The Touch of Magic Series, page 15
“There are strong magicks around you. On you. There are spells cast on you. Hexes.”
“Okay. Thank you for that bit of enlightenment. I’m putting the window up now.”
At that, the old man let go and took a step back, his brow wrinkling. Brandon put the car in gear and pulled forward to turn out of the parking lot. In the rearview he could see the Indian man shaking his head and frowning.
Well, he was probably disappointed he’d lost the sale.
Brandon drove away wondering if people really paid him five dollars. Maybe just to make him go away. And what kind of living did he make at that? Brandon read once that some panhandlers in Vegas made enough to put their kids through college. Still, the Indian man looked upset.
And what was that crap about spells and hexes on him?
Brandon got mad. That crap was doing exactly what it was supposed to do: make him uptight and make him want to go back and pay the five dollars to find out what the old man meant.
He shook his head most of the short drive home. But he believed he’d cleared most of the infection of ideas by the time he pulled into his own driveway and closed the gate behind him. He wound up sitting on the couch, watching football just as Dan had suggested. He microwaved a frozen dinner and missed Delilah’s cooking, but ate it anyway all the while telling himself that it wasn’t so bad.
But it was that bad. After a long, drawn-out game that first looked promising, his team lost. His microwave dinner had been one that he’d enjoyed in the past, just not now. Brandon wanted to tell himself the company had changed something. The formula for the sauce was different or it had been frozen too long, but he couldn’t quite brush it off that easily.
He knew the truth. The truth was that re-heated food no longer qualified. The other truth was that re-heated relationships no longer qualified. He’d been having the same stale go-rounds for years now. Meet girl. Like girl. Sleep with girl. Wait for something to come up that keeps it from going any further. Find next girl.
It wasn’t a very flattering look at either himself or the women he’d been dating. The fact was, he didn’t even remember half their names, they’d been so interchangeable. While he didn’t know if what was going on with Delilah was right or if it was going to completely blow up in his face, at least it was different.
Every time he saw her, he became more attached to her. More convinced that whatever was going on with him not remembering their first night wasn’t her fault. He needed, more than ever, to know if she felt any of the same feelings for him. Still, there was no way he was going to solve any of those problems while the football commentators re-hashed a game that had been thrown away at the end of the second quarter.
Eventually he hauled himself into his bedroom and rolled into bed.
But all night, thoughts bounced through his head about hexes and spells.
Something was different about Brandon. Delilah just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Wednesday, she’d slept all day. Her shift had gone by pretty quickly, and by eight a.m. she was home and putting away the groceries she’d stopped for on the way back. Then she’d fallen, face first, onto the fluffy comforter and tried to force her body back onto Brandon’s schedule. Though even he told her he hadn’t known what that would be, given that he and Dan were presenting to investors again all day.
Still, she shook herself awake and out of bed by four o’clock and was clean out of the shower by four-thirty. She took the time to blow dry her hair and put on make-up. By five, she was sitting on her couch with a glass of wine in hand while she waited.
Delilah figured she’d be there for a while. One, because she deserved it after making him wait last week. And two, because she hoped that meant things were going well with the investors and they had a lot of questions or were busy with paperwork. So she sipped her wine and leaned her head back against the couch cushions.
He called not ten minutes later to say he was on the way.
Delilah had hopped up and gotten down to work. She was quite proud that the oven was heating and the rice was already boiling in the steamer when he came in through the front door she’d left unlocked. She decided right then she would just give him a key. She had a few spares in the pen drawer, but he was so hyped up about something that she only got to hello before he was talking a mile a minute.
“Wait. I’m sorry.”
Delilah wasn’t sure what he was sorry for, but she didn’t have to wait more than a fraction of a second. Brandon hugged her close, lifting her to the tips of her toes, where he looked right into her eyes. “Hello.”
Then he kissed her thoroughly before sitting on her couch, which was a good thing because her knees were about to give out. Luckily, she’d already had a beer in hand for him and she held it up. As he accepted it, he started talking again.
Not all of it made sense to her. In a moment she found her feet and made her way back into the kitchen, still listening. Sipping at her wine, she got to work on the remainder of dinner while she listened to him ramble.
“These guys are very interested. It seems their problem is they want to put in more money than they have. But they wound up not signing anything today. Which is frustrating.”
“What exactly do they invest in?” She rubbed a thin layer of oil on the slabs of salmon in her hands.
“Well, we have a concept for a game. They put in the money, we hire the code writers and design people, and do a lot of it ourselves. Then we sell it to a big company and the profit goes out according to shares.”
While she sprinkled herbs and chopped broccoli, he watched her with an intensity that threatened to unnerve her. It was like he was looking for a drug deal to go down or trying to catch a card dealer doing sleight of hand.
But he kept talking, explaining the finer points of their system. How video games were developed in other ways. Their track record and the idea they had right now that people would want to put their money into. He told her about games they developed and sold in the past and what kind of money and splash they’d been able to make.
She shook her head each time. Each time disappointing him that she hadn’t heard of one of his babies. Eventually she begged him to stop his questions. She pointed out her TV, and how it lacked any kind of gaming system.
Brandon walked over to the set, looking at it as though it were an alien being of some kind. Which was funny, because hers was so much more basic than his, lacking all the wires and game controllers. Also hers was a lot smaller. He popped it on and—as Tristan had predicted a week ago—it was on one of the cooking channels. He sounded almost bewildered. “This is what you watch?”
She nodded as she pulled the fish from the oven, turning it and admiring the perfect tinge to the pink meat. She looked up at him long enough to catch the frown that marred his features.
“Why do you watch this? You’re a trained chef. You can’t possibly learn anything from your TV. Can you?”
“I get ideas. I don’t know that I would have thought up baking raspberries and pears together. One of the shows made a pie with it, like, a month ago. But two nights ago I had a batch of raspberries and I made raspberry pear cream tarts. So it’s worth watching.” She set the timer and joined him on the couch for a few minutes, curling in beside him as he watched a round woman showing off a level measure of yeast for a bread recipe.
He frowned again and flipped channels, surfing like every man she knew. Only after the first ten channels went by, he cringed and apologized. “I’m sorry. It’s just been a long day and my mind is off. Does it bother you if I channel surf a little?”
“Not at all.”
But while he ran through the programs, watching each one for all of fifteen seconds, it seemed he continued to keep an eye on her.
When she got up to pull the fish from the oven.
When she removed the top on the steamer and forked out bright green broccoli onto two plates.
When she pulled a lemon sauce from the fridge and whisked it for a moment.
She wanted to believe that he was just so in love with her that he couldn’t look away. But it seemed more like he was watching for poison. More like he was waiting to catch her at something than like he was making puppy love eyes.
He turned off the TV and came to the table. He ate everything she set before him, including the leftover fruit tart she cut into wedges for dessert, as though it were his last meal. He praised her for each thing until she thought he’d gone a little overboard.
“You act like you’ve never eaten good food before.”
He practically shoveled another bite of his rapidly disappearing dessert into his mouth. “I swear I had a microwave dinner last night.”
Delilah made a face and shivered through a round of the willies while Brandon laughed.
She smiled at him. “You could eat here.”
“Not all the time.”
There it was: the perfect opening to say ‘you can have a key, then you can come eat whatever you find in the fridge.’
There was a small pause as they waited, while Delilah couldn’t quite get her mouth to form the words. Then it was Brandon who filled in the space. “Besides, if I ate here all the time I’d get fat.”
“No, you wouldn’t. The preservatives in those frozen dinners will make you fat long before anything I serve you will.” There it was again. Another perfect opening to offer him a key. But still she couldn’t seem to get the words out.
“It wasn’t frozen,” he insisted, “it was from a box. I added water.”
“Eww. You should switch over to frozen. I don’t even want to think about the chemicals in food you don’t have to chill.”
Brandon, still laughing at her—though Delilah was convinced it was no laughing matter—stood with his plate, insisting that he clean up since she made everything. He practically forced her to sit at the table while he loaded the dishwasher and hand-scrubbed a few of her precious pots even though she’d volunteered to do it. They talked about nothing and everything and still he watched her.
Finally, he hit the start button on the dishwasher, filling the room with the subtle swishing sounds. Turning, he braced his hands on her countertop behind him, his eyes painfully serious for the first time all evening. Something in his stance made her heart go uh-oh. She’d seen him building to this all evening.
“I don’t know how to ask it, so I’m just going to say it flat out. Please don’t be offended.”
Here it comes. Although she had no idea what it was, she was nervous right down to her bones.
“Do I get to stay tonight?” Immediately he began backpedaling. “Look, that’s not why I came. I wanted to see you. And if the answer is ‘no’ I still want to see you. I want to stay for a while at least.”
She wanted to stop him in his frantic explanation. Then again, she wanted to hear it, too. Wanted to know if he had a solution or even just a reason for all this craziness.
“I thought we could settle in, watch TV, whatever.” He took a deep breath. Just when she was ready to jump in and save him, he started prattling again. “It isn’t just about the sex. It was. But it isn’t anymore. I just . . .”
He ran out of words or steam or something. His eyes looked away then and his hands searched for something to do before grabbing a hand towel and wiping at his fingers. After a moment passed in almost complete silence, he looked back at her. “Say something. Anything.”
Delilah was just ecstatic that he wanted to stay. She wondered for a while if maybe she’d placated him with food too much and now all he wanted from her was the occasional good meal. It also made her heart lift to finally find out what made him watch her so closely all evening.
When she opened her mouth to push the words out it felt like she stumbled over her own tongue. But she managed. “Yes. You should stay.”
His head popped up, his green eyes bright. “I should?”
She nodded. “Please.”
As charged as the moment was, they did what he’d suggested and sat down side by side on the couch. He automatically picked up the remote control and began looking for some kind of programming. What he was looking for, Delilah had no clue. Apparently, neither did he, because he changed the channel every few minutes. It wasn’t quite fast enough to be called surfing, but he couldn’t seem to settle on any one thing. Delilah couldn’t bring herself to complain, though. She was exactly where she wanted to be, curled into his side, with his arm around her holding her against him. She couldn’t have cared less what they were watching.
After half an hour, he turned to her.
“I know I said we should watch TV, but TV really isn’t holding my interest with you all pressed up beside me.”
Delilah smiled. “Me either.”
His return grin was all but lost as his mouth found hers. Heat from him flooded into her as his lips moved across her mouth. His tongue tasted her and tested the borders until she opened for him.
Delilah’s arms twined around his torso, using him as an anchor to tug herself up flush against him. Every breath, in her lungs and his, rocked them just a little closer together. His hands roamed over her, as though they were restless and didn’t know where to settle. Eventually they wound their way into her hair, tugging at the elastic and tossing it aside. His fingers found the back of her head and turned her so he could kiss her more deeply.
It was her hands that started undressing them, working their way under the edge of his shirt. Smooth skin and crisp hair passed under her touch as she slid the cotton higher. Brandon worked with her, pulling his arms out then finally giving her the shivers when he growled just a little because he had to break the kiss to get the shirt completely off.
He tossed it to the side, his hands and mouth already occupied with getting her out of her own shirt. Delilah felt her head fall back, as first his fingers, then his lips, made a path ever lower as he opened each button exposing just a little more skin. Somehow he managed to not touch her breasts, no matter how much she wanted him to, until he had the top entirely off her and flung to the floor to join his. Only then did he look her in the eyes as she felt his hand climb higher against the bare skin of her ribcage, until his thumb brushed the underside of her breast through the thin layer of her bra and she was unable to breathe at all.
Slowly and in maddening degrees, he stripped her of every piece of clothing, leaving her as bare and vulnerable as she could be. His skin was feverish to the touch and driving her crazy. Crazy to the point that she didn’t pay attention to the tiny flashes of pictures appearing in her head at random intervals.
He was thinking things before he did them—wanting and acting on it. When he first laced his fingers with hers, she was given the picture—the want—for her to touch him, to open the zipper on his jeans and ease the pressure he was feeling there. As he dragged her hand down, Delilah acted on his need. Pulling her mouth away from his, she kissed her way across his chest, using both her hands to set him free.
She reveled in the feel of him, unable to see beyond him or this exact moment.
Following the cues she was unaware she was even getting, Delilah pushed her fingers into his back pocket, finding the condom he’d been thinking about and pulling it out in her fist. Quickly she stripped him as bare as she was, all the while Brandon was lifting her, moving her, positioning her over the wide roll arm of the couch.
He watched as he draped her there before snagging the foil packet from her grip and rapidly sheathing himself. His voice came out on a breath, only her name, only part of it, and she heard the question there. “Lilah?”
She responded with her own desperate please, and was rewarded as he entered her.
They moved together, Delilah’s world shrinking with every touch. She existed only where his skin contacted hers, only in the scent of him, the taste of him. His name fell from her lips repeatedly, and his eyes made contact with hers where she could see the need shining there that mirrored her own.
She was hot and oversensitized by the time she gave a last gasp and fell, headlong into the contractions that seized her. Even in the abyss where she was, she could feel him tensing against her, his own release only seconds behind hers.
It took forever for the world to stop spinning around them, for her breathing to even out or her brain to be able to grab a single thought and hang onto it for more than a passing second. Brandon was a heavy weight, sweetly pinning her to the couch. She could feel every deep breath in his chest pressed against hers. Her hands felt the slick skin on his back, traced his spine while they lay there and recouped.
Eons later, he lifted his head. A small, sated smile wound its way across his mouth. Still it took him a moment to find his voice. “You look satisfied.”
Her own smile claimed her lips, and for a moment she managed a small stretch, even pinned as she was underneath him. “I needed that.”
Brandon’s green eyes blinked, his expression becoming more serious, even though she couldn’t say how it had changed. He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers. “I needed you.”
CHAPTER 21
Brandon heard the door click closed behind Dan hoping the lie didn’t show on his face. After all he wasn’t really lying about having more work to do, it was just different work. He was just hiding things.
Delilah wrung him out last night. Both physically and emotionally. They’d made love three times, as though to make up for the dry spell. He didn’t know if it was Delilah who demanded so much from him, or if he simply couldn’t help but give it. But each time they came together, he handed over another piece of himself.
In itself, that wouldn’t be bad. He’d been dating all those interchangeable women thinking that one day one would come along and be unique. Be one he couldn’t live without. But in his imagination, in the path he’d always been certain love would take, it had been both of them there—giving and learning together.
With Delilah, he was unsure.
Oh, she contributed, she was there, in a way his previous lovers hadn’t been. But he wasn’t sure she was handing her soul over, piece by piece, the way he seemed to be.
