Witch, Please, He's My Cat: A Comedy Fantasy Romance, page 31
He lifts his fingers, tracing the edge of my jaw with a reverence that cracks me open.
“I felt you,” he whispers. “All of you. You were… inside me.”
“You’ve been inside me,” I mutter. “Let’s not make it weird.”
His laugh is soft. Real. Beautiful.
And then it fades into a groan, his body curling against mine, breath hitching as the last of the magic hums low between us like a second heartbeat.
He’s heavy. Not in weight, not really-he’s all lean muscle and wiry tension, still warm from the fallout of whatever the hell just tried to tear him apart-but he leans on me like the weight of his magic is still pulling him down. Or maybe he’s just enjoying it. Knowing him, it’s both.
“Don’t think I don’t notice,” I mutter, wrapping his arm over my shoulder as I guide him, slow and uneven, back toward the car. The wards behind us fizzle out with a final snap of light. The sigils I carved are still glowing faintly, but the energy’s settling. Contained. For now.
“Notice what?” he says, breathless but smug, dragging his feet just enough to make me work for it. “That I’m putting my full body weight on you because I like how your hips move when you’re burdened with responsibility?”
“Because you’re a menace.”
“Because I’m charming. I’m giving you the fantasy, Mira. A trembling man, broken and vulnerable, leaning on you after a magical exorcism of epic proportions. You’re welcome.”
“You nearly died.”
He lifts his head just enough to flash me a crooked smile, shadows still whispering across the line of his collarbone like smoke too stubborn to vanish.
“Nearly,” he agrees. “But then you went full dark sorceress in the woods and bonded your soul to mine, so really, who's the dramatic one now?”
I tighten my grip on him. Not enough to hurt, but enough to warn.
“You’d better be grateful I didn’t let the forest eat you.”
“I am. Deeply.” He leans in closer, voice dropping, his mouth just at my ear. “So grateful, in fact, I’m already thinking of ways to repay you. Some of them involve whipped cream. Some of them involve absolutely no pants.”
I groan, dragging him the last few feet to the car. “You were literally on fire five minutes ago.”
“Emotionally. Spiritually. Erotically. Who can say?”
“I swear to the stars, Puck, I will hex you into a fucking caterpillar.”
“Only if you promise to raise me in a tiny glass jar with air holes.”
I shove the door open and help him slide into the passenger seat. He lands with a grunt, head tipped back against the headrest, eyes closed now, lashes still damp. But he’s grinning, even through it all. That reckless, incorrigible grin. Like he survived just to flirt with me again.
I shut the door and round to the driver’s side.
Because no matter what just happened-what’s happening to him-he’s still Puck.
Mine. Alive.
Snark first, consequences later.
Chapter Twenty Eight
He moans like a prince the second my fingers slip into his hair. Not subtly. Not quietly. Full-throated, gratuitous, with a sinful stretch of his long, still-glowing body in the chipped porcelain tub like he’s auditioning for a very exclusive cult of worship.
“You’re enjoying this,” I mutter, kneeling beside the tub with suds sliding down my wrists, the scent of eucalyptus and burned ozone still clinging to him beneath the soap. “Unreasonably so.”
Puck tilts his head back into my hands, eyelids fluttering like he’s seconds from purring. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You nearly combusted into shadowflame an hour ago.”
“Mm. Which I am bravely recovering from. With your assistance.” He shifts, leg sliding through the water with a purposeful splash that soaks the front of my shirt. “You didn’t have to bathe me, you know. You wanted to.”
“I wanted to make sure your skin wasn’t going to melt off.”
“Sure, sure,” he says, eyes still closed, grin blooming slow and crooked, “and while you were down there, why not get your hands in my hair and make soft, whimpering noises about the state of my scalp.”
“I did not whimper.”
“You sighed, Mira. It was scandalous.” He opens one eye, lashes wet, gold irises gleaming like the fire never really left. “Are you aroused by the idea of me using conditioner? Is this your new kink?”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Say it slower, sweetheart.”
I shove a fresh wave of water over his head and he splutters dramatically, shaking like a dog and sending droplets flying across the cracked tile walls.
“You’re lucky I don’t dunk you until you bubble,” I growl, reaching for the comb to work through the worst of the tangles. “Gods, it’s like a haunted bird’s nest in here.”
He leans into the comb, utterly relaxed. “That’s because someone insisted on dragging me through the woods and then tethering my unstable magical core to their soul. Which, I might add, is deeply intimate. We’re practically married now.”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“Only when you sit on my face.”
My hands freeze in his hair. He grins wider.
“Puck-”
“I’m kidding.” Beat. “Mostly.”
He lets out a contented sigh as I work the last knot free, and for a moment, something soft pulls at the edges of us. I see the rise and fall of his chest. The faint flicker of residual shadow beneath his collarbone, like the fire inside him is sleeping but not dead. He’s worn thin-his magic quieter now, less desperate-but it’s there. Still dangerous. Still too big for the body it’s in.
And he’s letting me touch him anyway.
No one told me how terrifying love would feel when it looked like this. Not tender. Not perfect. Just real.
He shifts again, a little closer to the edge of the tub, water lapping at his ribs. His voice drops low, teasing but edged in something that makes my breath catch.
“You like this.”
I snort. “You’re hallucinating from the heat.”
“You like taking care of me,” he says, opening both eyes now, gaze fixed and hot and impossible to look away from. “Even when I’m insufferable. Even when I’m-” he gestures vaguely to his still-slick chest, “-a magical anomaly you should probably report to the Council.”
I rinse the soap from my hands, letting my fingers trail over the curve of his neck, slow and deliberate. “You’re mine.”
He blinks. The smirk falters.
I meet his gaze and hold it. “I don’t report what’s mine.”
The water sloshes as he sits up slightly, arms bracing on either side of the tub, and gods-he’s so close.
“You keep saying things like that,” he says quietly, voice gone velvet-dark, “and I’m going to make very poor decisions in this bathroom.”
“Like what?” I whisper, already leaning in.
His eyes flare gold again. Dangerous. Hungry. “Like pulling you into this tub and worshipping you until you forget your name.”
Without breaking eye contact, I plant my palm on the top of his smug, golden-eyed head and shove.
The splash is glorious.
Water erupts like a geyser, drenching my already-wet shirt and half the bathroom wall as he sputters and surfaces, hair plastered to his forehead in dripping black waves, mouth open in a scandalized gasp.
“Oh, rude,” he chokes, blinking through soap and betrayal. “Is this how you treat your emotionally compromised magical partner post-rescue bath? I nearly died!”
“You nearly took out a leyline.” I toss him a towel like it’s a weapon and sit back on my heels, resisting the urge to laugh at the way he fumbles with it. “Get your head out of the gutter, Puck. We’ve got bigger problems than your unresolved need to seduce me every six minutes.”
He wipes water from his face like I offended his honor. “If I die with unresolved lust, I’m haunting you with shirtless spectral visits. That’s a promise.”
“Then I’m buying salt by the pound.”
He huffs, toweling off his hair in slow, lazy circles that make it clear he’s not done with me-he’s just storing energy. But beneath the posturing, I see it-the way his shoulders are still a little too tight. How his fingers tremble when they lower the towel. The shadows that haven’t fully disappeared under his skin.
This was just the first flare.
It won’t be the last.
I stand, offering him my hand again. “Come on, demon boy. Dry off. We’ve got to figure out what’s happening to you before you light up like a roman candle next time someone looks at you sideways.”
He takes my hand, warm and still damp and annoyingly smug.
“I am pretty when I burn,” he says, pulling himself to his feet with a wink that belongs in a far safer world than the one we’re living in. “But sure. Plot first. Worship later.”
That grin-that maddening, electric grin-follows me all the way out of the bathroom.
I towel off in the bedroom, the air cool against my damp skin as I tug on a fresh shirt and try not to stare at the black smoke that still lingers in the hallway like a warning. There’s no scent to it. No weight. Just the memory of something ancient slipping between us and staying. It’s not gone. Just quiet.
And quiet doesn’t mean safe.
I lay out clothes for him without thinking-softest shirt he owns, worn at the collar where I always pull on it, clean black jeans that hug his hips just enough to make him unbearable. He’ll pretend not to notice. Then he’ll comment on how well I folded his underwear.
But I can’t focus on the clothes. Not really.
My mind’s already circling the thing I don’t understand-shadowfire.
The old texts don’t say much. They call it unstable. Elemental. A rare byproduct of corrupted ley energy, or magic that’s been bent too far against the grain of its user’s soul. No one’s ever written clearly on what it means when a being not born of magic suddenly starts generating it. Especially not a familiar. Especially not one I transformed.
And then there’s the soulbond.
Which is its own problem.
It’s not that I’m scared of being tethered to Puck-I’m not. Gods, if anything, the bond feels... inevitable. The way we orbit each other, collide, pull and push like twin moons on the same cursed tide. He’s already in every corner of my life. The spell just made it official.
But the shadowfire is another thing entirely. If it burns too hot, too fast, and he loses control again… it won’t just take him. It’ll come through me. Through the bond.
I felt it earlier-surging, desperate, angry. And gods, it liked me. Liked us. Like it wanted to settle inside both of us and stay.
Which leaves only one option.
I sit on the edge of the bed, wet hair dripping down my back, and stare out the cracked window toward the edge of the woods, where the trees whisper secrets I’m too tired to hear.
There’s only one place that might hold answers. One place that’s old enough. Buried deep enough. Protected enough.
Home.
And I hate how the word tastes in my mouth.
Because home isn’t safe.
Home is where they’ll find us if they’ve started tracking. It’s where I was marked as unstable. It’s where the council keeps its eyes sharp and its knives sharper. Going back would mean putting us both in their path again. Exposing Puck to the people who taught me that familiars aren’t supposed to feel.
But it’s the only place with the texts that might help us. And if I don’t learn how to stop this-how to contain what’s growing in him-then it’s only a matter of time before he burns everything we’ve built to ash.
I hear him behind me, the soft rustle of fabric and the click of his teeth as he says something smug to himself about how “you’d think nearly combusting would earn me silk, but noooo.”
The shadowfire. The danger. The storm that’s coming. I have to protect him. Even if that means walking back into the place I swore I’d never go.
He’s buttoning the shirt I laid out for him-crookedly, of course, like he’s doing it wrong on purpose to test my patience. The collar is half-turned, sleeves rolled up with lazy elegance, and the line of his bare throat is still damp from the bath. There’s a smugness carved into every angle of him, even now, after everything-like nearly combusting was just another inconvenient hiccup in his day and not a sign that we’re both probably cursed six ways from Sunday.
He sees me watching. Smirks. “You gonna keep staring, or come over here and fix the buttons you’re so clearly judging?”
I don’t move.
I study him-this impossibly difficult, seductive, newly dangerous creature who would absolutely flirt his way through a funeral and then demand snacks afterward-and I wonder if he knows how fast everything is about to change.
“We’re going back,” I say.
His hands still at the hem of his shirt. “Back?”
I nod once. “To Elderveil.”
He blinks. Whatever joke he had locked and loaded slips back behind his tongue. “You’re serious.”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
There’s a beat. The air between us sharpens, not cold but aware. Like the room itself has heard the name and remembers. Elderveil isn’t just a city. It’s the city. Seat of the coven. Sprawling, ancient, regulated magic thrumming through every stone and street sign. Spelled borders. Surveillance enchantments. Every mistake I ever made archived in some warded ledger with my name written in red ink.
And for Puck-formerly feline, currently soul-bound, accidentally shadowfire-possessed-it’s nothing short of a trap.
“Tell me you hit your head when I wasn’t looking,” he says slowly, voice flat. “Tell me you tripped over my sexy shadow magic and smacked your skull on a tree root and now you’re delirious and this is some kind of guilt-fueled hallucination.”
“We need the records,” I say, standing. “The ones in the restricted archives. The ones they don’t digitize. The stuff they don’t teach. Shadowfire’s old magic. We can’t guess our way through it.”
“So instead,” he snaps, “we volunteer to waltz back into the city that wants to collar you and dissect me.”
“We won’t waltz,” I bite out. “We sneak. Warded. Quiet. We get in, we get what we need, and we get out.”
He scoffs, running a hand through his hair. “Right. Because you and I are so good at being subtle.”
I cross the room, fast. “You almost died, Puck. You felt that. You know we don’t have time to waste pretending we can handle this alone.”
His jaw tightens. He doesn’t look away.
And I know what this really is.
He’s scared. He won’t say it-he’ll couch it in sarcasm, cloak it in teeth-but he knows what Elderveil means. The risk. The exposure. What it’ll take from both of us just to get close to the truth.
But he also knows I’m right.
Eventually, he exhales, slow and bitter.
“Fine,” he mutters. “We go to Elderveil.”
His eyes are darker than they should be, that gold flickering somewhere deep beneath the surface like the fire’s waiting to speak again.
“But if I catch even a whiff of someone trying to collar me,” he adds, voice low, almost a growl, “I’m setting something on fire. And I don’t care what.”
I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his.
“That’s why I’m going with you,” I say softly.
He squeezes once.
I watch his fingers around mine-warm, steady, the faintest tremble still ghosting through his grip-and I make the decision, right there, standing barefoot in a cabin we never meant to survive in.
I won’t call Hexie.
I won’t send a rune-burst to my aunt, won’t give her the truth, won’t let her know we’re crawling back to the city she warned us never to return to. She’d worry. She’d interfere. She’d try to protect me in that brittle, furious way that always ends with her throwing firebolts and collecting pieces after the fallout.
And Beryl? I don’t trust myself not to fold the second she sees me. Not after the way we left. Not after what I did. She’ll want to help, but she’ll want answers, too-and right now, I don’t have them. Right now, I’m the liability.
So no messages. No heads-up.
We’ll go in quiet.
We’ll find the archives-the old ones, the ones sealed beneath the east quarter of Elderveil, locked behind charmscript doors and enchanted protections I still remember how to crack. The ones that house the histories the council doesn't share. The research into wild magic, anomalous manifestations, familiar transfiguration.
No one will know. Not until we’re long gone.
Because I’m not letting anyone touch Puck. Not the council. Not the Inquisition. Not even the wards that guard those ancient rooms. If they try to trap him, study him, dissect his magic like he’s some artifact that doesn’t belong in their polished halls-I will hex the foundation from beneath their feet.
We’ll get what we need.
And we’ll come back here.
Back to the woods. Back to the warded, crooked cabin that once belonged to the parents I can barely remember, to the place that’s already soaked in shadow and memory and the strange kind of love that burns at the edges. It’s not safe. It’s barely livable. But it’s ours.
We’ll come back here and figure it out-together. I’ll ward the place properly, anchor the leyline threads into grounding loops, layer the perimeter with sigils tuned to his signature now. And I’ll teach him. Gods, I’ll teach him everything I can.
Because if he doesn’t learn to control this-
If he burns again, harder next time, deeper-he won’t just hurt himself.
He’ll burn through me.
Through the bond. Through the magic. Through us.
And I’d rather set the whole coven aflame than let that happen.
Puck lets out a breath, still watching me, like he can sense the storm I've just built inside myself but knows better than to comment on it. He rubs his thumb along the side of my hand, casual, unconscious.
