Never Been Witched

by BLAIR, ANNETTE

  No doubt about it, Morgan’s how-to books dominated his collection, five to one, and his fiction tastes varied widely, revealing hidden depths.

  One stack of books, on a bottom shelf in a far corner, however, caught her eye simply because they’d been placed binding side in and shoved much farther back than the rest. She took them out, read their spines, and came face-to-face with a possible explanation for the priestly garb she’d found beneath the stairs.

  This particular set of how-to books were about sex, mostly about how to keep a woman happy in bed by giving her multiple and long-lasting orgasms. Go, Morgan. The book about how a man should cultivate this skill through practice looked dog-eared and well-read. Hmm. A man who practiced his staying power. Destiny grinned while her body heated deliciously. She shivered.

  In a clerical tome, which outnumbered his sex books—another clue—she searched for a picture of the priestly garb she’d found and finally identified the item. “Cassock: close-fitting, ankle-length garment worn by the clergy in the Roman Catholic church.” The picture looked the same: black, long sleeves, buttons down the front. A stiff white band centered the thin, black, stand-up collar.

  In Morgan’s makeshift art studio, Destiny began to paint a picture of a male version of Meggie: Morgan wearing a cassock as a boy, a bit, but not much older than Meggie had been when she died.

  How could she see Morgan wearing a cassock at such a young age, when she usually saw the future, not the past? She continued painting, hoping to see more of his past, of his and Meggie’s pasts together, but those visions eluded her.

  She heard a heavy step on the sloped plank path from the marsh toward the lighthouse—sloped, because the lighthouse sat on an oval stone base about sixty feet around and twelve feet deep, according to Horace, three-quarters on marshland, hence the plank, and one-quarter extending beyond the natural beach into the sea.

  In case it was Morgan, Destiny left the painting in an empty drawer of an old bureau in the studio and scooted into the bedroom, hoping she would look like she’d been asleep for a while when he came up.

  If he came up.

  He poked around downstairs, and when she finally heard the creak of the stairs, she closed her eyes.

  He came in and stopped next to her side of the bed. She heard him breathing. Difficult to keep your eyes closed and pretend to sleep when the person you were playing possum for stood watching you.

  She swallowed the hitch in her breathing as he traced her silver chain down to the butterfly between her breasts, around its filigreed wings, and back up to her nape. The butterfly, her symbol for fate, destiny—for coming out of one’s cocoon—seemed to have a strange effect on Morgan, as if he was shedding his inhibitions at this very moment.

  When he stopped, she might have cried out, if she wasn’t trying so hard to let him think she slept to allow him to be himself. He went to the foot of the bed, flipped the blanket off her feet—she peeked; she couldn’t help it—and he stooped down to examine the butterfly tattoo on her ankle. He traced that, too, and she closed her eyes to let the wonder of his touch radiate through her.

  When his hand traced higher, and higher still, keeping her breathing steady became a problem. His finger slid up along the side of her knee, rising toward—

  Shocked, she squeaked, and sat up. “Where were you going with that finger?”

  “The lure of the unknown,” he said. “I wanted to see how far you’d let me go. I know you just came to bed. I sat outside on one of the stone benches watching you paint until a short while ago. For a psychic, you sure are dense about being watched.”

  For a sexual being, he sure was dense about taking up the practice.

  He’d been watching her. Maybe she got such a good vision of him, because he was as tuned into her as she was to him, though she wouldn’t tell him so. He’d probably block her the way he blocked what he was supposed to remember, according to Meggie.

  Destiny raised herself on an elbow. “I pretended to sleep because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable if you didn’t want to talk. I was giving you an out.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take the out. What does your bed shirt say?” He took his own shirt off.

  Nice chest. She could usually see a part of it beneath the open shirts he liked to wear, but she liked seeing the whole thing. Touchable. “Blonde and Bitchin’, my shirt says.”

  He lowered the blanket to her waist to double-check. “Not so long ago, I would have thought it should say Blonde and Bitchy, but I’ve revised my initial impression. And your panties? What do they say?”

  “Why don’t you just pull my blanket off entirely, and you can read my ass yourself?”

  He took her up on her offer, and she rolled to her side to give him a peek. “Bite Me,” he read. “Does that mean your ass is none of my business, or is it a delightful invitation for me to nibble on that fine portion of your anatomy?” He palmed her bottom and primed her at the same time.

  “Bummer,” she said. “I interpreted it as an insult, not an invitation.”

  He retrieved his hand and went to his side of the bed, so she could no longer see him. “Too bad,” he said, dropping his jeans. She heard them hit the floor. Then his shoes landed, one by one, and he lay in the bed beside her, the walls of Jericho keeping her from seeing any visible evidence that he’d be inclined to accept an ass-nibbling invitation.

  “Are you going to rhyme us another good night prayer?” he asked.

  “Sniffling sneezeweed, have you come a long way. You’re dense, though. Very dense.”

  “He sees more than I think

  And wants more than he’ll say.

  I see more than I say

  And want more than he’ll give.

  “When it comes to sex,

  Tenderness beats skill.

  Hands ’neath the curtain

  Are a sign of goodwill.”

  Half a beat, and his hand met hers beneath the curtain. He held tight. “Do you mean what I think you do?” he asked.

  “My spells are my prayers. You were right about that. And this one is open to interpretation. Some are not, but this one is.”

  “Thank you.” A minute later, his breathing evened out in sleep.

  He’d hardly slept the night before, but sweet sassafras tea, he’d left her wanting.

  She didn’t know what he’d thanked her for, the spell or her offer to give him sex lessons—in the event she correctly understood his need, and he caught her less-than-subtle offer. Everything about him seemed to be a matter of psychic speculation and as open to interpretation as her spell.

  Closing her eyes while aching for him and holding his hand, however, opened a window in her mind to his past—so odd when she normally saw the future, though she and her sisters each carried a bit of the others’ gifts.

  She might need to glimpse Morgan’s past to help him remember it, so he could move on to his future, her area of psychic expertise.

  With any psychic gift, linked thoughts, and especially linked hands, or the sense of touch, strengthened vision. Him touching her in the bed, earlier, might have dialed up her vision. It had certainly dialed up her desire.

  She saw him wearing his cassock, a boy, a minute or so older than Meggie, kneeling in the grass, tracing her name and date of birth chiseled into a huge pink granite gravestone—topped by an angel lacking Buffy’s features, though similar in stature—towering over the cemetery.

  Morgan the boy doubled over and sobbed, guilt welling up in him, in Destiny, choking them both, until her own racking sobs overwhelmed her.

  She found herself caught up in Morgan’s arms. Him, comforting her, rocking her, kissing her brow, offering solace when he had suffered so deeply. “What is it?” he asked. “Des, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I should have told them what I saw,” she sobbed against his strong and sturdy chest. “She’d be alive if I told. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  Chapter Twelve

  DESTINY felt Morgan go still. “Who’d be alive?
Who, Destiny?”

  “I—” She opened her eyes. “Morgan? I don’t know who. I was lost in a mist. Time had shifted, and you were—”

  “You,” he corrected too quickly, “were having a nightmare.” He kissed her brow, the walls of Jericho behind his back. “Are you all right? Do you want a glass of water?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Wanna push me in the ocean again? Would that make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” she said, because she knew he wanted her mind away from her dream. Or her vision of the past?

  The relief in his easing grasp and the slowing beat of his heart confirmed as much. “Okay if I let you go now?” he asked.

  Destiny wanted to say no, but after the books she saw, she sensed that, when it came to intimacy, Morgan needed to make the first move.

  “Yes, you can let me go now, if you want to. I’m fine, thank you. It’s pink granite gravestones that give me the creeps.”

  His muscles beneath her hands became taut again. He let her go and returned to the opposite side of their wall, creaking the springs and mumbling beneath his breath about pink granite angels and walls he didn’t want toppled.

  Tired as well from the short night they’d had last night, Destiny felt herself nodding off. She slept fitfully, exhausted, but not in a good way, with dreams or visions skipping in and out of her mind, giving her incomplete peeks into the sequence of events that had brought her here. She saw twins and a fanatical uncle, the priest who baptized them.

  She woke with a gasp. A clue, maybe. Unlikely. Possibly.

  She changed positions, kicked off the blankets, and woke again, this time with one of Morgan’s hands cupping her breast. Loving the tactile experience, her nipple growing into his palm, she closed her eyes.

  The next time she woke, she came wide-awake, because they were snuggled crotch to bottom, with nothing but the walls of Jericho, her Bite Me underwear, and maybe a pair of his red silk boxers between them.

  Dawn hadn’t quite made an appearance as she felt herself being poked and spooned by an aroused male. This was real. This was Morgan making the first move, if he was awake, and even if he wasn’t.

  “Gee, who could that be?” she whispered. “I like.”

  Morgan didn’t answer.

  Destiny wiggled her butt to test his cock; yes, his rigidity and its resting place beneath her bottom gave the impression of length, or perhaps that was witchful thinking.

  Morgan groaned at her movement, but asleep or awake? Who cared? She wallowed in her power and gave his fine, firm dick the wiggling run of its randy life.

  Morgan moaned and changed position. He must be awake. No sleeping male would move away from that kind of pressure on his boner. A sleeping man would instinctively move toward it.

  She shouldn’t be so proud of herself for getting him hard, because she was as ready and willing as him, with no relief in sight. And he should at least call her a tease. Something. “You wanna relieve that ache?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he was embarrassed. Hesitant. “Tenderness means more than skill,” she repeated, and still he didn’t move.

  “Fine, but you should know that I’m hot, and it’s your fault.” Destiny huffed and tried to get comfortable, all but throwing her frustrated body into an assortment of positions, mostly to annoy him, until she saw his leg on her side of the bed like an escaped refugee beneath their blanket wall.

  Hot damn. This she could work with.

  She threw a leg over his, pushed her hot, flowering mound against his thigh, raised her knee, and let it ride his pulsing boner, barely northwest of the blanket border.

  Comfortable for the first time since Morgan had come to bed, Destiny sighed and drifted in ecstasy as he slipped a hand down her back and into her panties to cop a feel and cup her. She did the same, a hand beneath his boxers, found his buns, as soft as a baby’s cheek, but she did a bit more exploring than he’d dared.

  She cupped and palmed every inch of his perfect butt cheeks, then she stroked him between his legs all the way to the root of his desire.

  Once she found that delicious spot, she rubbed it, just there at the root, no higher, in small circles, then up and down the slightest bit, until he moaned again and splayed his hand to cup her butt tighter, pulling her moist mound against his leg, pushing her knee tighter against his burgeoning sex.

  She wanted to come. He wanted to come. And they were both too wise to yank down that freaking blanket. Evidently, he wasn’t emotionally ready to take that step. She could respect that. But physically? Oh brother, was he ready.

  She couldn’t help herself. Her need to give overrode her need to get. She rocked against his boner with her knee and matched the rhythm of her hand at the base of it. Yes, he’d learned staying power. What an incredible turn on. But she was in control, and they both knew it. He rode the wave of her manipulation until he began to rock against her mound, and though they couldn’t see each other, she came and didn’t hide her pleasure.

  After she did, he rocked faster, as if he wanted her to come again, so she obliged. Amazing with a blanket between them, but maybe that’s how he needed it to be for now.

  She closed her thumb and forefinger around the base of him, squeezed, released, squeezed, and slid her hand upward, not far, but he moaned. She took it slow and did it again. He moaned again. She came again. This might be the best sex she’d ever had. Kinky. Nearly blindfolded. No kissing. Just the glorious, mysterious basics.

  He must have felt the wetness of her come on his leg, because he moved as if he’d been challenged and rode her so she came again.

  Destiny sped her movements, closed two fingers around his base, sliding, sliding, three fingers, her whole fist, picked up speed, and she soared one last outrageous time. At the same moment, something warm hit her knee, her leg. As he groaned his pleasure, his arms tightened around her, and his brow settled against hers, with only the blanket wall between them.

  Destiny drifted into sated sleep and opened her eyes to full light, glad to be alone, warmed by her memories, and on fire over her brazenness. She hoped the experience had the same exacerbating effect on Morgan’s libido as it did on hers.

  Hot, ready, and distracted, Destiny found that preparing to dress took more thought than usual. She planned her wardrobe before showering. She didn’t have a T-shirt based on Meggie’s information about Morgan, so she decided to make one to fit the bill. Then she decided to take it a step further. Easier said than done. Her clothes at the base of the tower’s circular stairs didn’t give her a lot of choices. Most were still wet though no longer dripping. And the rest? Yech.

  Wrinkled and stiff from salt water, but dry, her peach Instigator T-shirt would work. How appropriate, since at this moment, she embraced instigation. Destiny turned the shirt inside out and went to their makeshift art studio for her acrylic paints.

  She was glad he said he wasn’t a priest, because seducing a priest would be bad karma. Never mind that she’d kept picturing him wearing the cassock; he’d denied it. So there.

  She’d wear her shirt without a bra—his lucky day—so she put it on and painted a hot pink pastel heart around each of her hard nipples.

  Hard from remembering and anticipating more of same.

  Carefully, so as not to smudge the paint, she raised the shirt over her head and flattened it on Morgan’s drawing board. With pastels and concentration, she painted, Cassock Wearers Welcome, above the hearts, added an I between the hearts, then Dare You beneath that.

  Okay, so subtlety didn’t enter into this, but sexually speaking, Morgan seemed as thick as a California red-wood, and according to Meggie, he hated to turn down a dare.

  Destiny mentally rubbed her hands with wicked glee, cackling like a cartoon witch, except that the apple she offered was hot and wet, free of poison, full of sparks, and aching for a sweet, tasty nibble.

  She figured that wearing a suggestive shirt wasn’t quite like making the first sexual move. It was like opening the door so that Morgan migh
t feel comfortable stepping inside to make his move—his first true move.

  Down in the kitchen, near the lingering, coffee-making warmth of the prairie cookstove, she spotted the corner of a picture frame on the top shelf of the Hoosier cabinet, a perfect spot to leave her shirt, paint side up, to dry.

  By the time she’d showered, wrapped a towel around herself, and gathered the mums, Chinese lanterns, and silver dollars she found in the backyard, her seductive shirt was done to a T.

  Destiny loved working with acrylics, especially on fabric, because the paint dried quick as a wink. A tease like her needed a quick wink now and again.

  After she dressed and applied her makeup, she put on the woven straw hat she’d bought to help fight breast cancer, took a container of yogurt from the ancient fridge, mixed in a handful of frozen cranberries and a teaspoon of flaxseed, grabbed a spoon, and went outside.

  She found Morgan whistling a Sousa march as he painted the molding that formed squares on the front door, Caramello perched beside him on a wooden bench, talking up a storm.

  “Good, gorgeous morning,” Destiny said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Good morning, gorgeous,” Morgan said, turning a fine beet red as he leaned a hand on the paint can cover, paint side up, in an effort to appear nonchalant.

  Once his indifference was blown, and he’d wiped his hand, he cupped her nape, pulled her close, lowered his lips to hers, and kissed her like she’d never been kissed in her life. His way of acknowledging the night before with thanks, she imagined. Fine with her. For a man with his limited sexual experience, ’nuff said.

  Regaining his bearings—not an easy task, judging by his fumbling—he noticed the message on her shirt for the first time, and gave it a double take, an intrigued spark entering his eyes. “Cassock wearers get their own statement shirts?”