Page 85 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

She writhed, dampness sliding her along the tip of his cock, just enough to torture them both. His fingers closed around her throat, firm but not squeezing. It anchored her further into her body and she came close to release right then and there.

“What do you say, little thorn?”

She met his hungry gaze with her own, pressing up against his grip.

“Convince me,” she dared him.

He went still. She had a moment to wonder if she had pushed him too far and that was part of the pleasure. A soft spinster made of flowers and the Crow that everyone whispered about.

“Open your legs for me.” She parted her knees, pressing further into the grass. “That’s it, sweetheart.” He surged into her and she gasped, rising to meet him. Her intimate muscles stretched to accommodate him; a twinge of discomfort and then it felt so good she was afraid she might start babbling.

They were frantic, lost to the sweat and the moans and the panting for breath. The slide of their bodies, the way he thrust into her, murmuring soft, filthy things into her ear. The way he came, hips stuttering and dragging her with him all because he demanded it. “Come with me, Briar. Come. Right now.”

And she did. Somehow he ordered it and she obeyed, promptly fluttering around him, gasping.

When he collapsed beside her in the grass, they were both gleaming with sweat.

“You really are a thief,” she murmured. “I think you just stole my virtue and I did not have it to begin with.”

A soft chuckle. He used a square of cloth from a pouch on his belt to clean her up. “Well, I am an Iron Crow. We steal things.”

“Magic, witch’s bones, maidenly virtues. Amulets that don’t belong to you,” she added pointedly.

“Next you’ll say I stole your heart?” he asked drily, getting to his feet to pull up his trousers.

It was a jest, a throwaway comment. And she took it as such.

Only the words still shimmered between them despite her determination.

“No,” she scoffed to drain those words of their power. “Not your heart.” Her hair had fallen out of its pins and tangled down her back. She was not a petal like her sister—she was a thorn. “Your ship.”

She held up the tin charm in the shape of a ship that she had stolen from his cross-belt, smug and preening. Snapdragon preened just as hard next to her, teeth full of starlight. Briar tossed Ethan her most wicked grin over her shoulder and took off at a run through the long grass, laughing. Her hip did not even twinge. His dragon followed her without a backward glance. She did not know if dragon familiars could chortle, but it certainly seemed like it.

“Traitor,” Ethan muttered.

Briar did not make it back to the cottage.

She was rushing down the path, still grinning, flushed with a heady mixture of pleasure and victory, when she caught her heel on the edge of a mound. The old hillfort temple dated back centuries, all the way to when the Romans tried to take Lyonesse. They’d never managed it. The witches had chanted day and night, sending storms and kelpies and phoenixes. The temples had long ago been reduced to stone outlines and patches of grass that never grew quite right, but the old magic still lingered.

It was the same place where Petal used to dig holes to hide her rock candy the summer she decided she would become a pirate queen. And the summer after that, when she stole all of the green ribbons from the hatmaker when he sneered at Briar’s limp. The gold candlesticks from the vicar’s house when he insisted Petal should marry him to save her soul.

Petal had always been a thief, now that Briar really thought about it. She had once hidden the last of the candied pineapple from Mrs. Aster and concealed it in her mouth. She had refused to confess even with her cheeks comically stretched. And Petal hated pineapple, no matter how fashionable it was.

Briar froze.

Dragon and swan circled her, dragging starlight, vigilant.

Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, drowning out the ever-present murmuration of the sea, the distant shriek of a kelpie, the toads croaking once more from the pond.

She knew where the moonstone was.

She wanted to shout at Ethan to hurry, hearing his footsteps. But she was suddenly suspicious of the thistles, the blackberry hedge, the boulder to their left. A Keeper or an Iron Crow or even a villager might well lurk in the shadows. A rabbit in a burrow, a fox in a den, all could answer to a witch. The very grass might tell her secrets despite its best intentions. She did not think Charles was brave enough to follow her when Ethan was nearby, but she was not going to take any chances.

In the end, it did not matter.