CHAPTER TEN
Walt
Walt knocked lightly at the door to Elysian’s bedroom. He’d heard the shower shut off about twenty minutes earlier, and he hoped that he’d waited awkwardly in the kitchen long enough for her to be presentable.
“Come in,” her voice called. “It doesn’t lock.”
Her bedroom was so different from the rest of the house that opening the door felt like stepping through a portal. No heavy mid-century furniture here, only a bed with a white enamel frame, piled with quilts and blankets and dozens of pillows in as many different colors. The walls were washed with white, but very little of them was visible as every available inch had been used to tack up photographs. Some were candids and selfies. Elysian dressed up for nights out with her friends. Standing at her high school in cap and gown. Clutching a bouquet of roses, trying to hide as much of a truly awful bridesmaid dress as possible. On the couch, with Annette’s cheek pressed to hers. Surrounded by women who he assumed were the other members of the circle.
Others were more carefully composed, taken with a good quality camera and professionally printed. These were clearly her pride and joy—pictures of birds in flight, deer caught in dappled sunlight, and one picture of a bear that he desperately hoped was taken with a telephoto lens, because it was so close and clear the only other explanation was that she’d stood two feet from its face.
She was sitting at a vanity with her back to the door, but she met his eyes in the mirror. Her hair hung down her back, gleaming like polished wood with water from the shower. It made the fabric of her silk robe cling to her back.
It gave him a strange satisfaction to see her so casually wearing the robe she had loaned him. There was something primal about knowing that his own body heat had once soaked through it, and now it was wrapped around her.
Which was… not a direction he’d intended his thoughts to take when he came in here.
“What’s up?” she asked. She shook her hair out, then ran her fingers through it from her scalp to the tips. Her hair fluttered back to her shoulders, completely dry and curling slightly.
Walt startled. “Doesn’t that break the whole no personal benefit rule?”
She chuckled, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “What, a magical blow dry and curl? Not really. Any personal benefits I get from having neat hair are pretty abstract. And besides, if I did it manually I’d have to run my hairdryer for twenty minutes, which is bad for the environment. So me doing it by magic is doing a favor for literally everyone in the world.”
“Seems like magic has a lot of loopholes,” he said.
“Like a hooked rug,” she agreed cheerfully. She grabbed a hairbrush to smooth away the few stray hairs that hadn’t fallen perfectly into place. “Seriously though, you didn’t come in here to talk about that. What’s up?”
He hesitated. “I was thinking that maybe I should stay out of the way while you’re having your party. I could stay in here. Or if you’re not comfortable with that, maybe I could go see a movie or something.”
“What?” She looked genuinely horrified by the suggestion. “Walt, I’m not going to hide you away like Mrs. Rochester in the attic.”
“It wouldn’t be like that,” he said. He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
“You seem nervous,” Elysian said, laying her hairbrush carefully on the vanity. The back of it was wood, inset with real silver, he noticed. His skin prickled at the metal’s presence. “I know the idea of a gathering of witches sounds intimidating, but I promise there will be no cackling. Mostly we’re going to eat pie.”
There was no point dancing around the issue.
“I’m attracted to you,” he said. Her pretty eyes widened, to his surprise. He thought he’d been obvious about it—embarrassingly so. “I don’t know if it’s real, or the spell, or both, but it’s there.”
“I… OK,” she said. “You don’t know if it’s real?”
Walt winced internally. That must have hurt to hear, which was far from what he’d meant to happen. “No, scratch that. I do know that it’s real. Maybe the spell is amplifying it, or killing my self-control but my attraction to you is real. You’re fucking beautiful.”
“And that makes you not want to come to the party?”
“I want to come to the party,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “But god, Elysian, I don’t want to humiliate myself. I’ve got no memories. For all I know I’ve never seen a naked woman.”
Liar, the wolf said casually. You know you must have, being so comfortable naked.
That’s different and you know it, he shot back.
Elysian looked him up and down, slowly. His skin burned under her gaze, but the assessment in them was anything but a dismissal. “Trust me, you’ve seen a naked woman before.”
She got up, very slowly, and stepped around her chair. “Would it help put you at ease, if I…” She tweaked the loose bow at her waist tying her robe closed.
“I’m not trying to pressure you into anything,” he said quickly.
“I know. It’s not a big deal, Walt.” The robe was already draped only loosely around her shoulders, showing both collarbones and the tanned skin between them. But the dark shadows behind where the fabric crossed over was another country. “You’ll see me naked after dinner anyway. And I’ve seen you naked.” She smiled, wickedly. “Fair’s fair.”
He reached out, slowly enough that she had plenty of time to pull away if this was a joke, and grabbed one end of the belt dangling at her waist. With a quick tug the bow slipped free, and the belt slithered to the floor.
She shrugged her shoulders and the robe fell away, leaving her in the soft light of her bedroom. A memory flashed through him of paging through a book of oil paintings. She would have looked at home among them, so at ease with her own naked body, hair floating down around her soft round breasts.
“So,” she said quietly. “Is that better?”
“Much better,” he murmured. He put a hand on her chin and tipped her head up so that he could capture her mouth in a kiss. He deepened it, and she moaned into his mouth, a low sound that shot straight down his body and into his groin.
“Walt,” she whispered against the skin of his jaw.
“Walt,” another woman whispered in his memory, sounding confused as he pulled away from her. “Walt?” she repeated as he turned and walked away, as if oblivious to her presence.
“Walt?” Elysian repeated, dragging him out. “You’ve got that look. Did you remember something?”
“Yes,” he said, regret and guilt churning in his stomach. “I think it was my girlfriend.”