Absolutely Captivated (30 page)

“Whew!” Travers said. “Stinks in
here.”

“No kidding,” Zoe said.

“I’d advise you to open a window, but
then it might take all day for the air-conditioning to get the
temperature back to this.”

“Try all week,” Zoe said.

She snapped her fingers, and the rug
dried instantly. Then she went into the bathroom. For a moment, she
just stared at the mess—hair everywhere, all of it short and brown
and probably canine. The sink was filled with hair and the remnants
of soapy water. Kyle hadn’t even pulled the plug to drain
it.

Travers peered over Zoe’s shoulder,
startling her.

“I forgot to check on him,” Travers
said. “My fault. Clean-up still isn’t his strong suit.”

“It’s okay,” Zoe said, and snapped her
fingers again. The bathroom sparkled, all the hair gone, and the
smell with it.

“I’m still confused,” Travers said. “I
thought you weren’t supposed to use your magic except in
emergencies.”

“I can use it whenever I want,” Zoe
said, “except when I would compromise some mortals.”

“Compromise?”

“Make them understand that magic
exists,” Zoe said. “And I shouldn’t use it for personal gain,
whatever that means. And most of all, I should try to live my life
as anonymously as possible, since the Fates—our Fates—were trying
to crack down on new myths and legends, or as they called them,
leaks from the magical realm.”

“Leaks.” Travers grinned. “Sounds like
something Fang would do.”

“You’re calling him Fang now?” Zoe
felt surprised. The dog wasn’t even close to a Fang.

“Bartholomew Fang,” Travers said. “It
suits him.”

Zoe shook her head, but didn’t argue.
The dog really was bamboozling him, and it was kind of
sweet.

Travers leaned against the doorjamb,
then stood as if the pressure against his skin hurt him.

“So,” he said, perhaps to cover that
awkward moment, “you can use your magic at any time without
penalty.”

“I didn’t say that.” Zoe
ran a finger in the sink. She had gotten it clean, but the wet-dog
smell lingered. Maybe the odor had just gotten caught in her nose.
“There is a penalty. The more power I use, the more I
age.”

“Power,” Travers said. “Not
magic.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes they’re
related.”

She turned to head out of the
bathroom. Travers put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. His
touch seared through her shirt, running through her entire body as
if he were current and she were the conductor.

“You must not have used very much
power,” he said. “You don’t look old to me.”

She felt torn: part of her flattered
at his compliment, and the other part worried about their age
difference. He ran his other hand along her cheek.

“In fact,” he said, “you’re probably
the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

And you’re the
best-looking man
, she thought, but didn’t
say, grateful that Kyle wasn’t here. She was certain she was
broadcasting.

Travers leaned toward her. He was
going to kiss her, and she should use the better part of valor to
move away. Not that it would be easy to move in this small
bathroom. And not that she wanted to move. But it would be better
for both of them and the Fates, and Kyle, and even that stupid dog,
if she just stepped aside.

But she dithered too long. Travers’
lips touched hers, and hers parted. Somehow her arms found their
way around his neck, and his found their way around her waist, and
she was pressed against him, her body fitting his as if they had
been made for each other.

She willed her brain into silence, not
that it took much work, and surrendered to the kiss. It was slow
and leisurely, as if their mouths were getting to know each other
as a prelude to them getting to know each other.

In the middle of it, Zoe forgot to
breathe. She realized she was getting short of air at the moment
Travers’ lips left hers.

“Wow,” he said, his mouth only an inch
or so from hers. “I haven’t kissed anyone in a long time, but I
don’t remember it ever being that good.”

Neither did she. And she’d probably
kissed a lot more people over a lot longer time.

She leaned her forehead against his,
felt the heat of his skin, and realized she was probably hurting
him.

She stepped back, out of his arms, and
held out her hand. A bottle of lotion appeared in it.

“Let me take care of
that burn,” she said, and winced inwardly. She had meant to say
that she would give him the cream and
he
would take care of the burn
—maybe even learn a simple healing spell—but that wasn’t what she
said.

He looked at the lotion, then at her,
as if he were trying to understand the transition. Finally, he
nodded.

“What do we do?” he asked.

It was another
opening.
We
as
opposed to
me
or
you
. But
she didn’t take it. And now she couldn’t believe that her
subconscious was guiding her. Her conscious brain knew what her
subconscious was doing, and heartily approved.

Maybe only one other part of her
disapproved and that part came out of fear.

“Sit here,” she said, moving ever so
slightly so that Travers could sit on the closed toilet seat. “And
take off your shirt.”

As well as
everything else
. But that sentence stayed
inside. She was managing some control—just not
enough.

Travers pulled his shirt
over his head, moving slightly so that the fabric didn’t brush his
skin. He was as well-built as she had guessed—broad shoulders, a
firm, muscular chest, and a flat stomach. The muscles didn’t ripple
on him—for which she was grateful; she never liked ripply men—but
they were visible with his movements, giving him a strength he
didn’t have when he was clothed.

He was lightly furred, the hair as
blond as the hair on his head, and it tapered down his chest, into
a line that pointed even lower—

Zoe made herself look at his sunburn,
as she struggled to control her breathing.

Underneath his shirt, his skin was
very white. A firm line had been etched in his biceps, where the
skin went from white to bright red.

It was a sunburn—no doubt about
that—and part of it was already beginning to blister.

“You should have said something,” Zoe
said as she squeezed lotion onto her hand.

“You probably would have moved away if
I had,” Travers said.

Zoe felt her face heat. She was
blushing. Dammit! She continued to blush around this man. She had
been so certain she had outgrown that habit.

“No,” she said. “I mean, I meant that
you should have said something about the sunburn.”

“Oh.” His head was down. She couldn’t
quite tell what he was thinking, and that made her feel odd. “I
figured it would be okay to say something when we got
here.”

“Well,” she said, “it clearly wasn’t
okay. You’re wind-burned and sunburned, and beginning to
blister.”

She rubbed the lotion on her hands,
and then applied it to the back of his neck. The skin there was
almost too hot to touch. She silently recited a small spell that
would take the pain from the burn and heal the skin.

“I get burned a lot,” he said. “I just
live with it—hey, what’re you doing?”

She pulled her hands away, afraid she
was doing something wrong. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“No.” He sounded surprised. “In fact,
the places you touched feel even better than they felt before the
burn.”

Maybe a bit too much
healing, then. Or she was taking tension out, too. She poured
lotion on his burned right arm, and rubbed, relishing the feel of
his skin beneath hers.

“Are you doing magic?” he asked. “I
mean, besides making the bottle just appear?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a simple
healing spell.”

And the next sentence out of her mouth
should have been about teaching him the spell, but she didn’t say a
word. Instead, she ran both hands along his arm, feeling the
muscles, the firm skin, the warmth. Then she took his hand in her
own, caressing it, massaging the fingers.

He sat very still, almost too still,
as if he were trying to hold himself in reserve. But that sense she
had had the day before, that sense of him vanishing, wasn’t there.
It was almost as if he had tried to vanish, and couldn’t, as if he
had forgotten how.

She moved to the other arm, and
massaged it, taking the pain away with the burn, the lotion making
her movements quick and gentle.

Travers’ breathing was ragged, and he
closed his eyes. But somehow he maintained the
stillness.

She wanted to interrupt that
stillness, to break through it, to take away his control. She moved
in front of him, planning to sit on his lap while she put the
lotion on his face when he grabbed the lotion bottle from
her.

“Okay,” he said, and his voice was a
little raspy, “now explain to me how this is done.”

His gaze met hers. His eyes were a
slightly different color than they had been before—a deeper blue,
as if she had gotten closer to his core self.

He was clearly as aroused as she
was.

“Later,” she said, and reached for the
lotion.

He pulled it back toward the wall, out
of her reach, like a little boy playing keep-away on a school
yard.

“Teach me now,” he said. His voice had
a little more control.

He was the one who had
started this with his kiss. He was the one who let her touch him
like that, who clearly enjoyed it. Why was he stopping
now?

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Wrong?” He stood slowly, so as not to
bang into her. She still had to step out of the bathroom to get out
of his way. “It’s not you, Zoe.”

She frowned. If he wanted her to be
off-balance, he was succeeding. She couldn’t remember the last time
a man made her feel so many emotions at the same time.

Including frustration. That little
dance in the cramped bathroom had let her feel just how attracted
she was to this man, and she was willing to explore that
attraction, even if there was no future in it.

“I don’t understand,” she
said.

He set the lotion on the sink and
looked at his arms in the mirror. They were considerably less red
than his face. The heat and pain had clearly left them.

He looked at his skin for a moment, as
if he were trying to think of what to say, and then he spoke. “I
can’t have a casual relationship, Zoe. Not as long as Kyle’s living
with me.”

“Not at all?” she asked,
not sure if “casual” was what she wanted, either.

Travers shook his head. “My ex-wife
walked out on my son, and the only women I want in his life are the
ones who are going to stay.”

“Like the Fates?” Zoe asked,
confused.

“No.” Travers turned and leaned
against the sink. His face almost glowed. She longed to touch it,
to remove the ache, but she kept her lotion-covered hands at her
sides. “He understands friendship and casual acquaintances. But I’m
not going to lie to him about my relationship with someone, and I’m
not going to subject him to loss like the one he experienced
before.”

“Him?” Zoe asked. “Or you?”

Travers gave her that
sideways, rueful smile that she liked. “Believe me, I thought of
that. And it’s not me I’m protecting. It’s sad to say I don’t think
I ever loved Cheryl. I was a teenage boy, lost in hormones, and I
thought marriage was the right thing.”

“That still had to hurt,” Zoe
said.

Travers nodded. “It hurt, but it was
eleven years ago. I’m long past it.”

“Except that you haven’t had another
relationship.”

“Because of Kyle,” Travers said. His
certainty made her doubt him even more. Travers hadn’t looked at
this at all. “If I bring someone else into his life before he
graduates from high school, she’d better be the woman I’m spending
the rest of my life with.”

“Or?” Zoe asked.

“Or there’s no
relationship.”

“It sounds impossible,” she said. “How
are you going to know the woman you want to spend the rest of your
life with—and it’s going to be a very long life, you know—without
giving a few other women a test run?”

“I’ll know,” Travers said.

She didn’t believe him. She sighed.
Now was the time. Now that they were putting everything between
them, making their sides clear.

“I’ve been around for more than a
hundred years, Travers,” Zoe said. “I’ve fallen in love a few
times. But none of those men were the One the Fates talk about—the
soulmate, the man I’ll spend the rest of my life with.”

“But you knew that going in,” Travers
said, once again not noticing the age thing.