Page 44 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
“Graceley, are you certain?” I asked, allowing the magic of the dream to drag me along, the words I’d said then spilling from my lips as naturally as if I’d just thought of them now. “The more of me you touch, the more you’ll crave.”
She pulled back slightly and offered me a smile that nearly cleaved me in two. The dream me was the happiest he had been—happiest he might ever be—while the rest of me wailed, the rest of me hated, the rest of me screamed.
“Then nothing much will change; I always crave more of you, Monster.” She leaned in with a smile, putting her forehead to mine. Our mouths found one another, and I curved my fingers into her hair, pulling her closer to me so that I could put my demon tongue down her pretty throat.
Wrapping my left arm around her waist, I dragged her against me and let the two of us fall back into the blanket, the black tulips and the silver grass fluttering around us as we kissed.
Our hands roamed over one another’s bodies as we tested the new limits of our relationship. Father will not be happy, I thought. Not just in the dream state, but the current me, the one who knew this was wrong.
Grace pulled back slightly, looking down at me with a slightly perplexed expression on her face, much more confused than she’d actually been that day.
“Is this a dream?” she asked. She’d asked the same thing then, too, but it’d been an easy question to answer. None of this had been a dream then. It was just her and me, and the love growing between us, stronger and more potent with each second.
Now? It was nothing but a long-forgotten memory. Well, forgotten by Graceley maybe during her stints with the tonic, but not me. Never me.
If I answered her yes now, she might take control of the dream and wake herself up.
Or leave me.
I hesitated, and she pressed her mouth to mine. My arms held her close as I breathed in her natural scent, the wet dirt and magic smell of witch mixed with the gentle jasmine and lilac scent that was Graceley’s signature.
“Yes, Everen Sinnes, it’s a dream,” I replied, the melancholic words sliding from the tip of my tongue like poison. Everen Sinnes. I shouldn’t have called her that, but I did it anyway. I just wanted her to kiss me again, but I reached between us and put my fingers to her lips. “Since it is, do you want to change anything about this moment? It’s yours to command.”
Graceley—because despite this being a memory, she was ultimately in charge of everything that happened here—shook her head and pushed my hand away.
“Nothing,” she said, and that admission just made me hurt more.
Because, by the end of all this, I would hurt her in an unforgivable and entirely unacceptable way.
“Then kiss me again,” I commanded, and she did, pressing her hot mouth to mine, tasting me, savoring my lower lip by taking it in her teeth and tugging on it. I dug my fingers into her hair, a gesture that worked her up in more ways than one.
The aphrodisiac in my skin was being massaged into her scalp as she experimented on me, kissing and licking and biting, finding herself in that moment. Finding herself with me. Grace straddled my lap, working her hips in a natural rhythm that I wasn’t sure she was fully aware of. She was following what felt natural to her body, to mine.
Her thumbs flicked my nipples, and I let out a sharp hiss of surprise.
The Graceley from back then had definitely not done that; this was the new Graceley.
Sexually speaking—well in all aspects really—she was infinitely more confident in herself now than she had been at age sixteen. By the time I forced us to go our separate ways, she was worse off than she’d been when I met her. I’d done that. I’d taken a fledging witch, a vibrant young woman, and I’d nearly broken her.
All the things we could’ve been, I thought, aching and bleeding on the inside, kissing on the outside.
I rolled us over and rucked Grace’s dress up, grinding my hips against the plain white cotton of her panties. She was dressed simply, hoping for a dip in the lake behind the waterfall. In Hael, one didn’t simply swim; it was a process. The simple dress and panties that Grace was wearing would keep her safe from minor demons that might live in and around the water.
Even though back then I’d been cautious not to rip them, the current me could not possibly care any less. I tore the underwear off and tossed them aside; one of the black tulips snatched the fabric out of midair and ate it.
