A Practical Guide to Sorcery for Night-Shift Workers novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Couch

We made it to the staff room at 12:29.

It was a narrow room with two desks, a filing cabinet, a dead plant, and a green corduroy couch under the window.

Anselm shut the door and turned the lock.

Out in the hall, the guard's boots began to squeak toward us.

We stood against the door, shoulder to shoulder, not breathing.

The footsteps passed.

A flashlight beam slid across the paper blind and moved on.

Anselm let out a long, shaky breath.

I looked at him in the dark, with his shirt hanging open and his curls wrecked from my hands.

I started to laugh, silently, with my forehead against his chest.

He laughed too, and the sound shook through both of us.

Then I stopped laughing, because his hand was in my hair.

"Come here," I said.

I took his hand and pulled him across the room.

I turned him by the shoulders and pushed him down onto the couch.

He sat with his long legs sprawled and looked up at me.

"Reya," he said. "I haven't, in a long time. I'm not good at this."

"You're not good at casting either, and look at you," I said.

"That's not comforting."

"Take off your shirt."

He did.

He took it off slowly, with those careful fingers, and let it fall behind him.

He was pale and lean, with a few curls of light-brown hair across his chest.

I put my hand flat over his heart.

It was hammering fast against my palm.

"There you are," I said.

I pulled my scrub top over my head and dropped it.

His eyes went wide and then very soft.

"God," he said. "Look at you."

"You can look," I said. "You can do more than look."

He lifted his hands, and then stopped, because they were cold.

"They're freezing," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Then warm them on me."

I took both of his hands and laid them on my waist.

I gasped, and then I didn't care.

The cold went right through me, and it was the best thing I had felt in weeks.

He pulled me down onto his lap.

I settled with a knee on each side of his hips, feeling his cock already hard beneath his trousers, and his mouth found my collarbone and stayed.

He kissed along it slowly, one place and then the next.

I tipped my head back and my hands went into his hair.

"Anselm."

"Yes."

"Don't be careful with me."

"I don't know how to be anything else."

"Then learn," I said.

He looked up.

His eyes were dark in the dim room, and for a moment I saw the boy who had burned his hands and never forgiven himself.

I kissed him until that look went away.

His hands moved up my back and unhooked my bra, and the cool touch of his fingers made me shiver all over.

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