2 Witch and Famous (10 page)

“Yes,” he said. “Okay, she
was
here, but it’s my job if anyone finds out I told you like this.”

I could feel the nerves coming off him. I could also feel everything he felt when he looked at me. It was a delicious combination. Almost without thinking about it, I reached forward, hooked an arm around his neck, and kissed him. I kissed him, and as I did, just a sliver of those emotions slid down into me.

“For risking your job for me,” I said as I pulled back, although it didn’t seem like enough then. Maybe I should go back and find one of the people who had come up to me? Maybe I should just grab someone from the crowd? It wasn’t like they would say no, if I suggested that we should check out what was going on upstairs. And I wouldn’t be much of an investigator if I left a whole area of the club uninvestigated…

I was actually, honestly, seriously considering it when I felt the lightest of touches on my arms. I knew who it was even before I turned. Even through the emotional noise of the club, I could feel him.

“Niall, what are you doing here?” It was just one of the questions I wanted to ask, but it seemed like as good a place as any to begin.

He answered me with a kiss. If he was trying to compete with the bartender’s kiss, Niall won, hands down. Well, hands up, and around, and just generally all over me. His tongue darted inside my mouth, and I felt my energy joining with his as the kiss turned more than physical. Eventually though, he pulled back.

“Come on,” he said softly. “I want to take you home and undress you slowly.”

When he put it like that, all the other questions I had didn’t seem so important.

As it turned out, Niall was serious about undressing me slowly. We had raced back to his place in his Aston Martin, probably breaking a number of traffic regulations along the way, only for him to slow things down once we finally reached his bedroom. Instead of pushing me back onto the vast expanse of his Egyptian cotton sheets, he had me stand beside the bed, very still while he started to peel me out of my clothing.

He made a slow string of kisses on my skin, his lips following every movement his hands made. They brushed against my neck as he took my jacket from me, working down to my shoulders in a wave of butterfly touches. They traced a line of heat down my back as he unzipped my dress, inch by maddening inch.

There were questions I wanted to ask. Questions I needed answers to. I even tried to get them out as Niall’s lips moved back up to my shoulders, his hands pulling away the shoulder straps of my dress so that the dark material slid down and pooled on the floor.

“Niall, what were you doing in the club?”

“Watching over you,” he whispered against my skin. “Do you really want to talk now, Elle?”

I was about to point out that we’d hardly talked in the last couple of days, but then his hands moved over me and I forgot all about talking. His lips kept up that slow, teasing movement following his hands, tracing every inch of newly uncovered flesh with his mouth. When Niall unclasped my bra, his tongue moved in lazy circles around my nipples, making me gasp. When he sat me down on the bed and removed my shoes, he kissed his way up to my ankle, finding all the most sensitive spots on my foot. When he finally pulled my panties away from me…

“Oh God, Niall!”

“You like that?” he teased, looking up my body at me before continuing until I couldn’t think. Could barely bring myself to move.

“Giving in to what you are has its advantages,” Niall murmured, standing and undressing. I watched every moment of it, the way I always did with him. I loved watching that athletic, dancer’s body appearing bit by beautiful bit. “Giving in to me has its advantages.”

Even feeling as good as I did right then, I wasn’t about to allow him that one. When he moved forward to join me on the bed, I flipped Niall onto his back, pinning him down, my hands catching his.

“I never said anything about giving in.”

He laughed in delight. “Sharing myself with you as you explore what it is to be an enchantress is an utter joy.”

I smiled and felt his warmth and passion rise up. Kissing him, I reached down to take hold of the hard length of him and guide it into me. I sat up, reveling in the moment, moving slowly, and making Niall wait. If he wanted to play games with me, well, I could play them just as well. Finally, though, I felt the pleasure building up within me again, and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I moved faster, harder, spilling us both over the edge at the same time.

For the longest time, I lay sprawled over Niall, not wanting to move. Not wanting to lose this moment as he gently stroked my hair. Not wanting to say anything. This worked. Whatever else was complicated between us,
this
worked.

“I am glad you went to that club,” Niall whispered after a little while.

“You’re glad? I almost—”

“Oh, I am glad that I pulled you out of there in time. It is far better to have you here with me. Far more pleasant.”

That was one way of putting it.

“But?” I asked.

“But I am happy that you have finally given in enough to feed the right way,” Niall said softly. “It will make things easier. I promise you.”

I rolled away from him enough to sit up. “Is that what this is? You’re happy that I fed on the bartender? You saw that and you’re okay with it?”

Niall took my hand, kissing the inside of my wrist. “You are what you are. I am what I am, too. Should I fault you for being true to your nature?”

“So, you’re completely okay with me kissing another guy?”

Niall kissed a little further up my arm. “Did it mean anything? Did this stranger have your heart? Do you suddenly love him? Was it more than just taking the energy you needed? I’d feel jealous then, I promise you.”

I shook my head. “You say it like it’s nothing. Like it’s okay that we just
take
.”

Niall had reached my shoulder by now. “We give, too. Or do you think the man you kissed won’t think of that moment with pleasure?”

“That isn’t the point,” I said. “What were you doing in the club? This time, tell me the truth. Tell me
something
.”

Niall paused, which was more than a little distracting, because his mouth had just found my ear.

“I was revisiting the past, going back into things that I had thought long buried. I do not want to drag you down into them. I wouldn’t want to see your face as I told you about them.”

“You said that what matters is whether I love you,” I countered. “How can I love you if I don’t even really know you? Talk to me.”

He sighed, his lips meeting mine halfway through, so that the sound seemed to be inside me. “Tomorrow, Elle. Tomorrow, I will tell you.”

“Why not now?”

His hand moved up my thigh. “Because I can think of better things to do with you right now.”

Even while I wanted to scream in frustration at him not talking, I had to agree. They
were
better.

I woke with the sunlight streaming down on me. What did it say that I didn’t even feel a disconnection at waking up somewhere other than my own bed anymore? And that it still didn’t mean I got to wake up beside the man I loved? I looked around, feeling the absence beside me, and then swore. Niall was gone. As usual. I reached out, looking for him with my magic, trying to feel the emotional signature that might mean he was just downstairs.
Nothing.

I got up, showered, and dressed. Kelly the housekeeper had breakfast waiting for me, and I ate it, even though it wasn’t food I wanted right then. It wasn’t even energy. It was answers. What had Niall been talking about last night? What parts of the past had been coming back? He’d left early because he’d known I would want answers, I was sure. This wasn’t just whatever strange need he had to never be there when I woke. Even so, when Niall’s assistant Marie came in to get coffee, I decided to make certain of it.

 “Marie, did Niall leave a note for me or anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I haven’t been over to his study yet, but he would have left something like that where you might find it, wouldn’t he?”

“I guess.”

“I could check.”

I stood up. “No, I’ll go.”

“I’m really not sure if—”

I cut her off with a look. “I’ll go,” I repeated, and then forced myself to smile. “Why don’t you phone Fergie or something? You know he’s interested in you, right?”

Marie’s look was surprised, but also pleased. It looked like I’d said the right thing. Good. I didn’t always get things right with Niall’s staff. I’d probably caused them more than a few problems over the last few weeks. Helping Marie and Fergie was the least I could do. It also meant that Marie was too busy to follow after me. I could be manipulative when I needed to be.

I headed off through the house, looking for Niall’s study. I hadn’t actually been in there before, because we tended to split our time between the living room, the kitchen, the gallery, and the bedroom. Mostly the bedroom, come to think of it. It didn’t take me long to find his study, though.

Given that Niall was born in 1873, I suppose I should have expected the room to look as it did. It was oak paneled, with the same antique furniture found throughout the house. Victorian carved bookcases lined the walls, and there was even a grandfather clock ticking away somberly to itself in the corner. I checked Niall’s desk, just in case he really had left a note for me.

He hadn’t, but what I found there was almost as interesting. There was a folder, and there was a trinket box. The folder turned out to be full of the details of old agreements, mixed in with letters, most of which seemed to be from women. Several of them referred to gifts the writers hoped that Niall had received.

The tortoise shell and lacquer work trinket box didn’t look like much, but I could feel the emotion swirling around it.
Niall’s emotion.
Clearly, the contents of the box were important. It was locked, but it was a simple thing for me to take some of the emotion around me and form it into the shape of an unlocking spell.

I opened up the box and sorted through the contents. Some of them were press clippings, obviously taken from very old newspapers. Most of them talked about accidental or unexpected deaths in locations as far afield as Paris and Toronto. There were a couple of small pieces of jewelry, along with a photograph that looked like it had been taken back in the 1920s, judging by the way Niall was dressed. The woman with him looked elegant in black and white, a hat half obscuring her features.

“Elle, did you find what you needed?” Marie called from outside the door. Quickly, I locked everything up again and went out to her.

“Yes,” I said. There was no point in taking it out on Marie. “I think I did.”