More Than Magic (20 page)

“Did your Pops tell you to let them go?”

“Pops never
told
us to do anything. Pops told stories. We had to figure out what they meant.”

Nick grinned. “Okay, what was the story?”

“Well, Pops said
his
Papaw—”

“His grandfather or the one who was part-Cherokee?”

“No, not his great-grandfather. This isn’t a Cherokee legend. At least, I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere in the literature. They don’t have any stories about—” She made a face at him. “You’re getting ahead of me.”

Nick lowered his head in apology, motioning for her to continue.

“So, his Papaw told him that the Mother—Mother Earth—used to sing to her people. And they would bow their heads and listen at her caverns to hear her voice. Her song was so beautiful that her people danced across the hills as her spirit wove its magic through the valleys below them. It was so beautiful that some of the stars came down to perch in her hair—” she pointed to the tall meadow grass and the woods around them, “—and listen. And as they listened, some of them began to flash in time with the music, filling the hills with brilliant light that ebbed and flowed with her song.

“But then her people turned away from her, and tried to create their own music and their own magic. When they did, the Mother went silent, and the stars were trapped here, waiting for the Mother to sing again. And now and again, in some parts of the woods, the stars sing for the Mother, flashing in unison, hoping her voice will join them once more.”

For a moment, there was only silence on the meadow.

“So, when you catch a star in a jar—” Grace mimed the action of putting a top on a jar, “—there is one less voice for the Mother to hear, one less chance that she will sing again for us. And your part is to let the fireflies go—” she mimed taking the top off the jar and shaking it into the air, “—and join in the great song.”

“Catching stars in a jar,” Nick repeated, understanding her reaction to his comment earlier about the champagne.

“Well, that’s the tale he told me. But there is more,” she said. “I was…I don’t know, all of seven or eight when he told me that. And being full of righteous certainty about the needs of Mother Earth, I proceeded on my own personal campaign to free every firefly that our guests on the mountain had captured—first preaching and persuading, then moving on to grab and release.”

She grimaced playfully when he laughed. “This was
not
funny to the owners of those mason jars, but it did result in recruiting a large army of firefly release specialists when Pops had to repeat his tale to all of my victims and their parents to get me out of trouble. He added that tale to his story-telling repertoire every summer, and, as a result, many fireflies have been freed by our converts.”

“Saving the world, one firefly at a time,” Nick said. “But is that thing about the flashing in unison true? Do they really do that?”

“Oh yes! And you must see it some time. My brother Daniel says he saw it once up here, out in the woods, but the most well-known spot is over in the Smokies—Elkmont. There are videos of it, but nothing can capture really seeing it happen in person. Daniel and Jamie insist it is all about math and something called phase synchronization. But I prefer to call it singing to the Mother.”

She slid back down to watch the moon and stars do their stately promenade across the sky. Everything paled to insignificance beneath this vast sweep. Nothing mattered, and yet nothing was impossible.

“Nan always says that when we die we become stars in the sky.” His voice sounded strange and disembodied, floating above her.

Something in his voice disrupted the rhythm of the dance above her. He was thinking of his own death, sensing the malignant darkness still lurking inside him. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she reached. The side of his leg was barely touching her arm. Even through her jacket and his jeans, she could sense it. The heat of his skin, the throb of the blood in his veins, the—

Inky black nothingness, waiting, lurking—

The song, pulsing in the stars, throbbing beneath her back—

“Hey!”

She sat up and bounced off something very solid. Two equally solid hands grabbed her arms. When she opened her eyes, she was inches from brown leather.

“What?” she yelled. “What happened?”

He let go as if she had scalded him. “What did you just do?”

“What do you mean?
You
yelled.”

“You—” He looked around, then up. “Something—”

“That happens sometimes. You get disoriented looking up at…well, infinity really.”

“Don’t make it worse.” His hand went to his head.

“I’m sorry.”
I really am.
“Perhaps star-gazing isn’t your thing.”

“Mmmm.” He just kept staring at her.

“Maybe we should head back.”

“Let your hair down out of that,” he said, oddly quiet and reasonable.

“What?”

“Your hair. I can’t hear you with your hair up like that.”
 

Grace tilted her head sideways. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be drunk here.”

He tilted his own head, then shook it. “That doesn’t help. It just makes it worse.”

“What are you—”

“Take that thing out of your hair,” he said firmly, then looked embarrassed. “If you don’t mind?”

She tugged the clasp out of her hair and it tumbled down into her face.

“So, can you hear me now?” Grace pushed what she could out of her eyes and smiled at him.

He nodded.

“Trust me. It’ll gradually grow into this huge red fur—”

Oh.
His hands were in it. She couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Copper silk. I was right.”

It’s the furthest thing from copper silk you can imagine, but don’t stop.

He combed his hand slowly out through her hair, watching its progress as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. And she realized that she was leaning into his touch, following his fingers. Shivering. Melting.

It seemed so natural, so completely predictable that his fingers would stroke back to cup her face, that his thumb would stroke her cheekbone, that she would fall into those gray eyes and get lost.

And then he slanted his mouth across hers and she
was
lost. Something warm and effervescent bubbled through her, reaching all the way to her toes. When he cupped his hand around her nape beneath the crackling chaos of her hair and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, sliding his tongue gently across her lips, she gasped. Then he planted a kiss on the very edge of her mouth and pulled away.

She jumped at the sparkle of static electricity as he pulled his fingers out of her hair.

“Sorry. I—I’ve wanted to do that all night,” he said.

Grace just tried to breathe.

“Blame the champagne, or the stars, or—”

She picked up the bottle, scooped Nick’s glass out of the grass, and filled it, holding it out to him.

The apologetic look on his face became a smile, with dimples, then slid into something much more intense. His pupils dilated until his eyes were nearly black in the moonlight, making her shudder in anticipation. She took a quick drink of the champagne herself, knowing it wouldn’t help in the least.

“Don’t swallow.” He leaned forward. “I’ve always wanted to try this.”

Oh.

He kissed her once more. This time his tongue was more insistent, dipping into the champagne fizzing in her mouth, drinking it, licking at the drops that spilled down her chin, then kissing her again.

His hands were in her hair, firmer now. He held her close as if he was going to devour her, but all she could feel was the effervescence bubbling through her, the heat coiling inside her. Then his lips slid across her cheek, and then into her hair, where he took a deep shaky breath and laid a kiss behind her ear.

“Do you know how amazing you are?” he asked, then kissed the tender skin underneath her jaw as she gasped.

The champagne flute slipped out of her fingers as she leaned back in his arms. His mouth slid down her throat to kiss her collarbone, then lingered in the hollow of her throat, before brushing back up to lick one last drop of champagne from her chin.

Grace felt his hand on her as if the skin was bare, sliding down her side like a hot brand—skimming across her stomach, pushing her jacket open to slip underneath and caress her breast. Only a fleeting touch through the wool of her sweater, but she made a needy sound before his mouth took hers again, and he pulled her up to push at the jacket. He paused for just a moment while it was tangled around her arms to pull her toward him, push her hair aside, and kiss her nape—again and again.

“Wanted to do that for a while, too,” he said into her ear as she lay helpless against his chest, feeling his heart pound hard against hers. He pulled the jacket loose and threw it behind her on the grass.

Then it was her turn to slip her hands under his leather jacket, under his arms, sliding up his back across his ribs and feeling him shiver beneath her fingers as she buried her face in his throat. He smelled like—

Nick tugged at his jacket and shoved it off, and she fell back onto her hands, startled. He took a deep breath and shoved his hand through his own hair.

All she could think was how much she wanted to do that too.

All Nick could think was that he was damn lucky that he had taken off his gun and left it in the SUV. Beyond that, he knew he wasn’t thinking straight. Actually, he wasn’t thinking at all. Not with
that
brain, anyway.

Grace leaned back on her hands, looking at him through that hair, her expression dazed and dreamy.

He tried to form a coherent thought that didn’t involve Grace’s body, but then she sat up and pushed her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair, sliding her other hand around his neck and pulling him toward her.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while myself,” she murmured. And then she kissed him.

He decided coherence was overrated as she pulled him by his collar back down to the blanket. Then he was lost in the taste of champagne and Grace, the smell of the grass around them and her perfume, the feel of her silky skin and the texture of the wool blanket against the cold ground under his back—

Under his back? When did that happen? She hung over him, hair glinting copper in the moonlight as it curtained her face. A backdrop of velvet blue pierced through with thousands of stars, but all he could see were the two that were glittering green as she smiled down at him.

She traced his eyebrow with her finger. Then his cheekbone. Then down his jaw to his chin. She leaned in closer and enclosed him with her hair, as she traced her finger next to his mouth, then along his lower lip.

“I adore your dimple.” She leaned in to kiss it, sliding over to his mouth.

Nick groaned, trying not to roll her beneath him right at that moment. Instead, he wove his fingers into hers where they rested on his chest as she leaned in to plunder his mouth. He slipped his other hand around her lower back, sliding down to press her toward him.

Her response wasn’t at all what he expected, because now she was straddling him, and her mouth had never left his, and other parts of her were—

It was a good thing the ground was hard and cold beneath the blanket. Otherwise, things would’ve moved a lot faster than she intended.

She leaned in to kiss his ear and her breasts pressed against his chest. Even through the sweater and the shirt he could feel them, silky and heavy, brushing against his skin.

“I imagine you’ve been told how amazing
you
are,” she said, then licked the skin below his ear.

She sat back on his hips then sliding her hands up, pushing his sweater up with them. Her fingers crept up the silky cotton of his shirt until she rested her hands on his chest over his heart.

Against his will, his hips moved beneath hers and he watched her eyes darken until only a rim of green remained. But he was completely lost when she threw back her head and closed her eyes. Her face glowed in the moonlight, and all that hair streamed back around her as she breathed his name.

Unable to keep his hands away, he sat up, running them up her neck until his hands were lost in her hair once more, and his mouth could reach hers.

“Grace,” he breathed her name as he kissed her. “Grace,” he said to her chin. “Grace,” he sighed to her neck. “Grace,” he begged in her ear. Then back to begin the litany again at her mouth as she sat wrapped around him.

In response, her hands slid up around his neck, her fingers in his hair, her hips moving over his—he could almost feel the heat and satin and slick despite the layers of clothing between them.

He wouldn’t last. It had been far too long since he’d felt this mad heated rush building inside him. Too long since he had felt anything at all.

“Nick.” Her fingers drifted to the buttons on his jeans.

He was breathing hard as he wrapped his fingers around hers. “Are you
sure
this is what you want?”
Or is this just the champagne and the stars?