I never wanted to look away. Not from the first time I had seen him.
He stared back down at me with similarly hooded eyes, half open, with a small smile playing on his lips. We both probably looked disheveled and completely a mess. His shirt hung open and slightly askew to the left. My hair, I could tell, had puffed up to my shoulders from my dip in the river.
“We should probably go back and join the others, huh?” Dom asked.
I blinked a few times, not realizing when we had stopped walking on one side of the house. It was almost to the corner I’d climbed a dozen times—or at least attempted while I had been here. I could’ve just walked right out the front door after deciding to stay with Gertie for a while, but at the time, I hadn’t been used to that kind of ability to be independent. Maybe I could give it another try, for old times’ sake, but Dom was no sly secret I wanted to sneak, like I had done with others.
No, he was always the person I wanted to scream about from the rooftop, even when I had hated him. But I didn’t hate him anymore. I hadn’t hated Dominic Rovnik in a long time—since he had first shown up on my doorstep, about as raving mad as I had been that night I cast out a spell for nothing more than a hope that someone out there might have felt just as awful as I did at that very moment.
“Probably.” But I took a step back and pulled on his shirt until my back was against the side of the house, vines caressing my shoulders and his stomach against my chest as I looked up at him, holding tight.
I wasn’t letting go.
“Are you sure you actually want to do this now?”
“Oh, shut up and kiss me,” I muttered, slamming my mouth against his.
I was reminded all over again exactly why one summer with him nearly a year ago had felt like we had been meant for each other forever. The understanding ached at my core. It bled into my vision.
Instead of letting it liquefy and break however, if there was one thing I had learned in my practices and in my life, it was how to turn anything into something that could ignite. I could burn and burn and burn brighter than anything else in the world, like the fires of hell. With passion. With anger. With confidence and pure, utter force.
I could spark a flame with every sloppy kiss and drifting hand as Dom captured my body against his.
Oh, I could burn.
25
Ididn’t want my mouth to leave his, but when he decided to drag his tongue down my throat to where my neckline of tiny buttons crested over my breasts, I didn’t stop him. I arched back for him to have better access as he ravaged me with his mouth.
I shivered under his touch, and Dom moaned against my skin. When he moved to lick and suck his way down my body, his other hands slipped down. Palms scraped against skin as he gathered up my skirt, shoving it up as high as he could past my waist.
I reached back, holding on to the broken trellis I had broken years ago one fateful night. I never tried to climb back up and through the second-story window again afterward, and I never told anyone else about the broken trellis or the vines that had taken more than a beating. So, it was never fixed. Maybe that, too, was fated because, now, it was the perfect thing to hold on to. It was meant to be right there for me to grasp as Dom touched every spot on me. Hands splayed out as they skimmed up my sides and left prickles of hot want in the creases of my stomach and legs.
He stood back up to kiss my lips once more, hard and deep, while his hand remained between my thighs. I lifted my arms, burying my hands in his hair and grasping at the back of his neck. He was my support now, and I knew if I fell or crumpled, he’d hold me up entirely. He caressed and flickered even more heat until it felt like my insides were turning into a bonfire.
He was a professional at making me want him. It was as if he knew my body better than I did.
Maybe he did. Right now, I was willing to take full advantage of it.
My entire body shook for him, begged for him. The pent-up desire that lingered between us finally took hold, and I whimpered.
Dom bruised my lips with his kisses, biting down on my lip for me to open up wider, making me wild as his fingers played inside of me. He stroked over my center to the apex of my desire. Dom hit all the right spots until I squirmed and writhed for him to hold me up.
“Please, please,” I said into his lips as we kissed.
Dom chuckled and went back to tucking kisses and love behind my ears while his other hand twisted in my hair to keep my eyes directly on him. “Eyes open. Don’t want you to miss anything. Just look at the stars, Sparkles. They’re shining for you.”
I looked up while he took me higher and higher with a single hand. Above us, the sky had long since turned dark, but glimmering light just starting to peek through.
The stars winked.
Neither of us wanted to break apart. I reached between us and slipped my hand right where it needed to be, cupping him in my hand.
I stroked my hand down him like I had the past week before he usually pulled away, telling me we should go slow, take our time. This time, both of us seemed to be on the exact same page. We shook and wanted in wanton fashion. I grinned as he pulled me to him and lowered us to the ground. I still didn’t let go, listening to the rough sounds he made as I brought him closer to the brink.
The grass was soft as he pushed against me, the two of us rubbing against each other the way teenagers did. Only now, no one was stopping us from doing what we wanted and needed. Even out in the open, it was only just us.
It was only ever just the two of us all our lives.
