Chapter 13

Tamsyn lay there in the pitch black, the only sounds her heartbeat in her ears and Bowen’s rough breathing, and wondered if

insanity was a symptom of time travel.

Felt like it must be, but maybe it was just the weirdness of the night, the coziness of the bed, the darkness all around them,

and those things Bowen had said—those simple, matter-of-fact, absolutely devastatingly perfect things—that had her already

sliding her nightgown up her legs, even as Bowen said, “How can you show me when I can’t see you?” his voice gruff, but still

somehow gentle. The heat of his body next to her...

Once again, a holiday temptation was presenting itself, and once again, Tamsyn found she just couldn’t turn it down.

“Well, maybe ‘demonstrate’ would be a better way of putting it,” she told him, and then added, “With description.”

Tamsyn could actually hear him swallow, and she smiled in the dark.

“Back home,” she said, scooting just the littlest bit closer, “I have all sorts of toys for this.”

“Toys,” he echoed, his voice like sandpaper, and Tamsyn nodded, her breath speeding up as she slid one hand up her thigh.

“Mmm-hmm. Really good ones, too. And all different types.”

“Types?”

He sounded like he was actually choking now, and Tamsyn nearly purred as she curled her toes, sliding her hand away from her

leg to cup one breast, her nipple hard against her palm. “You know,” she told him, even though she was pretty sure he didn’t.

“The kind that slides inside. The ones that vibrate. I even have this one shaped like a flower that I sometimes use in the

shower.”

“Shower,” he echoed, and Tamsyn laughed, even though the sound was a little strangled as she tugged at the tip of her breast.

“You just going to repeat everything I say?” she asked, and he shifted closer, his foot nearly brushing hers.

“There’s no blood left in my brain, Tamsyn,” he told her, and she chuckled.

“And that’s a big brain,” she answered, letting her hand drift back down her stomach.

“You should see my cock,” he replied, and she would’ve laughed again, except now she was the one whose throat seemed to go

tight, her legs clenching together, every part of her lit up with desire.

“I want to do a whole lot more than see it,” she told him, finally letting her hand settle between her legs, pressing hard

with the heel of her palm. “But I’m the one showing you, remember?”

“Well, hardly seems fair,” Bowen said, and she heard him moving in the darkness, imagined him sliding one of those rough, able hands into the waistband of his pajamas.

He groaned then, and Tamsyn moaned along with him, letting her fingers start to circle. She was wet, wetter than she’d maybe

ever been, and the sound would’ve embarrassed her except for the damn near worshipful sound that came out of Bowen’s mouth.

“God in heaven, I’d give anything to taste you right now,” he panted, and she could hear his hand moving now, feel the slight

shuddering of the mattress.

Closing her eyes, Tamsyn arched her back, her fingers sliding, little cries slipping from her lips, and he was right there

with her. She could feel him even though they weren’t touching, couldn’t even see each other, could only hear and imagine,

and holy shit, the things she was imagining.

Bowen’s mouth between her legs just like he said, his beard damp with her, his lips and tongue voracious, and her hips bucked

against her hand as across the bed, Bowen made a low sound deep in his chest.

He was saying something, something that at first she thought was some kind of spell and had her tipping even closer to the

edge—Sex Magic with Bowen was another pretty powerful fantasy of hers—but then she realized he was just saying something in

Welsh. She didn’t know what it was, but she made out her name.

Tamsyn had heard Bowen say her name a hundred times, but never like this, never in a voice so wrecked, his accent gilding every syllable, and it wasn’t just how he said it, but everything she heard behind it.

This gorgeous, powerful man—this literal magical being—was, in this moment, completely in her thrall, and that was enough to tip Tamsyn over the edge, her face turning into the pillow as she cried out, her thighs shaking,

her fingers soaked, her whole being somehow turned inside out just from her own touch.

She heard Bowen’s own cry, low and deep, and it sent another tremor shuddering through her, her breath coming out in gasps

now, and she whimpered, letting her hand fall back to the sheets, her chest heaving.

Next to her, Bowen was still breathing like a bellows, and she wanted so much to be able to see him right now, see the darkness

of his eyes, the hunger she knew would be in them.

But she was equally glad not to look at him, because she also knew that he’d see what was in her eyes right now, too, and

there would be no hiding it with a quick joke, no mask to wear, just the naked vulnerability of how much she liked him—and

oh god, she was going to have to admit that this was way bigger than like at some point—and Tamsyn wasn’t ready for that.

After they got home.

After YSeren.

Not now.

Now, she turned her head in his direction and said, “So. Do you feel sufficiently educated in what I do when I think about

you, Bowen Penhallow?”

He made one of those grunt-huff laughs of his, and Tamsyn’s heart swelled in her chest.

“What I feel,” he said, sitting up to strip off his pajama top and, Tamsyn assumed, clean himself up, “is the same thing I

felt the first night I ever saw you, Tamsyn Bligh.”

“Which was?”

Bowen paused, and Tamsyn felt the air move near her face, knew he was reaching for her, but he didn’t quite touch her, and

she didn’t move any closer so that he could, because she knew that whatever he said next was going to go straight to her heart,

and it would be that much harder if he were touching her when he said it.

“From the moment you walked into that pub,” he said, “I knew you’d be the making and the ruin of me all at once, woman.”

And Tamsyn realized she was right—that did go straight to her heart—but wrong at the same time. Because touching her, not

touching her, none of it mattered. Bowen didn’t have to touch her to make her love him.

She already did.

The bed curtains were open when Tamsyn woke up the next morning, watery gray light filtering in the thick glass windows, and

she sat up, her head immediately swiveling to the other side of the bed.

Bowen was already gone, which was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she was ready for waking up beside him, seeing his curls rumpled with sleep, his face soft and relaxed. Last night had been earth-shattering, but she could put it in a box, thinking of it almost like a dream. They hadn’t touched each other, hadn’t kissed, hadn’t fallen asleep with their arms wrapped around each other.

It had been... a stress reliever. A fun way to pass the time now that they found themselves in a magical fuckup of pretty

serious proportions. Wasn’t that normal? Like the way people wanted to have sex after someone died because it reaffirmed life

or whatever it was.

Right. That’s all last night had been. Orgasms as coping mechanisms.

It was easy to think of last night while she was alone in her— their —bedroom, getting ready for the day. In addition to the Haunted Mansion Nightgown, Lady Meredith had sent up a whole heap

of outfits, everything from dungarees to evening gowns, and Tamsyn selected a festive red sweater and a pair of tight black

trousers before throwing a tweed blazer over the whole thing and, since she was in the Welsh countryside, a pair of dark green

wellies.

With the little bit of makeup Lady Meredith had also provided, Tamsyn felt nearly human again as she strode down the stairs

of Tywyll House, pausing to give a little salute to the more terrifying-looking Meredith ancestors before moving down the

hall to where she remembered the dining room being.

That room was empty, though, the shutters still closed, but Tamsyn could hear sounds farther down the hall, so she followed

them until she came to a smaller, brighter room.

There were a few couches scattered about and a wall of windows looked out onto the misty garden. A smaller table had been laid as well as a long buffet against the back wall, and Tamsyn’s stomach growled at the scent of food wafting off it. It had been hours—well, decades, literally—since she’d eaten, and she was just about to get a plate when a movement caught her eye, and everything she’d thought about last night—her boxes, her coping mechanisms, her If a girl can’t get herself off next to her crush after breaking the space-time continuum, then honestly, when can she? justifications—practically exploded in front of her face as she took in Bowen standing by the farthest window, a delicate

cup of coffee in one hand, his eyes drinking Tamsyn in like the sun itself had just walked into the room.

She’d told herself she was immune to how handsome he was after all this time, that it was just a fact of him, like how his

eyes were brown and he liked talking about elves too much, but like her, he’d attempted to blend in a little today, and the

fitted green sweater he was wearing paired with dark gray corduroys made him look less Fearsome Mountain Sorcerer, more the

Most Fuckable History Professor Tamsyn had ever seen, and the knowledge that this man could be both had Tamsyn suddenly hungrier

for much more than the eggs and bacon that had seemed so tempting before.

He took a step closer to her, and Tamsyn realized they were the only ones in the room, only the judgmental eyes of long-dead Merediths watching them now. Outside, she couldn’t even make out the lawns or the maze anymore because the mist outside had gotten so thick, drifting over the glass, eddying over the grass outside as though the entire house were encased in a cloud.

He took another step closer, the cup rattling on its saucer, and Tamsyn wasn’t sure what she would have done had Elspeth—Bowen’s

grandmother, she reminded herself—not swanned into the room with a “Oh, wonderful, another gray day.”

It was very hard to remember that this woman would one day birth Bowen’s dad, a man she’d heard only ever described as terrifying,

because Tamsyn wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone as beautiful and glamorous as Elspeth Carew. Today, she was wearing a figure-hugging

white dress with a cowl collar and fitted sleeves and a pair of low deep green heels, her auburn hair swept back from her

face with a pair of tortoiseshell combs.

As she took in the two of them, her red lips curled into a knowing smile. “Am I interrupting something? I certainly hope so.

Someone might as well be trysting this weekend now that I’m not going to be a married woman by Yule.”

“The only thing you’re interrupting is me getting to those sausages,” Tamsyn told her, nodding at the buffet. “And that is

not a euphemism.”

Probably a little risqué for 1957, but Elspeth only laughed, the sound like chiming bells. “Oh, I like you, Mrs. Penhallow,”

she said.

Tamsyn hated the way that being called that made everything inside her light up, but there it was. In a weird way, nothing

that had happened last night had changed anything between her and Bowen, and at the same time, it had changed everything.

Because now she knew. All those times she was lying awake, thinking about him, fantasizing about him, he was thinking about her, too.

Did he have the same fantasies?

Doubtful. Bowen was a smart and creative man, but not the type to gin up Visiting Wizard Must Take Village Maiden as Bride,

although if she ever had the chance, she was absolutely going to share that one with him.

But now, she smiled at Elspeth and said, “I like you, too, Miss Carew. A shame we won’t be family after all.”

Elspeth’s expression darkened. “Well,” she sniffed, making her way to the sideboard with a flourish of her skirts, “you should

talk to Harri about that.”

“About what?”

Oh, fabulous, now Harri Penhallow had entered the room, his dark hair messy, his glasses slightly askew, and while he was

as handsome as his eventual descendant Rhys Penhallow, he could not have looked more miserable.

“About how your absolute pigheadedness has brought an end to our engagement,” Elspeth replied, and Harri’s jaw tightened as

he stalked to the buffet, filling his plate with roasted tomatoes and sausages robotically.

“There is exactly one person to blame for the dissolution of this engagement, Ellie, and it is you.”

“Don’t call me ‘Ellie’ anymore, I don’t like it.”

“You used to love it,” Harri fired back, and then he lowered his voice. “Especially in certain circumstances.”

Elspeth straightened up and turned to face him, her chin raised, her expression haughty, but her cheeks rosy pink. “How dare you,” she said. “I’ve taken you for a fool and a... a fortune hunter, Henry Penhallow, but never a cad.”

“And I took you for a woman worthy of bearing the Penhallow name, but it seems we were both mistaken.”

Sidling up to Bowen, Tamsyn picked his coffee cup off his saucer and took a sip before whispering, “I still think your grandparents

are hot.”

“And I still think you never, ever need to say words like that again,” he replied.

Smiling, Tamsyn replaced the cup on the saucer even as she tried very hard not to meet his eyes, because if she did, she couldn’t

guarantee memories of last night wouldn’t have her bursting into flame.

“It’s them, though,” she went on, nodding at Elspeth and Harri, who were now filling their plates in silence. “They’re the

reason we’re here, I’m sure of it. Something has gone wrong, and now they’re not getting married, which means your dad never

gets born.”

Bowen grunted. “Not sure that’s a huge fucking tragedy.”

Turning to him, Tamsyn reached up without thinking, taking his face in both her hands. “It is to me if it means you never

get born,” she said, and oh shit, it was too late now. She was looking in his eyes, and he was looking in hers, and everything

that had happened last night in the warm, velvet darkness of that bed—their bed—seemed to fill the space between them.

Tamsyn had slept with her fair share of guys, was no stranger to sex in all its permutations, but nothing had ever been as intimate as those moments with Bowen in the dark, their hands touching their own bodies but not each other’s, and yet she’d felt every stroke he’d made, heard every gasp, and she knew he’d felt and heard her, too.

It was too much, too overwhelming, and she looked away, her hands dropping to her sides.

Harri and Elspeth were both sitting at the table now, five chairs between them, but both of them were ignoring their food.

Instead, they were watching Bowen and Tamsyn, and they were wearing nearly identical expressions.

Longing.

Envy.

Regret.

Whatever it was that had gone wrong with Harri and Elspeth, it wasn’t that they didn’t love each other.

Or didn’t want each other.

And, Tamsyn reasoned, anything that wasn’t that could be fixed.

Giving one last longing look at the buffet, Tamsyn took the coffee from Bowen’s hands, draining the cup and then sitting the

cup and the saucer on the table.

“If you’ll excuse us,” she said to Harri and Elspeth. “We have some work to do.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” she heard Harri mutter as she dragged Bowen from the room, and Bowen scowled even as he let himself be dragged out into the hallway.

“Stop looking like you want to punch your granddad,” Tamsyn said in a low voice, and Bowen glanced down at her.

“Punched my da once,” he told her. “And both my brothers. More than once. Lots more than once, actually. So a grandda doesn’t seem a bridge too far, if I’m being honest.”

Tamsyn thought of her own brother, Michael, and tried to imagine punching him, but the image literally wouldn’t come. They

were as different as night and day—her with this bizarre but adventurous job, no family, no real home, no ties to anything;

Michael with his husband, Josh, his insurance business, his condo, and his boat—but she loved him so fiercely that she was

pretty sure she’d cut off her own hand before she’d raise it against him.

It was another reminder that she and Bowen were very different, and not just because he was a witch and she wasn’t. All the

more reason to let things like last night be an anomaly, ne’er to be repeated.

All the more reason to focus on the task ahead.

“We want to get out of here, right?” she asked Bowen, and he stared at her in confusion before saying, “Well, we want to get

out of this time, the place itself is actually cor—”

Tamsyn clamped a hand over his mouth, trying to ignore how warm his lips were, how his beard was so much softer than she’d remembered. “Fine. We want out of 1957. And I’ve watched enough time travel movies and TV shows to know that people end up in the past only because they have to fix something that went wrong, something that affects their future. What could affect your future more than your grandparents breaking up before they even get married, much less have your father?”

Bowen frowned, that trio of wrinkles appearing over his nose in the way she loved. “Don’t disagree, exactly,” he said slowly.

“But Carys—”

Tamsyn shook her head. “Carys isn’t even here. That spell just took us . Which means we’re here for a reason. And I think I know what it is.”

Bowen watched her expectantly, and Tamsyn took a deep breath.

“We have to Parent Trap your grandparents.”