Chapter 29

Despite my exhaustion,I couldn’t go to sleep. I’d tried, hoping the routine of a hot shower and brushing my teeth would shut off my brain. Not a chance. So I’d shimmied into another sundress and my overlong knitted socks and returned downstairs to wear the porch floorboards so thin with my pacing they threatened to snap beneath my weight.

Sawyer wouldn’t let me out of his sight—apart from that brief sprint to the hobs’ barn to tell them everything was alright, despite the battle raging in the forest between the shifters—but the midnight air was much too cold for him, especially when he was wounded and missing tufts of fur. He sat inside on the windowsill, eyes half-lidded and drowsy.

I should’ve been wearing a jacket, or at least boots, but no, my roiling emotions kept me warm enough. Plus I’d left the front door open, the heat of the hearth escaping the house and into the November air. I’d wanted a direct line of sight to the hearth flames every time my pacing brought me in front of the doorway, insisting on visual confirmation even if the hearth sent out a warning pulse beneath my feet.

They were still green, for while the fiáin no longer hunted me, its masters sure did.

With my skin hot and my breath short, my nerves continued to fray as I paced and listened to the fight in the forest.

Thoughts were like butterflies in my head, flitting away before I could catch and examine them.

The grimoire. Shari’s quilt. Lewellyn the tracker. Grandmother. The Vanishing Spell. The Hunting Spell. Thistle thorns, and what was that blue zap between Arthur’s chest and my finger all about?

My stomach clenched as I realized my ears were straining to hear a sound they hadn’t heard in many minutes. Arms clasped around me, hugging myself so my thousand thoughts wouldn’t burst me apart, I hurried to the railing to lean over and peer into the darkness.

The moon was only a crescent in the sky, providing hardly any light to see by, but the solar-powered, blown-glass lawn ornaments by the pixie’s birdhouse allowed a little multicolored light to dapple two approaching figures.

Lewellyn and Arthur walked side by side, as if they were old friends.

Both were clothed, though Lewellyn’s were too big for his frame and Arthur was wearing one of his flannel button-ups, his leather jacket slung over his shoulder, the tank top nowhere to be seen. Apparently he’d had a stash of extra clothes somewhere in the woods.

“Why are you wet?” I blurted; the only thing I could think to say. Indeed, little droplets of water still beaded at the ends of their hair.

“Washed off in the vernal pool,” Lewellyn replied. “I know how you like a clean house.”

I slammed my hand against the doorframe, barring his entry before he even left the garden path.

“While you two were having your hissy fit, I’ll have you know the ladies and I took care of the fiáin,” I announced snippily, crossing my arms over my chest. “Yep, sorted that threat out all by ourselves, no superstrong shifters needed.”

The two men had the sense to look ashamed at their behavior, murmuring apologies.

Lewellyn was the first to raise his head, swallowing hard as I continued to scowl. He deserved it, having instigated the whole fiasco. “Good. Well, the big man and I sorted everything out too, so I’ll, uh, find someplace else to sleep tonight.”

My ivy-green glare told him that would be for the best.

Nodding, he turned and sprinted off into the night.

When a porch step squeaked, I wrenched my attention to the approaching Arthur Greenwood. With slow movements, he draped his folded jacket over the railing and finished climbing the few steps to the porch.

“Misty, I…” Words failed him. What could he say, or do, that he hadn’t already?

He’d come to the woods nearly every night to make sure I was safe. To protect the moonflowers, something very dear to both Flora and me.

His hazel eyes pleaded with me, his mouth parted as he held his breath, and every nuance of his body language screamed an apology. Yearned for reconciliation. Was desperate to convince me—

Suddenly my chest felt tight. My knees threatened to buckle as the anger and strength that’d been keeping me upright fled. Before me was my Arthur, the man who’d protected and cared for me, even at the expense of his own heart. I didn’t deserve him, but my heart ached for him.

“Arthur,” I sobbed, stretching a hand out for him as I collapsed.

He was a blur, or maybe it was my tears finally overflowing, but I never hit the ground. That invisible tether that had bound us since our first meeting ratcheted tight. His arms caught me, swept me up against him, and then my fingers found his hair.

They wove into those brown locks and yanked his head down even as I launched onto my toes to crush my mouth against his.

The doorframe cracked as he pinned me against it, but I didn’t feel any pain. I only felt him. His mouth hot and branding, his chest pressed against mine, his hands sliding from my ribs to palm my backside and hoist me up onto his hips.

Arthur carried me inside, kicking the door shut behind him so forcefully it rattled on its hinges. Not once did he stop kissing me. Not once did I take my attention off his lips, his neck, his tongue, the feel of his beard against my skin as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. The scent of old-growth forest and pine and honey and sunlight and everything that made him surrounded me in my own personal haven I never wanted to leave.

I gasped as my back hit the wall, craning my chin up so Arthur could nip down my neck. His hands caressed over my thighs clamped over his hip bones, then up again, slipping under the cotton fabric of my dress. The touch of his callouses against my softer flesh made me shiver, legs tightening.

“You’re so strong,” he whispered against my shoulder before digging his teeth into my skin.

The love bite was on the verge of turning painful, so I clamped a fist in his hair and wrenched him away. “Not like you, bear claw.”

He grinned at the nickname and kissed me again, harder this time. His very presence threatened to smother me, and I relished it. I wanted him, all of him, so ferociously I felt an ache awaken inside me. I’d been the obedient granddaughter for so long, always doing what was best for the family and the coven, denying myself anything that wasn’t relevant to its power and prosperity, not to mention my mission, and now that I had this chance for me, I didn’t care that his kind was forbidden. I was going to latch on and never let go.

That ache turned into a throb, urging me to give my hips an impatient thrust against him. Arthur broke the kiss with a shuddering breath, a low groan muffling against my neck. His whole body shivered as he simply held me, fighting for control.

But I was losing mine. Fingers trailing through his beard, I cupped his face to guide his lips back to my own. “More, please,” I rasped.

Suddenly I was released from my captivity against the wall, Arthur carrying me into my bedroom. Once inside, he set me down, and my body protested the air that now filled the space between us. Had I not been clear with my request? That I wanted more of him, not less? But he didn’t step away, merely took my hands and guided them over his taut stomach hidden by the flannel and up the swells of his chest until he curled them over the shirt edges unbuttoned at his throat.

“Go on,” he urged in a husky whisper. “I know you want to.”

I’d momentarily forgotten what it was I’d wanted, and then the details of the text I’d sent him when confined inside Flora’s crystal barrier came flooding back.

With a wicked smile, I ripped his shirt apart, spraying the little white buttons all over my bedroom floor. A shrug of those mighty shoulders and the torn shirt joined the buttons on the ground.

I backed up a step, shreds of red plaid still gripped in my fists, to drink him in. The muscles I’d felt when he’d been clothed had just been a tease of the real thing, the wan bedroom light sliding over every curve, at the power trapped beneath. The tattoo on his chest hinted at the ferocity he’d unleashed earlier this evening, but when my gaze eventually returned to his hazel eyes, I saw his real beauty shining there, in his soul.

My gentle giant.

Something snapped the tension between us, and my lumberjack shifter reached for me, snatching me into his arms for another devouring kiss as he backed me up to the bed.

Trapped beneath him, the first fantasy I’d ever had of him replayed in my mind, of his hands stroking over the ivy-green satin of my sheets. Of pinning my hands above my head at the wrists as he worked his mouth lower and lower.

I moaned as that fantasy became a reality, but it was short-lived. His hands released their hold on my wrists, caressing down the sensitive skin of my inner arms as his mouth stopped short just below my collarbone, at the tops of my breasts. He was being a gentleman, after a fashion, but I wanted the bear.

My heart hammered as he pushed away, unhooking my ankles from around his back and retreating a few steps. I wiggled my elbows under me and propped myself upright, looking what had to be horribly ridiculous with my hair disheveled and my dress scrunched up to my hips and my legs dangling over the edge of the bed, knitted socks uneven.

Where was he going? Had I done something wrong? Was I not pretty enough? All Hawthorne women were curvy—did he prefer thinner women like Brandi? I’d showered after my tussle with the fiáin, but did I still stink? Thistle thorns, had I forgotten to shave my legs?

Before those perfidious thoughts could fully seed and take root, Arthur dropped a massive hand to his belt buckle, hazel eyes gleaming.

“How do you want me, sweetheart?” he rumbled, unbuckling the belt. “On the bed, or kneeling before you?”

My pulse thundered in my ears. Roared, like the sound his bear had made. Every thought was cast from my head like wildflower seeds to the wind… except those fantasies he’d conjured with that one sentence. Suddenly my tongue became swollen and thick and unable to answer him.

Oh my Green Mother, I panicked, anticipation like a tide threatening to pull me under. Or launch me into the heavens. Oh my Green Mother!

My breath came in shallow gasps. “I-I—”

He yanked his belt free of his jeans with a loud crack.

The hammering of my heart reached a crescendo, and something inside me snapped, my mind bursting into nothingness.