when building a spell, but not one time in the years she'd spent at Haggara, had something like this happened because she’d imagined it. Or wished for it. Or put every ounce of thought or feeling into doing something.
Ivy didn't feel as though she'd done anything magical, but then, she'd never done anything remotely magical in her life, so would she know what it felt like if she had?
“Hey.” Uriah pulled her against him, tipping her chin up to tug her bottom lip out from between her teeth with his thumb. “Don't think about it so hard.”
Ivy tried not to dissect the how and whys of the sudden aggression of the berry bushes. It couldn't be a coincidence, not unless there was another witch outside somewhere who could read minds.
Or unless one of her coven sisters was spying from the woods. Which was possible, but any of them would have waltzed over by now and given Ivy shit for walking around in the buff, or to compliment Uriah on the breadth of his muscles and the heft of his cock.
So focused on trying to work out the answer, the lance of pain when Uriah gave her nipple a tweak was such a shock she gave a short squeal.
“Ow!”
Her mate gave her a stern look even as he leaned down to kiss her, his hand cupping her breast to soothe her sore nipple with gentle sweeps of his thumb. “Breathe, honey. Just relax and imagine the vines coiling back up, like you're putting the hose away at work after watering the veggies. Picture them going to sleep, curling up the trellis where they're supposed to go.”
Uriah set the scene for her, and after a few minutes of wallowing in the warmth of his gaze, he touched another sweet kiss to her lips and tilted his head at the bushes.
Ivy was astounded to see the vines had gone back to creeping up the trellis, and the only movement in the leaves came from the whistle of the wind across the porch.
Dumbfounded, Ivy pointed as though Uriah couldn't see the plants. “I... did that just... did I... did I do that?”
“Seems so,” Uriah answered proudly. “Wanna try something else?”
“Don’t… don’t you have to go to work? Your guys need you.”
Uriah snorted derisively. “Fuck’em. They can wait a little longer.”
Shell shocked, Ivy nodded like a bobble head, excited and terrified at the same time. “Okay. Let me just get some clothes...”
“Why?”
Fair question. It wouldn't be her first time attempting to work some magic in the nude. Some of the rituals the coven performed on their land worked best when there were no physical barriers between them and the elements, so yeah. Why not?
“Come on.” Uriah held her hand and led her out over the grassy landscape to the nearest garden bed, pointing at a tiny little sprig of clover. “Try making that clump of weeds bigger so I can get rid of it.”
Ivy reached out her hand toward the plant, willing the little shoots to grow. She scrunched up her nose, held her breath, closed her eyes, and after a handful of minutes went by, nothing happened. Frustrated and somewhat mortified, her shoulders slumped, and she dropped her hand with a defeated sigh.
“Maybe it was a fluke.”
Uriah frowned intently, his scruffy beard rasping against his palm as he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “At the risk of sounding like that guy, maybe you're doing it wrong.”
“Doing it wrong?” Ivy echoed, her embarrassment and frustration turning to outrage in an instant. “Since I was seven years old, I’ve been hunched over spell books, taking every class there was to get my potions right, to create and say incantations correctly, following solar and lunar charts almost every minute of every day to perform rituals at just the right time—”
Uriah winced and made a placating gesture, interrupting her before she could really get on a roll. “I know how that sounded, but I'm not trying to put you down. When you made the berry bushes lash out at Warren, you weren't using spells or incantations to make it happen. And you made the vines go back to normal without trying to force it, so... let’s repeat our experiment.”
Ivy crossed her arms over her chest, her hips canting to the side. “I'm listening.”
With a sexy grin, Uriah grabbed her waist and turned her around to face the garden bed. He touched a kiss to her shoulder, making goosebumps race across her skin with a pleasurable shiver.
“Relax,” he whispered in