Dom hadn’t moved far from where he was standing in the middle of the room, zoned out toward the other wall.
“Something wrong?” Cocking my head, I took a step toward him to look him in the face.
He shook his head, shaking himself out of whatever was on his mind. His hand moved back up to the front of his hair, tugging on it. My eyes paused there before he spoke. “Just thinking. Nearly nothing bad happened tonight since we were together the whole time.”
He was right. The whole day since I had come home from my fiasco at Kim’s, nothing that had happened besides the casual misstep or messed up turn of the wheel at class, if that could even be counted.
“Besides our lack of talent at ceramics?”
Dom licked his lips and bit down on the bottom one. He really needed to stop doing that. I looked down, away from him and whatever other things he planned on capturing my attention with. Because it was my problem, not his.
“Besides that,” he agreed, though his brow furrowed. “Though you must only be talking about you. I had an emerging gift.”
“You were just the Mud Queen’s prize pupil,” I snarked.
Dom absolutely preened at the false compliment.
“So, you really think this whole thing will just go away in time?”
I gave a shrug and a small smile. “That’s usually how it works. I don’t think I have it in me to cast any generational curses.”
Then again, I hadn’t thought I had it in me to cast a spell of this magnitude at all.
Surprisingly, Dom laughed again. Every time, the sound seemed to shock my nervous system, sending new, delighted flares through me, which I tried to tamp down, unsuccessfully.
“Well, that’s promising at least.”
“But I’m going to figure this out. We’ll figure this out soon enough.”
His eyes were soft, half closed when he nodded. “I know you will. Maybe we’ll have to keep going back to classes. Sheila might be the one who breaks the curse.”
“Think again, big guy. If that’s the case, I’m more likely to throw myself into the river to fix this,” I joked. “I’m pretty sure after tonight, the Mud Queen has it out for me anyway.”
“With that mouth of yours, you did scandalize the poor church ladies on their night out.”
I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t been that bad. Frustrated, but at least I had kept my volume down, unlike him constantly teasing me for it.
“I didn’t realize you were so prudish.”
“Is that what you think?” Dom asked, a canine scraping at the corner of his mouth.
I looked up at it, tracking the movement. Up, because I hadn’t realized until now how close we had become in the past few moments, standing right in front of each other as we spoke, no furniture or anger nestled like a barrier between.
“I’m the prude?”
I flashed him a grin. “If the shoe fits.”
“If you remember correctly,Ifit perfectly inside of you,” Dom whispered. His voice lowered into a rumble. He leaned down toward my ear, as if there were someone else who could be listening. “And there was nothing prudish about the noises I caused you to make right here in this room, begging me to show you just how depraved I could be, even compared to you, little witch.”
My breath hitched as I stared at him, shocked but unable to look away. He was talking about us. He was talking about us and last summer, and there was no tension, only heat from each breath between us. Deep breaths, just like he had taught me to take hours ago so as not to get more overwhelmed.
In and out.
He stared down at me, and in the darkness was the magic I always remembered staring back at me. It sparkled and teased and sought the things that were on the tip of my tongue. It was almost just like I remembered it—him.
“I, uh …” I swallowed. “I remember. I remember everything.”
The two of us stared at each other, so close, no longer searching for words. Whatever was on the tip of my tongue this time, however, disintegrated.
