Page 63 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

And wasn’t that lovely?

Miss Briar Foxglove, wanted and wanton.

“Hurry,” she begged. “There are things I want to do to you, too.”

He cursed, but it was reverent, holy.

He knelt in front of her, and it was nearly too much—and he was barely touching her yet. His gaze was a fiery, alive thing, brushing over her skin, leaving streaks of tingling sensations. He drew his palms up her legs, dragging her skirts higher. She felt swollen and slick. Desperate. But he was patient, methodical, as if committing every second to memory. She was squirming by the time his mouth touched the inside of her knee. A sucking kiss, a scrape of teeth. His breath was hot against her.

When he finally reached her center, licking softly with the flat of his tongue, she jerked in his grasp. His fingers dug into her hips, holding her in place. There was no pain, only command. Not just an expectation but the certainty of being obeyed.

She loved it.

She didn’t know what that might say about her, and she did not care.

The heat gathering in her belly shot through her, down her thighs, up to her breasts. He licked again and again, up to her bud, around it, sliding through her folds, making sounds indicating that he found her delicious. He slid his fingers into her, only up to the first knuckle, pressing down but no further. The pressure, the taunt of more, threatened to make her mad. She moaned, waves of her release tingling in her lower belly, building but not cresting.

Ethan smiled against her. “Do you need more, sweetheart?”

She nodded helplessly.

“You can have it all.”

She might not survive it. He closed his lips over her, sucking her bud into his warm, wet mouth. His fingers stroked deeper, deeper. Her thigh muscles began to shake. He was relentless, patient, inexorable. When she came, waves of sensations worked up from her inner thighs, over her quim, making her clench around his fingers. Her back arched off the steps. He didn’t stop his work, still licking and sucking, until she was whimpering. When he pulled away his smile was darkly satisfied. She could only blink at him, mildly stupefied. Her bones were made of molten silver, her blood turned to starlight.

Since when did she resort to poetry, even inside her own head?

Oh, he was a dangerous one.

He wiped his mouth, eyes glittering. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, rough and gravelly. “I’m not nearly done with you.”

Only they never made it up the stairs.

The moment shattered.

Briar gave serious consideration to cursing everyone in Haven with boils. Or a tail. Maybe two.

Her sister might get a boil on her nose as well.

This kind of magical interruption was unacceptable. If there was a Keeper at her door, he would be sorely surprised by his welcome. She knew a spell that would cover his tongue in goat fur.

Another thrum of magic. It was disconcerting, like a skittering under the skin. Briar’s breath clogged her throat. Her heart sped up.

The sharp feeling of unease was immediately washed away by a soft, lilting voice.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. Felt.

“What is that?” Briar breathed.

“A grimsong,” Ethan replied. Rain hit the roof in a steady, loud patter. Not enough to cover the song, but enough to mask it slightly. Briar found the interruption irritating. What was wrong with him? This was no time for rain.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said.

“And deadly.”

The cottage gleamed and glittered with the song. That lilting voice drew them out into the back garden, under the stars, to a woman with pale, waist-length hair, floating as though she were underwater. She shone like mother-of-pearl. Her eyes were the blue of sea glass—no, the green of a summer pond. She had wings that shimmered like abalone and mother-of-pearl.

When she smiled, she had the pointed, sharpened teeth of a shark.