Delicious, this other her insisted.
And the other her was right. She could feel that exact thing between her own legs, the moment she visualized something solewd. It made her moan, and he didn’t make her regret it. “For that reason, but also so he could drink in all of that beautiful cunt,” he said, and for the first time she let herself think:
The way he curls his tongue around that word is electrifying.
It urged her on, even as she blushed anew at what came next.
“I spread my legs to make sure he could.”
“Then his reaction—”
“He fell on me like a starving man.”
“But you liked it. You like that.”
“God, I loved it. I loved him. All I want is to feel him again,” she said, all of her knowing that she had been brought to that point by everything they had just shared. By his words, by her words, by the images in her head, like photos from a book she had never read.
Yet still, the way it made her feel to say the wordlove.
To be so full of desire for someone who didn’t exist.
Where did this come from?she wanted to cry out.
But before she could, she felt him step away. Cold air hit wherehis inexplicable warmth had been, hard enough that she knew he had almost touched her. She knew that he had come so close.
And now he was back to where he had been.
She opened her eyes to see him with his hand near his wand, instead of on her.
“Good. Now defend yourself,” he said, as he went for it. But in truth, he didn’t even get close. Her hands seem to come up of their own accord, already so full of blazing bright magic she couldn’t see through it to him. All she knew is where he was, and she aimed true.
There was an almighty crash, and when the dust settled, the only thing she could see was a hole in the stage. Dust billowing up, the splintering of wood. Followed by a hand on the edge of that damage she’d done, as he levered himself back out of it.
“There, you see,” he said, as he shook debris out of his hair. “Once you make the connection, everything else is easy.”
Chapter Twenty
She didn’t know what to make of what had happened. It had felt like a dream—like before, when she had felt Lilibet’s ghostly hand on her shoulder. Only so much more intense and vivid that it had almost seemed as if she was living it. She was still mired in it days later, and to the point where she could hardly concentrate.
All she could think about was the kiss from someone safer than him. The feel of her skirt sliding over her thighs. The freedom of doing something so lewd and knowing it would be accepted. And then that glorious sensation of someone’s mouth on her. Soft and greedy, all at the same time. Good, good, good, and so much so that she found herself waking, with her hand between her legs.
She almost let herself go further.
And she only stopped when she realized something, in a great rush:
Her back wasn’t on the bed, somehow.
It was on something harder. More solid. Like the stone of that table he’d put her on, it felt like, and she panicked a little. She tried to push herself up, thinking she’d sleepwalked to a dangerous place. But once she had, she could see where she actually was.
That was her bed, down there.
Her bed wasbeneathher. Thefloorwas beneath her. She couldsee her shoes on the rug by the dresser, and the top of her chest of drawers, and her stack of books on her windowsill. Like everything had turned upside down.
Though of course she knew it hadn’t.
Shehad done this. She had put herself on the ceiling, in the night, using magic she had barely been able to access before. It flowed through her now, so strongly that she had actually drifted up there. She had flown somehow. She had done what she had only looked up to the sky and dreamed about, before.
And more, there was more.
