More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  Yeah. I fell in love.

  She pulled his handkerchief out of her jacket and held the initials up for him to see. “Really? You go undercover with your own monogrammed handkerchief?”

  Nick had to admit that was embarrassing.

  “But I knew there was a good explanation.” She stared at it for a moment. “I knew.”

  He was surprised that she didn’t throw it at him. Instead, she stuffed it back into a pocket.

  “However, I’m thankful beyond words that you left Jamie out of your story. I can’t imagine how her notebook was involved, though.”

  “There’s going to be a lot of pressure to keep this from going to trial. And to keep you out of it as well.” He took a step toward her. “I’m really sorry, Grace—”

  “Someone actually thought I was cooking some kind of special meth up here? Seriously? Just because I know my way around a lab—”

  “A really potent kind of meth starts causing big problems in Atlanta. You just earned a degree with the knowledge and experience to create all manner of pharmaceuticals. Instead of going off to use your degree in some exotic rainforest, you show up here.” He had given up apologizing and decided the scientist in her needed a list of evidence. He ticked it off on his fingers for her. “One of the text messages they sent was traced to the cell tower nearest this mountain. Your cellular extender uses that tower. The geographic locations of two drops and one pickup point—all easy driving from here. The sellers are using encrypted math puzzles to communicate with their buyers. And here’s Jamie with her geocaching notebook full of the same type of puzzles with some of the same keys.”

  Grace had folded her arms in front of her and was staring at her feet.

  He took another step.

  “And the way you acted that first night—trying to get rid of me. Then the way you sneaked off into the woods—” Nick explained.

  “Sneaked?” she protested, though not too loudly. “You are talking about sneaking around?”

  Nick took another step.

  “Then, when I stumbled over you, you were really disturbed by the idea that you were being followed.”

  Grace was about to object, but Nick raised a hand.

  “Yeah, the ginseng. I know that now. But then I catch you talking to someone on the phone about ‘magic fairy dust’. And you are even more jumpy and edgy about me overhearing that conversation.” He threw up his hands. “Seriously, Grace. You are a brilliant scientist, you figure—”

  She grimaced. “Yes. Fine. I see your logic.”

  “And I am sorry. I can’t tell you how much,” he said.

  “You only did your job.” Grace stared at her feet. “And if you hadn’t, who knows what might have happened. To Jamie. To me. To anyone who might have stumbled across that trash or something else.” Her voice was tight. “Like Pops.”

  He waited, but she didn’t say anymore. In the silence, he heard water dripping somewhere.

  “When they called me in on this case and I started analyzing the evidence, I knew,” he continued. “My gift said, pretty clearly, this was the case that was going to end my career. So, when I narrowed everything down to this mountain, I had to come up here myself. It wasn’t hard to convince my boss. He thought it was a long shot and that I should still be on sick leave. So, to him, this looked like a great place for me to take it easy.”

  Nick found it hard to put words around the rest of it, and Grace was still avoiding his gaze.

  “To be honest, when I got here, I thought it looked like a great place to die.” He heard her gasp as she finally looked up at him. “Until Old Annie pointed that damn gun at me and I realized I had a lot to live for.”

  “Oh Nick,” Grace said, her eyes wide and wet. “Of course you do.” She stepped into his arms and kissed him.

  Foolish. Stupid. Reckless. But how could she keep up the pretense of anger in the face of that confession? Even to save him from heartache—

  But his heart wouldn’t ache. He would just be confused when his obsession with her faded. Confused and then embarrassed when he realized it was all just—magic.

  Magic.

  It certainly felt magical. His mouth on hers, his fingers sliding down her back, his heart beating wildly against hers. Grace felt as if she were filled to the brim with Tink’s “gold sparklies and magic fairy dust.”

  Just magic.

  Grace pulled away, but Nick wouldn’t let go, so she ended up leaning back in his arms with her hands on his chest.

  She attempted to put her crumpled defenses back in order. “I-I suppose you don’t really like to cook—”

  “Love to cook,” he whispered. “And I have a thing for redheads, if you must know.”

  She clamped her mouth shut. Her best efforts were useless against this man—against her own rebellious heart.

  “What are you afraid of Grace? You know me by now. Hell, you know my insides better than my doctors.”

  Grace couldn’t think. The look in his eyes had slid into something dark and wild, as it had in the meadow—was it only last night? But she felt her body respond to the idea before her mind could protest.

  “I-I don’t know,” she stuttered.

  “Good,” Nick said. He pulled her toward him and kissed her, first on the lips, then, bringing his hands in to cup her face, he kissed her eyelids and her cheeks and her chin, then her lips again, before he pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair next to her ear. “I like it when you don’t know something.”

  “What?” she protested.

  “Exactly.”

  Then he kissed her again and she couldn’t remember what he had just said. Her headlamp cast wild shadows around them until he stroked his fingers into her hair and pulled it off. He looped it around his wrist and cupped his hand around her nape to pull her closer and deepen the kiss as he picked her up off the floor.

  “What are you doing?” she protested as he shouldered his way through the door into the office.

  “You know, when you dragged me in here, for a second I thought you were some kind of angel carrying me off to the other side. Then—” he pushed the door shut with his foot, “—I woke up thinking I’m dead, but you’re there, so I think I’ve made it to heaven, in spite of everything.” He maneuvered through the opening to their little cave. “Now I’ve come to understand that I’m actually in my own personal purgatory, where I get you in an underground meth lab.” He grinned at her devilishly.

  “Purga—” she laughed. “You are not carrying me!”

  “Looks like I am.”

  “Nick C—Mc—whatever your name is, put me down! You just got shot. You can’t go around picking up pe—” She squeaked as he set her down on the makeshift bed and put both of his hands on the wall behind her head, pinning her in.

  “My name’s Nicholas Andrew McKenzie. I’m not an author of thrillers or anything else. I’m a Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration—and I apologize, probably not for the last time, for deceiving you, Dr. Grace Elizabeth Woodruff.”

  He leaned closer. Close enough for her to see the tiny flecks of white in the gray of his eyes. “Everything else I told you is true. Including this, which I tried to say before—I think I’m in love with you, Grace.” Then he kissed her. A gentle chaste kiss on her lips. His hands still on the wall behind her. Not demanding. Not asking for anything more.

  “Andrew,” Grace said. “And how did you find out my middle name, Andrew?”

  “Not apologizing any more tonight,” he said firmly, kissing her again. Waiting.

  “I could get accustomed to this kind of apologizing.” She ran her finger slowly down the side of his face to curve around his dimple. If this is all I have of you, it will be enough.

  He wasn’t asking for more than a kiss, but she did, running her finger slowly back and forth across his bottom lip until he closed his eyes and groaned, pushing his hands away from the wall and grasping her shoulders as she kissed him. I hope you can forgive me when the magic wears
off.

  She rose to her knees, slipping her hands around him and tugging at his jacket, managing to shove it down and off his arms along with his vest and the headlamp.

  He returned the favor, capturing her arms in her jacket while he explored her neck again, paying special attention to the area below her ear. She was shuddering by the time the jacket slipped off, freeing her hands to pull at the edge of his stained sweater until he growled in frustration and tore it over his head, throwing it behind him, where it sent the candle flame dipping and swaying, making the shadows weave around them on the walls like ancient dancers.

  “I want to see my handiwork,” she said, rolling his undershirt up across his chest, making him gasp as her thumbs dragged through his chest hair and her palms slipped across his nipples. “And I don’t want to look at those bloodstains any more than I have to.”

  She smiled as she pulled the shirt over his head and reached around him to twist it around his wrists, then leaned back to kiss his neck where she could feel the pulse pounding rapidly beneath the skin. Sliding her mouth along his stubbled chin, she kissed beneath his ear.

  “I’m going to end up with beard burn,” she whispered into his ear.

  “Dammit, Grace.” He yanked at the shirt tangled around his wrists and something ripped. “I was right. This is purgatory,” he complained.

  Grace laughed and leaned back on her heels to run her fingers across his stomach and beneath the waistband of his jeans while he struggled with his shirt, watching as his muscles jumped and shivered beneath her touch. There was no sign of the wound that had been there hours before—only the ugly bloodstained hole in the fabric. She closed her eyes and reached out with her gift.

  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.