Page 93 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

Trying to remove clothing while refusing to stop kissing someone is far from graceful. My dress gets briefly caught around one wrist, and Merry laughs when I nearly elbow the lamp next to us and I have to catch it before it falls.

“This is going really well,” she whispers.

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious.” She moves to kiss my neck. “Extremely seductive.”

I stare at her for a second, her hair mussed and her lips swollen and red, and my breath hitches.

I run my hands slowly along her sides, watching her face as I do it, and the intimacy of being allowed to look at her like this hits me almost as hard as the wanting.

I have spent years becoming good at figuring out what people don’t say. And Merry… Merry isn’t asking me to guess.

When I touch her and pause, she leans into my hand. When I kiss the place beneath her ear and feel her shiver, she whispers, “Again.”

There is something almost startling about the simplicity of it.

Merry’s arms circle my neck, and I pull her closer until there isn’t room left between us, until the warmth of her fully-clothed body and the faint hum of the house around us and the cool air against my naked back become the only things I can hold on to.

Then Merry starts backing toward the bed.

She sits first, looking up at me, and something about the sight of her there sends another rush of heat through me.

Merry reaches for my hand and pulls me closer until I’m standing between her knees, then presses a kiss against my stomach. My breath falters, and I feel heat course through my body so fast, I have to ground myself with my hands on her shoulders, holding on to her so I don’t fall.

A tiny flash of satisfaction in her eyes tells me she noticed how my knees went weak, and I feel her smile against my hip, one kiss trailing after the other.

I touch her face, brushing my thumb over her cheek, and she turns her mouth into my palm.

The urgency of downstairs softens, and somehow everything feels more intimate.

Merry reaches for me again, and I go willingly, bending until she can kiss me.

The angle is different with her sitting on the edge of the bed, enough that I have to brace one hand beside her while the other settles against the back of her neck. She draws me closer between her knees, and the kiss deepens gradually, without the frantic collision that brought us to the couch just an hour ago. There is urgency still, but there’s also time, and I feel the difference in the way she touches me.

Her hands aren’t searching anymore.

Neither are mine.

I know exactly how to recognize the little intake of breath when my mouth moves along her jaw, the way her fingers tighten against me when I find the place beneath her ear that she liked downstairs. When I kiss the spot again, Merry tips her head to give me more room.

“Again,” she whispers.

The word moves through me almost as sharply as her hands do.

I oblige, slower this time, and her eyes fall closed.

There is something intoxicating about watching Merry become less self-conscious. She spends so much of her time filling the air around her, turning nerves into jokes and uncertainty into words, but here she doesn’t seem interested in making any of this easier to laugh at. When she likes something, she lets herself like it. When she wants me closer, she pulls me closer.

And when she opens her eyes again, there is nothing uncertain there.

“Come here.”

I smile against her skin. “I’m already here.”

“Closer.”

That I can do.