Waiting for Magic (25 page)

Devin felt an immense relief well up inside him. Thank goodness for trees and horses. He thought she might be more than half open. And she was so responsive. He could make this good for her. He could.

He flicked across her sensitive nub and she made a little shriek. Just soft, but Devin decided he had another worry. So he scooted over on the bed and moved her gently to her back, keeping up his gentle stroking. Then he stopped sucking on a breast and looked up at her. Her eyes were almost dazed with excitement. He put his hand over her mouth, very softly, a question in his eyes. She hesitated then nodded. If she didn’t have to worry about being quiet, she could enjoy her climax more. He smiled at her, hoping she could see in his eyes how beautiful he thought she was. She licked his palm. He had to count prime numbers for a minute or he would have lost it. He scraped his chest across her nipple as he reached his mouth to kiss her throat, even as he kept up his stroking of
her most private areas. Her thighs were spread in invitation to continue, and she arched up into his hand as he rubbed across her swollen tissue.

And then he wasn’t sure she was even seeing him as he rubbed a little faster. Her eyes glazed over, looking inward in fascination. Her tide must be rising toward climax. He redoubled his efforts, but made sure to give her little moments of relief, which the book said only made the next high higher. He saw the moment she went over the edge. His hand clamped a little tighter over her mouth so she could just let go. The muffled cries against his palm were sweet music. She jerked against his hand, on and on, pressing herself into him.

Finally she jerked her hips away, almost involuntarily, and he removed his hand. She gasped and shuddered and started to cry.

Oh, my God.
He scooted up. “Kee, Kee what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head convulsively, but continued to cry, big heaving sobs that tore at him.

He didn’t know what to do. He felt so helpless. What had he done wrong? She buried her head in his shoulder and he put his arms gently around her, afraid to make the situation worse. “What can I do, Kee?”

Her sob subsided into hiccups and finally she took a big shuddering breath and looked up at him. “That was the most beautiful, most astounding … thing
ever
. I had no idea.…”

He grinned, proud. He had done that for her. “You’re … you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed. “A little overwhelmed.”

“That could be good,” he ventured.

“Good doesn’t begin to cover it.” Her smile was so soft. Her lips were slightly swollen. She put her arms around him and held him close. So that was what a sated woman looked like. “Devin, that book is priceless.” He wasn’t sure, but she might have meant
he
was priceless. That felt damned fine. She looked down. He was still rock hard inside the condom. “Shouldn’t you have a turn?”

Nothing he wanted more. But he knew from the book that if he waited just a little while longer, she’d be able to come again. “In a minute.”

So he just held her, while she snuggled into him, and he realized all the pain of her touch recently was just that overwhelming feeling that was really pleasure. Pleasure/pain from touching Kee was all he wanted. How had he been afraid of holding her? Because he would lose her? Certain fact. But he couldn’t refuse to play just because he was bound to lose. He’d miss, well, everything in life. Wasn’t everyone bound to die? That was the ultimate loss. And yet he could choose to live while he could, if he was smart.

Kee’s hand had moved slightly. She was feeling the muscles in his back. Her palm smoothed down over his butt, so different from hers. She seemed to like it though because she made that kind of yummy sound again and squeezed. He squeezed his muscles back.

“So, you think it’s time yet?” she whispered.

“Maybe so.” It better be, because he was going to spurt into that condom with or without Kee, if he wasn’t careful. And that wouldn’t be fair. He bent and took her breast in his mouth again. She seemed to have really sensitive breasts. He was rewarded with a moan. “Was it okay that I held my hand over your mouth?” he asked. He didn’t want her feeling bossed around.

“Yeah. That way I didn’t have to worry about waking Kemble.” She reached down between them and touched his cock. Thank God for the condom, or he would have come right there. It was bad enough as it was. He had to last, for Kee.

To his surprise, she pushed him over on his back and, with a wicked grin, straddled his hips. Her hair was drying a little by this point. Some strands had begun to wave down her back. Her breasts were high and full, and those nipples jutted out. He heaved a breath in as she braced one hand against his chest and felt for his cock. She lifted it up and positioned it under her. She had to feel around with the tip to find her opening. They both groaned a little.

He was still nervous about penetrating her. “If I hurt you.…”

“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “And this way I can choose the moment and be prepared.”

Why hadn’t he thought of that? She slid down a little. She was so tight and wet. His cock sliding into her felt like she was gripping it, the muscles inside her massaging it. She pushed herself up and then slid down again. Once more, twice. He was holding his breath. Now he was up against what was left of her hymen. She just eased down with a little gasp.

He wanted to lift her hips up, but he didn’t dare. That might hurt her worse. “You okay?”

“Not bad.” She slid up, and then down. “Not bad at all.” She slid up and down. Her slow smile was reassuring.

He hoped he could get her off again before he lost it. “If you kinda go back and forth as well as up and down, it’ll feel even better for you.”

“Show me,” she commanded eagerly.

He took her hips and lifted then brought her forward and down, buried hilt deep in her now so her mound scraped his pubic bone. She gave a little gasp. Oh, yeah. He was going to be able to make her come again. He lifted, lowered, and she began to help, catching the rhythm.

“It’s like cantering a horse,” she breathed.

He couldn’t help but grin.

“If you whinny, I’ll never forgive you, Devin Tremaine,” she said in mock severity.

“What?” he asked defensively, as though he hadn’t been thinking about doing just that.

He could tell she was getting close. He was reduced to counting prime numbers again. So he drew her into his chest, which stilled her movement, and rolled her to her back. Supporting himself with his arms, now he drove the pace, rocking into her, which would rub her just the right way according to the book. She was giving little gasps again.

Finally counting prime numbers wasn’t doing squat. God, he hoped she was close. He wanted to wait. Wanted to. Wait. Wait. Her nails were digging into his shoulders and nothing had ever felt so good. The instant he felt her muscles contract around him, she arched and mewled in little shrieks and he lost it, driving into her and pumping his hot streams into her. He couldn’t quite see her. He couldn’t see anything. He just heard his own rhythmic grunting and felt like his soul was being stripped out through his cock as the darkness flashed blue-green colors against his retinas. For some reason he smelled the sea. It went on and on. He and Kee seemed to be floating. He saw himself and her from above at a distance. They looked beautiful, his muscles straining, her white legs wrapped around him, arched into him with an expression of wild abandon on her face. He was separate from himself, at the same time his body was filled to overflowing, each nerve ending screaming in ecstasy.

The sensation faded, slowly. He was back in his body only. Kee pulled him in to her breasts. He held her to his chest, rolling them to the side so he wouldn’t crush her. Then he just cradled her, kissing her damp hair. As his few remaining brain cells began to vibrate with a little more life, he wondered if it was like this for everybody. Was it because she was his soul mate that sex with her seemed transcendental?

Oh, God.
In the heat of the moment he hadn’t put his hand over her mouth. Had the bed been kinda thumping against the wall? He sure hoped Kemble was a sound sleeper. But he wasn’t going to tell Kee. Why ruin everything? She was making little, breathy sounds against his shoulder. He drew the spread up to keep the chill off her as the sweat dried from their bodies.

After a while, she snuggled deeper into this embrace. “Some book,” she murmured. “Can you give books more than five stars on Amazon?”

“Don’t think so.” The smell of damp hair and of what they’d done together filled his nostrils. “Guess I’m gonna have to read more romances.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Can’t you stop weather?” the old woman asked Rhiannon. The old woman didn’t like to fly, so they were driving.

The black Mercedes limo was just turning off
the 15 freeway. It had rained all the way in from Vegas. She was seated in the back with Weather Girl. Jason and Talbot, one of the new guys, sat in the seat that faced to the rear. Hardwick was driving. It should have been only four and a half or five hours at night but the rain slowed them down some.

“No,” Rhiannon pouted. “I can
draw
energy to make storms, but I can’t
push
energy back into the atmosphere. Doesn’t work like that.”

“Well, it should,” the old woman muttered.

Jason was quiet, not wanting to draw attention. They’d left Phil lying on the floor of the hotel suite, barely conscious. Hardwick had called Jackie and Raffia, two of the newer converts staying in the adjacent suite, to clean him up and stand guard on him. But it wasn’t needed. Phil didn’t have anywhere else to go. None of them did. Freaks. All of them with their hearts torn apart, patched up like they were whole. But they weren’t. The old woman and her plans for them were all they had now. Even Rhiannon, Weather Bitch, needed the old woman. And if by some chance any one of them did decide to give up any chance they had at the future the old woman had planned and try to leave, she’d just hunt them down. They were tied to her now in some crazy dance of pain and possibility. They might write their own destiny someday as the ones who changed everything. Or they might just die on the way to the goal line or go crazy from trying to keep the old woman happy. But it wasn’t a matter of choice anymore. For any of them.

“How long?” the old woman snapped.

“Couple more hours,” Hardwick called back.

“I booked at the Hotel Bel
-Air, so you have a base of operations,” Jason said.

“Good.” She took a deep breath. “I need some sleep before we see Mr. Pendragon.”

Here they were chasing across the desert to the Hollywood Hills after a Talisman that the old woman had just decided this Pendragon guy had. How could she know?

But his was not to question why. And he’d hate to be Pendragon if he didn’t have something she wanted.

*****

Devin saw the black square of the window lighten, almost imperceptibly. It would be dawn soon. He looked down to where Kee’s hair, dried now to its usual light brown, spread across his chest in a tangle. Her long lashes brushed her cheeks. The fact that he could feel the regular rise and fall of her breasts against his ribs had made him hard ever since he came out of his groggy, post
-coital sleep. But he didn’t want the provocation removed. He should be ashamed of what they’d done. But he wasn’t. Nothing had ever felt so right to him in his life. He wanted to freeze this moment, right here, forever.

But he couldn’t. He had to wake her before the household got up and started moving around. Why had she made love to him? She
had come with condoms, for Christ’s sake, so it hadn’t been accidental, though they’d both been more than a little lubricated at the time. If she’d had a good reason for coming to his room, she might be okay with it this morning. Maybe she was afraid to admit to her curator that she was a virgin at twenty-three. Maybe she wanted a little experience, so she could be a generous partner in bed. Though her romance novels seemed to have given her a pretty good leg up on that. Jeez. When she had smoothed that little drop of pre-come over his….

No. No. Can’t think about that.
His cock was yelling at him, and he couldn’t think with it yelling at him.

Part of him wanted to tell her he had the gene. Just to see if maybe.
…

Maybe what, surfer boy?
The Tremaines are aristocracy,
he reminded himself, like a mantra. Brian and Kemble ran a multinational corporation. They were connected to senators and governors. He was the orphan boy they’d graciously taken in. He was willing to bet their generosity wouldn’t extend to giving him Brian’s favorite daughter. Kee would be throwing herself away on him, and they’d all know it, even Kee. He wasn’t even an artist like Museum Guy, who oozed swanky, east-coast money from every pore. And there was the incest factor. Brian would love that. He might not be her real brother, but they all saw him that way. Hell,
he’d
always seen himself that way.

Maybe th
e family would know the truth soon anyway. Kemble wasn’t going to keep Devin’s secret forever. He’d just agreed to give Devin a little time. Then what? He’d have to tell them his relationship with Sybil was fictional. They’d get the truth out of him or guess about Kee and be horrified. He could just imagine what would happen next.

Still, it tore him up to keep secrets from Kee. And she
had
come to him last night….

But the
risk.
What if she hated him for what he felt? What if she’d been upstairs, craving Museum Guy, and gotten herself horny and drunk, and just needed a screw? That one hurt. He took a breath and tried to settle his thoughts.

Even her friendship might be lost if he told her he had a power and she’d raised it. It might be lost anyway if she was
appalled at what happened last night.

The square of window was definitely lighter. There would be no freezing time. It took all his courage to smooth her hair away from her cheek.

“Hey,” he said softly. Her eyelids fluttered. “Hey.”

*****

Kee blinked awake slowly. She’d been so tired, she must have slept hard.

She felt the smooth skin of Devin’s shoulder under her cheek, his arm around her shoulders, the muscles of his hard abdomen under the elbow of the arm she’d cast carelessly across him. Memories of last night came flooding back.

She gasped and pushed herself up, scrambling away from Devin’s obviously naked body. What had she done? She clutched the sheet to her breast and put her hand to her mouth, looking around wildly as if there was some way she could take back what had happened. But the tequila bottle and the shot glass on the dresser, the two towels strewn over the floor, the … the box of condoms.…
Oh, no! Kemble’s condoms.
With her brother!
She’d done something she couldn’t take back. She felt her breath coming in little panicked gasps. All very well to think she wanted a great sorrow in her past to make her a charismatic person and a great artist. But great sorrows weren’t that easy to deal with in the present tense.

She glanced to the window. Almost light. Her mother was an early riser.
Mother! No, no, no, no.
She shook her head convulsively. Without looking at Devin, she grabbed for the spread, since taking the sheet with her would leave Devin naked. And she might see something that … that she shouldn’t see. Didn’t want to see. And had seen a whole lot of last night.
What have I done?
Her brain was chaotic with various, unconnected thoughts, all dire.

She got up, and pulled the spread around her.

She grabbed the tequila bottle and noted dumbly the nearly empty decanter that had once held Scotch beside it. That’s how all this happened. She was drunk. He was drunk. She collected the shot glass and reached down to the floor for the box of condoms. Then, what with trying to hold the spread around herself, the bottle spilled because it didn’t have a cap, and tequila was sloshing everywhere, and she dropped the box of condoms … and just stood there, staring down.

“I’ll take care of all that.” His deep voice seemed to vibrate inside her. With re
morse. She took a breath and felt it cut her from the inside out. Chancing a look back, she saw the regret etched deep in his expression.

“I’m so sorry,” she managed, trembling.

“Not your fault.”

Slowly, she bent over and picked up the box of condoms. “Yes, it kind of is.” She’d tempted him, walking in here nearly naked and armed with tequila and condoms. He’d been drunk himself and reacted like any male would, and now he’d have to suffer the sorrow she’d planned only for herself. She hadn’t been thinking about how her actions would affect Devin. But she’d hurt him. She could hear it in his voice. She didn’t know what to do.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice husky, after the silence had gone on for a while. “We’ll be back to being just friends in no time.”

Kee felt a sob struggling to get out of her chest. “No, we won’t.” Because this had changed everything and she didn’t want him as just a friend anymore. She wanted the tender, passionate lover of last night. And she couldn’t have that. They’d both be scarred forever by the fact that they’d made love (well,
she’d
made love, for him it was just sex that presented itself on a platter) with someone who was forbidden.
Brother.
And he regretted it. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she gathered the spread around her body and stumbled to the door. She’d leave him with the mess, just like she was leaving him with the other, emotional detritus of her rash action. At the door, she paused. “You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

There was a moment of silence. “You know me better than that.” It came out as a hoarse whisper that chased her from the room.

*****

Devin watched her go. He hadn’t known his physical heart could ache, but it did. He couldn’t swallow and his eyes filled, just like when he got thrown against the rocks by a wave or he hit his thumb with a hammer.

He’d hurt Kee. Oh, she’d been the instigator. She was right about that. But he should have said no, saved her from her worst self. Protected her.

Her horrified reaction had been so painful he hadn’t known what to do, what to say. It didn’t matter. If she felt like that about what they’d done, there wasn’t much to be said. She was the soul mate of Museum Guy, and she thought what they’d done was a betrayal of her true love. And then there was the fact that Devin was her brother. For him, the night had been a beautiful gift, their lovemaking something he would treasure for the rest of his days. For her, a nightmare.

It was clear now his days could not be spent around Kee. His presence would be a raw wound she picked at and worried over. He felt her move from her room back up into her garret. He couldn’t do that to her. He had to leave, though the very thought made him want to vomit.

He’d never belonged here. He shared the Tremaines’ special gene but that hadn’t changed anything. He was still an outsider looking in at the happiness they thought was their birthright.

He got up and picked up Kee’s towels, the now mostly empty tequila bottle, and the box of condoms. He’d sneak them back into Kemble’s room later. Kemble
didn’t go out to clubs now that they were all stuck at the Breakers, anyway. He wasn’t going to miss them. Devin got a trashcan liner from the wastebasket in his bathroom and bundled up the trash. Towels into the hamper, sheets too. After he stripped the bed in a daze, he walked into the shower and let the water sluice over him, as hot as he could stand it. Maybe he could burn Kee out of his system.

No such luck.

He was going to walk out of here and not look back, mainly because if he looked back, he wouldn’t go. But the Tremaines had been kind to the tanned and blond duckling in their pale Celtic brood of swans. They’d tried very hard to make him feel a loved part of the family. Just walking out didn’t seem right.

He couldn’t tell them why he was going, of course. But maybe … maybe he could pay his debt, at least in part. He stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry.

It was all so clear.

They needed Talismans to counteract Morgan Le Fay’s growing power. He could get them a Talisman. Pendragon wasn’t so much of a much. An old charlatan who liked to make up stories about himself, just for effect. The Tremaines had magnified the spookiness of his house because they’d been sneaking around in the middle of the night like kids. So, that’s what he’d do. He’d get the Talisman before he left as a parting gift to his adopted family.

He shook his head at himself. Just like that? But looking inside, he knew he could do it. Piece started falling into place like dominoes. He knew how to get out of the compound without being seen. That would protect him from the Clan. They’d never know he’d left. He thought he might be able to locate the Talisman. And he’d seen how Pendragon looked at him. It wasn’t just Kee the old lech wanted to boink. The man would let him in the door. And if there
was
any danger, well, he had a power now. He needed a practice session. But he could do this.

He reached for his phone as the gloomy, wet day began and sent a text to Pendragon at the number Kee
had used when she had first called him. “Loved ur collection. Dinner 2 night?” Guy was a night owl. Devin wouldn’t get an answer for hours.

To his surprise his phone buzzed in his hand. He flicked it awake. “Luv 2. 10?”

Devin swallowed.
Here we go.
“U R on.”

Time to get down to the beach before anybody else was up and about. He had some major preparation to do. And it would keep him from thinking about tomorrow. When he was leaving.

*****

Kemble
stood in the doorway of his room about ten o’clock, wondering what to do. He’d finally fallen asleep, but only after a long time of ditto—wondering what to do. By the time he’d realized what and whom he was hearing, the deed was done and couldn’t be undone. It would have been bad enough if Devin had smuggled in that girl he was teaching to surf, but this…. Kemble just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. The burden of knowing when his father didn’t was excruciating. Should he tell Senior? The very thought made him shudder. What would his father do if he knew? He’d probably throw Devin out. Or horsewhip him. And he’d be hurt at the betrayal. The wakeful hours had settled nothing.