“I like socks when they’re on you.” He slid his hand higher, over the curve of her calf, up her thigh, all while she watched him, clearly torn between interest and suspicion. “You’re taking me right back to high school, Meriel. What’s your middle name?”
Her brows knitted as she tried to figure out his game. She was out of her league, he was a con man, a master player and she didn’t have a chance against him.
Thank the heavens for it.
“Patrice. Why does this take you back to high school? Did you trick girls into sitting next to you and while complimenting their socks all innocent-like, you slid your hand up their thigh until your fingertips were just a whisper away from their panties? We’re all trained to foil your gender’s tricks, you know. I was a whiz at deflecting wandering hands.”
He sent her what was supposed to be a reassuring smile but she snorted so he knew she was on to him.
“I’m sure I said something like, I know you’re nervous, but I promise you’ll like it. Let me make you feel good, Meriel. I’m not teasing you now. I want that. How can it be wrong for me to want to give you pleasure?”
Her breath hitched when he pressed ever so lightly, the heat and wet of her a siren song. The simplicity of that moment felt so very right. Goddess he wanted her, wanted to possess her in every way imaginable.
Just a bit more and the heated crotch of her panties rested against his outstretched fingertips. Her lips parted on a soft sound of pleasure, a murmur, a groan, a wordless gust of expression that needed no interpretation.
Keeping his eyes on hers, he slowly pulled the silky material back until she was bared to his touch. He had to swallow and count to ten and then twenty-five when all that glorious sweet slickness met his fingers. He’d made her that way.
Her eyes found focus again and she started to speak.
“Ssshhh. Let me. I want to give this to you. We can talk more about your no-sex thing when I’ve made you come.” To underline his point, he stroked from side to side until her gaze went glossy again and she relaxed.
“This is a very bad idea. With your hands on me, it’s hard to think. All I want is more.”
“Then let me give it to you,” he nearly purred it as he touched her. Covetous. She brought out an intense greed in him. It filled him from head to toe.
“Are you listening to me? Sex is a deeply intimate act. Once we bare ourselves to each other like that it’s going to bind us on a basic level. Once it happens, our connection will only get stronger.”
He backed off slightly, not removing his hand entirely, but ceasing to stroke her.
“This is big. I know it and you feel it, but you don’t know enough about it to truly accept it. The way we feel together is intoxicating. Truly. Our chemicals and our magicks are meant to mix and work best as a unit. You don’t have to believe me, but I need to tell you.” She moved his hand back, out of her panties and he acquiesced, but stayed close.
“In a very real way, we’re drunk on each other. I’m certain about this bonding between you and me. I was raised in a world surrounded by people with bond-mates. I know it exists because I see it every day.
“But you didn’t grow up in a clan and you don’t seem to know a lot about us. So while I’m sure of the bond, I want you to be too. If we do this tonight, you’ll wonder one day and that would break my heart.”
At those last words her bottom lip trembled just a bit and he ached to make it better.
That and he had to admit he understood her point.
“You’re going to kill me.” He moved her so that she fit against his side, not willing to not be touching her. “It’s going to be midnight shortly. Does that count as not rushing?”
She frowned at him, but then shook her head with a slow smile. “You’re going to be trouble.”
He laughed, surprised by her.
“I want to fuck you.” He sighed and then that intensity of his focus was back and she shivered. “And just so we’re clear, I will fuck you. But I understand your perspective and it can wait. Not a long time or I’ll explode.”
She snickered and he didn’t resist the urge to play his fingers through her hair. He liked being around her. She was the kind of woman who had her shit together. The calm and hyperefficient type he rarely ended up with and now he wondered why. He dug the self-sufficiency and the desire to ruffle her feathers and see just how wild she could be once he got down a few layers was nearly overwhelming.
“Why don’t you tell me about the bonding?”
“All right, I will.” She sniffed, slightly snotty and he dug it. “I’m going to give you the basics. You may know some of this so cut me some slack.”
He didn’t know much, he admitted inwardly.
“In every clan you’ve got two types of witches. Commonwealth witches, essentially ninety percent of the clan. And council witches.”
“Why the disparity? Why so many of them and so few of you?”
“Us. We’re freaks of nature.”
He narrowed his gaze. “What?”
“Most science points to a genetic anomaly. And a percentage of that percentage is compatible with each other. And when they connect their magick with the ascension — a spell that’ll unite our magick — they rise to an even greater level of power by several orders of magnitude. It’s our function, and our honor to use that extra power to run and protect the clan for the benefit of its members.”
He tended to see that point and yet it bugged him that the few ran the clan for the many. And he said so.
“The wards at Heart of Darkness? I’ve seen only a handful of witches who can work spells like that. You’re already powerful and unique. Now, me? I could have done it and not tapped into the font. Because I’ve been trained. If you choose to ascend, you’d be able to do it ten times over without much of an effort. So it’s not much of a surprise is it? That witches with that sort of power end up running things?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I get it. But it seems undemocratic.”
She shrugged. “It is undemocratic. We’re not a country, we’re a voluntary membership organization whose sole mission is to protect and enrich member witches.”
“Did you get training to rule then?”
“It’s easy to be flip when you don’t know anything. Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve been in training since before I took my first step. I work, on average, nearly eighty hours a week.”
“So do I.”
She raised one brow, very slowly. “And yet, I’m not attacking your life. It’s the other way around.”
“I’m not attacking anything.” Well, he supposed, it might appear that way. “Did you know your whole life you were meant to be full-council? I mean, because your mom is, you are too?”
She let him get away with his statement, but they both knew she did. “Your mother must have been as well as your father. Children born of unions between two full-council witches will be full-council. Mixed couples it’s about a quarter of the time.”
“It’s a wonder you’re not all inbred freaks.” As soon as it came from his mouth he wished he hadn’t said it.
“Such a way with words.”
“I don’t like my life and future dictated by a bunch of shit I had nothing to do with deciding.”
“So don’t.” She shrugged and tugged free and he felt her absence acutely. “I’m not interested in forcing you to do anything, much less be with me. I want you to make that choice of your own free will. You still have it.” She pushed to stand.