Elise swallowed, hoping her cheeks weren’t flushed with her signature cherry red blush. She wanted to make a good impression, not ogle him. It wasn’t easy, though.
Cal’s expression was pensive, but there was a determined tilt to his brows that made her heart race. “Hello,” she called out, trying to rein in her instinct to grin at the sight of him. Keep it cool, Elise. “I’m glad you came back.”
He gave her a quizzical look. Gliding closer, he replied, “I said I would return.”
“Well, yes, but you might have changed your mind.”
Cal’s lips quirked. It wasn’t a smile, but more of an endearing little tick, as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to grin or grimace. “I don’t change my mind. Once I decide to do something, I keep my word.”
Elise held very still, her eyes fixed on his expression. He came to a stop close to her. Only about a foot separated them. It felt like no space at all and also like a hundred miles too far.
“Oh?” she breathed, heart leaping. “Have you made a decision about my proposal?”
“I have.”
Elise waited, but when he simply stared at her rather than tell her what he wanted in exchange for his story, she licked her lips and asked, “So… what are your terms, Cal?”
He lifted one long-fingered hand to touch her lips. Barely a brush, it still sent a shock of pure heat through every single one of her nerves. “I’ll tell you my story,” he murmured, a look of intense concentration on his aquiline face, “if I get to be with you.”
Elise’s mind blanked. Surely, she’d heard him incorrectly. “I… what?”
Cal’s fingers slid into the hair behind her ear. Cupping the side of her head, he bent slightly to hover his mouth over hers. She felt the brush of his lips when he said, “I spent all night and all day considering what I want. I don’t want money. I don’t want fame or recognition. I want to know what it’s like to be like everyone else for a while. I want to know what it’s like to kiss you, to live like you, to touch you.”
She gasped, surprised and aroused and completely baffled. This force of nature wanted her? Surely not in the way he implied. “For how long?” she found herself asking, as if this was something she could possibly agree to.
She couldn’t. Of course not. You didn’t trade that sort of thing for a story. That was at least the tenth or twelfth rule of journalism, right?
Cal’s lips ghosted over her own. Cool and smooth as polished stone, they tantalized and terrified all at once. He was quiet for a moment, thinking perhaps, before he answered, “Until you finish the book.”
“And you… want what, exactly?” On this she needed absolute clarity.
“Everything,” he murmured, a strange note of pain in his voice. “I want everything you have to give me, witch. I want to try it all. But for now, I’ll settle for a kiss.”
Cal’s kiss, when he finally committed to it, was a chaste press of his lips against hers. There was no tongue, no teeth, no groans of pleasure. It was stark and intense in its simplicity.
It wasn’t like any kiss she’d had before. It tore Elise’s soul out by the root and replaced it with something new. Something bigger and fuller than anything she knew before.
It was like kissing pure, intoxicating magic.
The possibility that she might say no fled under the onslaught of the desire that roared through her. When Cal gently, so very gently, sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and let out a sound of pure, unfiltered surprise — as if he’d never kissed before, gods help her — Elise knew she was lost.
Magic sang in her veins, crowing a possessive, age old song she’d never heard before: He’s mine.