Inked Magic (42 page)

“Yes.” He met his father’s eyes. “I’d stake my life on it.”

The barest nod indicated the message had been received. “Are you equally certain she didn’t cut a deal to make nice with you for a long game?”

Cathal laughed at that. “If I let her, she’d be done with me after today.”

“So she means something to you.”

“Yes.” Cathal leaned forward. “I want a promise of safety for her. From you and Uncle Denis both. No hits ordered. No accidents. No disappearances.”

“And if we won’t give it?”

It was an effort not to bare his teeth. “If anything happens to her because of her involvement with us, then I’ll do everything I can, put every resource I have into getting justice for her.”

His father swirled the liquid in his glass then took a sip. “I’m glad you understand about the need for justice. You haven’t asked about your cousin.”

“How is she?”

“On the mend. Like Etaín told you might happen, she doesn’t remember any of it.”

He chilled with an icy reminder of what had happened in his office.
Better get used to it if you intend to stay in her life
.

He turned his attention to the second of his reasons for approaching his father. “Where are the drawings?”

“Here.”

His father set the drink down long enough to retrieve a sheaf of papers from a wall safe. Returning, he spilled them across the table like still frames in a movie, giving reality to what had happened to Brianna and Caitlyn.

A surge of protectiveness rolled through Cathal along with anger and regret and guilt. “These need to be destroyed.” He was surprised they hadn’t been.

“I wanted you to see them first. So you’d know in your heart that what you did for the family was the right thing.”

His father reached into a decorative Wedgewood bowl at the center of the table and removed a box of matches, offering it to Cathal.

Cathal took it. “This is all of them?”

“Unless you’re wrong about your girlfriend.”

Fear came with the realization that Etaín living Brianna’s memories meant she could reproduce the pictures. His heart beat against his chest in an unneeded warning of danger. “I’m sure about her,” he said, lighting the stack of kindling in the fireplace.

He placed the drawings on the grate one by one, forcing himself to look, to endure, to face a question he had no answer for even after the last of them had burned and he’d left his father’s home. What would he have done if he’d seen them first and had a choice between turning them over to his uncle or involving Parker?

He slowed instinctively when he spotted the sedan parked a short distance from Etaín’s apartment. Though he couldn’t read the license plate number, the odds told him it was the same one Eamon had gotten into outside Saoirse.

Seeing it here, imagining them inside together making love was like slamming into a brick wall.
Truth time
. Stop or continue on?

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, wisps of jealousy returning though they were drowned out by a greater need. He wanted her, almost to the point of obsession.

He couldn’t explain it, other than she felt
right
on so many levels. With her, he didn’t have to worry she was with him because of his club, or his money, or his family.

There was a moral core to her, as evidenced by her involvement with the shelter and her willingness to help Brianna and other victims, despite the cost to her. And yet that moral core was threaded through with the kind of loyalty it would take to keep her alive and safe from his father and uncle.

His heart beat like he was about to step into a fight ring. But he
knew he had no choice other than to climb into it or she’d be gone from his life.

If he was going to do this thing, accept another man in her life, he needed to confront it up close and personal. He slowed the car further, but only so he could make the turn into the driveway.

N
ot a fool after all
, Eamon thought as he watched Cathal park in front of the garage housing Etaín’s bike as the Hummer following it pulled to a stop along the curb.

Cathal emerged from his car, but the driver of the other didn’t get out. Protection, Eamon guessed, pleased by Cathal’s actions despite having mixed emotions about Cathal being part of Etaín’s life.

Not my choice, but the magic’s
, he reminded himself, and nothing had changed in that regard. He wouldn’t challenge the primordial elements of Elfhome. Nor would he do anything to risk Etaín as she neared the point when she would successfully transition from changeling to Elf, or would die as a result of it.

E
taín startled in reaction to the knock on the door, dropping the hairbrush as her heart rabbited in her chest with an instantaneous urge to bolt and run.

No
, she told herself.
No
. She refused to live like this. She left the bathroom, hair still slightly damp from her shower.

Tugging on shorts and a sweatshirt over naked skin, she crossed to the window and peeked out to see Cathal standing there. An ache blossomed in her chest at the sight of him, slowing the fast beat of her heart into a painful throb.

She tried to cloak herself in anger as a way of protecting against the insidious emotions and needs his presence brought, but it didn’t come. The fury sustaining her earlier had burned itself out, leaving something far more frightening in its place, a craving for comfort and connection, for the intimacy that came not just from shared pleasure but shared, inextricably entwined lives.

He knocked again, lightly, as if he sensed her on the other side of the door. “Etaín. Please.”

His voice was husky and low, raw with echoes of the pain she felt. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the back of the door.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She’d never had trouble avoiding relationships before.

But then she’d known in the instant when she’d seen him through the window of the shop that he wasn’t like the men she usually chose. Instinct had warned her away from him and she’d ignored it, just as she’d chosen to ignore the warning against offering to help Brianna. Just as, apparently, she couldn’t let her stop by Saoirse be the end of things with Cathal.

She sent a skittering glance sideways, to the sketchpad on the desk and the drawing of the tattoo she’d been compelled to embellish when she first got home, despite what she’d learned when she touched him at Saoirse. She opened the door.

His eyes met hers. Determined. Pleading. “Talk with me?”

“Yes.”

She stepped backward to let him in but rather than enter he said, “In my car, unless it’s okay if I have your place swept for listening devices. I’m sorry, Etaín. This is part of the baggage that comes with the Dunne name. I arranged for someone to take care of it, if you’re willing.”

She shivered at the thought of having her privacy violated. It hadn’t occurred to her that listening devices might have been left behind. “I’m willing.”

Cathal turned and motioned with his hand. A man emerged from a black Hummer parked along the curb in front of her apartment.

Surprise lightened her mood. Given the choice of vehicle, she expected a military haircut and clothes sharp enough to be a uniform. Instead he wore a Harley jacket and black jeans.

His hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he sported a thin mustache and goatee, shades of Johnny Depp, and she was a fan. She’d have looked at him twice if she’d encountered him on the street.

“Sean McAlister,” Cathal said by way of introduction.

“Quinn’s friend.”

Sean smiled. “The very same.”

She stepped aside and he entered the apartment, opening a briefcase and quickly assembling a piece of equipment. No one spoke as he
made a methodical sweep through her living space. Finally saying, “Clean,” and repacking the scanner.

“The cell phones?” Cathal asked.

“No warrants issued so far.” He glanced at Etaín. “They can be turned into mobile listening devices. You’re probably in the clear but I’d recommend you pop the battery or put your phone somewhere that’s too far away to pick up a conversation if you’re talking about anything sensitive.”

She acknowledged the advice with a nod, a chill coming with the implicit reminder she was under suspicion. He left and Cathal stepped forward as if he’d pull her against him.

She stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest as a defense against being swayed by the feel of his body against hers. “You wanted to talk. Then talk, Cathal. Or leave.”

He shrugged out of his jacket, throwing it to the floor then unbuttoning his shirt, letting it hang open rather than removing it. Heat stole through her at the sight of his chest. Her nipples tightened as sensory memories bombarded her and she dug her fingers into her arms to keep from touching him.

“I went to see my father, that’s why I wasn’t here sooner,” he told her, cautiously reaching out, encircling her wrists and gently tugging, pulling her arms away from her body, the hum of connection and electric desire flaming into existence with the contact. “I wanted to make sure he understood how important you are to me, and what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

There was no fear in his eyes when he carried her hands to his bare chest, stopping just beyond the dark hair she loved to comb her fingers through and feel against her bare skin. His thumbs stroked over the eyes on her palms, as if he’d guessed at their importance, though all he said was, “When you came by the club, you only saw part of the truth, a very, very small part of it. I want you to see all of it. I want you to know everything.”

He pressed her palms to his chest and held them there. Beneath
them, his heart slid into a racing beat, primal fear mastered by desire and strength of purpose.

“I can’t promise you’re safe from my father and uncle. I believe you are. They have a code they live by. There are parts of it I respect, but I’m not involved in their business. Never have been and never will be.”

“Organized crime?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me for details. I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them.”

He leaned in, touching his forehead to hers, his hands tightening on hers. “Look at my memories, Etaín. Don’t just take my word for it.”

“Show me the truth,” she said, and it was as easy and safe for Cathal as it had been with Eamon, only it was different too. Seeing Cathal’s memories was like stepping into a darkened movie theater, except instead of being alone, phantom arms wrapped around her.

An imagined chest served as a pillar of strength for her to lean on as they both watched fast moving images on a mental screen. Glimpses of reality focused on his seeking her out and his desire to keep her safe, ending with his burning the drawings and protecting her further by not revealing she could easily re-create them.

She couldn’t fault him, not when she knew his motives and saw how he was caught in a situation beyond his control. She couldn’t separate herself from him in anger, not after the visits with Brianna.

“Forgive me?” he asked, voice soft and uncertain, hopeful.

“Yes.”

She didn’t protest when his hands went to her hips, pulling her against him as his mouth sought hers. It felt good, right. Inevitable.

If ignorance was deadly, then knowledge was empowering, freeing. Her lips parted with the first touch of his tongue to them. Desire burned through her, desperate need demanding a deeper revelation of truth, a joining of bodies.

Cathal hardly dared to believe she was back in his arms, the small sounds she made going straight to his heart, urging him to greater intimacy so he pushed her shorts downward.

They dropped to the floor and his hands cupped bare buttocks, his mouth sealed to hers as his tongue thrust, retreated, hungrily revealing the depth of his need to be inside her.

Stroking his hands upward he found only skin beneath the sweatshirt she wore. Desire deepened to see, to touch, to taste every inch of her in a carnal possession.

He drew back, stripping the sweatshirt off so she stood completely naked, nipples hardened and lips swollen, eyes dark, sultry, beckoning with the power of a born seductress.

A hard throb went through his cock. She was beautiful, more than beautiful. He’d had beautiful women before but none of them had affected him the way she did.

In days she’d made it impossible for him to want anyone else, to imagine being with anyone else. He pulled her against him, pleasure rippling through him at the feel of her breasts pressed to his chest. He tangled his fingers in silky hair, holding her as he plundered her mouth until they were both panting, their lower bodies rubbing and grinding.

Her hands went to his belt and his joined them there, making fast work of unbuckling, unzipping. He moaned when she captured his cock, her thumb teasing over the head, wetting it with escaped desire.

“Bed,” he said against her lips, buttocks clenching as her fist moved up and down on his shaft.

“I think you need help getting undressed first.”

She knelt, electric heat surging through his cock at its proximity to her mouth. If not for her grip on it, it would have pulled away from his body to go to her.