Chapter 12
Wells wasn’t sure why he’d expected Gwyn to leave quietly, but when he heard her boots thumping after him down the basement stairs, he barely repressed a sigh.
“I don’t require your assistance,” he called out to her as he flipped on the lights.
Such as they were. The whole place had maybe four metal sconces attached to the walls, keeping the room in a sort of perpetual twilight.
“You obviously do,” she retorted. He heard a small hiss and pop, and then a globe of light floated over his shoulder, slowly climbing the shelves in front of him.
Gwyn appeared at his elbow, her head tilted up as she looked at the assortment of boxes on the shelves. The light she’d conjured up cast a warm glow over her features, her long red hair spilling down her back, and he forced himself to look away.
It would be slightly easier to stay annoyed with her if she weren’t so damned beautiful.
Ever since that moment with her cat and her smile and her bloody fucking cheek—had he always liked cheeky women? Was this new? Had someone cursed him like Rhys had been cursed?—he’d been thinking about her, and now, having her this close felt like a special form of torture.
Made all the worse by the fact that he’d clearly buggered something up royally here.
God, he’d been careful. There were a few magical items in the shop, yes. He’d wanted to keep some on hand should Penhallow’s eventually become the sort of place where one could—discreetly and safely, of course—purchase that kind of thing.
But now he’d sold a magicked stone to a human, and that was a cock-up and a half.
“How hard is it to find one box?” Gwyn asked, and Wells turned around, gesturing to the sheer plethora of boxes stacked on these shelves.
Rolling her eyes, Gwyn stepped forward, those damned boots clacking and setting his teeth on edge.
From irritation, clearly.
Nothing else.
“This one is sticking out a little,” she said, stretching up on her tiptoes. “Maybe it’s the one?”
She tugged, but the box was just slightly out of reach, and Wells made a frustrated noise, coming closer. “Let me get that.”
“I’ve got it,” she insisted, tugging at the edge of the box, and Wells snorted, his own hand coming up next to hers. She was tall, but he was taller and able to get a firmer handle on the thing than she had.
“You demonstrably do not ‘got it,’” he told her as he yanked, and she frowned up at him, curling her fingers in tighter, pulling harder.
“Well, if you didn’t have dangerous magical shit hanging out in boxes down here—”
“One crystal with a very basic rune on it hardly qualifies as—”
“Magic is magic, Esquire.”
“I’ve told you not to call me that. I don’t even understand why you call me that.”
They were close together now, both their hands on the edge of the box, their chests touching, the hem of her skirt brushing against his knees. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, her lips parted, and he reminded himself that it was anger causing that blush, and her lips were opening to insult him, no doubt, but that seemed hard to remember right now for some reason.
Neither of them was pulling on the box anymore.
They were just standing there, staring at each other.
A stupid, basic human reaction. She was pretty, they were close together, they were breathing hard and looking into each other’s eyes. Of course he’d suddenly find himself thinking of other reasons they might be this close, other things they could be doing besides arguing.
It’s just that . . . this was a side of himself he’d more or less shut down over the past few years, and feeling it roar back to life for the last woman he should be interested in was more than a little disconcerting.
“Gwyn,” he said, and her eyes met his again. Had they been on his mouth? Had Gwynnevere Jones been looking at his mouth and thinking the same filthy things he had?
Wells saw the same confusion he was feeling flash across Gwyn’s face, and she shook her head, almost like she was trying to clear it.
And then her hand tightened around the box, and she yanked.
It still didn’t come free, but one corner of the carboard tore, something flying out of the box and hitting Wells squarely in the chest.
A pink and shimmery cloud seemed to envelop both of them, the bakery-sweet scent of vanilla filling the air. Filling Wells’s mouth and lungs as he blinked against all the floating bits of glitter in the air.
It was all over Gwyn, too, a pale dusting of rose and glitter, her eyes a vivid green as she looked up at him, and if Wells had thought he’d wanted to kiss her before, it was nothing compared to how he felt now.
Now, it was like he might actually die if he didn’t. Suddenly, kissing Gwyn Jones was the only thing that mattered in the entire world, and when she took a swaying step toward him, her pupils huge, her tongue darting out to wet her lower lip, Wells chased the movement with hungry eyes.
Her hand was on his chest, fingers curling in his shirt, and then somehow his hand was on her face, looking down at her as his heart nearly beat itself out of his chest.
It’s a love spell, you idiot, his one last sensible brain cell cried. He’d never had experience with one, only heard they might exist, but there was no doubt in his mind that’s what this was. That was clearly the box the crystal had come from, the one box in the whole bloody shop that actually contained magic, and now he was paying the price for his arrogance.
Not that he cared when she was looking at him like that.
“Wells,” she murmured, and he realized she’d never called him by his name before. Always the dreaded Esquire. Never Wells.
He liked the sound of his name in her mouth. He wanted to taste it there on her tongue. He wanted to slide his hands into all that gorgeous red hair, and feel her body against his. He wanted . . .
Fuck, he just wanted.
“This is a very bad thing,” he told her as he lowered his face to hers.
“Just the absolute worst,” she agreed, and then she was on her tiptoes, her lips on his.
Gwyn was no stranger to lust. It was one of her favorite feelings, in fact. That heady rush when you looked at a person and saw desire in their eyes, how your own desire rose up to match it. The swooping in the stomach, the pounding of the heart, that shiver that raced up and down your spine . . . all of it was pretty amazing, and she had chased it whenever the opportunity presented itself.
But kissing Wells Penhallow in the cellar of his shop was on an entirely new level.
It’s because you’re both sex-magicked up, she tried to remind herself even as she pressed herself closer to him, arms winding around his neck as his hands slid over her back, her ribs, pulling her in even tighter.
It didn’t feel like a first kiss. It was too good, too sure of itself, and once again, Gwyn tried to tell herself that had to be the magic because surely a man named Llewellyn didn’t kiss like this without some kind of magical intervention.
His hand was on her face again, that gorgeous hand she’d been watching earlier, thumb moving along her jaw and raising shivery sparks everywhere it touched. When that touch moved higher, brushing a spot just beneath her ear, Gwyn was pretty sure she actually whimpered.
That was a first.
Wells met that sound with a noise low in his throat, and she felt that growl everywhere, her knees actually going a little weak.
Without breaking the kiss, she turned so that his back was against the shelf, pushing him up against it hard enough to rattle something above their heads, but honestly, the entire thing could’ve come down on both of them, and Gwyn wasn’t sure she would’ve noticed.
Not when his hand was on the back of her neck, the silver of his signet ring cool against her heated skin, not when his tongue was sliding against hers, his mouth tasting like citrus and sugar from the tea he’d been drinking. Not when she could feel him through the fabric of his trousers, hard for her.
Wanting her.
Because of a spell.
Finally, that voice started to cut through some of the haze.
A spell.
A stupid love spell that had rained down on them because they’d been arguing, which is all they ever did, so it was clearly the most powerful love spell in existence, and Rhiannon’s tits, she was climbing all over a man she didn’t even like because of a shower of cotton candy sex dust.
Head clearing, Gwyn broke the kiss, stepping back so quickly that she bumped into the shelf just behind her. This time, something from the top did fall, a little votive-candle holder, and the glass shattering at their feet seemed to bring both of them fully back to themselves.
Wells was still breathing hard, his face streaked with the pink dust, his eyes wide and his hair a wreck.
I did that, Gwyn thought almost wonderingly, and then she shook her head, pulling at the hem of her dress to straighten it.
“This,” she panted, reaching up to push her hair back from her face.
She didn’t even have to finish the sentence. Wells was already standing up straight again, jerking at the lapels of his waistcoat. “Too right,” he agreed to something she hadn’t said.
“And that,” she added, pointing up at the box still teetering on the shelf.
“Burning it,” he replied. “Salting the earth.”
Gwyn gave a brisk nod, then spun on her heel, hoping her legs weren’t too shaky to carry her back up the stairs.
She didn’t look back.