“No, you aren’t,” he said.
Incredibly, she just gave him a little shrug before heading toward the door. He grabbed her arm and pulled her close, and immediately the need to kiss her, touch her, fuck her, exploded inside of him.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Yes,” Cece moaned. “Let’s do that.”
With the last of his control, he said, “You can’t go out there. We don’t know how powerful she is.”
Her normally brown eyes had gone a bright green jade, and Briggs could feel her magic feeding off of whatever it was between them. It should have scared him. Instead, he had to battle back the urge to fuck her, to give her what her magic craved.
“Baby, you need to be calm, okay?” He kept his voice low. “You can’t go out there, but I’ll call for reinforcements.”
“We don’t need them,” she said. Her voice turned thick with anger, and she looked him up and down with a smoking hot look of possession that only notched his lust higher. “I’ll make her pay for trying to take what belongs to me.”
“Baby, you said before that your magic isn’t strong enough to fight off another witch or warlock.” It was getting harder to stay calm, not when he had the feeling that if Cece decided to go outside, he wouldn’t be able to stop her.
She looked him up and down again, her gaze lingering on his dick tenting the front of his pants. “You’re right.”
His relief was short-lived when Cece stuck her hand into his pants and gripped his cock. She stroked him roughly, each pull of her hand sending pure pleasure through his body as visions of ancient forests and densely flowered meadows flooded his brain.
“Fuuuuuck,” he moaned, his hips bucking forward when she ran her thumb over the sensitive head. “Cece…”
“If we fuck, my magic will be strong enough.” Cece stroked him firmly. “We should fuck, Briggs.”
“We can’t,” he said.
Her hand tightened exquisitely around his dick, and precum spurted from the tip. “Are you denying me what’s mine?”
“For now,” he said. “I want you to stop, Cece.”
A part of him believed that she wouldn’t, that her magic had taken too strong a hold on her, but she let go of him immediately and stepped back. Disappointment covered her face as she crossed her arms over her torso. “Fine.”
He looked out the window again, studying the witch who still stood motionless beneath the pine tree.
“Well? What’s your plan?” Cece asked, the annoyance clear in her voice.
“We go back upstairs, I grab my phone, and we call Mal,” Briggs said.
She snorted. “They can’t stop her.”
“Maybe not,” Briggs said, but headed toward the stairs anyway. “Come with me, baby.”
To his relief, with one final look at the window, Cece followed him out of the room.
CHAPTER 17
“Everyone sees that the tiny tree witch is glowing, right?” Ronin eyed Cece as she stomped back and forth in the living room.
Bishop pulled on a thick pair of gloves. “Yeah, I see it.”
Mal had answered Briggs’s call on the first ring, and half an hour later, he, Bishop, Hudson, and Ronin were pulling into Cece’s driveway. To Briggs’s surprise, the witch had taken off into the dark woods the second the headlights splashed the trees. Mal had refused to let Ronin and Bishop go after her.
Mal was standing close to the spell-inscribed rock, and he studied it before turning to Cece. “So, you’re positive wearing gloves will protect Bishop from the spell?”
She didn’t answer. She paced between the couch and the doorway, her blonde hair streaming out behind her and her hands in tight fists. A pale green shimmer surrounded her body, and she muttered to herself as she paced.
Mal turned to Briggs, raising one dark eyebrow. Briggs glanced at Hudson, who stood beside him, before taking a step toward her. “Cece, Mal asked you a question.”
