Page 31 of Captivated
She smiled. “So now you get paid for writing them.”
“A perfect way to feed the habit. If I can ever get this one whipped into shape.” In one smooth movement, he took a handful of her hair and wrapped it around his wrist. “What I need is inspiration,” he murmured, tugging her forward for a kiss.
“What you need,” she told him, “is concentration.”
“I’m concentrating.” He nibbled and tugged at her lips. “Believe me, I’m concentrating. You don’t want to be responsible for hampering creative genius, do you?”
“Indeed not.” It was time, she decided, for him to understand exactly what he was getting into. And perhaps it would also help him open his mind to his story. “Inspiration,” she said, and slid her hands around his neck. “Coming up.”
And so were they. As she met his lips with hers, she brought them six inches off the floor. He was too busy enjoying the taste to notice. Sliding over him, Morgana forgot herself long enough to lose herself in the heat. When she broke the kiss, they were floating halfway to the ceiling.
“I think we’d better stop.”
He nuzzled her neck. “Why?”
She glanced down deliberately. “I didn’t think to ask if you were afraid of heights.”
Morgana wished she could have captured the look on his face when he followed her gaze—the wide-eyed, slack-jawed comedy of it. The string of oaths was a different matter. As they ran their course, she took them gently down again.
His knees buckled before he got them under control. White-faced, he gripped her shoulders. The muscles in his stomach were twanging like plucked strings. “How the hell did you do that?”
“A child’s trick. A certain kind of child.” She was sympathetic enough to stroke his cheek. “Remember the boy who cried wolf, Nash? One day the wolf was real. Well, you’ve been playing with—let’s say theparanormal—for years. This time you’ve got yourself a real witch.”
Very slowly, very sure, he shook his head from side to side. But the fingers on her shoulders trembled lightly. “That’s bull.”
She indulged in a windy sigh. “All right. Let me think. Something simple but elegant.” She closed her eyes, lifted her hands.
For a moment she was simply a woman, a beautiful woman standing in the center of a disordered roomwith her arms lifted gracefully, her palms gently cupped. Then she changed. God, he could see her change. The beauty deepened. A trick of the light, he told himself. The way she was smiling, with those full, unpainted lips curved, her lashes shadowing her cheeks, her hair tumbling wildly to her waist.
But her hair was moving, fluttering gently at first as though teased by a playful breeze. Then it was flying, around her face, back from her face, in one long gorgeous stream. He had an impossible image of a stunning wooden maiden carved on the bow of an ancient ship.
But there was no wind to blow. Yet he felt it. It chilled along his skin, whisked along his cheeks. He could hear it whistle as it streaked into the room. When he swallowed, he heard a click in his throat, as well.
She stood straight and still. A faint gold light shivered around her as she began to chant. As the sun poured through the high windows, soft flakes of snow began to fall. From Nash’s ceiling. They swirled around his head, danced over his skin as he gaped, frozen in shock.
“Cut it out,” he ordered in a ragged voice before he sank to a chair.
Morgana let her arms drop, opened her eyes. The miniature blizzard stopped as if it had never been. The wind silenced and died. As she’d expected, Nash was staring at her as if she’d grown three heads.
“That might have been a bit overdone,” she allowed.
“I— You—” He fought to gain control over his tongue. “What the hell did you do?”
“A very basic call to the elements.” He wasn’t as pale as he had been, she decided, but his eyes still looked too big for the rest of his face. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You’re not frightening me. Baffling, yes,” he admitted. He shook himself like a wet dog and ordered hisbrain to engage. If he had seen what he had seen, there was a reason. There was no way she could have gotten inside his house to set up the trick.
But there had to be.
He pushed out of the chair and began to search through the room. Maybe his movements were a bit jerky. Maybe his joints felt as though they’d rusted over. But he was moving. “Okay, babe, how’d you pull it off? It’s great, and I’m up for a joke as much as the next guy, but I like to know the trick.”
“Nash.” Her voice was quiet, and utterly compelling. “Stop. Look at me.”
He turned, and he looked, and he knew. Though it wasn’t possible, wasn’t reasonable, he knew. He let out a long, careful breath. “My God, it’s true. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. Do you want to sit down?”
“No.” But he sat on the coffee table. “Everything you’ve been telling me. You weren’t making any of it up.”
