very personal. For me, my Nana—my maternal grandmother, Rose—she was an obeah woman. It’s a spirituality that started with enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, so it has a lot of influences and variations, but . . .” She trailed off, her eyes distant in a way that told him thoughts were arcing through her mind faster than lightning.
“Is that what you do?” he asked, nudging her gently. His knee brushed her legs, which were curled up beneath her like a cat’s.
She blinked back to him. “Oh—hardly. It’s passed down through generations, but I was never interested in learning, not until Nana died and left me her statue of Oshun. And then, of course, it was too late.” Dani flashed a smile Zaf recognized: the kind that hid grief and longing and regret and a secret wish for five more fucking seconds. Five more seconds with the person you’d lost. “I sort of cobbled things together on my own, after that, so I could feel closer to her. I’m a hodgepodge of modern witchiness, I think. Whatever feels right. Whatever feels real.”
You. You feel so fucking real to me. Zaf held out his hand, and Danika took it. The braid of their intertwined fingers, the pressure of her palm against his, lit up the shadows inside him. If this touch could take away a fraction of her sadness, too, then his right hand had never been so useful.
Which, considering how often it had wanked him off recently, was saying something.
“Oshun and I get along well,” she continued, nodding at the statue. “She’s the goddess of beauty, purity, abundance, and”—she flicked a glance in his direction, and suddenly the curve of her mouth and the sweep of her lashes became a slow, hot tease—“lust,” she finished, her tongue flicking against her upper lip. “Which is why I asked her to send me you.”
Funny thing about the human body: it went haywire so fast. Dani’s words shot through Zaf’s veins like liquid pleasure, his heart pounding like a war drum against his rib cage. In the space of a second, his cock became the center of the universe, and it fucking ached. Lust. He’d thought she’d changed her mind, which would be an absolute travesty, but the look in her eyes said she hadn’t. She hadn’t. Thank fuck.
Zaf needed to sleep with her so he could stop wanting her so bad. Needed to take the edge off, to know the unknown, because unfulfilled desire had her on his mind 24/7.
Kiss me. Cure me. Please.
Danika gave his obvious hard-on a satisfied glance and murmured, “Well, that’s encouraging. I thought you might be too tired.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Too tired for you? Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?”
She laughed, and just when he stood a chance of gathering actual human thoughts for a moment, maybe holding a coherent conversation to follow that I asked for you thread, she ruined everything by rising up on her knees and straddling his lap. Just like that, he couldn’t move. He might’ve forgotten how. She sank down like soft, fluid sin, her incredible arse smothering his dick, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and the tips of her breasts brushing his chest, and Zaf shouldn’t be able to feel her nipples through both their clothes, not really, but, holy fuck, he could. And judging by the flutter of her pulse at her throat, the spilled ink of her blown pupils, she felt something, too.
Just as his options narrowed to either kissing her or exploding, Dani arched an eyebrow and looked pointedly over her shoulder. “Are you enjoying that?”
Only then did Zaf realize he’d grabbed a healthy handful of her arse. Apparently, he did remember how to make his limbs move, but only for important things. Fair enough.
“Yeah,” he said honestly, and squeezed some more, his hips jerking up into her soft, warm weight. He could feel the little ripples and dimples of her skin, could feel her tattoo, the lines of ink slightly raised, and maybe it was the fact he now knew what Danika Brown’s arse felt like, or maybe it was the sound of her breathing heavy and the way she pushed against his hand, but Zaf’s dick felt like it might break in two. He was leaking pre-come so slow and steady, he wouldn’t be surprised if he soaked through his jeans.
“Well,” she said graciously, “if it helps you concentrate.”
“It does,” he lied. “So. You . . . asked for me?” He