Our lips brush and I shiver. I feel him breathing me in, hesitating. Savoring. Then his tongue slides along my bottom lip, teeth nipping gently, teasing. I thread a hand into his hair and draw him closer, and he shudders, fingers curling inside me, stroking me so perfectly it’s as if he’d been studying my body for years. I tremble around his touch, and he deepens our kiss, a moan of desire rumbling in his chest.
Status update: Merrick Sutherland’s kiss was worth the torturous wait.
Stars explode behind my eyes, butterflies tumbling through my belly as he savors my mouth, the thrust of his fingers intensifying, faster, faster still, my blood humming with the magic of his devoted touch, and then…
“Yes!” I gasp, chasing the cresting wave inside me. “I’m so close… oh my god, right there. Right?—”
“Not yet.” He draws his fingers out, and I open my eyes and gasp in protest, my body throbbing and needy, teetering on the precipice. I reach for his face, desperate to taste his kiss again, but Merrick is already kissing a fresh path down my belly, shifting over to fit himself between my legs. Gripping my thighs,he spreads me further, gazing up at me like a feral beast lost to his hunger.
“Bloody Hell, woman,” he nearly growls. “I need to taste you.”
The roughness of his voice sends a fresh surge of desire straight through me. My head drops back on the pillow, and Merrick presses his mouth to my center, tongue swirling around my clit, hands tightening on my thighs as he teases and devours, moaning into my flesh.
With every stroke of his tongue, I can feel him unraveling, losing the last of his control as he brings me right back that knife’s edge of pleasure. I lose myself in the vortex of desire—his, mine, all of it spinning around me as he kisses and sucks and?—
“Merrick!” I whisper, and shatter for him all at once, a star-bright burst of pure, explosive pleasure that starts low in my belly and sings through every nerve, every inch of me, mouthing his name over and over, my voice gone, my thighs shuddering beneath his strong grip.
And when he finally relents, when his deliciously bruising hold turns tender once more, and he looks up at me with his red, glistening mouth, his eyes full of wonder and love, I smile and taste the warm, salty tears streaming down my face.
Because for the first time in my life, a man—thisman, this extraordinary, brave, amazing, sexy as sin,verysocially awkward demon—touched me like I meant something to him.
Like I truly mattered.
He holds me afterward, my naked back against his clothed chest, his body curved around me like a protective shell, in no rush to chase this moment to his own passionate end.
And as much as I want him to wreck me in full, to fill and stretch me, to claim me in every way possible…
Mmm. I can’t say I don’t love this part. Being held so completely by someone who asks for nothing in return.
I’ve never felt so cherished. So safe.
“Sleep, Elizabeth,” he whispers, lips brushing my ear. “I’ve got you.”
I nod and let my eyelids flutter, but I can’t keep them closed. They keep drifting back to the Tarot card on my nightstand. The one from my mother’s bedroom.
After several silent moments, I feel him shifting. He lifts my hair, leaves a soft trail of kisses down the back of my neck. “What are you thinking about, darling?”
I sigh, still staring at the Six of Cups. I brought it to my room after my sisters went to bed, hoping to call up another vision of my mother. To figure out what she was showing me earlier. But no luck.
“My mother.” I pluck the card from the nightstand and turn to face him, passing it over. “It popped up tonight while my sisters and I were cleaning her bedroom.”
I tell him about the vision.
“This card appeared the first time you experienced a vision of your mother, yes?”
“Exactly.” I sit up in bed, drawing the sheet up over my bare breasts. “That first time, I saw her doing some kind of spell, and then that creepy demonic hand reached out through the portal. This time, it was something to do with the wall in her bedroom.”
“Do you think they’re connected?”
“It didn’t seem like it at first, but the thing is, this card has to do with memory, with passing things on from one generation to the next. And in both visions, I felt like my mother was trying to show me something important. Something that actually happened to her.”
“It’s possible she crafted a memory keeper spell. If she worked with Tarot magic, it sounds like this would be the perfect card to amplify it.”
“What’s a memory keeper spell?”
“Exactly as it sounds. A recording, of sorts. Meant for someone else to find and interpret. Someone with the gift of energy interpretation.”
“A channel.”
