More Than Magic (39 page)

Nothing but light, and that was much brighter now. She smiled and opened her eyes to find him watching her intently.

“You’re not going to disappear, are you?” he said, his eyes shimmering pewter in the reflected light. “
Poof
.”

She smiled. “No.”
But you are.
“I’m a horribly flawed and very human creature.” She turned so he could see her back. “See, no wings. You kept talking about wings while I was working on you. Sadly, I don’t have any.”

“Uh huh.”

“Very. Very. Human.” She lowered her head to kiss just above where her fingers rested on his stomach over and over, until his fingers plowed into her hair and he tugged her head urgently up so that he could reach her lips.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he murmured, then started unbuttoning her shirt. For a long while there was nothing but his mouth exploring hers, his fingers fumbling with her buttons while her hands stroked his body, sliding along the ridges of muscle and feeling him shudder as she slid her fingertips down his ribs.

But he stopped her exploration when he tugged her shirt over her arms and twisted it around her wrists. “Turnabout,” he said.

His mouth moved from hers and he kissed beneath her ear. She gasped. Then his lips were under her chin, then the side of her neck, then the hollow of her throat. When she realized what he was going to do, she struggled against the bonds on her wrists, but he had done a better job. And his lips traveled relentlessly down across the silk.

“Nick,” she moaned.

“Mmmm?” he replied, undaunted.

She knew he was smiling when she gasped as he slid his mouth across her breast.

His mouth sucked on her through the silk and that heated point became the fulcrum around which everything swung, sending waves of sensation pulsing through her. Her mouth was open, but she wasn’t making a sound—until he moved to the other breast and she heard the echo of her own voice saying his name.

His hands moved to join his mouth, his fingers slid up beneath the silk across the bare skin of her stomach, making her shiver as he cupped her breast and pushed the silk out of his way.

Grace didn’t remember him pulling the silk top over her head or undoing the shirt from her wrists, but they were gone as she leaned over him, her hair curtained around him, her fingers buried in his hair.

Then he had her in his arms, lowering her to the blanket, and he was kissing her again, his legs straddling hers. He had somehow managed to capture her hands and held them on either side of her head. He kissed her until she was dizzy and she finally lifted her hips up against his insistently.

Nick pulled away and glared down at her. Grace stuck out her tongue.

“Good idea,” he growled, and slithered downward.

He already had his fingers on the zipper of her jeans when she raised her head. Then he waited, as if for permission, and she smiled and lifted her hips for him to drag them off.

Of course, he had forgotten her boots, and she laughed as he struggled with the laces.

“What are you laughing at? You’ve got impossible knots in these,” he muttered, yanking off one boot, sock and all.

“Surgical knots?” she responded, smirking.

“Mmmmm,” he replied, yanking off the other. Then, while he was at it, he untied and removed his own.

She was up on her elbows watching him. When he looked at her now his expression changed from amused frustration to insatiable hunger. Grace could almost feel the heat of his gaze on her skin as he reached and tugged off the denim around her ankles, then took one of her feet in his hand, lowering his mouth—

“No—oh!” she yelped. He was kissing her instep, then her ankle, then the inside of her knee through the silk.

“I never thought of long johns as sexy before,” he said from somewhere around her thigh.

At that point she threw her hands above her head, shut her eyes and surrendered to the sensations fluttering up her leg to her spine—tingling in her stomach—making everything quiver—and then his fingers were sliding up the outside of her legs.

It was more than she could bear. She made a needy sound, lifting her hips into the air. His hands were hot as they slipped beneath her, holding her there.

The moist heat of his breath touched her mound through the silk as he whispered her name. “Grace.”

“Nick—please,” she begged.

“Look at me.”

Her head shook as she looked into his eyes and he lowered his mouth to kiss her there. Her spine arched upward, pushing her up onto her shoulders as he held her firmly, moving to kiss the inside of both her thighs until she lowered herself back to the ground. Then he reached for her waistband and slowly tugged the silk, down and off.

Grace shivered from the sensation of the cool air washing across her skin, then Nick slid his hands slowly up her legs and she moaned.

“Did I tell you I have this thing about redheads?” he whispered, his fingers toying with the curls. She could feel each word, spoken so close to sensitive skin, as if he were caressing her with his breath.

“Nick!” she protested.

He laughed, and then dipped his head and licked.

Grace finally remembered that she had hands and grabbed at his hair, not so much holding him there as holding on while he tortured her with his tongue, until he threatened to send her screaming over the edge. And, of course, he stopped.

When she lifted her head, panting, his smile was just a bit too smug.

She was out from under him before he could react, pushing him backward as she leaned over him. Surprised, he sat down.

“Wha—”

“Off,” she demanded. “Now.”

Nick’s eyebrow went up and she would’ve laughed if she were in the mood. But she wasn’t. Instead she straddled his legs, reached for his waist band, and unbuttoned it, then realized what she was doing and looked up at his face as she unbuttoned the next one. His interest was evident beneath her fingers as she unbuttoned the next. She slowed down deliberately, sliding her finger down his length, and he pushed her hand out of the way, undoing the rest one-handed.

“Thank you,” she said. Then she pushed his hand out of the way and pulled his jeans and everything else down to his knees.

The expression on his face as she crawled up toward him was priceless, but when she stopped and bent over his arousal with interest, he tensed.

He shuddered when long tendrils of hair brushed his stomach and curled around his hips. “I won’t last, Grace.”

“Oh yes, you will,” she promised, nodding her head, her hair moving over him.

“G-Grace,” he warned as her hair twined around very sensitive flesh.

He didn’t plead, but she could see it in his eyes. “This time,” she relented.

His eyebrow went up again. She was beginning to love that eyebrow.

She smiled and leaned over to kiss the tip. His head went back so fast that he nearly missed the blankets and cracked it on the floor.

“Dammit, Grace,” he groaned.

She slithered up him, taking every opportunity to rub or bump something along the way.

“Purgatory,” he moaned.

“Wrong mountain.” She breathed into his mouth, kissed him, then moved her hips over his and lowered herself onto him, watching his face as she did.

His eyes were nearly black, with only a sliver of gray around the edge. A muscle twitched in his jaw and she could see him trying not to move, but his muscles were shaking beneath her and he finally grabbed her hips and pushed up against her.

She gasped, then bent forward and kissed him again. “I think I’m—”
No, don’t tie him with words,
“
—
on top.”

Then she moved, languidly at first, leaning forward, stopping once to kiss him. He closed his eyes and growled her name, grabbing her arms and pushing up on his elbows. Grace pulled away from him and leaned back, closing her eyes and losing herself in the feeling of him inside her, the burn in her thighs dissolving into the pleasure spiraling through her, his hands on her hips urging her to move faster.

She leaned forward. Her hair caressed his chest and wrung a groan from him before he slid his fingers up her sides and cupped her breasts, his thumbs circling the sensitive flesh, another layer of sensation whirling into the vortex building inside her.

Slick heat twisted through her and around her. Sparkling gold sizzled from that molten core out to the very tips of her fingers, throbbing with her heartbeat.

“Grace. Look.” Nick gasped, sliding his fingers into hers as she moved on him.
 

When she opened her eyes there were stars reflected in his dark eyes, stars tangled in her hair, stars swirling around them in the cave. Fireflies—brighter than the candlelight—pulsing in time with some distant music.

Grace began to convulse around him, crying out as he thrust up into her once, then again, and then shouted her name as he came.

The smell of warm Grace and old books. The sound of pages turning—slower this time—and the occasional scratch of a pen on paper. The flickering of a candle, still burning away.

“And you’re still not dead,” Grace said. She didn’t even look up from her note taking. She was seated against the wall with that journal propped against her knees.
 

“Still buried underground with an insatiable witch. I can live with that,” Nick said. His voice was hoarse. Understandable, considering what they had been up to for the last couple of hours.

“Insatiable?” She looked up then, her eyebrows raised.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Did I say that? I meant—uh—completely satisfied and fulfilled witch.” He smirked. “Sated. That’s the word. Sated.”

“And here I thought I was an angel,” she said.

Nick stretched, enjoying the absence of the fatigue and fever that had dogged him for months, and the comfortable ache of muscles that hadn’t been used quite so enthusiastically in a long while.

Grace closed the journal, marking her place with a piece of paper. “Before our rescuers knock through that mess out front, I wanted to thank you—”

“You know, I love this whole Southern politeness thing. Thank you, Dr. Grace, for proving that all my various components are in fine working order,” he said to the ceiling. “Over and over and over—”

“You’re welcome,” she said, cutting him short. “But I was thanking you for something else.”

“You’re welcome. Whatever it is.”

“Seriously, Nick.”

Her tone made him sit up with a theatrical groan. “I need coffee before serious.”

She reached for her pack, sitting against the wall beside her. “Instant?”
 

He finally woke up enough to notice that she was fully dressed and everything that had been spread around their little nest was packed away, except for the blankets and his clothes, which were draped neatly over a rock.

“Meh.” He pulled the blanket around himself and settled back against the wall. “We need to ask those guys for a thermos. Or maybe we can slip out the back, go down and brew some, and be back up here before they notice. Maybe the mountain will let us out for coffee.” He grinned at her.

Grace frowned.

“You’re right to protect that back entrance. You might even want to put some additional security in place to keep people from nosing around.” Nick saw her flinch a little, and wondered, for a moment, if she regretted sharing her secrets with him. “But I’m sure the cave will be safe. It has been for—”

“No, you’re right. I’ll need to put in some extra measures once the entrance is open, just in case,” she agreed. “But I was thanking you. Stop interrupting.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Thank you for telling me about your gift,” Grace said. “What you shared was painful—and you didn’t have to. But—” she put her hand over her heart, “—it really helped me see some things in a different light.”

“Good.” Nick should’ve known Grace would pick up the obvious parallels. “I’d imagine it’s hard for doctors sometimes, knowing their skills could help and heal so many people, but only having so many hours in the day and so many years of their life to do it.”

Grace smiled. “Is that part of your sixth sense again?”

“No. It’s just something I had to deal with too. So I know what goes through your head when confronted with the tough choices these—” he looked at his hands, still struggling to reconcile what he had learned with reality, “—gifts present to us.”

She nodded. “When I started med school, Pops said that if I was a true
physician
, not only a doctor, at some point I’d get overwhelmed by the thought of all the sickness out there in the world. And then—then he reminded me of the fireflies.”

Nick waited.

“He reminded me that my part wasn’t to try to save all the fireflies in the world, trapped in their jars. My part was to save the one right in front of me.”

Nick smiled. “Saving the world, one firefly at a time.”

There were tears glimmering in her eyes when she looked up at him and he moved as if to comfort her, but she waved him back, shaking her head. Frowning, he settled back to listen.

“I had forgotten that he had used that old tale on me that way until you told me your story, and I read something in this,” she stroked the old journal in her lap. “Sometimes I get tangled up in my own head—thinking too much about
all
the fireflies out there trapped in their jars—and it helped to realize that someone else had learned to cope with the same horrible choices. So, thank you.”