1 Witchy Business (15 page)

“I absorbed the emotion from you and from the people in the nightclub?” I asked.

Niall shook his head. “Not absorbed. Not then. Just felt. We rode it like a wave, and it was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say yes so much. “Was I…”

Niall seemed to guess the next part. “It wasn’t wrong, Elle. You didn’t hurt anyone. If anything, you brought them happiness. How can that be wrong?”

It was such a simple argument, but such a powerful one that I wanted to believe it. I wanted things to be that straightforward. Yet, the closest thing I had to a friend had already told me what had happened to me in that club. How much danger I had been in.

“They…” I tried to find the words for it. “They said that you got me drunk with emotion, Niall. They said you were feeding on me. That I’m nothing to you. That I’m just prey.”

“Do you believe that, Elle?” Niall asked quietly.

I wasn’t done, because the horror of that thought was still there in the background. “They said you will suck out my emotion until I am a dead, shriveled husk of flesh and bone. That there won’t be anything left of me if I stay around you.”

“Do you really believe that?” Niall repeated. “I couldn’t feed on you, Elle. Even if I wanted to. Even if I
were
the kind of vampire they describe, I physically couldn’t feed on you. I told you before that my powers cannot touch you, and I meant it. It is part of what makes you so special. With anyone else…”

“With anyone else, you’d be wondering about what they felt,” I guessed.

Niall nodded. “It is the irony of what we are. I can see every emotion in someone, but I can never be sure. Are they happy simply because they are, or because I want them to be happy? I would like to think that it is not in my nature to be malicious. Yet, am I selfish? At times.” He swept his arm over the treasures in the room. “These things are proof of that. So, how do I know that I am not arranging the world for my benefit? Yet, with you, I said it before…”

“That we were the only people who could be truly certain of what we felt.” I remembered him saying it, back when I had believed he was simply another enchanter. “So, is that all it is? That you think I’m your equal?”

“My equal and more,” Niall assured me. “Not to mention beautiful and clever…is it so hard to believe that I might love you?”

No. Because the same feeling was running through me. Despite what he was. Despite what he’d said I was.

“And there’s
nothing
you can do that will change my feelings?” I asked.

“I didn’t say
that
.”

He kissed me then, so quickly that it caught me by surprise. So quickly that I barely had time to gasp, a soft whisper of what Niall was feeling for me traveled into me like oxygen, filling my lungs and giving me sweet breath that tingled through me. I had a mental image of a red rose opening to reveal sparkling dew inside. Some part of me seemed to know what it needed to do reflexively, because I drew that energy down, coiling it away in my nameless depths that I hadn’t even known I had until that moment.

The truth of it hit me then.
Really
hit me. “I…I’m…”

“You are exactly what you were before, Elle,” Niall assured me.

“And this was really just because I’m…a vampire?” I said.

Niall kissed me again. “I came to your life because I had heard about an enchantress whose skill and talent with emotion seemed to mirror my own. I stayed near you because that enchantress turned out to be you. Beautiful you. Inside, you are everything I hoped and dreamed you might be.”

That was easy for him to say, but certainly not prove in a moment or two. Now, only a foot from him, thoughts flitted through my mind like a flock of dark birds, all flying in different directions. So many memories were instilled in me, of tutors warning me not to use my abilities carelessly, of moments when I’d shut down what I could feel to keep from hurting people. Of Rebecca warning me against Niall. Of Niall in the nightclub, letting emotions run through me…

Practically everyone I knew had lied to me about the right and wrong ways to use my powers, and the one man who tried to tell me the truth, who had risked everything to show me the truth…well, he wasn’t just a warlock. He was a vampire, too. And he was the most beautiful man I had ever met.

 “I don’t know what I should
do,” I said.

“What do you
want
to do, Elle?” Niall asked patiently.

It was a question no one had ever asked me before. My mother had set out the path I was going to follow and I trod in her footsteps. The coven had assumed I was going to fall into place after her as an obedient witch and an asset to the coven. Even my employers told me what I was going to be doing with my time. Where I was going to go, what I was going to do.

 “You have the right to choose your own path, Elle.” Niall put his hand on my face. “But you have to say it. What do you want to do?”

Right then, there was only one thing I wanted to choose. One man. One warlock. One vampire. I kissed Niall. I kissed him with all the passion I could find, throwing my arms around his head to pull him to me. I moaned as my tongue darted into his mouth and took him more assertively than I had ever touched anyone.

He groaned in turn, his hands pulling me tight to him. When my hands moved to his shirt buttons, he didn’t waste time asking me if I was sure. I guess that he, of all people, knew exactly how I felt in that moment. And I was glad he did.
So glad.

His hands slid under my sweater, burning hot wherever they touched my skin. His mouth made its way along my jawline, kissing a spot on my neck that sent my nerve endings into overdrive.

“Let me in, Elle,” he breathed against my skin. “I want all of you. Every last part.”

I almost didn’t realize what he meant until it occurred to me that I was shielding as habitually as I always did. The hard instinct that kept me shielding almost every waking moment of my life was still there. Still holding up that barrier. Niall’s lips moved up to find mine again, before moving up to brush my ear.

“I’m here, Elle,” he whispered in my ear and tugged my hair gently as he held my head in place to kiss my ears. That sensation, that small sharp pain among the pleasure, made me gasp.

“Oh!” Tingles shot through me as his lips caressed my ear lobes. Not just physical ones, but emotional ones, too. My knees would have buckled, but he held me tightly against him.

“You don’t have to maintain control around me. Just. Let. Go.”

The words were enough, and I felt the waves of emotions break through me. I felt washed into him, my sea of want and need crashing into his. For several seconds, I couldn’t even begin to tell which of us was which. Every touch, every kiss, seemed to send so much sensation flowing through both of us that it didn’t matter then.

I wanted more. “Niall.”

“What do you want, Elle?” he asked softly, his lips brushing my eyelids.

“You.
All of you
.”

“Come and get it.” He lowered his shields completely, more than anyone else I had ever felt in my entire life. His emotions were completely naked before me and he wrapped the tendrils of them around mine, even as his fingers moved across my skin.

When I couldn’t get the buttons of Niall’s shirt undone, I tore at them, pulling the fabric open to look on the hard planes of the muscles underneath. He had a dancer’s body, not heavily built, but every inch of his torso defined, every movement under control as he lifted the sweater from me, then reached back to unclasp my bra with gentle but deft hands that didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter.

He knew what he wanted, too. He’d done this before. Niall’s hands moved over the newly bared skin of my torso, every touch a torrent of sensation where I got everything Niall was feeling along with my own pleasure. When his hands went to my breasts, I moaned and arched them into his hands as they caressed me.

I knelt, pulling at his belt, stripping away those dark pants and barely wasting any time on the frustrating black boxers beneath. I wanted him then, and I wanted him in every way possible. I wanted to feel the rush of pleasure as I took Niall into my mouth and know that I was doing that to him, too. I wanted it, and I did it, reveling in teasing the hard thickness of him until he groaned above me and pushed me back.

“No, not yet, sweetest,” he said, bending down to lift me to my feet.

He finished undressing me then, his clever hands seeming to find oh-so-sensitive spots every time they brushed my skin. I shuddered with pleasure under his touch. Oh, he was good at this. Oh Goddess, he was very good at it. When I was as naked as he was, Niall lifted me, seating me on top of the pedestal that had recently held a piece of modern sculpture before I’d tried to steal it.

He stepped back, staring at me. “Beautiful, Elle. I should never take you off this pedestal.”

He didn’t give me a chance to reply, moving forward again, his lips making their way down my body, the heat of his mouth on my neck, my breasts, my belly…

“Oh…”

I couldn’t help crying out as he spread my legs wider, his mouth doing for me everything that I had just done for him and more, his tongue moving swiftly as he brought me to the edge of climax, and over it.

“Oh, yes! Yes!”

My hands gripped that beautiful halo of golden hair as I came, pulling him to me. I still wasn’t done with him. He stood, and I could see he wasn’t done with me either. He pushed into me, and what little self-control I had left shattered…I felt like I was floating, and that Niall was floating with me. I could feel everything around me. We were here in this room, and yet, we hovered far above the Earth, just on the edge of twilight. Every breath each of us took, every atom in the room vibrated and every molecule of star stuff spun out into little galaxies. I could feel him, the house around us, and the street. More than that, it felt like I could feel Scotland, the seas, the planet, the universe. In that moment, it felt like we were all of it.

I stared into Niall’s eyes as we moved together, our bodies seeming to know each other perfectly, and in those moments everything in the universe made sense. When my pleasure burst over me a second time and he cried out above me, my scream must have carried through the city.

Afterward, we lay on the floor of the gallery, nestled together on the thick, soft carpet. I realized that the floor must have had radiant heating. Or maybe it was just the warmth from us radiating around us with swirls of well-being, comfort, and joy.

“Elle.” He said my name like it was magic itself and my tears welled up but did not fall. I didn’t even remember how we had gotten to the floor—perhaps he had laid me down gently. Niall was beside me, our bodies still entwined, connected by spent flesh and by emotion. He tenderly stroked a strand of hair back from my face. He didn’t say anything after my name. Right then, he didn’t need to. I already felt like I understood everything there was to know.

“Niall.” I breathed his name into his mouth and our lips met again, this time to seal our destiny.