Page 60 of Demon's Beauty

I let him reel me in.

For a few long moments, time slows down.

Finn looks at me.

I look at Finn.

The firelight gilds us both, and the moon above shines its silver-white light down over the mountains.

“Goodnight, sunshine,” he says finally, one hand reaching up to cup my jaw.

Is he going to kiss me?

Do I want him to kiss me?

The magick fluttering in my chest saysyes, absolutely, but my more rational brain can’t quite catch up.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because his lips land on my forehead, brushing against my skin so softly I’m not sure he kissed me at all.

He steps back, grins that devastatingly handsome, crooked grin, and gives me one last lingering look before he heads to his tent.

It leaves me standing there, alone and entirely off-balance. I’m torn between throwing all caution to the wind and going after him, or doing the responsible thing and heading into my tent to get some sleep.

And that’s what I do.

Eventually.

After I stand there and stew in all my feelings a few moments longer.

Stew in my confusion, my longing, the magick hammering against my rib cage.

I can’t make sense of any of it, so after a minute or two I stop trying.

But when I’m all tucked into my cot, Vayla snoring softly on the other side of the tent, the faint sounds of night pressing in close from outside, the thoughts creep back in.

Goddess, it’s been a long time since I had any kind of romantic connection. Or even just a simple hook-up.

Opportunities for that sort of thing are few and far between when you spend as much time in the coven hall as I do. At least unless you’ve got an eye for seducing other witches, and I’ve unfortunately never had that inclination.

Wielders—what male magick-users call themselves—are thin on the ground in upstate New York where the coven hall is located, and going out to pick up some mundane man in a bar somewhere always just seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

Sure, a quick physical release is nice, but trying to navigate making any kind of connection with a man with whom it might be unsafe to share my true nature is… less nice.

So I’ve been lonely, for the most part, in the romantic relationship department.

Really lonely, actually, since at the end of the day I’ve mostly just chosen not to.

Not to bother. Not to try. Not to open myself up like that and risk all the potential complications.

Sure, there have been a few casual connections here and there, a few flirtations that turned physical, but nothing that’s panned out into a long-term partnership.

Most witches I know have the same problem.

My parents are a rare exception. Even in their case, it took mom nearly two years to work up the courage to tell dad that the metaphysical work she did wasn’t just smoke and mirrors and intuition. Maybe because as an astronomer, dad was already used to contemplating the enormity and vast unknowable sprawl of the universe, he was surprisingly cool about it. Shocked and knocked a bit on his ass at learning magick really existed in the world, but he came around pretty quickly.

Which is more than most witches can say, at least the ones who’ve tried to forge similar bonds with mundane partners.

Wielders can be even worse, given the long and complicated history between us and them.