I'm not safe to be around right now."

"You've never been safe to be around." I twist my fists tighter in his shirt. "I didn't come up here for safe. I've been lying in that bed all day feeling you hate yourself through the bond, and I can't stand it anymore. So either throw me off this roof or kiss me again."

He kisses me again.

His mouth moves along my jaw to the place under my ear where my pulse is pounding, and I tip my head back to give him more of it. I slide my hands up under his wet shirt, and my fingers must be freezing, but he doesn't flinch. He's burning up under there.

"Inside," I breathe against his mouth, then change my mind before he can move. "No, here. I don't want to stop long enough to climb back through that hatch."

"Good, because I wasn't planning on letting go of you long enough to find it."

He grabs the hem of my T-shirt and drags it up, but it's so wet it clings to me, and I can't lift my bad arm high enough to help. He yanks, and it tears right down one side.

I laugh, once, short and wild, the first sound I've made all day that wasn't crying, and it scares me how good it feels. Then I shove at his shirt until he drags it off over his head and throws it somewhere across the slate.

He kisses his way down my neck, and then his mouth is on my breast. My nipples are tight and aching from the cold, and when he sucks one into his mouth, hot after all that rain, I arch into him with a moan and dig my fingers into his scalp.

The charge follows his hands wherever they go. When his thumb drags over my other nipple, a blue spark jumps between his skin and mine, and I jerk against him with a gasp.

He stops dead. "Did that hurt? Tell me the truth, because I can't always tell how much of it is getting out."

"It stung." I grab his wrist before he can take his hand away and put it right back on my breast. "I liked it. Do it again, and don't you dare start being careful with me now."

He does it again, on the other side. It sizzles through my nipple and straight down between my legs, and I swear at him, a long, filthy run of it with his name somewhere in the middle, grinding against his thigh.

He's so hard he must be hurting, his cock trapped in his soaked jeans and pressing against my stomach. I get the button open with my good hand and wrap my cold fingers around him. He's hot and thick in my grip, and I stroke him once, slowly. The charge jumps out of him into my palm, and he catches my wrist before it can get away from him.

"Not yet." He holds my wrist against his chest, breathing hard. "Keep doing that and I'm going to lose it, and I don't mean the storm. I want you coming on my hand first. Then I'm going to bend you over that chimney and fuck you until your legs give out, and I'll hold you up when they do."

I look up at him through the rain. "That's big talk for a man who's been sulking on a roof all day."

"Yeah, it is," he admits. "Let me make good on it anyway."

He tugs my leggings down just far enough and slides his hand between my legs. I'm slick and hot for him, and when he pushes his fingers inside me, I moan his name through my teeth and grind down on his hand.

"Harder," I beg. "Please. I need to feel something besides sorry."

He backs me against the chimney, the brick rough and freezing on my back, and fucks me with his fingers, hard, the heel of his hand grinding against my clit, and I hang on to his shoulder with my good hand and ride him with my eyes squeezed shut and the rain running down my face.

"I can hear how wet you are over the rain," he tells me, his mouth against my ear. "You came up here barefoot to drag me off this roof, and you've been dripping for me the whole time, haven't you?"

"I came up here to—" I lose the rest when he curls his fingers. "Okay, yes. Fine. Don't stop."