him to me again.
He kissed me with enough passion to make my knees wobble. I wrenched off my shirt, and then we were toppling onto the bed, Noah braced over me.
He paused, tracing my skin just above the cup of my bra and gazing into my eyes. “Are you sure?”
No more questions. No more thinking. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight enough through the flood of dizziness and giddy desire anyway. I ran my fingers along his jaw and into his hair, more of the silky strands falling free from his ponytail, and simply said, “Please.”
He beamed and kissed me again, and the glow inside me lit up twice as bright. Somewhere in the midst of the heat and the gasps and the crashing of our mouths, my bra vanished, and then his shirt. I yanked at his belt, and he chucked off that and his slacks together.
His erection already tented his boxers. I reached for it, cupping him in a way that must have seemed oddly tentative after I’d hauled him in here so determinedly, but Noah didn’t complain. His breath hitched, spilling hot over my shoulder when he lowered his head to kiss me there. His lips moved along my collarbone, charting a path to my breasts. I stroked his cock through the fabric, reveling at the way it twitched and seemed to stiffen even more at my invitation.
I’d decided this. I was making it happen.
I squirmed out of my jeans and panties, losing my sense of purpose partway through when Noah sucked my nipple into his hot mouth, finally kicking them off my feet. As I dipped my hand between my legs, he raised his head to watch. For the first time ever, I murmured the casting that would serve as magical protection.
Desire turned Noah’s bright eyes molten. We peeled his boxers off together, I lifted my knees, and he slid inside me as if he was never meant to be anywhere else.
My head tipped back with the shock of pleasure. Oh. I hadn’t known—when I’d gotten myself off with my hands and the occasional magical assistance, it’d never felt this satisfying. He filled me so perfectly, our bodies rocking closer together, every part of me glowing with the exhilaration of it.
Our mouths collided. I bucked up to meet his thrusts. He gripped my hip, plunging even deeper, and tucked his hand between us to fondle my clit in time with his rhythm.
Bliss spiraled through me faster than I could grasp. Yes, yes, yes. I clutched at his hair, his shoulder, already careening over the peak of my release.
The pleasure raced through me in a swell of sparks. No, nothing before had ever thrown me to a peak even close to this high. The ecstatic awe of it shocked a cry from my throat.
Noah thrust faster, and then he was coming too, his breath fracturing. I held him close, absorbing every shudder of his body against mine.
This—this was how it should be. I had to remember this moment, always.
When Noah eased down on the bed beside me, I found my body had gone too slack for me to have any interest in getting up. My thoughts had reduced to a blur. I snuggled closer to him, and he looped his arm around me.
The last impression to register in my alcohol-and-lust-clouded brain was the brush of his lips against my forehead in one final kiss.
Chapter Four
A headache pinched the spot right between my eyebrows, its dull pulsing dragging me out of sleep. I closed my eyes tighter as if that would shut out the hangover, but while I was usually reasonably careful with the vodka, I’d hit it a little too hard enough times to know that strategy would get me nowhere.
The mattress moved under me at the shift of someone else’s weight, and my eyes popped open with a lurch of my heart.
Noah was sitting up next to me in the faint dawn light that trickled through the window. Noah Ashgrave, his leanly sculpted body naked all the way down to where the sheet fell across his lap, in my bed.
Noah Ashgrave, future baron.
Noah Ashgrave, my student both in the Illusion classroom and in our tutoring sessions.
Last night’s events rushed back to me in a jumble. The talk on the sofa, his confession, that first kiss—
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I gaped at him, an icy pool of nausea collecting in my stomach. Oblivious to my internal crisis, Noah rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand and