Fairyville (3 page)

"Zoe." He gripped her shoulders in his hands, the tingling warmth of his hold like hot molasses running down her skin. She struggled not to shudder with enjoyment. "I'm not unhappy with what you make. I want this for you. Because you deserve it. You can't imagine I'm looking forward to you being gone."

She did cry then, horrible, sniffly sobs that had her gasping into the tissue Mrs. Darling had refused. Completely mortified, she tried to struggle out of Magnus's hold, but he wasn't having that. He pulled her close instead, tucking her head under his and enfolding her in his arms.

He'd never held her like this before. She had to use all her self-control to stiffen instead of melt.

"Shh," he said, then swore softly into her hair. "Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. You had to go and make this harder than it was."

"Oh, God," she cried. "You're turning me out!"

He clucked his tongue in exasperation, then tipped her head back and held her face. "I like you, Zoe. I'm not turning you out. I enjoy having you around."

She mopped the last of her crying jag from her nose. She was light-headed from her outburst and probably not thinking straight, but she knew she'd never find the nerve to ask this again.

"If you
like me
," she said as deliberately as he'd been addressing her, "why haven't you made a move on me?"

His green eyes darkened a second before his face followed suit, a flush washing up his chiseled cheeks. She'd thought his smile could knock a woman flat, but the intensity of this expression stole her power to think. His gaze burned down at her from his greater height. He looked like he was angry, but she was pretty sure that wasn't it.

She was certain when his lips covered hers.

His kiss might have been soft, but it sure wasn't wasting time. She felt his tongue push into her mouth and heard her own knee-jerk moan of excitement. The rest of the world disappeared as that hot, wet flesh speared deep. His heat, his scent, his pounding heart became her universe. Suddenly, his arms were wrapped hard around her, one hand forking through her curls to cradle her head. He angled it to suit his pleasure, while his second hand crushed her left butt cheek. She was wearing a gauzy, printed skirt, and he gripped that buttock like he owned it. His long, hot fingers stretched farther forward than she let most men get on a second date.

She had no urge to stop Magnus, and it wasn't just because it had been longer than she could remember since she'd had any date at all. At the first intimate contact of his fingers, her body jolted with an erotic shock so powerful it surprised her—even with the time she'd spent hankering after him. No wonder women dropped like ripe cherries around this man. His hands conveyed an energy that fairly buzzed. A flood of moisture ran into the folds he'd brushed, then overflowed them in a heated rush.

Boy, it had been too long since anyone had touched her. If the mewls she kept spilling into his mouth hadn't clued him in already, Magnus had to know what he'd done to her.

Right that moment, it didn't seem to bother him. Feeling the evidence of her arousal, he made a low, rough noise and kissed her harder, his hunger a savage, wonderful thing. His body moved in a slow undulation, his erection grinding against her belly.

God, it was big. Big and hot and—

Magnus tore his mouth away from hers.

"This is… not the plan," he gasped.

Dizzy, Zoe stroked the pulse throbbing in his neck. She had to touch him, had to feel his skin against her palms. His tendons were tight, his skin dark with the blood rushing under it. She felt starved for him, for this. Going on tiptoe, she tipped her head up for another kiss.

"No," he said, very firm but still breathless. "You're not thinking like yourself."

Zoe's head cleared reluctantly. If thinking like herself meant stopping, she didn't think she wanted to. Magnus had kissed her. Magnus had eaten at her mouth like he'd been lusting after her every bit as much as she'd been lusting after him. His big, broad chest went up and down with his labored breathing. Then he let his hands slide to her elbows and stepped back.

Zoe dropped onto her heels like a balloon with the air let out.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This isn't how I want it to be with you."

Hurt and anger had her eyes sliding to his groin. She might not be the queen of the sex parade—her oddball calling saw to that—but she remembered the difference between a man who wanted her and one who didn't. Magnus's erection shoved starkly against his jeans, its outline almost too thick and long to be real.

"This isn't how you want it?" she repeated in disbelief. "I'd say one large part of you would disagree."

"I'm easily aroused," he said with an odd, defensive dignity.

Zoe folded her arms across her breasts, uncomfortably aware of how sensitized they were. "Well, that explains why you only fuck once a month."

Her sarcasm called a shade of purple into his face. The contrast made his eyes blaze like emeralds, in spite of which his voice was calm.

"Don't be crude, Zoe. It doesn't suit you."

Her temper, which she almost always had under control, abruptly snapped. "How about this? Is this too crude to suit me?"

She slapped her hand around the bulge of his big erection, squeezing hard enough to feel the give of his balls through the worn denim. It was possible she'd meant to hurt him, but she forgot to be angry in her enchantment. She might as well have taken hold of a python; his cock felt that substantial, that alive. Magnus moaned, agony and pleasure mixing in the sound. His hand jammed over hers, completely covering it.

It took a second to register that he wasn't pulling her away.

"Don't do this," he said through gritted teeth, his hips beginning to circle into the cup their locked hands had formed.

Zoe's jaw dropped as she watched him writhe. Maybe he
was
easy to arouse. He did seem to be having trouble controlling himself. Teresa had said he'd gone all night, and now he was pushing at her so hard her fingers were going numb. His palm was actually sweating. When he spoke again, he sounded desperate.

"You know you won't appreciate being the next notch on my bedpost. You know you're too good for that."

She looked at him, her soul gone cold. "You're saying I wouldn't be any different than the others?"

"I'm saying you
couldn't be
."

Failing to see the distinction, she wrenched her hand out from under his. She would have stepped away, would have salved her pride somehow, but he brushed her cheek with his fingertips. The tenderness of the gesture arrested her.

It was pathetic, really, how badly she wanted to believe he cared.

"Be my friend," he said. "Be the friend I've always hoped you'd be."

His tone was gentle, his expression genuinely fond. She didn't say she couldn't be his friend, that she cared too much in a different way. That would have been a lie. Magnus meant so much to her, she suspected she could be his friend even if her heart cracked in two.

She did, however, have too much self-respect to admit it.

She blew out her breath instead. "You're even weirder than I am."

That inspired one of his dazzling smiles. "High praise, coming from a real Fairyviller."

She should have been grateful he was still comfortable enough to tease. Unfortunately, she was too busy fighting memories. The sad truth was that Magnus wasn't the first man she'd loved who'd pulled a number like this on her.

When Lizanne Pruitt entered the investigative offices of Goodbody & McCallum, first thing Wednesday morning, she didn't look like the oddest client they'd ever had. With her five-year-old son in tow, she looked like any harried suburban mom they might have run across in a Scottsdale mall.

From his seat behind their broad walnut desk—the one that told clients they were solid—Bryan McCallum watched his aptly named partner, Alexander Goodbody, usher Mrs. Pruitt in. He and Alex had run this eight-man firm for the last four years, and they'd been college roommates before that. Being so familiar with each others' strengths made responsibilities easy to divvy up, though it wasn't as simple as brains and brawn. Bryan wasn't stupid, nor Alex weak, but Alex was the more polished of the two. He did the gentlemanly niceties, pulling out Mrs. Pruitt's chair and helping her to sit.

Bryan did his bit by sizing her up.

Mrs. Pruitt had been pretty once upon a time, in a pink-cheeked, former cheerleader way. She wasn't unattractive now, just ordinary and tired and plump. Her outfit, a coordinated powder-blue dress and cardigan—one hair short of country-club chic—was nice enough to suggest she could afford their fees. Her eyes, blue like her dress, held a hunted look. Bryan would have bet this was a cheating spouse case if it weren't for the kid's presence. It still could be, he supposed. Some parents liked to get a head start in the battle for their children's sympathies.

"Coffee or tea?" Alex offered in his surprisingly raspy voice. The way he looked, it should have been as smooth as sherry. Instead, it came out as rough as a rock star's.

Mrs. Pruitt responded to the aural stimulation with a touch of flusterment. She blushed when Alex leaned down close enough to hear her faint request for tea. Bryan knew she'd probably gotten a whiff of the cologne beneath Alex's business shirt.

When you added
Pour L'Homme
to Alex's natural smell, you got a guaranteed wet panty.

The effect wasn't deliberate. Bryan's partner was no flirt; his manners were too reserved for that. But Alex
was
unnaturally good looking—a tall, lean, sun-streaked blond with eyes the color of a Caribbean cove. The sleek gray suits he favored took nothing from his sex appeal. In Bryan's experience, the women who met Alex tended to fall into two camps: those who wanted to mother him and those who wanted him in the sack. It didn't take a genius to figure out which Mrs. Pruitt was, or that she was uncomfortable with her response.

Join the club
, Bryan thought, at which point her son looked up and laughed.

"Oscar," scolded his mother, though the five-year-old couldn't have meant any harm, or even known what he was laughing at. "Go sit in the corner and be quiet."

The boy obeyed her without objection, clambering into the extra chair where he sat grinning and swinging his short legs. His shoes were bright yellow high-tops with some sort of cartoon figure printed on the canvas. He was a cute kid, as lively as his mother was worn down. Something in his expression, maybe the joie de vivre in his eyes, made Bryan grin back at him.

"I'm sorry," his mother said. "I had to take him out of preschool."

"Not a problem," Alex assured her as he handed her the tea. Rather than take the chair beside Bryan, he perched his narrow runner's butt on the desk's front corner. Bryan had entertained fantasies about that butt that he couldn't repeat in public even to himself. "I can see that… Oscar is a nice young man."

Oscar seemed to think being called a
nice young man
was hilarious, though he didn't make a sound as he somersaulted over in the chair, ending up with his head and hands on the ground and his feet wiggling manically in the air.