“That was . . . what?” Bowen asked, turning his head to look at her. His hair had started to dry, curls rioting around his head in a way that was wildly endearing and so cute Tamsyn was fighting the urge to wrap one around her finger.
“Annoying,” she repeated with a sigh as she rolled to her back. The sheet slipped down to her waist, but she didn’t care, lying there with one hand thrown up by her head, the other flat on the mattress beside her.
“The sex?” Bowen clarified. “The . . . the sex was annoying?”
“Oh, no, the sex was amazing,” Tamsyn said, shaking her head before turning to look at him. “That’s what’s annoying. You’re already really smart and very handsome, and so being good at sex is, as you Brits like to say, overegging the pudding, frankly.”
Bowen rolled onto his side to face her, his head propped on one hand. “I consider myself a fairly smart man, Tamsyn, but talking to you is occasionally like trying to translate . . . I don’t know, Greek into Welsh, and then maybe into some dead or dying language. Like Cornish.”
“Or summat,” she finished for him, and he smiled at her, reaching out to tweak one nipple.
“Glad to see this hasn’t changed one thing between us,” he said. “You’re still going to give me shit no matter what.”
“Yup,” she confirmed. “Even if we end up stuck in 1957 forever, I’ll still be here, making fun of you.”
Bowen’s expression grew more serious then, his finger coming up to trace the line of her nose. “We’re not going to get stuck here,” he told her. “If the two of us can find ourselves together, how hard can it be to convince Harri and Elspeth to get back together?”
“Maybe we should introduce them to that magical bathroom,” Tamsyn suggested, and was delighted by the absolutely horrified look that came over his face. “Bowen, you do realize your grandparents have to have sex for you to exist, right?”
“I can realize that on an intellectual level without ever having to think about it or, Rhiannon forbid, picture it.”
“Fine,” Tamsyn said, sighing as she slid farther down into the bed. “First thing tomorrow, we come up with a plan to fix their whole deal that doesn’t involve you having to think about your grandparents doing it.”
“Don’t say ‘doing it.’”
“Shagging.”
“Stop it.”
“Making the beast with two backs.”
“That one is genuinely vile, and I’ve never understood it.”
Grinning, sated, and happy—god, too happy, scary happy—Tamsyn reached for him, and it felt so good how easily he slid into her touch, his nose playing along her jaw, his lips and tongue placing a wet, sucking kiss just beneath her ear.
“But that’s for tomorrow,” she said, already sliding a thigh over his hip. “Now what was it you mentioned earlier about me
deserving sex in soft sheets?”
Chapter 18
The next morning, Bowen sat at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and staring at his grandparents.
They weren’t speaking at the moment, just studiously ignoring each other while they ate their eggs, and he wished Tamsyn would show up already, because she would surely know where to start with this whole “getting these two back together” plan.
Of course, he’d given Tamsyn plenty of reasons to sleep in this morning, he thought, hiding his smirk with his coffee cup. It wasn’t like him to smirk—that was more Wells’s territory. But he’d spent most of last night making love to the woman of his dreams, so a smirk felt well deserved. His brain was still spooling through images from last night.
Her in the bathtub, her skin wet, the room steamy from more than the water.
Tamsyn in the sheets, uninhibited as anything, her nails scoring his back, her fingers in his hair while he licked and sucked at her, the breathless way she said his name, the way her hips bucked beneath his mouth . . .
Clearing his throat, Bowen distracted himself by refilling his coffee from a silver pot. The last thing he needed was a hard-on while he ate breakfast with his grandparents, even if they didn’t know they were his grandparents.
His eyes flicked toward the door again, hoping Tamsyn would appear, but no such luck. The only person coming into the breakfast room was Emerald, another one of those velvet ribbons—black this time—holding back her golden hair and yet another book in her hand.
She was so focused on the book she nearly collided with the Ming vase near the doorway, and saved herself only at the last moment with a startled “Oh!” The vase wobbled on its stand, and Emerald reached out with one hand to steady it. As she did, she lowered the hand holding the book, and an entirely separate book slipped out from between its pages, smaller and slighter.
Blushing furiously, the teenager stooped to pick it up, and Bowen pretended not to see. Probably something she wasn’t meant to be reading, something “dirty,” no doubt—Rhys had had a similar habit of hiding girlie mags in his spellbooks when he was a teenager—and Bowen wasn’t about to blow up her spot on that.
Harri and Elspeth didn’t seem to notice, and Emerald took her place at the table, reaching for the basket of toast that had been set in the middle of the table. Once she’d slathered a piece with butter and marmalade, she went back to reading, the book in one hand, toast in the other.
“Lady Meredith will have your head if she sees you reading at the table,” Elspeth commented, and Emerald shrugged.
“Madoc has locked himself in one of the hidden chambers, and no one can figure out which one. She’ll be busy for a while.”
“Do you know which one?” Bowen asked, and Emerald looked at him over the top of the book. She had big hazel eyes, and there was no doubt that one day she’d be quite the beauty, but for now, she looked exactly like what she was: a teenager full of attitude and more than a little mischief.
“Maybe,” she replied, taking a bite of toast and returning to her book.
Shaking his head, Bowen turned his attention back to Elspeth and Harri and said, “So, Harri, which branch of the Penhallows are you?” as if he didn’t already know.
“The useless one,” Elspeth answered for him. “The one whose magic has started to fade, which is why they sent him off to woo a powerful witch bride under false pretenses.”
“False?” Harri echoed, his eyes going wide behind his glasses. “I bloody well loved you, Ellie. That’s why I asked you to marry me.”
“Huh, and your father’s edict had nothing to do with it.”
Throwing up his hands, Harri turned in his chair to face his erstwhile fiancée more fully. “Of course my father wanted me to pick a powerful bride. Of course he’d like a strong line of magic reintroduced into the family, especially after Gryffud bugger—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes flicking to Emerald, before amending, “After Gryffud left for America thirty years ago. He was the last Penhallow with any real power.”
And he stole most of it from the Jones women there in Graves Glen, Bowen thought, but it was interesting, learning that his family, prior to his da, had been considered less powerful than they’d been. So weak, in fact, that Harri’s father had sent him off in search of a bride with enough magic to perk up the bloodline.
