Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(5)
It’s not just that this connection feels as amazing as hunger and energy—wanting and fulfilling, lusting and satisfaction are all wrapped up into a spell I never summoned but has been cast anyway—it is Tilda. The power we Connollys have at the center of our magical abilities doesn’t just call out the desires of others for knowledge or power or wealth or people, it calls our own as well.
Unleashed at last, the magic revs a tangible touch that teases and tempts until every fantasy, every wish, every desperate need that Tilda has ever had comes to me at once, filling my mind and becoming my own.
Damn, I love the way this woman thinks.
She reaches out, touching me back. Her fingertips glide over the buttons of my shirt, leaving an aching craving in their wake. As we whirl around in the air, she strains to bring herself close until we are pressed against each other, her soft, pliant body fitting perfectly against mine, feeling like the answer to a question I’ve never asked. Resisting the addicting tug of my magic, of Tilda, I fist my hands, determined to protect her from what has grown beyond my control.
“Gil,” she says, her voice heady with lust. “Kiss me.”
A better man would hold back, remember it isn’t real, that it is just magic.
I break.
As I lean down and reach for her, every lightbulb in the bakery brightens as magic’s electric buzz hums around us, growing louder and louder until every other witch in the bakery covers their ears and flees. The noise, the power, the sparks showering down from the bulbs hold me in place though. My hand cups Tilda’s face and my lips are only millimeters from hers as the air sizzles around us, alive like I’ve never felt before.
This is more than just power breaking free.
It is more than losing control.
This is something altogether different.
In that moment, I realize exactly why Tilda has tested as a true magical null. She isn’t an outré. She is something altogether more.
And if the Council finds out what she really is, the Sherwoods will have hell to pay.
Chapter Three
Tilda . . .
What’s more humiliating than asking—okay, fine, begging, demanding, going all hey-big-wizard-that’s-a-big-wand-you’ve-got sex kitten—my absolute most hated archenemy to kiss me?
The fact that he doesn’t.
That’s right, folks. Here I am all warm and melty, wrapped around Gil like an octopus in heat (Do they go into heat? I don’t know, that’s not the point here.), sparks are literally flying around me, and I’m experiencing the biggest adrenaline rush of my life. Seriously, I am riding a thunderbolt of let’s-strip-right-now and all of it comes crashing to a halt the second Gil sets me down on my feet and steps back.
Everything changes in a second, as if some magical faucet of overwhelming attraction is turned off (not that I would notice the feel of any magic, because that’s not something us nonmagical witches get to experience beyond a little charge of static electricity). Instead of hot, I’m icicle cold. Instead of electricity lighting up the air, it’s just a bit of lingering burnt-popcorn-smelling smoke. Instead of riding the wave of ultimate bliss, I’m wiped out on the beach of humiliation with sand up my bathing suit bottom.
Gil, his perfect dark hair all mussed for once, glares at me and takes another step back. “Cut the shit, Sherwood. What are you up to?”
“Honestly?” My voice cracks on the single word question because the universe isn’t done showing me yet that I’m a dud in magic and basic attraction. “Trying to find a guy that isn’t a total shithead, but I keep getting set up with you, and you obviously must have just pulled some bullshit spell on an outré that can’t detect it. You don’t have to do something like that to show me what a loser I am. I already know that!”
And now there are tears pricking my eyes and I’m clenching my molars together to keep my chin from trembling. I will not bawl in front of this smug-faced jerk.
I.
Will.
Not.
That means I have to get my ass in gear and get out of here, because the countdown to cry time has begun. Holding on to the slight bit of dignity I have left, I lean over and grab my tote from the floor where it fell. It’s covered in sticky tree sap because of course it is, but damn it, I’m still a Sherwood, so I sling it over my shoulder as if I’m above all that and march out the door, leaving Gil the Git behind me.
Outside in the bright sunshine, I ignore the small crowd of witches who are all watching and tittering behind their hands. Several are straight up filming me on their phones. There is no way I’ll get home in time to warn Mom of the incoming bad publicity and spin it so she/I/we can continue to ignore the fact that I am the least Sherwood to have ever Sherwooded.
Hell, she probably already knows about whatever happened back in the coffee shop. Bitch witches work hard, but Izzy Sherwood works harder, and her sources are as legendary as they are numerous.
That’s why, instead of going right and catching the trolly up to Charmstone to the rambling house that has been the Sherwood family headquarters for the past two hundred years, I go left. Within the first block, the street goes from sunshiny and sweet with white picket fences and monarch butterflies floating on the breeze to twisting ivy covering dark stone fences, with the occasional bat hanging from the mossy oaks that span the width of the narrow cobblestone street.