The vines stilled, their exquisite torment cut short. His mouth lifted from her skin. He pulled back like he was dragging himself out of quicksand, face twisted in conflict, and pushed upright. His gaze flicked toward the unmoving Thornfather in the shadows.
Goldie blinked, the haze of desire so thick it clogged her thoughts. Her skin still crackled with hypersensitivity, her pulse throbbed in her throat, and the ache between her legs was a living thing, sharp and unrelenting. She sat up slowly, her limbs trembling with the effort.
“Oh. Right. The ritual. I guess…” She forced a weak grin. “Haven’t we already begun?”
Splice’s answering smile was faint, tired, aching with restraint. He shook his head. “Sadly, not in the way that matters.”
The hunger in his gaze dimmed into something heavier and quieter. “I’ve never performed a ritual for this situation,” he confessed. “You and I will have to… feel our way through it.”
Definitely want to be feeling my way through this.Goldie swallowed hard, trying to herd her horny brain back into something resembling order.
“Okay,” she whispered, the word catching in her throat. “But you have to tell me if I’m doing it wrong. I’m just a hedge-witch, Splice, not some… I don’t know, dryad priestess. And you’d better not be comparing me to any of your past ritual partners?—”
“Marigold,” he interrupted, his voice impossibly gentle. “Beautiful one. Please.”
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers. The simple contact snapped her back into herself, grounding her even as her body still trembled with wanting. A soft, almost pained chuckle rumbled through his chest, vibrating into her.
“You don’t need to sparkle your way through this,” he whispered. “You are perfect, Goldie. More than enough.”
The words struck deep, silencing the frantic chatter in her skull. Her breath shuddered out, shaky but steadier, and she let her eyes fall shut for a moment. Until instinctively, she lowered one hand to the mossy floor. Splice mirrored her, their palms flattening against the green, and together, they reached for the god slumbering beside them.
Her fingers brushed the Thornfather’s gnarled, bark-covered shoulder; Splice’s hand settled near his hip. A faint coil of whisper stirred in her chest, as if the Grove Core was awakening within and it, too, was watching.
Desire still throbbed within her, but when she opened her mouth, what came out was not a moan. Words spilled unbidden from her lips, instinctual and heavy and certain.
“Great Thornfather, root of the forest, hear the voice of the soil that sings your name. Feel the pulse of the life we share with you.”
A low hum rippled through the moss, and the leaves on the Thornfather’s brow trembled as though stirred by a hiddenbreeze. Splice’s vines unfurled from his wrist, stretching across the god’s withered skin. Where they touched, a soft light pulsed, green-gold and alive.
“Green be deep,” Splice intoned, his voice a low vibration that sank into the earth, then climbed back up through Goldie’s spine. “Green be still.”
Her breath caught. She couldfeelthe words as he spoke them, sliding through her like the first thrust of something thick and inexorable. Her nipples tightened against her shirt and her body pulsed with treacherous, hungry need even as ritual light swelled around them.
Splice looked over at her, and in the quiet glow of his eyes, she saw a melding of magic and desperate hunger.
“Blossom,” he murmured, the word a command, not a prayer. He lifted his hand from the ground and cupped it against the swell of her breast.
Through the thin fabric of her shirt, she felt his heat scorch her skin, and a sharp, involuntary gasp escaped her lips.
“Fruit,” he whispered, and his other hand moved, lifting from the Thornfather’s skin before sliding down her stomach with agonizing slowness. His fingers brushed the waistband of her leggings before his palm came to rest flat against the mound of her sex.
He applied a firm, knowing pressure, and Goldie felt the slick, hot wetness soak into the fabric, a testament to her body’s shameless answer to his call. A violent shudder wracked her frame, a choked sob of pure pleasure lodging in her throat.
As if in response, the Thornfather stirred. A single, luminous petal on the crown of branches at his brow unfurled.
“Rot,” Splice breathed against her neck as he leaned in, and the word was not about decay, but about the fertile, messy, glorious breaking down that precedes new life.
The hand on her breast moved, his thumb finding her nipple through her shirt and rolling it with devastating precision. The hand at her groin pressed down, rocking against her, and the vines returned. They slid from his body, warm and smooth, slipping beneath her shirt to caress the bare skin of her ribs, her stomach.
“Seed,” she whispered, her voice husky. The word was hers, but the power behind it came from the soil of the Grove Core, from the breath of the building, from the very core of her being.
As she spoke, she drew her hand from the Thornfather and slid her hand down Splice’s chest until her fingers boldly traced the thick, hard ridge straining the front of his trousers.
A raw, guttural sound tore from Splice’s throat. He pulled her into his lap, his mouth crashing down on hers with ravenous, desperate hunger. His tongue plundered her mouth, tasting her, owning her, and she met his ferocity with her own.
Her hands fisted in his shirt, breath ragged. “Take this off. I need?—”
“Do it,” Splice growled, eyes dark and blazing.
