Chapter 10 #2
She couldn’t help but smile at him. He’d put on the same air of nonchalance as if he’d asked a very personal medical question “for a friend.”
“I can,” she said. “You can usually tell from an aura. If something is magical, there’s a certain edge to it. A harshness.”
“And . . . what’s mine like?”
Pippa looked at Maxim with the most serious expression she could manage.
“Soup.”
“Soup,” Maxim repeated with a frown.
Pippa nodded. “It’s warm. Kind of herb-y and savory. But there’s a little kick of spice to it, like chili peppers.”
It feels nice and welcoming and I’ve never felt another like it. Of course she didn’t tell him that. It wasn’t what he’d asked.
“There isn’t any magic in it, though. You’re one-hundred-percent normal.”
Maxim gave a small nod. “Ah. I mean, I’d assumed as much, seeing as I’d gone this far in life without floating or burning anything. Still, might as well ask.” He chuckled, though Pippa saw right through to the disappointment hidden beneath his forced smile.
How could he not have hoped just a little? If she had spent a life dreaming of magic and then discovered it was real, she too would have wanted to be part of it all.
“You do have power, though.”
He glanced at her, eyebrows raised.
“You’re very good at brooding.”
Maxim’s startled laugh came from deep in his chest.
“Looming, too, in case no one has told you so.” She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning. “Really. You’re an extremely powerful loomer.”
He pressed an open hand to his sweater, over his heart. “I’m flattered and honored that you recognize my talents.”
Pippa dipped her head, her laugh making ripples dance across her tea.
Stars, it felt good to just be with him.
Just a few days ago, it felt impossible to mildly tease this man and have him enjoy it.
Laugh at it. Smile at it with creases at the corners of his eyes and lines bracketing his mouth and a twinkle in his gaze that had her feeling like she’d been snagged somewhere beneath her ribs.
Maxim shifted, then rapped his knuckles on his hip. “I should probably head out,” he said at last. “It’s gotten late.”
Pippa glanced out a window. The sky had darkened, and one of the courtyard lights flickered through the open blinds.
“I came over with a promise to help, and all I’ve done was bother you with incessant questions.” He huffed a short laugh.
“They weren’t incessant,” Pippa said. And not all he’d done, either, but she wasn’t about to say how thankful she was for the mutual touching or emotional sharing or even the stomach muscle appreciating.
“There’s always next time. I mean, if you want a next time.” He flashed her a smile that on anyone else would have been shy. On Maxim, with his rumpled hair, wrinkled sweatshirt, and crooked nose, that expression managed to look embarrassed, hopeful, and sexy.
It was a remarkably unfair attack on Pippa’s restraint.
She turned the mug in her hands, and said more to it than to Maxim, “You can stay, if you’d like.”
In her head, it had sounded thoughtful, like something a friend would say to another friend when it was late and the first friend worried about the second getting home safely.
Out loud, those innocuous words had emerged as flirty words. Sexy words. She hadn’t planned for sexy words. If they had been actual objects, she would have scrabbled to catch them before they could land anywhere. Her armpits began to sweat.
“The couch folds out,” she added quickly in a panic, yet when she glanced up at Maxim, she caught the tail end of that familiar, intense look on his face. His lips were parted, his eyes dark.
Then she blinked and it was gone, making her wonder if she’d imagined it had been there at all. He crossed his arms over his chest and one side of his mouth quirked in amusement.
“I thought by now you’d be sick of me,” he said.
“It’s late,” she said defensively. “I don’t like the idea of you walking alone outside. Dangerous things about.” She did have some reason to worry. There was that strange aura to consider.
If anything were to follow him to his own house, he wouldn’t have the benefit of the recently refreshed wards around Pippa’s home. Or Pippa herself. She wasn’t so proud as to think she could be the one barrier between Maxim living and dying, but she could at least be a speed bump.
As she closed her teeth on her bottom lip and waited for Maxim to speak, she found herself hoping he would say yes. His presence was enjoyable, exciting, and a perfect distraction for the recent stresses. Every little piece of him she discovered hinted at more she had yet to find.
Pippa almost expected Maxim to ask that if she was so worried, why couldn’t she just walk him to his car, and was about to rescind the offer when he spoke.
“Sure,” he said, with another one of those smiles that Pippa was sure would haunt her for several days.
Pippa lay in her bed and made a very solid attempt not to think about the man sleeping on her couch.
She gripped her comforter where it lay over her chest and held still as if the barest movement would shake loose new fantasies or further encourage the temptation to shuffle out of her room and close the distance between herself and Maxim.
They’d ordered delivery for dinner and had eaten it together at the table.
Maxim engaged her with small talk, almost as if he’d felt sorry for his earlier barrage of questions.
They discussed some of the demon cookbooks on Pippa’s shelves, though thankfully he avoided asking about Eaten Right by the Duke.
Maxim had helped her set up the fold-out bed.
As they’d stretched the sheets over the mattress, Pippa had been struck by the way they’d wordlessly collaborated.
It wasn’t difficult to anticipate someone else grabbing one end of a blanket and pulling it taut, yet there had been an ease to it that was comforting.
The kind of comfort that made her want to ask if he needed anything else before bed, pull him closer by his open sweatshirt, and give him a look that demonstrated exactly what she meant by “anything else.”
She hadn’t, though.
Instead, Pippa had given him an extra toothbrush, said goodnight, and closed herself in her room. She’d heard the floor creak as he walked about the apartment, and each time a creak had sounded nearby, her breath had caught and her pulse raced as she anticipated a soft rap on the door.
Yet her door remained silent, and soon, all of the lights clicked off except for the one by Pippa’s nightstand, and then that too went dark.
She didn’t know what to do with all of this pining.
All of her previous relationships had been shallow, transient things, since her lifestyle didn’t exactly make room for brunches with a partner’s friends and weekends with his parents.
Of course, having dated vampires helped with that, since it was difficult to have a “where is this going” conversation with someone who had lived through the Renaissance.
So she’d had flings, and passing dalliances, and a tryst or two.
There hadn’t been any of this . . . yearning.
Yearning was for high school or novels with tattered covers. She was an adult who could create flames and warp the fabric of her surroundings; why couldn’t she bring herself to act on her desires?
What does he want from you?
Pippa tightened the grip on her blankets.
That was why.
That single question stopped her from strolling out into her living room, whipping her pajama top over her head, and joining Maxim on the thin, lumpy mattress.
Why had he wanted to stay? He’d said that he wanted his life to mean something, and that he’d wanted to help.
There were better, easier ways to do that, and most of them didn’t involve assisting a witch who’d accidentally earned herself a death warrant. He could volunteer at an animal shelter. He could deliver meals. He could take up knitting and make hats for newborn babies.
Pippa flopped onto her side and grumbled into her pillow.
If Maxim tried knitting, he’d probably end up with a misshapen cock and balls patterned into that, too.
Her laugh came out as a soft snort. It was easy to picture him glancing up from a tangle of genital-shaped thread with a chagrined smile on his face.
It was irritating, truly, how attractive she found him now.
She remembered the thought she’d had several days earlier in the bathroom, and the mental image of Maxim sprawled on the couch returned with vigor.
Before, she’d pictured him draped over the cushions with his face mashed into a throw pillow, his button-up shirt wrinkled.
Now after having set up the fold-out, he was on the mattress, propping himself up on one arm with a long leg thrown out from beneath a blanket.
Shirtless, his hair mussed, the low drape of a blanket teasing the shadows of his hips and pelvis.
A sweet, tight squirm formed low in her stomach. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and bit hard, hoping the flash of pain would lure her attention away from the building tension between her legs.
It didn’t work.
The tactile memory of his fingers on her thigh rushed back to her, and her imagination took over, supplanting memory with fantasy and bringing his touch higher and higher until he was running the pad of his thumb along the elastic of her underwear, sliding a finger beneath the cotton.
Pippa caught her moan before it could emerge. Without realizing she’d done so, she’d slipped a hand down the front of her pajama shorts.
She shouldn’t.
Not with him in the house. Not with him so close, not with the remote possibility that he might hear.
Desire wriggled beneath her skin and hummed in her ears. Her body felt wired and wildly tense.