Midnight Enchantment (13 page)

Her tongue went dry. She wanted that, too, very much.

Then he dropped his mouth between her legs and her tongue went even drier. Words left her—the ability to
think
left her—as he sucked her clit between his lips. Pleasure tingled throughout every part of her body, starting from the place where he touched her. It was so much better than any of her late night fumblings, when she’d tried to ease the natural yearnings of her body with her own hand. He added a second finger to the first and she gasped as he pressed them slowly inside her, widening her and stretching her muscles.

She imagined what it would be like to have his cock there instead, thrusting inside her, his chest pressed against hers,
his mouth sealed to her mouth—and the ecstasy tripled from the fantasy of it, pleasure surging through her and bringing her right up to the edge of an orgasm. Already she could tell that when she came from his lips and fingers on her, it would be so much better than the climaxes she’d ever given herself.

His tongue eased over her swollen, sensitive clit, pushing her harder, his fingers still tunneling in and out of her. “Niall,” she half breathed, half gasped, her back arching and her fingers digging into the carpet on either side of her.

Intense pleasure burst, making her cry out. Her body tensed as it washed over her, and she gasped against the waves of it rolling through her body. Niall pushed her past the threshold, extending her climax. Her orgasm stuttered, came to a close, but he pushed her straight into another. The ecstasy seemed to go on and on until finally it receded, drained away, and left her limp and breathing heavily on the floor.

She felt like she’d been wrung out like a washcloth, but in a good way that left her tingling, weak, and wanting more.

Niall crawled up her body and lay on his side, looking down into her face. She opened her eyes blearily, feeling drugged. “That was fast,” he said with a cocky grin.

She gave a sleepy half-smile. “It was the first time a man’s ever touched me. Don’t get too arrogant.”

He covered her breast with his hand and gently flicked the nipple back and forth. “Should we see if we can make you do it again?”

Reaching up, she caught his nape with her hand and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss. His tongue tangled with hers and she pulled his trick, dragging his lower lip through her teeth. He shuddered against her, and she smiled against his mouth, pleased at his reaction to her.

“Let’s do it together,” she murmured. Her other hand found the button and zipper of his jeans. She wanted to feel what it was like to have a man inside her.

He moved his pelvis away from her and shook his head. “All in good time.”

His hand strayed to her stomach and glided between her parted thighs. Slowly, he stroked her clit until pleasure flared once more. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“I want to see how many times I can make you come in a
row. You have a lot of lost years to make up for, you poor, sexually deprived woman.” He slanted a mischievous grin at her. “Let’s see how we can remedy that.”

He lowered his head to her breasts and explored every ridge and valley of her erect nipple while he steadily petted her clit, drawing it from its hood. It wasn’t long before her sex-starved body was shuddering in climax on the rug once again.

And he wasn’t through by half.

THE door opened with a metallic groan and Niall stumbled out into the cool air and dragged in a lungful of it. Sweet Danu, she was killing him. She was the one in bondage, he was the one in control, yet this woman had him wrapped around her slender finger like so much breakable tinsel at Yuletide.

Anything she wanted, he gave her.

He had not meant for this to happen. It was bad all the way around. Bad because she was in his care. Worse because it brought them closer together. Where the body went, a tiny slice of the heart followed. What he needed was distance, perspective. Hells, he was supposed to be getting information out of her, not making her come multiple times on the carpet in front of a merrily burning fire!

Gods, he was weak where this woman was concerned. At least he hadn’t fucked her.

But he almost had.

Maybe he wasn’t the right man for this job. Maybe the Shadow Queen needed to send someone else. This was getting out of control fast and he needed to find a way to rein it in, bring the control back to him and him alone.

Time was almost running out, anyway.

He took a couple staggering steps forward and caught himself on a tree. His cock was hard and he considered relieving himself of his erection, and then decided against it. He needed to get back in there. Leaving her alone wasn’t good idea. Not even when she was unconscious.

Looking up into the star-strewn night sky, he exhaled hard, his mind working over the situation.

What to do? He needed to make this work, or he needed to let her go.

*   *   *

ELIZABETH woke in the guest bed, nude body swathed in softness. Her body tingled and pulsed from Niall’s hands and mouth on her the night before. There was weakness there, too, sickness. Every day it grew a little more pronounced. She was still technically a virgin, but at least she had experienced what it was to have a man touch her.

He sat in the chair across the room, a brooding look on his face, eyes troubled.

“What is it?” she asked, sitting up. The blanket fell away from her breasts and he glanced at them, then away, as if he didn’t want tempt himself. She pulled the blankets up to her chest, suddenly feeling chilly.

“I fucked up last night. I’m getting too close to you. I’m not the man for this job.”

Hope shot a tiny blossom of light into her chest. “What do you mean?”

He stood and walked to her, flipping the blankets back. Cool air kissed the length of her bare body. He leaned over, touched her cuff, and whispered a power-laced string of words in Old Maejian. The cuff popped off. “You’re free.”

She kicked the cuff away like it was made of nuclear waste and stared up at him. Was this for real? Or was this just another layer of illusion? “I don’t trust you.”

He turned away. “Fine, then stay. But I’m out of here. I’m headed back to the Black Tower. I need to tell the queen I’ve failed and get someone else to come after you. Someone who can do the job.”

“Bullshit.” She hopped from the bed and followed him out of the room. She was still naked, but that was a secondary concern right now. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it all before…up close and in detail. “If you were going to send someone else, you would leave me in the charmed iron and just direct the next miscreant here to me.”

He rounded on her and bared his teeth. “I touched every inch of your body last night, Elizabeth. I made you come multiple times. Is it so hard to believe that I might want to see you live? By the time the Shadow Queen sends someone back to this cottage, you’d be dead from the iron sickness. The next
guy can catch you, kill you. I’m done.” He stalked into the other room, grabbed a duffle bag, and paced to the front door. “Bye, Elizabeth. Good luck.”

She stood in the middle of the room, staring out the front door that he’d left open.
Danu
, she wished she knew if this was real or not.

After she’d heard the sound of his SUV driving off, she hugged herself, shaking off the disgusting feeling of the iron sickness that still clung to her, and trying not to feel like she’d just had her first one-night stand.

HE never came back.

Wrapped in a blanket on the couch, she waited and waited. Also absent was the sense she was being watched. No niggling from the recesses of her mind ever came. So, finally, she stood and dissolved.

Surrender. Permeating wood, sliding through cement, finding earth. Accumulating and leaking through rock, silt, humus, minerals, decaying organic matter. A stream not far. Merge. Rushing, rushing.

Ah, it felt good. So good to be water self.

She returned to full consciousness lying on her side at the edge of a river with sprae playing in bushes and trees opposite her. Sitting up, she hugged herself against the chill and analyzed her location. Her water self had led her to a clearing near her home. Better yet, this was a place where she kept clothing,
thank Danu
.

Standing, she pulled the cached set of pants, sweater, under-things, shoes, and socks from a heavy plastic bag secreted under a bush and pulled them on.

The sensation of being watched remained absent. Yet, something didn’t feel right.

More than anything she wanted to verify that the pieces were still hidden where she’d left them, but she couldn’t risk it. Not yet.

Instead she went to her house.

All was as she’d left it, though her ATV was still at the garden where Niall had caught her. She’d have to go back for that, but it was almost dawn, the time when her energy ebbed
and she normally slept. The iron sickness still had its claws sunk deep inside her and would take time to fade, so she would wait and rest.

Visiting her mother would have to wait until evening, too. She would have to make up a story to explain her absence, maybe something about how she’d traveled to the ocean for a little impromptu vacation. She would apologize for not telling her beforehand, would feel terrible for lying…and hope like hell her mother didn’t give her any food that would compel the truth from her.

She made herself a dinner of stew, sipped fortifying tea, and snuggled into her bed to sleep. Dawn was just lighting the horizon when the phone on her nightstand rang.

“Hello?” she answered, already half asleep.

Silence on the other end. Finally, a man said, “Is this Elizabeth Cely Saintjohn?”

“Yes.” She sat up, pressing the phone more firmly to her ear and waking up fast. The unfamiliar voice had a note of threat threaded through it. “Who wants to know?”

“I know where the pieces are. I’m going to get them right now.” Pause. “Then I’m coming for you.”
Click.

Elizabeth stayed frozen for a heartbeat, then slammed the receiver down and leapt from the bed. She needed to go now, dissolve, get the pieces, and hide them again. She raced out of her house in her pajamas and ran into her front lawn, ready to become her water self and get there before the unknown man.

Maybe there was still time. Maybe…

Wait.

Her jaw locked and she fisted her hands. “Why would someone hunting the pieces warn me they were going to get them?” she said loudly to the air around her, turning in a circle and looking up into the sky. “They wouldn’t. They would just take the pieces and then come after—”

For the second time, her front yard melted.

SHE sat up on the rug in front of the fire, still naked, body still tingling from the last orgasm Niall had given her. He stood not far away, dressed only in a pair of jeans, barefoot, and staring down at her.

“You’re a class A bastard, Niall.”

“You keep saying that. Can we just have a standing agreement that I am, indeed, a bastard so we don’t have to talk about it anymore?”

Angrily, she stood and pulled a throw from the couch, wrapping herself in it. The last thing she wanted was to feel naked and vulnerable in front of this man. What had she been thinking, throwing herself at him that way?

Never again.

His eyes were stormy. “I’m running out of options, Elizabeth.”

She collapsed onto the couch, every molecule of her body fatigued and sore. It was the iron sickness, coming on faster and faster. “Whatever,” she breathed, resting her head on the cushion behind her. “No matter how you try and trick me, I’m not leading you to the pieces. You’re just going to have to let me die,
bastard
.”

At some point she felt him lift her and lay her in bed. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he murmured and touched the charmed iron cuff around her ankle. “Tick tock, baby.”

Exhaustion pulled her under.

ELIZABETH sat on the couch in the living room, staring daggers into Niall’s back as he built up the fire. Over the last two days, the iron sickness had dug its claws so hard into her body that it was an effort for her to move.

She was dying.

The ache in her body and the fatigue in her muscles made it so this fact was almost a blessing—something to look forward to. Her magick was entirely eradicated. She felt certain that if Niall took off her cuff, laid her on the earth outside, and took a step back, even then she wouldn’t be able to form water self. Her magick was completely gone.

Little by little, minute by minute, he was destroying her.

All she could hope for now was a swift passing to the Netherworld. At least the pieces were safe, and that meant her mother was safe. She had to stay strong in her resolve. The sickness leached her strength, but not her will.

That didn’t stop Niall from trying. Illusory scene after illusory
scene, he battered at her, trying over and over to trick her into leading him the pieces. No matter how sick she was or how awful she felt, she foiled his plan every time.

He brought over a glass of water from the sink and sat down next to her. Refusing to look at him, she stared into the flickering fire instead.

“Drink,” he insisted, putting the glass to her dry, cracked lips.

She opened her mouth and water trickled in. Ah, water, how she missed it. It was an effort to swallow or speak. Walking was just a dream.

Not long now.

He set the glass on the table. “Nothing I do works.” He sounded discouraged, and it made her crack the smallest of smiles. “The Summer Queen was right to pick you.”

“Soon,” she croaked. “I’ll be dead and the pieces will forever be hidden, from everyone, even the Summer Queen.”

“And the fae will be at the mercy of the Phaendir. Trapped in here, forever.” His tone sounded as bleak as his expression looked.

She had a twinge of regret. “I wish it could be different. I wish we could all have what we want, protect everyone we love. But there are always winners…” She took a deep, rattling breath. “And losers.” She closed her eyes, smiling. “I’m a winner.” Slowly, painstakingly, she raised her hand to her forehead and made an
L
with her hand. “And you’re a loser.”