Chapter 15
The moment his lips met hers, Vivi realized she’d made a terrible mistake.
It had probably been too much to hope that the intervening years had somehow made Rhys worse at kissing. Even with the curse.
And of course she’d lied to him when she said she couldn’t remember his kiss. She’d remembered everything when it came to him. Every kiss, every touch.
Those months with Rhys Penhallow had been prime fantasy material over the years, her own personal X-rated scrapbook.
But maybe she hadn’t been lying after all, because as he kissed her, she realized she hadn’t remembered exactly how good it was. How good he was at this.
He kissed her like he’d been dying to kiss her every one of these past nine years, a low growl rumbling in his chest when his tongue met hers, and Vivi felt that sound all the way down to her toes.
Hands cupping her face, Rhys tilted her head, deepening the kiss, and Vivi’s own fingers clutched at his shoulders, wanting, needing to get as close to him as she could.
As he backed up, pulling her with him, his hip nudged the table. Vivi heard that one precarious stack of books hit the floor almost from a distance as she turned around, propping herself up on the edge of the table, never taking her hands off him, her eyes closed, her blood so hot in her veins she was surprised her skin wasn’t steaming.
“Christ, I forgot,” he was muttering against her neck, his mouth hot. “How did I forget?”
Vivi could only shake her head because she’d forgotten, too. Or maybe “forgotten” wasn’t the right word. She’d driven the memory of this connection, this heat, from her mind along with all the rest of Rhys. She hadn’t let herself remember how good it was between them because that would mean the summer fling she had at nineteen somehow trumped every other relationship in her adult life, and that was too depressing to contemplate.
Or maybe you were scared, a little voice in her mind reminded her. Because if he was the best, you lost him too soon.
His hands were skating over her hips now, gathering up the material of her skirt, and even as Vivi told herself she’d be completely out of her mind to have sex with her ex in a freaking library, she wasn’t stopping him. In fact, she was helping him, her own hands going to shove his jacket off his broad shoulders even as she situated herself more firmly on the edge of the table.
Rhys was standing between her legs and she could feel him, hard and hot through the denim of his jeans, pushing against the cradle of her thighs as they just kept on kissing, and Vivi put one hand on the table behind her so that she could brace herself to press even closer.
The sound he made as she rolled her hips against him sent electricity racing down her spine, and Vivi tilted her head to give him better access to her neck, her eyes drifting shut as her fingers clutched the edge of his jacket.
Then he was kissing her mouth again, his tongue stroking hers, his hips moving against her in a way that made her feel more than a little crazy.
“Vivienne,” he murmured against her neck, his hand stroking her thigh, and she nodded, needy and wanting.
“Touch me,” she heard herself say. “Rhys, please . . .”
She was wearing tights, but she could still feel the press of his fingers along the seam there between her legs, and she tilted up into his touch, gasping.
“Okay, so that part of the curse definitely didn’t work,” she muttered, and Rhys lifted his head, gaze foggy with desire.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Just do it again.”
He did, and Vivi lowered her forehead to his shoulder, her grip on his shirt so tight she was surprised the fabric didn’t tear.
This was insane. Irresponsible. Stupid.
And she was going to do it anyway.
When Vivi heard the first scream, the first thought her dazed, lust-addled mind could come up with was that someone had walked in on them.
But no, as the scream came again, it was clear that it wasn’t that close.
Rhys had frozen, too, his head slightly tilted toward the door.
“I’m guessing that’s not a normal sound in the library.”
Still only half aware of what was going on, Vivi shook her head, blinking. “No, that’s—”
The third scream was followed by a low rumble, and Vivi leapt to her feet, smoothing her skirt down back over her legs with one hand as Rhys took her other, pulling her toward the door.
“Come on.”
As they came out of the study room, Dr. Fulke had already stepped down from her massive desk and was looking off through the stacks back toward the regular part of the library, her wrinkled face creased even further with worry.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, shaking her head, and Vivi had the sense Dr. Fulke wasn’t even talking to them.
And then Rhys was pulling her back through the shelves in the direction they’d come this morning, closer and closer to that awful screaming.
The strange thing was, the closer they got to the source of the sound, the more Vivi’s heart pounded, not just with fear but with that same overwhelming sense of magic she’d felt earlier, that cold sense of wrongness that had seeped in from the moment they’d entered the library.
She and Rhys burst out of the stacks, and the cold nearly sucked Vivi’s breath from her lungs. Earlier, it had been chilly. Now it was frigid, so cold it almost hurt, and she looked around her with wide eyes.
Students were cowered under study desks, huddled in corners, and in the center of the room . . .
“Is that . . . ?” Rhys asked, and Vivi could only nod, dumbfounded.
“It’s a ghost.”
Rhys stared at the apparition in front of them, wondering how someone who grew up where he had had never seen a ghost before.
Truth be told, he hadn’t actually believed the damn things were real because if they were, there’d been no better place for them than Penhaven Manor.
This seemed very real.
The woman was a glowing greenish blue, her eyes wide in her pale face, feet dangling just a bit off the floor. But the weirdest thing about her was how she was dressed. She had on jeans, a flannel shirt over a T-shirt and a pair of Converse high-tops with Sharpie doodles on the toes, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail as she glared at them.
Whenever she’d died, it hadn’t been all that long ago, and Rhys found that more unsettling than he could explain.
The kid nearest him, a tall skinny guy in a Penhaven College hoodie and jeans, was sitting on the floor, his hands raised over his head like he was warding off a blow.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked Rhys, and Rhys fought the urge to reply, How in the name of sweet fuck would I know?
Vivi stepped a little closer to the apparition. “What’s she looking for?” she asked.
The ghost was still moving back and forth, her head swinging from side to side, and yes, she definitely seemed to be searching the shelves for something, her pale face contorted into a scowl.
And then she seemed to see him.
“Son of a bitch,” Rhys muttered under his breath.
“I think she’s looking at—” Vivienne started, but before she could finish the sentence, there was a banshee shriek, and the ghost was flying at him.
For a moment, the cold Rhys had felt earlier seemed to slip over him from head to toe, enveloping him as though he’d fallen into the sea.
And then he was flying.
Well, not flying so much as tumbling slightly above the floor, his back connecting painfully with a bookshelf. Dimly, he heard it creak and wobble, heard the shrieks of the students in the library, the pounding of running feet and Vivienne calling his name. But above all of that, he could still hear that shrill scream the ghost had uttered, like Satan’s teakettle whistle, and as he tried to sit up, he winced, holding his ribs. None seemed broken, but they were definitely sore, and if that thing decided to take another shot at him . . .
The ghost had its back to him now, its attention focused on the shelves in front of it, and as Rhys watched, spectral fingers reached out to take a book down, only for the ghost to howl in frustration as her hand passed right through whatever it was she was trying to hold. Still she tried again and again, her movements jerkier and more frantic, and Rhys swallowed hard as he attempted to come to his feet.
Vivienne was still standing there, frowning at the thing, and when she took a hesitant step even closer, Rhys lifted his hand.
“Vivienne!” he called, and the ghost’s head whipped around, eyes narrowing.
He could feel it gathering up energy, the temperature in the room dropping even further, so cold now that he could see his breath, and every hair on his body seemed to be standing on end.
Bracing himself for another attack, Rhys gritted his teeth.
But then the ghost stopped, floating slightly to the right to glare at Vivienne, who still stood there, studying it like it was a puzzle she couldn’t quite work out.
With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a wail, the ghost dropped her head, and, as suddenly as a soap bubble popping, was gone.
The room almost immediately became warmer, and Rhys looked around him.
The few students in the room had fled, leaving him and Vivienne alone among the overturned tables, the abandoned textbooks and pages of notebook paper that had fallen to the floor, the library suddenly very quiet after all that chaos.
Rhys moved over to Vivienne, taking both her hands in his. They were freezing, and he chafed her fingers between his palms. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.
Moments ago, they’d been kissing. More than kissing, really. Rhys knew when a kiss was just a kiss, and when it was a prelude to more, and what they’d been doing in that study room had definitely been leading somewhere. He could still taste her on his tongue, still feel the damp heat he’d touched between her legs.
But now she was pulling her hands out of his and moving back, her eyes a little distant.
“Fine,” she said. “You?”
Rhys gingerly touched his ribs again. “Nothing a hot bath and a nice whisky won’t fix.”
She nodded, then looked back to the shelf the ghost had been searching. “What was she looking for?”
“That’s what you’re concerned about?” Rhys asked, raising his eyebrows. “Not the fact that ghosts are real?”
“That part, too,” she said, walking over to the shelf, frowning as she scanned the titles there. “Have you ever seen one before?”
“Most definitely not,” Rhys said, shoving his hands in his pockets with a shudder. He could still feel the unnatural coldness of the spirit slipping over him, remembered how he’d felt suddenly not in control of his own body.
Fucking horrifying.
And it hadn’t just been the cold he’d felt—that thing had been angry at him. But why?
“Ms. Jones.”
A woman stood in the doorway between the regular library and Special Collections, Dr. Fulke hovering nervously behind her. She could’ve been anywhere between fifty and eighty, somehow ageless and ancient all at once, her hair a bright shock of white against her dark skin, and she was wearing, as far as Rhys could tell, about sixty-eight scarves.
Next to him, Vivi heaved a deep sigh.
“Dr. Arbuthnot,” she said, and then looked at Rhys. “Head of Witchery.”