He moved his hands down to close over her thighs. "Are you calling me your gift?"
"Yes." She smiled. "How do you feel about that?"
"Like it's my turn to be unwrapped." He nibbled at her mouth. "Do it slow."
Her laughter mingled with his and the sound felt like starlight on her skin, like the promise of forever . . . like a lick of "majick."
Chapter 1
"The love of my life is not going to wear a pink shirt." Bree Murphy looked in disbelief at her little sister Abigail, who was waving what remained of the tarot deck in her hand with total confidence.
"It's right here in the cards, Bree." Abby tapped the Empress card lying on the kitchen table.
Bree fought the urge to roll her eyes. Teaching Abby the tarot had been her own idea, apparently a stupid one. Abby couldn't divine her way out of a paper bag if suggesting Bree would date a man in pastels was any indication. It wasn't going to happen. Ever. Besides, the Empress was an indicator of her own destiny, her ow
n strength, not about a man.
"No men in pink. I like men in black who read poetry. You know my type."
"Your type usually looks like they need a flea dip," Bree's older sister Charlotte commented.
That was a total exaggeration. "Hey, no one I have ever dated is unclean. Give me some credit. But being empathic makes me sympathetic. I sense when men need my support and emotional counseling, and I can't help but respond."
"That's actually kind of creepy," Abby said, her lip curling back. "Who wants a guy who's that needy?"
Hey, Bree knew it was a bad pattern. She could admit that. That was why she had stayed away from men for the last two years, which suddenly seemed like an incredibly long time. A long, celibate, lonely time. But she did not need her eighteen-year-old sister passing judgment. "And you're the expert on men, how?"
"I have a boyfriend," Abby said, tossing back her dark hair.
Now Bree did let loose with an eye roll. "Whatever." Bree didn't think Abby's boyfriend was any sort of model of male attentiveness, but there was no point in arguing. "But seriously, no men in pink shirts."
"He does something corporate," Abby added, as if she hadn't heard a word of protest. "I see him in an office."
That got Bree's attention. Not because she would ever date someone corporate, because she so wouldn't, but because Bree was speaking with such total confidence, and there was nothing in the tarot spread in front of her that should be giving her a clear visual of any man, let alone a candidate for the corner office. "Abby, where are you seeing this?"
Despite Charlotte's lifelong protests, Bree knew that all three of them were witches. It was a trait of Murphy women, going back as far as Bree could trace. And she knew that she was empathic, meaning she could see and feel people's emotions almost as clearly as if they were her own. She also knew that Charlotte could move objects when she really focused, and that Abby could insert herself into her sisters' dreams. She'd been doing it since she was a toddler. But until now, Bree had never thought Abby could be psychic.
"I don't know." Abby shrugged. "It's just like there. In my brain. I thought that's what happens with tarot."
"No, not really. The tarot is an interpretation based on the spread of the cards." Bree lifted her cat Akasha off the floor as she walked by and settled the feline's warm bulk in her lap. "What else do you see?" She was curious to know if Abby was in truth seeing anything, or if she was just projecting her own thoughts and imagination out onto the cards.
If Abby were psychic after all, she clearly had Bree mixed up with someone else because she was not, repeat not, going to be falling for a man who thought money was the ultimate goddess and treated his overpriced car like a high-class hooker to stroke.
"Um. I see him walking up to the house and ringing the doorbell."
Because the love of her life was actually just going to stroll up to her very own house and ring the bell. Like that ever happened to anyone, let alone Bree. No one came to her front door but the mailman, and he was fifty and happily married.
Then Abby cocked her head to the side, staring off into space. "He wants to have sex with you."
"Okay, that's enough. This is ridiculous." Abby was either making fun of her for not dating in twenty—count them—twenty months or she was fishing to know about her sister's sex life. Either way, Bree wasn't biting.
Charlotte didn't look thrilled with the conversation either. "You know, we should probably get started if you want your Christmas tree up by the end of the day."
Bree wasn't really dying for a Christmas tree at all since she usually burned a Yule log, but it made Charlotte happy to provide her with one, and Bree could always put a witch's spin on it. "Sounds good." She moved to put Akasha down and paused. "What's in her mouth?" She tried to reach for the cat, but Akasha twisted her head in protest.
"Oh, my God," Charlotte said, reaching out and snatching something from the cat's mouth. "It's the mistletoe. From last Christmas. The one we put the spell on."
As her sister waved it in the air, staring at the greenery like it was possessed, Bree winced. "Whoops. I meant to destroy that." It was nothing more than a sprig of mistletoe, but she and Charlotte had loaded it with symbols of lust so Charlotte could lure her friend Will to make a move on her.