The Morning After the World
A Witches of Clitwick Bonus Chapter
by Blair Lennox
⚠️ Spoiler warning: This scene takes place the morning after Samhain. Read the full novel first for maximum impact.
The cottage was showing off.
Elise noticed it the moment she opened her eyes — the bedroom was suffused with a golden warmth that had nothing to do with sunrise and everything to do with the building’s opinion about last night. The quilt had rearranged itself into a cocoon around both of them while they slept, tucking itself beneath their shoulders and across their tangled legs with the fussy precision of a sentient textile that had finally gotten what it wanted. Fresh flowers had appeared on the nightstand — blue roses and violet orchids, Adelaide’s colours — and the air smelled of lavender and cinnamon and the particular clean electricity of freshly renewed wards.
Through the bond, she could feel Morgana. Still asleep. Warm, heavy, sprawled on her stomach with one arm across Elise’s waist and her locs fanned across the pillow like dark water. The unglamoured Morgana — no performance, no armour, no three centuries of carefully maintained magnificence. Just a woman. Scarred and real and breathing slowly in the November morning light.
The sheet had slipped to the small of Morgana’s back during the night, revealing the full topography of her body — the broad, dark shoulders, the elegant line of her spine, the dimples above her hips that Elise had discovered, catalogued, and filed under “places that produce extraordinary results when kissed.”
She reached out. Traced one finger down the valley of Morgana’s spine. Light. Barely there.
“Too early,” Morgana murmured into the pillow.
“It’s ten thirty.”
“Too early for the morning after saving the world.”
“The world has been saved. The sun is up. Your wife is awake.” Elise’s finger continued its path — tracing the wing of Morgana’s shoulder blade, the sensitive skin along her side. “And your wife has an observation.”
“Last night, during the ritual, you were in charge for the first half and I was in charge for the second half. But we never established what happens the morning after.”
Morgana’s eye opened. “The morning after.”
“I’m proposing we negotiate new terms.”
“You are proposing to negotiate morning-after sex using contract metaphors.”
“I’m proposing morning-after sex. The contract metaphors are a framework for discussion.”
“I accept your framework.” Morgana reached up, slid her hand into Elise’s hair, and pulled her down. “Propose your terms.”
Their mouths met. The kiss was slow and warm and unhurried — the kiss of two women who had nowhere to be and nothing to prove and the rest of their lives to do this.
“Term one. I want to take my time.”
“Accepted.”
“Term two. I want you to tell me everything you feel. Out loud. No performing. Just truth.”
“Accepted.”
“Term three.” Elise sat up. Straddled Morgana’s hips. She was naked — they both were — and the contact of skin against skin, the heat of Morgana’s body beneath hers, the way Morgana’s hands immediately found her thighs and gripped, sent a current through her. “I want to use my binding magic.”
“Accepted. All terms. Without modification.”
Elise smiled. The new smile — wide, warm, and lethally confident. “Good girl,” she said.
The effect was nuclear. Morgana arched beneath her — hips lifting, back curving, a full-body response. The sound she made was three centuries of composure cracking at the foundation. Elise felt the surge of wet heat between them and thought: I own this moment.
“Those are my words,” Morgana breathed.
“I know. I’ve been saving them.”
She called the silver light. Took Morgana’s wrists and lifted them above her head. “Stay,” she said, and the binding settled into place — silver threads of clarity magic, cool and luminous. The release word was “clause fourteen.” Because they were who they were.
Morgana tested the binding. Pulled once. Pulled harder. It didn’t give.
“Oh,” she whispered, and the single syllable contained more vulnerability than anything she had said during the rituals.
“I’m here. And I’m going to take you apart. And you’re going to tell me how it feels. Every second.”
She started at the throat. She knew the hollow beneath the jaw produced a gasp, the tendon produced a moan, and the spot where neck met shoulder, bitten with precise pressure, produced a sound so raw it had once set off the cottage’s smoke alarm. She visited each location with methodical attention while Morgana pulled against the binding.
“Your mouth on my neck does things to me that should not be physically possible at my age.”
“You’re three hundred and twenty-seven.”
“Exactly. And yet you put your mouth on my neck and I forget how to — ah —”
Elise had bitten down. At the junction of neck and shoulder. Morgana’s hips bucked upward, grinding against Elise, and the friction — direct, skin against slick skin — made both of them gasp.
“Term two. Tell me.”
“I can feel you. Against me. You’re wet and I can feel it on my hip and it’s making me — I need your hands, I need your mouth, I need you lower, please —”
Elise moved lower. She took her time with Morgana’s breasts — cupped one, lowered her mouth to the other. Circled the nipple with her tongue, slowly, watching it tighten. Closed her mouth around it and sucked, and Morgana’s spine left the mattress. Switched sides. Used her teeth, gently. Morgana made a sound the dartboard would later describe as “unprecedented.”
“I planned this,” Elise said. “I’ve been planning this since you said ‘good girl’ to me three weeks ago and I came so hard I saw colours. I’ve been thinking about what it would feel like to say it back. To have you underneath me. To watch you fall apart and know that I caused it.”
“You’re causing everything. Now please — go lower.”
She kissed her way down Morgana’s stomach. Each rib. The soft skin between them. She paused at the navel, circled it with her tongue. Then she was between Morgana’s thighs, her mouth hovering inches from where Morgana needed her, close enough that her breath ghosted across swollen, wet flesh and Morgana whimpered — the Head Witch of Clitwick, three hundred and twenty-seven years old, whimpered because Elise Warren was breathing on her.
“Please what? I want to hear you say it. Specifically.”
“Please put your mouth on me. I want your tongue on my clit and your fingers inside me and I want to come so hard the ward-lights fire and I want you to watch me while it happens because you watching me is the most erotic thing I have ever experienced in three hundred years and I am including the 1920s, which were, for the record, spectacular —”
Elise put her mouth on her.