Chapter 9 #2
Pippa arched an eyebrow at him as she wiggled the waistband of her pants over her hips. “So now you’re a lawyer masseuse?”
“Soon to be a flying lawyer masseuse.” He reined in his disappointment at her rapidly disappearing bare skin.
“Ah. Shame on me, I’d already forgotten.” Her fingers were nimble as she drew the ties into a quick bow. “Well. Satisfied with what you saw?”
Yes. He absolutely liked what he’d seen. And he wanted to see more. God help him, he wanted to see her waist, her navel, the contours of her stomach, the dimple where her thigh met her pelvis.
“It’s fainter than I thought,” he said when he managed to wrangle these intrusive thoughts into submission. “I hope mine will fade like that.”
Such was the force of Pippa’s ensuing frown that a line formed not only between her eyebrows, but also in her chin.
“How bad does it look?” she said. Her eyes flicked to his, and in them, Maxim saw concern.
“Uh,” he said, startled by this development.
He’d of course seen her concerned before: when Juliette Cohen had shown up late to work after a car accident, looking paler than a sheet of copy paper; when Geoff Davis told the office he was leaving early to take care of his ailing dog; when the communal creamer had a note stuck to it stating, “Use with CAUTION.”
The only time that look had been aimed at him he’d been bleeding copiously over the concrete. Since that was his only personal association with such an expression on Pippa Beverly’s heart-shaped face, he resisted the impulse to check himself for a mortal injury.
“It’s not horrible,” he answered finally. “Just a bit—”
“Can I see?”
Their knees brushed as Pippa shuffled to the edge of her chair and leaned forward.
Maxim couldn’t possibly say no, not when she was looking at him like that. He leaned backward and lifted the hem of his shirt over his stomach.
The warm light of Pippa’s home gave the scar a certain realness that it lacked when he’d stood in front of his own mirror, as if part of him had hoped it was only a trick of the light in his apartment.
Pippa let out a distressed hum.
“That bad?” Maxim forced lightness into the question.
She scooted her chair closer to his, then leaned in and began to feel his stomach with all the professionalism of a dermatologist. Her fingers were warm and firm as she manipulated his skin.
“I didn’t realize I’d left it this prominent,” she said to his midsection. “I can make it less—”
Pippa broke off when she caught his expression. His desperate attempt to remain stoic and not at all aroused by how gravity tugged on the collar of her shirt and revealed the generous swells of her breasts must have come across as something darker.
She sat upright, pulling both hands to her lap. “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “That was rude of me to just start groping you. I should have asked.”
“Don’t apologize. I was caught off guard.” He gestured to his stomach. “Grope away.”
Fucking hell. Maxim squeezed his eyes shut and gnawed on his cheek.
Genius. Brilliant. Smooth as a goddamn kidney stone.
But he took some small bit of comfort that when he opened his eyes, Pippa was biting her lip and staring at the button of his jeans.
Then she blinked rapidly and seemed to collect herself.
“You’re sure?” she said, even though she’d already started to reach out once more.
“Of course. What’s a bit of scar palpating between consenting adults?”
Her laugh tickled the trail of dark hairs that led down from his navel. Then she was touching him again, and it took most of Maxim’s concentration not to let his thoughts travel anywhere untoward.
God, she was close. Her nearness made his lungs hitch and his heart rattle into his sternum.
He gripped the chair so tightly he was surprised the wood didn’t creak.
Despite all they’d been through together over the past two days, and despite the various states of undress in which they’d seen each other, nothing had been equivalent to a flirtation.
One could not flirt while running for one’s life.
So his fantasies of her hands traveling either up his chest or down into his jeans were ludicrous and awful and unbearably inconsiderate.
Yet Pippa’s professionalism of earlier was gone.
Where before she had prodded him as if he were a particularly interesting thing she’d found in a drawer, now she was letting her touch linger.
It was slower, softer. She swept the pad of one finger down the ridge in the center of his abdominals, and even though the angle was not ideal for viewing it, he was sure she’d drawn her lower lip into her mouth.
Then Pippa started. An embarrassed flush spread over her chest and up her neck. “I’ll help it along,” she said quickly. “Make it lighter. Here.”
She pressed her palm over the wide scar and as her brow furrowed in concentration, a stinging warmth bloomed in his stomach.
Maxim remembered how she’d healed him in the alley, and how close she’d looked to collapse right after.
“Pippa, wait.” He rested his hand over hers and curled his fingers around her palm, pulling it gently away from his body. His shirt hem fell back into place, and the sensations ceased in an instant. “You don’t need to do that.”
She looked startled by his objection. “But—”
“Don’t exhaust yourself for the sake of my own vanity.”
As she looked him over like he was a riddle to solve, he realized he was still holding her hand. And even more, she made no move to withdraw.
Maxim found himself wondering what it would be like to suck her oft-bitten lower lip into his mouth and bite it himself.
His fingers tingled with the urge to brush her wrist or the inside of her elbow and feel her pulse flutter.
As he held her small, warm hand within his, the full force of that desire expanded outward with so much force he felt breathless.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
A second of confusion passed as Maxim mentally backtracked their conversation, then said, “I’m perfectly capable of making up creative and inaccurate stories to impress people.
” He’d simply meant to give her hand a light squeeze to reinforce his sentiments.
But he found that his fingers slipped easily along the creases of her palm.
Her lips parted, and her gaze drifted down to his mouth.
“Oh?” Her monosyllabic question encouraged him further.
The inside of her wrist felt softer than anything he deserved to touch. He ran his thumb along the strong tendons, feeling the quick throb of her heartbeat.
“It could have come from a shark,” he murmured. What was he doing? “Or a wannabe mugger.” He’d come here to talk with Pippa, not try and seduce her. “Saving kittens.”
Her eyes were darker when she looked at him. Perhaps his desire wasn’t completely one-sided. He could lean forward, close the distance between them, feel her. All of her.
“Things seem to keep wanting to kill you, so you need all the strength you have already.”
As soon as he said it, Pippa tensed, and the moment shattered like it was made out of ice. She stood with a swiftness that jerked her hand from his.
Maxim inwardly cursed. They’d been having a lovely moment that seemed like it was the kind to lead up to something, and he put his foot in his mouth and said .
. . what? The truth? It wasn’t a far-reaching truth, either.
In two days, two separate monsters had tried to murder her.
How was he being rude for pointing that out?
“I’ll get you something to drink,” she said quickly as she pulled a glass out of a cabinet. “I have some iced tea. Or I can mix up lemonade.”
“Water’s good.” Fine, if she was going to pretend nothing had happened between them just then, so would he. What better time to start his questioning?
“So how do you fit in?”
In the process of filling the glass at the sink, she sent him a curious glance. “What do you mean?”
“The city. The . . . witch . . . uh, clubs. Are there clubs?”
“No.” Pippa smacked the tap off and brought the glass over. “There are covens. I suppose they’re club-like. There are benefits to being part of them. It gives you a sense of place. But you have to be accepted into one.”
“Which one are you in?”
“None. Yet.” Pippa plucked a mug out of the dish drain. “It’s a work in progress,” she muttered, then opened another cabinet and stood on her toes to peer at a shelf a good three feet above her head.
Right as Maxim was about to offer the assistance of his longer reach, she made a pulling motion with one hand and a tea box flew out of the cabinet and into her grasp.
It was strange—he could easily discuss magic with her, yet seeing her use it in front of him still felt as thrilling as the entire concept of it existing in the first place.
“What about brooms?” he asked. “What’s the reality, ordinary housekeeping implements or mode of transportation?” He knew how dumb the question sounded. Her expression made him feel dumber for asking it. “A familiar, then. Have one of those?”
It was as if the question had been a demon itself for Pippa’s reaction to it. She flinched, and the cardboard box tumbled out of her hands onto the kitchen floor. A fumbling grab prevented the mug from joining it and crashing over her bare feet.
Normally, Maxim would be spiraling into self-deprecating discomfort at having said so many inappropriate things, but now, he had literally no idea what he’d said that had apparently been so troubling. He remained standing and folded his arms over his chest.
“When you promised to answer my questions, I didn’t expect to pick every one you hated answering,” he said.
Pippa snatched the box from the floor and set it on a counter with the mug. “It’s not—” She broke off and glared at the sink.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She bit down on her lip as if coming to some determination. Then she sniffed, turned to him, and mirrored his crossed arms. “I didn’t plan on you knowing any of this.”