Written

by Kathryn Moon

  My hips writhed against his and he was stiff and heavy against me. His palms were spread beneath my shoulder blades and he slid down, teeth scraping at my collarbone and releasing a low note that reverberated down between my legs. I cried out and clasped the back of his neck trying to hold him there, to keep the vibration in my bones steady. But he travelled again, soft kisses over my chest as he held a quiet, sweet tone.

  “Kisses shouldn’t be rushed,” he said.

  He kissed the gap between my breasts, cheek rubbing against me and stubble snagging at my slip. I caught my breath for the half beat between one note and the next.

  When his lips wrapped around a silk covered nipple I sang with him, off key and broken but it did nothing to stop the tremor running through me. Aiden grinned, pulling away and looking up from my chest with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  “That’s cheating,” I said, voice low.

  “I warned you I’d try to influence you in our favor,” he said and then he blew softly on the wet spot he left over my slip.

  I shivered, tilting my head back to hide my face. Aiden traced the low collar of my slip with his tongue and then sucked on the unattended breast. I held him to me as he started to hum again and I groaned in chorus. He held himself off me then, giving me nothing to seek any badly needed friction from. But every tug of his mouth around my pebbling nipple was an echoing tug inside of me. He reached around a hand to my front, fingers gently pinching in tandem with his mouth. The song burrowing in my skin was turning high and ringing through me, carrying out of my own lips.

  “Please, please,” I whimpered.

  “Patience, darling.” Aiden kept up his work, never really touching below my waist but building up a throbbing beat there all the same. My legs were quaking on the bed as I begged for a release I would have thought was impossible, not with so little stimulation to only my breasts.

  He tugged at my slip and it scraped over my skin, exposing me to his hot breath, tongue lashing over one tender nipple while his thumb swirled over the other. My legs stretched up and knotted around his back, tugging him down to land heavily on me. Aiden growled into my skin and the trilling, wavering tension broke in me, music flooding my ears and spiraling out from my aching core.

  Aiden kissed his way back up, peppering a warm wet path up my chest and neck and across my jaw. His hands stroked at my thighs, holding me in place. I clutched his jaw in my hold and brought him in for a lazy, licking kiss until he was purring into my mouth.

  “S’dinner time,” he murmured, pulling away. And there was no apology for the smug smile on his face, although I couldn’t really blame him.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, reaching up to attend to the buttons of his shirt. My stomach betrayed me with a growl and Aiden laughed.

  “You are, and so am I,” Aiden said, and he kissed me once more. “Also, I don’t want to be interrupted and I suspect if I keep you here too much longer we will be.”

  “You don’t want…” I trailed off biting my lip and righting the collar of my slip, damp fabric sticking on my skin. Aiden raised up and I could see him, stretching at the zipper of his pants.

  “Of course I want you to strip me naked and have your way with me,” Aiden said, grinning and easing the knot of nerves in my stomach. He settled at my side, hand soothing down my hip while the other brushed the loose curls out of my face. “But I’m patient. The part I was most anxious for was knowing you existed. The rest is icing.”

  There was a knock at the bedroom door at that moment and then it was opening, Isaac smirking at the pair of us. He glanced down briefly at my chest, eyes darkening, and then looked at Aiden.

  “Callum’s hunting for you,” he said. “And dinner is ready.”

  I squirmed out of Aiden’s hold and pushed my slip back down my hips, rising from the bed.

  Isaac stayed leaning in the doorway. “I have a robe,” he said to me. “It’ll be more comfortable and no one will mind.”

  I paused at Aiden’s armchair. It would be nice not to have to get dressed again. Isaac shrugged as I thought it over.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  We were leaving Isaac’s bedroom with me wrapped in green velvet when Callum came thundering up the stairs and nearly ran into us.

  “Where’s the portal?” he asked, eyes wide behind his glasses.

  I was about to answer when Isaac gestured to me and asked, “Are you completely blind?”

  Callum rolled his eyes, stepping forward and sweeping an arm around my waist to plant a swift, fierce kiss to my mouth.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, words mumbling into my lips. “Where’s the portal?”

  Isaac made an exhausted sound and started down the stairs as I laughed and kissed Callum again. “Aiden’s bedroom door,” I told him as he released me.

  “You have ten minutes to be downstairs or you forfeit your right to second helpings,” Isaac called from a flight down.

  I stood at the top of the stairs for a beat, watching Callum race to the door and debated joining him. But I was starving and Aiden was just emerging from his room, looking as rumpled as I’d left him if not more so. And I wanted those second helpings.

  19. Joanna

  Students trickled back into the library as the week went on, suddenly turning up with overdue books as if it might be a consolation to those of us working. Construction continued on the front desk, as well as the glass roof, and for the first time since my arrival the library was loud with activity. Isaac walked me to work before his classes. Callum brought me lunch and did research in the staff section. Aiden appeared at the end of my shift with some excuse for me to return back to the house with him. He had a new piece of music he wanted me to hear. Isaac was trying a new recipe. Callum wanted to test different writing utensils with my magic. I pretended not to see through the orchestration.

  It all felt very regular. Or it did in the moments where I made sure to not look toward the woods that had gone gray. Even the sky hanging over the tops of the trees had lost its color. And now grocers were keeping smaller stocks of food because the fresh would turn to rot overnight.

  So I had bought a bag of apples and commandeered the kitchen from Isaac to bake them in dark sugar and whiskey for dessert. We had gorged ourselves on them before they went to waste. And then Callum had disappeared up into his office. Like he did every night.

  Just like every night after falling asleep with Isaac and sometimes Aiden, I would wake up and find Callum curved against my back, an arm wrapped possessively around my stomach.

  “Do you want to see your room tonight?” Isaac asked. He had dragged an armchair over from the corner of the front room when I’d settled in the window seat with a book. And while I knew he’d pulled out his sketchbook, it was easy to ignore the scratches of a pencil on paper in favor of studying runes and sigils.

  “Sick of me stealing your pillow?” I asked in answer, flipping a page but not seeing it.

  The room, the guest room as Aiden had first called it, came up often. And always referred to as ‘your room’ like there was a permanent place for me here. Everything they said to me offered that, and every time it was offered I felt a swell of panic. That this was a dream that could be snatched away. That they would realize their mistake in bringing me into their fold.

  I glanced over at Isaac and he was looking away, a frown on his mouth and a guarded tightness around his eyes. Just take the stupid room, I thought to myself. But there wasn’t a room in this house I hadn’t loved upon finding it, and I knew that would be the case now. Just another piece of the dream to lose later.

  “I need to go find Callum,” I said, which was true but it had been just as true days ago. Now was only convenient because I needed the escape.

  Isaac nodded but didn’t look back. I rose and crossed to the doorway and he caught my hand on the way, linking our fingers and holding me there.

  “When you’re ready,” he said, meeting my eyes with something fierce and tender in his, “We can take m
y damn pillow with us.”

  He smiled a little and I dove down for a kiss to thank him for his patience. He held me there for a long, sweet, stretch and I was practically ready to accept the room and the coven when he released me.

  “Good luck with him,” he said, kissing once more at my cheek.

  I blinked and then remembered. Callum. I had used him as my excuse to break the tension and now I suppose I had to follow through. It was overdue anyway.

  I took the stairs up to the third floor, hearing Aiden practicing from his studio on the second. Callum was squinting down at a text by the dying sunlight from his office window. A pile of books on the floor surrounded his desk chair like a protective wall.

  “You need a lamp,” I said.

  He glanced over his shoulder at me, a furrow on his brow easing with his smile. “Write me one.”

  I pulled the chalk—now kept in a little cigarette case Aiden had found for me—from my pocket and wrote on the edge of a bookshelf. Callum has a lamp on his home desk.

  “Ohhh not that,” Callum said, and he pushed his chair away from his desk. It was gaudy, a more elaborate version of the crystal one in Aiden’s bedroom. “Anyway there’s nowhere for it to plug into.”

  It is always lit. And so it was. Callum’s face went wide with surprise.

  “You should have been more specific to your tastes,” I said.

  “You could fix it with a word,” he muttered, prodding at one of the hanging crystals and sending prisms of light dancing over the books around us.

  “I’m thinking I’ll spend next week at my own house,” I said, pretending to study the books on the shelves.

  “What? Why?” Callum asked, voice sharp. “What if we…need you?”

  “For what?” I asked, laughing. I pulled a small paper bound text on defensive glamouring and disguise from the shelf and flipped aimlessly through.

  He was quiet and then I heard him pushing books aside. “Aiden or Isaac will want to stay close-”

  “Aiden or Isaac, but not you?” I asked, turning on my heel to face him.

  He winced and raked his hand through his hair. “No, of course I-but-”

  I took pity on him and abandoned the teasing offense. “Just say it, Callum.”

  He froze and swallowed and his fingers swept through his hair again, tangling at the ends. He sighed and dropped his arm. “I’d like it if you stayed with us as long as we’re dealing with this threat. Or…or with Gwen and her coven. If you’d prefer. As long as I know you’re safe.”

  The suggestion of staying with Gwen caught me by surprise, I’d give him that. I’d expected more insistence and less…genuine worry.

  “I’d rather stay here,” I said, smiling.

  His shoulders dropped with relief. “You mean that?”

  “I do, I was just sick of the play acting, Callum. You can be honest with me, I promise not to argue for the sake of it,” I said.

  I had meant to say more but the words were lost as Callum surrounded me, arms clutching and lips hard against mine. It was an urgent, hungry kiss and in half a breath I was answering it in kind, my fingers clawing at his shoulders. I felt like I was trying to climb him, force our bodies closer, close enough that I could feel his heartbeat against my breast and pounding through my blood. His hands grasped my hips, holding me tight to him and pinned against the shelves.

  “I promise to be better,” he whispered, pulling away just long enough for me to gasp. I wanted to answer him, to tell him I didn’t need better, that he could simply be less skittish around me.

  But he wasn’t skittish now. He was consuming, his tongue stroking against mine, hands traveling, gathering up my skirt so my legs could cling around his waist. I severed the kiss as my nose smashed against his glasses and broke away laughing, pulling them off his nose. Callum barely noticed, intent on sucking kisses along my jaw. His hips jerked between us, fingers digging into the soft underside of my thighs and the glasses went clattering to the floor. There was too much fabric between us and with every aching groan from Callum I needed him more. I wanted to soothe him as much as I wanted to satisfy myself.

  “Put me down,” I rasped and Callum stepped back so fast I nearly fell to the floor.

  “I’m sorr-” he started.

  “Don’t you dare say it,” I said, raising a finger in in his face. I dropped my skirt to the floor and pulled my shirt over my head too fast, a button popping and dinging against a book.

  Callum stared dumbly at me for a moment and I smiled shakily back, reaching out and plucking his vest buttons loose. There was a sudden hot shimmer and then Callum was bare and I had a second to see him, the long narrow lean of him, muscles corded, and the tangle of scars down his right hip before I was back in his hold. I swallowed his groan; tangling my hands between us to pull my slip over my head. And then he covered my cry as his fingers slid into my panties, fondling at my skin, dipping inside of me and spreading the wetness he found here. I pushed the last scrap of clothing between us off my hips and Callum lifted me from the floor.

  I grabbed the shelf above me for balance, laughing and kicking one leg free of my underwear to brace it against a stack of books. Callum hitched my other leg over his hips, fingers guiding himself into place and then he filled me with one swift stroke. I cried out at the stretch, and the suddenness. But it brought with it an immediate flutter of relief, like I’d been waiting hours for him instead of minutes. I felt full to bursting, Callum fitting so deeply, pressing into places I’d never found before.

  “Oh gods, Jo-Joanna,” he muttered, the words were winded. His lips snagged over my earlobe, breath puffing against my skin.

  One of my heels was pressed to his ass, holding him still inside me.

  “I didn’t mean to rush,” he said, a whine at the back of his throat and I nuzzled into his cheek.

  “I want you to,” I said, and I squeezed experimentally around him. His mouth fell open with his moan, and he stirred, hips twitching. “Please, Callum,” I said. I kissed his cheek as his hands braced me. My foot stroked down the back of his thigh and I rolled my hips into his, our breaths catching.

  His belly quivered against mine, all the tension in his body built up. And then his lips latched onto mine like an anchor and he drank my ragged cry as he gave in, drawing back and surging in again. It was a harsh, heavy rhythm, our bodies slapping noisily together and Callum’s hands tight enough on me to leave fingertip bruises. But every push threw stars into my eyes and a hot flutter mounting in my belly.

  Books rattled on the shelf behind me and I pulled away from his mouth to giggle and gasp, a moan falling free with every hitch of his hips into mine. Callum’s forehead was knotted, mouth open and he looked so desperate and lost. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders, tangling my fingers into hair at the back of his neck.

  “You feel so good,” I said, kissing over his brow.

  He grunted into my neck, hips snapping. It was a deep, full pleasure but not the kind that would send me over the edge. Still, I didn’t want him to stop. Having Callum turning needy and wild in my arms was a heady enough feeling on its own. As his thrusts became more urgent and the groan held tight behind his teeth turned into an aching, begging sound I only wanted more. I raised my legs higher around his hips and squeezed him with every buck and twist, watching with hungry eyes as his back arched and his cries tore free.

  “Joanna,” he gasped, gaze fixing to mine. “Joanna- I want-”

  “I want to watch you,” I said softly, nails scratching into his hair and thighs clasping around his hips. “You’re beautiful.”

  He cursed and the bookshelf dug into my back as his even thrusts turned erratic and sharp. My hand above slipped, bringing two smaller books crashing down to the floor. I was grinning as Callum was grunting, face pressed to my neck as there was a warm, slippery feeling bursting inside of me. His arms twisted up around my back like a fierce hug and for a long moment I could feel his legs shaking as he leaned into me, with soft little thrusts. Then he st
raightened, face leaning up to glare at me, and he pulled us away from the bookshelf, a few more texts tumbling down.