MAYBE NYMPHOMANIA WAS PART OF SKYE’S CONDITION, GRADY THOUGHT THE NEXT DAY, AS HE TRIED TO CONCENTRATE on ripping up romaine over a colander in the sink while Skye held him in a languid hug from behind. Her hands trailed up and down his chest, slid over his hips, and inched dangerously close to his crotch. He could feel her warmth and breathing, could smell her shampoo, could remember so clearly the softness of her breasts and the slickness of her mouth when they’d kissed yesterday…
Her hand slid between his legs and rested there. His lettuce-tearing motions faltered, and he closed his eyes, tortured with want.
“You’re being a very disruptive kitchen helper.” But he made no move to escape her touch.
Skye responded with a firmer caress, and kissed his shoulder blade through his shirt.
Wouldn’t Livy have warned him if she knew Skye was a nymphomaniac? That was the kind of thing you would warn someone about if you were going to leave them alone with the person.
To be fair, though, he was reacting almost like a nymphomaniac himself.
“Didn’t we say yesterday we should slow down?” he tried.
“Yesterday,” she pointed out.
“What, like that was yesterday, this is today?” He was still pulling apart lettuce, but only slowly.
Her hand still petted him. “Mm.” She slanted the sound with a tone that suggested Sort of.
He glanced partway back, only enough to catch her shoulder in his view. “Or you mean, like, we waited a whole day, so that counts for something?”
“Mm.” Closer to agreement this time. Her fingertips circled his groin.
He swallowed and tried to focus on the romaine. “I should at least finish the salad.”
Skye withdrew her hands and stepped away, the motion exuding sulkiness even though he couldn’t see her with his back turned.
He glanced over his shoulder, and examined the frustration burning in her eyes. His gaze traveled down the black hoodie she wore over a tank top. Her nipples made visible peaks through both layers, and he set his back teeth together to keep from groaning. “But maybe, just for a second…”
She stepped forward. He dropped the head of lettuce into the colander and snatched her up with his wet hands. A second later he had her propped against the fridge, their lips and tongues entangled, all four of her limbs wrapped around him. She had on black leggings, so thin you could almost feel skin through them, and she gasped in pleasure.
His mind filled with strange, bizarre wants: not just stripping her down and plunging into her, the way he’d usually fantasize about at this stage of things, but also the woods. Sex with her in that mossy, semi-spooky forest, down in the undergrowth where he’d landed after he kissed her and got tripped by blackberry vines, or high up in the trees, in some kind of treehouse—the ones she drew, maybe—the two of them powerful and reckless like animals…
What the hell?
“God,” he said. “Okay…okay, just…” He slid her down till her feet landed on the floor, and wrenched himself back a step, though it almost physically hurt to break contact with her. He stretched out his fingers in front of him as a barrier. “Remember? How I didn’t want to do anything you’d regret?”
“Regret?” Her face beautifully flushed, she looked down and shook her head. She seemed mournful almost, as if there might be many things she regretted, but not this specifically.
Grady raked one of his damp hands through his hair. “I’m so confused. I’m sorry. But this whole thing, it’s making me want things, think things, that I don’t understand. And too much of the time, I don’t even care that I don’t understand. That scares me. It makes me think I’m going to do something I definitely will regret.”
Skye tightened her lips and nodded, her gaze still cast down. Turning her from sexy nymphomaniac back into sad depressed waif made him feel like a complete asshole.
He stepped forward and took her hands. “Listen. You have no idea how much I want you. Or—well, you probably do. I’m sure you can tell. But let me get the salad done like I’m supposed to, and then maybe we can try to be responsible grown-ups who do this right. Okay?”
“Right.” She tipped her head forward to lean it on his chest. Then she chose another few words of his to echo, in a whisper: “I want you.” But erotic though the sentiment was, she sounded just as conflicted and disturbed as he felt.
Skye backed off and let Grady finish assembling the salad. She understood his reasons for resisting, and could add a reason of her own: namely, that it was surely wise to fight the magic as long as they could. Maybe they’d even find a way to reverse their spell. How, though? She couldn’t even Google the question; the words wouldn’t transfer from brain to fingertips. She had tried.
On the other hand, she didn’t see a lot of point in resisting, because at least kissing and fondling him felt good. Not nearly enough of life felt good for her lately. She had to admit, with a guilty sort of thrill, that it was a turn-on to know they’d be unable to fight their mutual magnetism much longer. Given this was the one single aspect of the curse that actually involved pleasure, why wouldn’t she pursue it?
While Grady assembled ingredients and whipped up salad dressing, she sketched various parts of him, divided into random-sized boxes around the page. In one, she drew his big feet in their black socks against the kitchen tiles (he’d taken off his shoes at the door). In another, the back pocket of his jeans, with the shape of his phone making a rectangle of faded denim within it, and his T-shirt’s rumpled hem draped just above. The back of his neck, near-black hair inching halfway to his shoulders, vertebrae showing in subtle bumps. His hands selecting a knife. His profile, eyelashes swept downward, full lips set.
As she finished shading in the stubble on his skin, he glanced at her and smiled. “I’m being lazy for this lunch. No actual cooking required. I brought some chicken that I cooked last night.” He pulled down two plates from the cupboard. “I figured, less time cooking, more time…doing other stuff.”
She nodded, and slid the sketchbook out into the center of the table.
He didn’t notice it yet. He loaded both plates with salad, already tossed with its dressing, sprinkled crumbled goat cheese on it, added chopped chicken and walnuts, and pulled over a plastic bag of something dark red. His hand was inside it, closing around a fistful of the stuff, when Skye recognized it as dried fruit.
Her voice surged to the surface. “No!”
He jolted and looked at her, then back at the bag. “Oh. That’s right. You’re off fruit.”
She nodded, lips pressed together, stomach clenching. Would the goblins make her eat that disgusting magical fruit again when she did finally join them? Would she actually like it at that point?
“Then no dried cherries. No problem.” He twisted up the plastic bag to close it. Turning to face her, he rested his back against the counter. “There was an apple in one of those pictures you drew. Evil queen with an apple. I feel like fruit is another clue.”
Skye looked sadly at him.
“It sometimes seems like I’m starting to get it.” His gaze wandered to the table, and halted at the sketchbook. The haunted look dissolved from his eyes, and his sunnier everyday expression slipped back in. “Hey. You drawing me?”
She drew in a deep breath to settle her queasiness, and nodded.
He came forward and planted his knuckles on the table to study it. “Dang. You’re good.” He flicked a nail against the drawing of his sock. “Even got the holes in my clothes.” He kissed her forehead. “I love it. Can I take a picture of it?” When she nodded, he got out his phone. “Then we can have lunch.”
After their salad, they settled on the couch, Skye nestled against Grady’s arm, to chat via text. This time the topic was past relationships. Both of them had gone through a share of drama, now worn down to amusing by the passing of time.
It was probably inevitable that they’d detour through the woods again before he walked her to work. Probably just as inevitable that she’d end up leading him down a side trail into the quietest depths of the forest. She hopped up onto a fallen log, which had landed at a slant, propped against an upright tree. She pulled him in for a kiss.
After what she’d started this morning, it was also inevitable that he’d slide his hands under her wool coat and grip her. Or that her hand, before long, would roam across the front of his jeans.
He groaned against her mouth. Awash in spell-magic and normal lust, unable to tell anymore how much she owed to each, she clung to him and urged him on with rhythmic writhes. Moss squished and crumbled under her, his tongue tangled with hers, their hands teased and pressed.
“We should stop,” he begged, not stopping.
“Should,” she said, also not stopping.
He gasped against her neck. “Or not.”
“Or not,” she agreed.
She took a foil-wrapped condom from her pocket and slipped it into his hand, a minor victory for human responsibility in the face of reckless magic, she felt.
Grady turned it over in his fingers. “Brought some myself,” he admitted. “Just in case.”
He lifted his blue eyes to her. Here was where he should have smiled, where the old Grady would have smiled. Instead his gaze searched her face, drenched with desire, drugged with magic.
This was terrible of her. She knew full well they were watching. She couldn’t see or hear them; no one would in the daytime; but they were most certainly there, ogling the two of them as free entertainment, laughing, commenting to each other in the crudest and most offensive ways. She knew it, and Grady didn’t know it yet, and she did this with him anyway. Because that was how much she wanted him, and because in the house Grady might be able to resist her, but out here he couldn’t.
Afterward, they caught their breath, her forehead against his temple. He shivered, tucked his coat back around his body, and hugged her. He looked with wonder at the evergreens swaying above. “Well,” he said, his voice a bit unsteady. “This is my new favorite place in the whole world.”
Skye could only cling to him and hide her face on his neck, in sorrow.