The Fortune Teller's Daughter (17 page)

He paused again, snapped his fingers and made a
perfectly square piece of silver paper appear between his fingers, and he
started folding it while he talked.

“I was about to show you an impressive trick involving
pulling a dove from my hat. A very traditional magician’s trick, but not
spectacular. Instead, I’d like to end the night with a trick called the Origami
Crane. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of her.”

He finished folding the crane and held it on the palm
of his hand for the audience to see. I pressed my hands against my stomach,
remembering the way he felt touching me, thinking that there must be a flock of
origami cranes inside my chest right at that moment, flying around, making me
feel dizzy.

“Normally, this trick involves a single crane made
from a love note I’d ask a member of the audience to write for someone in the
audience, a stranger, that they’d like to meet after the show for a clandestine
moment in the dark. Instead I want everyone to think on someone in the audience
they are attracted to. Think hard, hold them in your mind,” he paused and swept
his heady gaze across his audience. Everyone was looking around, meeting gazes,
blushing, giggling. I didn’t look anywhere but at the Magician. “Imaging holding
them to your body. Do you have them? Now, watch closely.”

The lights dimmed but did not go out. The spotlight
made the silver wings sparkle.

Then, the wings began to move, just a little.

No one dared breathe.

No one dared blink.

Eli stared with all his power and the slow movement
became stronger until its tiny paper body lifted off his palm and floated
magically above the crowd. All eyes stayed with the crane, all hearts fell in
love over and over again with the Magician. The crane soared over the heads of
his audience, sparkling like a star.

The Magician swept his hat from his head, flipped it
over, and held it out in front of him. He reached in and scooped a second crane
out, this one made of green glittery paper, already folded. He held it on the tips
of his fingers and blew a slow, long breath into its wings. It floated off his
fingers, lost buoyancy for a moment, then beat its tiny paper wings until it
joined the first on an invisible current around the tent, flying in formation.

The two cranes hovered, then parted, and floated
lazily down into the hands of a man and a woman across the theater from each
other. Their eyes met and I swear I could hear their hearts skip.

“Her trick got me thinking,” he said as he set his hat
back on his head and stuffed both hands in his pockets. “Perhaps everything is
better in pairs.”

*  *  *

Hours later when I couldn’t sleep, I found myself on
the curved steps leading up to the Magician’s wagon. My tent was perfectly
adequate, as tall as I was with a soft futon style mattress and clean sheets
and a new pillow. Like usual, I couldn’t sleep when I was supposed to, but
tonight I was plagued by the memory of soft raven curls as they sifted between
my fingers.

I didn’t bother knocking and I found the door unlocked
anyway. The curtains along the length of his bed were closed, though parted
just enough that I could see a sliver of bare arm in the moonlight. I nudged
off my shoes so I wouldn’t make any noise and tiptoed across the wagon to the
edge of his bed and edged the curtain open enough to peer inside.

His blanket lay across his hips, low enough that I had
a remarkable view of his naked chest. Across one half of his chest was a large
tattoo of a dragon. I followed its shape with my eyes all the way down to the
cut muscle lines urging me to look lower.

Before I could lose my nerve, I slid onto my knees on
the edge of his bed and knelt beside his body. He had one arm draped across his
eyes and his breathing remained slow and even.

“How did you do it?” I whispered.

He sighed, giving away that he wasn’t asleep at all.
He lowered his arm but did he bother to cover himself.

“How did I do what?”

“Make them fly.”

He traced my shadow with his eyes, lazily touched his
fingertips along the side of my bare knee and up along the back of my thigh to
the edge of my shorts. A sleepy smile touched his mouth as he tugged on the hem
of my boxer shorts covered in pirate ships.

Then he reached for me.

“Come here,” he urged. “Lay down.”

He slid his hands behind my knees. I climbed into his
bed and settled into the dented spot in the mattress where I’d been snuggled
when I woke up after my arrival. My head hit the pillow so close to his. He
reached the edge of his quilt across my hips and tucked me in with him.

I could not describe the comfort I felt when I laid
beside him in his bed. He settled a hand across my hip, didn’t search for my
naked skin this time. He squeezed a handful of my fleshy waist and let his eyes
drift closed.

“Won’t you tell me how you did it?” I pressed. My
fingers ached to reach out to touch the dragon’s scales and trace them down the
length of his body. I resisted the pull, it seemed like I was already getting
away with too much.

The corner of his mouth turned up again, but he didn’t
open his eyes.

“Say,
pretty please, Eli
,” he teased. I
hesitated. It felt like a trap.

I nibbled my bottom lip, but finally gave in.

“Pretty,
pretty
please, Eli.”

“No,” he growled playfully, a pleasant rumble that
made his accent thick and hoarse. I could feel the rumble in my chest and all
along my thighs. “But I like to hear you beg sweetly for a change, especially
since you barged into my home where I am not getting any sleep.”

“You’re impossible.” I shoved him, not hard, but
enough to make my point. He took advantage of my hands coming in contact with
his chest and pulled me closer. His palm settled across the small of my back.
We were so close. I could smell his warm skin and there was no place for my
hands but curled up against the dragon. Despite its fierceness, the inked skin
was soft with faintly raised edges.

The Magician opened his eyes and met mine. While he
watched me, I ran my thumb across the top of the dragon’s head deliberately,
aching for a reaction to my touch. He’s muscles trembled beneath my thumb and
his lips parted, wet and full in the dark.

“There’s that word again,” he whispered. “How many
wonders does a man have to perform for you before you’ll believe?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’ve never had anyone
perform wonders for me before.”

Eli went quiet and still. I wanted to lay my head
against the dragon and listen to its heartbeat. I wanted to know what it felt
like to sleep in the cage of his arms.

But I could feel his hesitation.
This is close
enough.

Here there be dragons.

You have been warned.

“Go to sleep, Serafine.”

“I don’t really sleep either, even before meeting your
brother, which didn’t help matters.”

He frowned. “He can’t hurt you here. I would never
allow it.”

“I believe you.” I meant it. It seemed impossible that
Castel could find us here, hidden in this grove of trees, protected by
Imaginaire
.

The Magician released my hip and brought his hand
close to my face, made me look cross-eyed and hovered so close my eyelashes
brushed his fingertips. When I didn’t flinch, he touched my eyelids until they
closed and he slid them to my cheeks and along the tip of my nose.

“Tonight you sleep. For me.”

“How’s that? With a spell?” I mocked, but softly and
without derision.

“If you wish.” He touched his thumb between my eyes
and I sank into his pillow. Two fingers to my eyelids and I saw stars. A single
touch to my lips and I bent my head to his shoulder. 

“Abracadabra,” he murmured.

And I slept.

__________________

Every night, like a lost kitten, I found myself on his
doorstep, reluctant to go inside until he pushed the door open and held out his
hand. We didn’t talk about it. I didn’t tell him that I wanted to explore all
of his tattoos, even the ones I hadn’t yet found with my eyes. I didn’t tell
him that I’d kill to place my mouth on his collarbone and kiss all the way up
to his chin. I didn’t tell him that I wanted to follow the lines of his muscles
with the tip of my tongue to see where they lead me.

Sleeping beside him already felt like I was asking for
too much. 

The night Micah met me after the show, regaling me
with a story of spectacular drop she’d done that night, I found him waiting on
his steps, wringing his hands and messing with the black leather cuffs he wore
on his wrists. He looked distracted and tense.

Seeing Micah approach at my side did not prove to
relax him.

“Eli,” she said with a little wave. “My favorite
magician. How’s tricks?”

“Not as fantastic as I hear you were tonight. I heard
you made Annabelle wet herself in terror.”

She beamed as we came to stop before him. “And thank
god for Katya’s big, gossipy mouth. There’s a reason that I’m the star
aerialist and it’s not because I’m hotter than a sinner on a preacher’s knee.
Though it helps, of course.”

I chucked and Eli flicked his gaze from her to me and
back again. I wanted to reach for him and once I thought he might actually
reach for me.

Unfortunately, Micah had eyes like a hawk.  A tiny,
over-caffeinated  hawk.

“So. Well. A-hem.” She cleared her throat and bounced
onto her toes. “Well, I suddenly feel like a third wheel. A third wheel who
will be waiting at breakfast for all the details from her very best friend.”

“There are no details,” I interjected before the
acrobat slinked away. Micah smiled innocently.

“Of course there’s not.”

“Micah,” Eli warned with his scary lieutenant voice.
“This is not gossip.”

“Like I’d give Cruella de Katya any more ammunition
against our girl. Who will tell me everything worth knowing tomorrow.”

“There’s nothing to know. Really,” I insisted.
“Micah.”

My friend shrugged her shoulders emphatically as she
backed away.

“Sure there’s not. You’re both terrible liars. Like,
the worst.”

I started to protest but she was already gone through
the trees. I sighed and turned back to him. “Sorry about that.”

He answered by capturing me around the waist and
pulling me into his space. My insides went melty as he fit me in between his
spread knees. He pressed his face into my stomach, inhaled my scent as if he
ached for it and my hands trembled as I touched his hair, still a little damp
with sweat from the hot stage lights. His big hands slid down the backs of my
wide thighs and gripped them possessively.

“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured into my shirt. “I
thought you weren’t coming.”

“You were waiting for me?” I asked, surprised.

Without answering he took me by the hand and pulled me
inside.

He stripped his shirt off, then his shoes, and left
them haphazardly near the bed. I watched him from the door, his back a
beautiful display of muscle and strength. He had several more tattoos across
his back, and I felt like there was a pattern to them, a story I couldn’t quite
piece together. They were beautiful, subtle except for the great dragon on his
chest.

As he got ready, I removed my shoes. I hadn’t planned
another night with him, though a part of me hoped I would end up here. Not
enough to pack a bag, though. That seemed a little too brazen. Tempting fate
was never a good idea. I slipped out of my bra from under my shirt, and then
left my pants in a pile on the floor.

Standing behind him in nothing but a t-shirt, barely
covering my underwear, reminded me of the night in my apartment before we had
to run for our lives.

And when he turned to call me to his bed, he gasped, a
strangled sound that played havoc with his expressions. His eyes widened, the
pupils enlarged, then they narrowed, his brow knitted, lips parted to speak
then shut automatically. His chest puffed and framed between the curtains that
hid his bed, his slacks slung low on his lean hips, he looked beautiful and
powerful and a little
heathenous
. The way his chest rose and fell with
his deep, barely restrained breaths made me feel like I was dangerously close
to being captured and carried to his bed and claimed.

A part of me badly hoped he would try.

Kiss me.

Nervously, I tucked a bare ankle behind the other and
waited.

“Come here. Sera.”

I went to him, balanced on the balls of my feet,
hovering close to his bare chest. He caught my hand, rested another along the
width of my hip. His fingertips dug into my skin through my shirt, hiked it
dangerous where his thumb could brush along the hem of my underwear. It felt
like he was encroaching on some unwritten violation.