The Garden Gate

An Ex-Hex Next Door Bonus Chapter
by Isla Wilde

⚠️ This bonus chapter contains major spoilers and takes place after the events of The Ex-Hex Next Door. Read the novel first!

The vine on the garden gate bloomed for the first time on a Sunday morning in March, and I missed it because Sloane Blackwood had me pinned against the kitchen counter with her hand between my thighs.

“The — the vine,” I managed, because I’d caught a flash of white through the window, the unmistakable burst of petals opening, and some idiot part of my brain thought this was information worth sharing while Sloane’s fingers were doing things that should be classified as structural engineering.

“Later,” she said against my throat, and did something with her thumb that made my vision white out.

She was right. The vine could wait.

We’d been building this morning for hours without knowing it. Saturday night had been a coven dinner at Odette’s — a long table in the mayor’s dining room, candlelight, good wine, the kind of evening where Briar Hollow’s witching community gathered and talked shop and pretended they weren’t all watching me and Sloane for signs of progress or collapse.

We’d sat beside each other. Not across — beside. Sloane’s thigh pressed against mine under the table for three hours while she discussed ward maintenance schedules with a coven elder and I argued about candle enchantment theory with June. Her hand had found my knee at some point — under the tablecloth, out of sight, her fingers drawing slow circles on the inside of my knee while she maintained a perfectly composed conversation about boundary marker calibration frequencies.

I’d found her hand with mine. Our fingers interlaced under the tablecloth while we carried on separate conversations with separate people, and the connection — quiet, private, entirely ours — had hummed between us all evening. Not the curse. The curse was gone. This was the thing the curse had been built on — genuine, unenhanced, chosen compatibility.

By the time we’d walked home through the garden gate — our gate, the shared one — I was vibrating. Not from magic. From three hours of Sloane’s hand on my knee and her voice in my ear saying things like “the northeast boundary requires recalibration” in the low register that made my pulse do things completely unrelated to ward maintenance.

At two a.m., Sloane had rolled over, pressed her mouth to the back of my neck, and murmured, “I can feel you not sleeping.”

“I’m sleeping. This is what sleeping looks like.”

“You’re radiating heat like a furnace. The sheets are warm enough to press flowers.”

“Your magic has a very specific on switch, and I’m currently spooning it.”

We’d made love in the dark. She’d known exactly where to put her hands — one in my hair, one between my legs, her fingers sliding through wet heat with the focused attention she brought to everything. I’d come with my face pressed into her shoulder, my teeth sinking into the muscle there hard enough to leave a mark.

Then I’d returned the favor. My mouth on her neck, her collarbone, the dark nipples that hardened under my tongue. I’d settled between her thighs and put my mouth on her, and she’d said my name in the dark like a woman releasing something she’d been gripping too tightly. I’d taken my time. Circled her clit with my tongue in the steady rhythm she needed. Slid two fingers inside her, curling forward, and felt her back arch off the mattress. She’d come with her hand fisted in the sheets and my name on her lips.

Afterward, we’d slept. Briefly. Tangled together.

At seven a.m., I’d gotten up to make tea. Sloane had followed me to the kitchen wearing my flannel shirt and nothing else, her hair a disaster, her reading glasses on because she’d grabbed them reflexively from the nightstand.

“Sloane. It’s seven in the morning.”

“I’m aware of the time.”

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

“I’m aware of that especially.” She stepped closer. Her hands found the hem of my tank top and slid underneath, palms flat against my bare stomach. “The shirt smells like you. I’ve been breathing you in for the last eight hours, and I am not finished.”

She kissed me. Not the sleepy two-a.m. kiss. This was deliberate. Morning Sloane was a precision instrument. Her hands slid from my stomach to my hips, fingertips hooking into the waistband of my pajama shorts. She pushed them down — one decisive motion, fabric over hips, the shorts dropping to the kitchen floor. I hadn’t been wearing underwear.

She lifted me onto the counter. Her hands under my thighs, one smooth motion. The marble was cold against my bare skin and I hissed.

“Cold?” she asked. That private smile.

“Freezing. And you’re still dressed. This is fundamentally unfair.”

“Life is unfair.” Her hands spread my thighs, positioning me on the counter’s edge, opening me up. Her eyes went dark. “Spread your legs.”

The command hit me like a physical force. I spread my legs.

She dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor.

The sight of Sloane Blackwood on her knees — council president, trust manager, the most composed woman in Briar Hollow — kneeling on the cold tile between my legs in my flannel shirt and her reading glasses, looking up at me with focused intent, was one of those images that rewired something fundamental in my brain.

“The glasses—” I started.

“Shut up about the glasses.”

“I love the glasses.”

“I know you love the glasses. That’s why I left them on.”

She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the inside of my thigh. A slow, deliberate kiss — lips and then tongue, tracing the sensitive skin, working inward with the unhurried precision of a woman who had nowhere else to be. Her hands gripped my thighs, holding me open, thumbs pressing into the crease where leg met hip.

She kissed the other thigh. Same pace. Same attention. I was already wet. Had been since she’d walked into the kitchen in my shirt. My body operated on a specific Sloane-based frequency now — two months of mornings had trained my nervous system to respond to her presence before my brain had finished processing.

“Sloane—”

“Patience.”

“I’ve been patient. I was patient at two a.m. I was patient all through dinner—”

She put her mouth on me.

The first contact of her tongue — flat, warm, sliding through slick folds with devastating accuracy — made me grab the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles went white. She didn’t start at my clit. She never started there. Sloane was methodical — she began with broad, slow strokes, base to tip, tasting everything, relearning the terrain she’d mapped a hundred times and never tired of exploring.

Her tongue traced the outer edges, dipped between, pressed inside briefly — just enough to make my hips jerk — and then withdrew, returning to the long, slow strokes that were driving me out of my mind.

“You’re — fuck — you’re doing that on purpose.”

She hummed against me. The vibration shot through my nervous system like electricity.

She finally sealed her lips around my clit and sucked. Gently. A controlled, steady pull, her tongue maintaining pressure from underneath, and the sensation was so precisely calibrated to what my body needed that I made a sound that wasn’t a word.

She slid two fingers inside me without breaking the rhythm of her mouth. Curled them forward. Found the spot — because Sloane Blackwood had never in her life failed to locate a structural weakness and exploit it — and my vision went white around the edges.

“Right there — God, right there, don’t stop—”

She increased the pressure — tongue and fingers working in concert, the dual stimulation building in waves that started at the point of contact and radiated outward through my belly, my thighs, the arches of my feet. My magic was surging, uncontrolled — flooding the kitchen with warmth and the scent of woodsmoke and honey.

“Sloane — I’m going to—”

“I know. Let me feel it.”

Three words, spoken against the most sensitive part of my body, her lips and breath and voice all vibrating against my clit while her fingers pressed deep inside me, and I came apart. The orgasm rolled through me in sustained, devastating waves — arching my spine, locking my thighs around her head, tearing a sound from my throat that was equal parts her name and something primal. My inner walls clenched around her fingers in rhythmic pulses. My magic surged — every candle in the cottage igniting simultaneously, the climbing rose outside the window putting out three new blooms in five seconds.

She kept her mouth on me through all of it. Gentle now. She knew exactly when to push and when to gentle, exactly how long the aftershocks lasted, exactly the moment when sustained contact shifted from pleasure to overstimulation.

“Your turn,” I said, and my voice was wrecked.

I slid off the counter on unsteady legs. Caught her face in my hands and kissed her — tasting myself on her lips.

“On the counter.”

She sat on the counter. I stepped between her legs and unbuttoned the flannel shirt — my shirt, on her body — one button at a time. Slowly. She watched my fingers work with an expression that shifted from patient to strained as each button revealed more skin.

I spread the shirt open. She was naked underneath. No bra, no underwear. She’d come to the kitchen in nothing but my flannel and her reading glasses, and the glasses were still on, slightly fogged, and the sight of Sloane Blackwood sitting on my kitchen counter in an open flannel shirt and tortoiseshell reading glasses with her hair loose and her mouth swollen from going down on me was the single most erotic thing I had ever witnessed.

“Leave the glasses on,” I said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Leave them on or I stop.”

“That’s coercion.”

“That’s negotiation. Glasses stay.”

She left the glasses on.

I kissed her throat. The long, elegant line of it, the pulse jumping under her skin. I cupped her breasts — small and firm, the nipples already hard, dark against my paler hands. I took one in my mouth and she inhaled sharply, her hand finding the back of my head. I sucked gently, then harder, my tongue circling the nipple, and her hips shifted on the counter — restless, involuntary, seeking contact.

I kissed down her sternum. Her stomach. The sharp ridge of each hip. She shuddered when I dragged my tongue along the crease of her hip.

I sank to my knees between her thighs and looked up at her. Sloane Blackwood. Sitting on my kitchen counter, flannel shirt open, reading glasses on, legs spread, looking down at me with dark eyes and parted lips.

She was wet. The evidence of her arousal visible, glistening — the physical proof that going down on me had done as much for her as it had for me.

“I want you to watch,” I said.

She nodded.

I leaned forward and tasted her.

She made a sound like something coming undone. Low, involuntary, the sound of a woman whose composure was a load-bearing structure and I’d just pulled out the keystone. Her hand found my hair — not pushing, not guiding. Just holding. Needing to feel me while I tasted her.

I used my tongue the way she’d used hers — slow, deliberate, paying attention. Reading her body’s responses through the pressure of her thigh against my shoulder, the small sounds she made when I found the right angle, the right pressure.

Sloane’s sexual responses were subtle if you didn’t know what to look for. She went quiet. Still. The pleasure gathered inward, building behind the composure like pressure behind a dam. You had to watch for the tells — the tightening of her jaw, the white-knuckle grip on the counter edge, the way her thigh trembled against my shoulder.

I circled her clit with the flat of my tongue — slow, steady, consistent. Giving her the sustained, reliable pressure she needed. Her hips were rolling in small, controlled movements, riding my mouth, and I gripped her thighs and held her open and let her take what she needed.

I slid two fingers inside her. She was tight and wet and hot, and when I curled forward — the same spot, the same technique — her back straightened and her jaw clenched and her hand in my hair tightened to the edge of pain.

“There— right there, don’t—”

I didn’t change a thing. Same pressure, same rhythm, same steady devotion. My tongue on her clit, my fingers inside her, my eyes lifted to watch her face as the composure cracked.

When she came, it was with my name whispered like a secret. Sloane’s orgasms were private things — every muscle in her body locking, her inner walls clenching around my fingers in hard, rhythmic pulses, her thighs pressing against my head, her hand fisting in my hair.

And her magic surged. A wave of green energy rolled through the cottage. The pothos vine on the windowsill grew six inches in three seconds. And through the kitchen window, I saw it happen.

The vine on the garden gate erupted into bloom. Dozens of small white flowers split open simultaneously. Petals unfurling in the March light, the whole gate disappearing under a cascade of white. The scent hit the open window — woodsmoke and jasmine. My magic and hers, tangled together in the ironwork, blooming because the woman they belonged to had just let go.

Some magic doesn’t need a spell.

I gentled her through the aftershocks. When I pulled back and looked up, Sloane was staring at the window — at the vine, the flowers, the physical evidence of her magic responding to pleasure. Her glasses had fogged completely. She took them off. Looked at me with clear, unguarded eyes.

“The vine bloomed,” she said.

“Yeah. I saw.” I stood and kissed her softly. She kissed me back, tasting herself on my mouth, pulling me between her legs.

“You’re going to be late for the council meeting.”

“I’ll send an email.”

“You always say that.”

“I always mean it.” She traced my jaw with her fingertip. “The vine. It’s both of us. My magic and yours. Nobody planted it. It just grew.”

“Some magic just needs two people who finally choose to stay.”

She took my hand and led me toward the bedroom.

“After,” she said. And smiled — the private one, the one that sounded like surprise, the one that said she still couldn’t believe this was her life and she was going to spend the rest of it being grateful.

The tea went cold. The candles burned. And outside, in the garden that belonged to both of us, the vine went on blooming in the thin March sun, growing the way things grow when no one forces them — slowly, persistently, toward the light.

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