Chapter 17
17
W hat was that? Like, seriously? Devlin kissed me and it was so HOT!
And speaking of— why did he kiss me? Why did I let him? Must be because I’m enduring the sex dry spell from hell. Otherwise I never would’ve let my guard down, and my girlie parts never would have tingled and done several cartwheels like they did when his lips were moving down my neck.
Oh gods, it felt so good.
Never mind. Must think about other things.
I’ve got to be concentrating on Storm and figuring out a way to make sure that he doesn’t hate me after I broke his beautiful nose.
“What should I say to Storm?” I ask Devlin.
We’re at the ball, just arrived—separately, I’d like to add, so that no one grows suspicious—but as soon as he entered, I scuttled over to him like a spider needing a fix, put my back to the wall. And started talking.
My gods, he looks good. His hair’s smoothed back, and his jawline looks exceptionally sharp tonight.
Devlin takes two flutes of champagne from a waiter walking by, and hands one to me. “I wouldn’t say anything. Just ask him how he is.”
“But you’ll make sure that he’s not mad at me.”
He quirks a brow. “I will?”
“Of course you will!” I screech. People turn to look so I suddenly study the skirt of my green dress. Wow. It’s very flouncy. When I feel the stares off me, I say, “I mean, won’t you?”
“I got him to come,” he replies, keeping his gaze on the crowd.
“But you promised that you’d get us tog?—”
He holds up his hand to silence me. “I will. I’ll make sure he dances with you tonight, and that you’re well on your way to a blissful relationship.”
Is that bitterness in his voice? “What’s wrong with you? That’s the agreement, remember? You help me, I help you, and you don’t use your power to bed anyone.”
He frowns, stares into the crowd, keeping his handsome face turned away from me. “What if I wanted to?”
My stomach drops. “What if you wanted to use the power to bed someone?”
“Not use the power,” he sighs. He turns to look at me, and it feels like the world is slipping away. He’s staring at me as if there’s something important he needs, must have, desires above all else. “What if I wanted to bed someone?” he says in a husky voice that makes my insides shatter.
I lick my lips, ignoring how it feels like everyone in the ballroom’s vanished and it’s just the two of us. His eyes tear down my face to my mouth. Then they slowly drag back up to meet my gaze.
“What if you wanted someone?” I repeat dumbly like I’ve just learned how to talk.
“Yes. What if I do? And what if I don’t want to use your power to have them?”
Pinpricks of desire dance down my spine as he shifts to face me. Everything about Devlin is massive and beautiful, and all I can think about are his lips grazing down my throat, and how my nipples are now hard as diamonds because I’m stupidly thinking about kissing the wrong man.
“Well, you can’t bring anyone home, not while I’m in your house.”
“What if I don’t have?—”
“Storm Grayson,” the announcer booms.
I jump, startled at the interruption. My head swivels to the front of the room, and there stands Storm, looking beautiful and hot with his perfect face and even more perfect nose.
Thank goodness he was healed. I’m already in the doghouse enough. If he couldn’t be put back together, my chances at a perfect match would have been finished.
“Oh, there’s Storm. I’m going to say hello.”
I start to walk off, but Devlin grabs my arm. “Hold on there, cowboy. Let me talk to him first.”
“But I thought it would be okay to greet him.”
Darkness flashes in Devlin’s eyes. “Let me feel him out. You did break his nose.”
“And I should apologize,” I argue.
“Let me talk to him before you do.” I lift a brow in defiance, and Devlin smirks. “You know I’m right.”
Of course he’s right. That’s what’s so annoying. Why does he have to always be right?
He glances down at my arm, seeming to realize for the first time that he’s touching me, and drops me like a hot potato. Then he strides into the crowd, managing to make striding look swelteringly sexy.
“So have you hit that yet?” Chelsea says, sidling up with Dallas.
I scoff. “No, I haven’t, and I’m not going to.”
“Is that a hickey on your neck?” Dallas asks, squinting in my vicinity.
“What? Where? Quick. One of you give me a mirror.”
My sisters stare at each other and burst into laughter. “Oh, I got you,” Dallas says.
“You didn’t get me.” I fluff out my skirt in annoyance. “I knew there wasn’t a hickey, because there’s no reason for there to be one.”
Chelsea clasps her hands behind her back. “Then why’d you look? Hm?”
“You surprised me,” I mutter. “But anyway, Storm looks like he survived spell ball.”
“Just barely,” Dallas admits, clicking her tongue. “I heard he almost left because of it.”
A pit opens in my stomach, and my body falls into it. This is a disaster.
Devlin’s talking to him now. Storm looks all broody and delicious. Devlin’s greeting him, saying something. Storm’s gaze tracks the room until it lands on me.
Then he turns up his nose and looks away.
I become a puddle of sludge. I’ve ruined things between us. Completely. Irrevocably.
I can just see it now—Storm Grayson leaves, taking with him my last chance at marriage. I wind up manless, it being just me and my vibrator for the rest of my life. My family loses their magic and we’re forced to sell the bookshop, because who needs a bookshop of magic when it doesn’t have any magic?
My sisters all marry off, and I’m left at home, taking care of my parents and dead nana, who reminds me of all my past mistakes every day for the rest of my life. Then I die and am buried in an unmarked grave that no one tends, and it gets covered in weeds.
Wow. I’ve really got to get out and stop imagining terrible things.
But that doesn’t stop the fact that Storm does not look happy to see me, and it amplifies the sinking feeling in my gut.
“Here comes Devlin,” Chelsea tells me. “We’ll leave you to it.”
Before I can tell them that they don’t have to leave, my sisters scurry off, nodding and smiling at Devlin as they pass him in the crowd.
I barely wait for him to arrive before pouncing. “Well? How’d things go?” I omit the fact that Storm shot torpedoes out of his eyes at me.
“Not well.”
My chest seizes. “No?”
“No. Oh, he gladly took the information I had about the anti-aging treatment, but there’s bad news.”
His eyes flash on me in a way that says I don’t want to hear what’s coming. But of course I ask because I’ve got to know the truth. “What is it?”
His expression darkens and I recognize that look. It’s disgust. Things must be really bad if Devlin’s disgusted.
“Does he not want to see me? Does he hate me forever? What?”
“Come on.”
He takes my arm, and I follow him over to the string quartet. They’re between songs, and he whispers in the ear of the violinist, who nods and smiles.
Then Devlin drags me into the center of the room.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. “What’s going on?”
He spins me into him, and I fall onto his chest. Devlin takes my hand and murmurs in my ear, “What’s happening is that we’re going to change Storm Grayson’s mind about you.”
“Why? How does he feel about me?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Then how are you going to fix it? Influence him?”
He shakes his head, and a slow smile works itself across his face. “No. Better. We’re going to tango.”
“What?” I screech as the music starts up.
Before I’m given a chance to bolt, Devlin’s got me in a tight embrace. The music kicks up, and he leads me with strong steps into the dance.
Now I’ve taken lots of dance lessons. Any good witch worth her salt can move and shake, but I’ve never done the tango. I’ve seen plenty of movies where there have been sexy tangoes, but watching and doing are different.
Aren’t they?
“Make him want you,” Devlin whispers in my ear.
“What?”
“Blair, you are three seconds away from losing the one shot you’ve got, and there’s nothing I can say to Storm to change his mind. So unless you pull out the sexiest dance you can manage, he’s going to walk out that door and never return.”
My head snaps toward Storm. He’s still here, but he’s not paying attention to us.
“I could use your influence power,” Devlin whispers in my ear, “but that’s only a temporary fix, a bandage on a problem. You’ve got to convince him to stay, that you’re worth it, that suffering from a broken nose was the price of being in your presence.”
My skin shivers as his words float over my ear and trickle down my neck. Something happens in this moment. It’s like a lightbulb’s been snapped on, and I realize that I have two choices—let Storm leave or win him.
I decide to win.
So I throw myself into the tango.
The music is slow and sultry, and I take the opportunity to show off my dance skills. Devlin walks me back several paces, and I drop, extending my right leg between both of his while keeping my eyes pinned up at him.
A hush fills the room. Everyone’s watching.
I rise and Devlin’s hand splays over my lower back, across the curve of my rear end, and I suck air but keep my eyes latched onto him.
Heat is flaming like an inferno in his gaze, and that heat envelops me, spurring me on, pushing out the world as I follow his lead.
Our steps are quick, our legs entwine, tangle, separate. My torso’s pressed against his as he pushes and pulls, dipping me down, his breath grazing against my bust before he dramatically whips me up and catches me in his embrace.
I’m breathless, intoxicated by this moment with him. There’s only him. There’s no one else in the world except Devlin, and I’m putty in his hands, water in his embrace.
He moves like a god, and the entire room knows it. I can feel all their eyes as I’m dipped, as I fall onto him and he catches me, as I tangle my leg in his like we’re wrapped up in bedsheets, and as I unwind from him.
All he sees is me, and all I see is him. I haven’t stared at Devlin this long in forever. This is more intimate than being with him, moving with him like this, it’s like we’ve become one, and when I look at him, I can see all his vulnerabilities. He can’t hide from me, and I can’t escape him.
We’ve found our rhythm now, and we’re fluid, dancing as one. I instinctively know what he’s going to do before he does it, and I’m right there. There’s no stumbling, no falling and no barriers between us.
The heat of his gaze (yes, there’s heat, girl, an inferno of it!) sinks into my skin. He’s all I see, all I know, all I want.
My breath comes quickly. I can’t get enough air into my lungs because he’s sucking it up as quickly as I inhale it. He dips me one last time and the music stops.
I lift my head and stare at him, and the connection I feel is like a rope’s been tied between us, knotting us together so tightly that there’s no space to breathe.
What in the world has happened?
Devlin slowly lifts me, both of us keeping our gazes locked on the other. I feel such a connection that I don’t dare inhale or think or even blink because I’m afraid that this thing vibrating and humming between us will be lost.
“Devlin, I?—”
And then the crowd explodes in applause and I’m snapped out of whatever I was going to say and I’m back in reality.
He slowly tears his gaze from me, and it feels like I’ve been cast out into the cold of outer space, facing away from the sun and life.
He flashes the crowd his mischievous grin and wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me to him. “Smile. I think that did what we wanted it to.”
But what had I wanted it to do? Charm Storm? Now my brain’s totally fogged up. I can’t stop thinking about kissing Devlin and how he made my lips burn. Not like someone threw Tabasco on them, but more like burned with desire.
And then that dance. It was sooooooo hot! So hot that I need to add about a thousand o ’s to the s . My hormones are doing all kinds of dancing in my pants, and Devlin looks yummy delicious.
Maybe my biological clock is ticking. That would explain why I’ve clearly suffered from brain damage and want to mate with someone as terrible as him. When hormones take charge, they win over all rational thought.
Me cavewoman. Me want to make baby. You man. You seem good enough.
Ugh. My brains must have spilled out of my head when Devlin was spinning me.
Before I get a chance to scour the floor for them, a shock wave hits me, sending a pulse zinging to my fingers and toes.
My mind opens and I’m suddenly tangled in bedsheets. I’m being kissed and I’m kissing back. A hand skates over my breast and doesn’t stop until it dips between my legs.
It’s dark in the room, so I can’t see his face, but I feel his weight on top of me and how much I want him.
He breaks from the kiss and sits up. Moonlight slashes across his face, the face of?—
The scene vanishes as quickly it appeared, and it takes a moment for me to realize that I’d just seen my first vision.
Wow. That was trippy.
And now I’m horny.
“Blair,” a masculine voice says, “you were incredible.”
I glance up at Storm, who’s standing in front of me, clapping slowly, a small smile tugging up one corner of his mouth.
My gaze darts to Devlin, but he’s not looking at me. “Um, yes. Thank you.”
Storm does a little bow. It’s very romantic. “Would you like to dance?”
Devlin’s still not looking at me. He’s talking to some guy I don’t recognize. But he must be listening, because his arm slips out from around my waist and he turns to face the man fully, putting his back to me.
My heart gives a little shudder as I tip my chin up to Storm and smile. “Sure. I’d love to dance.”