The Lost Enchantress (27 page)

Hazard gave a slight shrug. “It’s your talisman.”

“But I haven’t spent close to two hundred years obsessing over it the way you have,” Eve retorted.

He shrugged again, but his black brows lowered in concentration. “I know it wouldn’t be possible for it to spontaneously regenerate. Something from nothing. It doesn’t work that way. For all its mystery, magic is governed by a few—a very few—principles, the exchange of energy being one of them.”

Eve nodded. The idea was vaguely familiar to her from long-ago discussions with Grand. “That means the energy from the talisman must have gone somewhere. It couldn’t disappear.”

“Or be destroyed,” he added with a confirming nod.

“So where is it?”

Silence.

After a moment of thought, he said, “There is a law of physics that might apply. Actually, it’s a law of thermodynamics that deals with the creation of an efficient system of energy transfer related to—”

Eve held up a hand. “Stop. You’re making my head ache. If the answer involves learning thermodynamics, I’ll just remain in suspense.”

She turned to walk back into the living room, but before she made it through the doorway he was at her side. She tensed in surprise when he caught her by the arm.

“How the hell do you do that?” she demanded before he had a chance to speak. “Move so quickly. You did the same thing the other night in the garage.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh please,” she snapped, trying to pull free and failing. His hold on her upper arm was gentle but inescapable. “If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. But don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying. Certain . . . enhanced qualities came along with the curse. Speed is one of them. I can also do things without getting hurt that I shouldn’t be able to.”

“Like dropping fifty feet onto concrete and walking away?”

He nodded. “Like that. I still feel pain, and I can still be injured, but never seriously, and not often. And when it does happen, I heal quickly.”

“So, invincible and faster than a speeding bullet . . . that’s your idea of bad luck?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he insisted, his voice troubled, his eyes grim.

Eve resisted the thread of sympathy that tugged on her heart when she looked into those eyes.

“Yeah, I’m sure immortality’s a real bitch,” she said. “That must be why people have been searching for the key to it since, oh, the dawn of time.”

He dragged his free hand through his hair impatiently. “Those people are idiots; they don’t appreciate what they have. I didn’t when I had it.”

“You still have what they have. You just have lots more of it.”

“Exactly. Too much of anything lessens its value. It can even make some things unbearable.”

“An astute insight,” she told him. “But then you’ve had a lot of time to work on it. And just for the record, if you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, it’s not working.”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want you to feel anything for me. That’s the reason I didn’t tell you the truth about the curse in the first place.”

“Really?” she challenged. “I figured it was because you knew if you were honest with me about what you were planning to do, I wouldn’t help you.”

“I never wanted you to help. That was all Taggart’s doing,” he reminded her, disgusted. “Deciding at the last minute that he didn’t have enough power to do it on his own. And it was you who insisted on being here. If it had been left up to me, you wouldn’t have been anywhere near here when . . .”

“When you died?” Eve interjected when he hesitated for a split second. “That is what was supposed to happen, right? If the ritual went according to plan, you would have ended up dead.”

“That was one possibility,” he allowed.

“Name another.”

“My research showed it was possible that if the curse was ended, my life could pick up where it left off and I would resume aging naturally.”

“
Possible
. But not likely.” She said it serenely, as if she didn’t feel a silly little puff of hope at the prospect of a happier ending.

He lifted his shoulder in an uneasy shrug. “There’s not a great deal of verifiable information on the subject of immortality curses. In fact, there’s none.”

“How convenient.” She glanced pointedly at his hand on her arm. “Please let me go.”

With obvious reluctance, he let his hand drop and then followed her into the living room, where she paced around, too wound up to sit.

“I need a drink,” she said when her gaze landed on the bar.

Hazard immediately went to there and returned with a glass holding more whiskey than she’d had to drink in her entire life. She hated whiskey.

She lifted the glass and downed a third of it, paused, and swallowed another mouthful. It burned all the way to her belly, but after a minute or so it began to smooth the jagged edges of her nerves. She put the glass down and paced some more.

“You may not have wanted or needed my active participation,” she conceded, “but you wanted the pendant.”

“And I had it,” he reminded her. “That night at the park, you gave it to me to hold and then forgot about it. I didn’t have to give it back.”

“Why did you?”

“Damned if I know,” he muttered. “It’s not like me to be noble and self-sacrificing.”

Eve wasn’t so certain of that; every time she thought she was seeing Hazard’s true colors, they changed right before her eyes.

“I didn’t want to steal it from you,” he told her. “Or trick you out of it. I don’t know why other than that your good opinion mattered to me . . . more than anything has mattered in a long time.”

“You didn’t think lying to me—especially about something like this—would affect my opinion of you?”

His expression turned stubborn. “I lied because I had to . . . to protect you. And I hoped you’d never find out the truth.”

“How did you plan to pull that off? Death is a little hard to slip by someone.”

“I made arrangements,” he replied. “Everything would have been fine if Taggart had just stuck to the plan instead of dragging you into it and opening the door for Pavane. Then when it was over he would have come down and returned the pendant to you as promised. He would explain to you that the ritual was a success, but that I was in no condition to talk to anyone and would be in touch soon. After a day or two he would mail a note I’d written ahead of time, thanking you and telling you I’d been called away and wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone.”

“And then I’d never hear from you again.”

His perfect mouth curved into a small, jaded smile. “Not the most chivalrous approach, but the best I could do under the circumstances.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” he asked, drawing nearer until he was standing dangerously close, so close she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. He gazed down at her, studying her face as if it mattered very much to him that she understood what he was trying to tell her. “I didn’t want you involved in this because I didn’t want you to feel responsible for what happened. I didn’t want you to suffer any guilt or regrets after I was gone. I didn’t want you hurt.”

“Too late,” she said softly.

T
oo late.
Only as she said it aloud did Eve understand how true that was.

“There’s no way you could disappear from my life now that wouldn’t hurt,” she told him.

It wasn’t the sort of thing she said to a man, ever, not even to a man she was fond of and whose company she enjoyed. It was too encouraging, too misleading; her sense of fair play wouldn’t permit her to knowingly lead a man down a dead end.

And this thing with Hazard? It had to qualify as the deadest end of all time. She would hardly describe what she felt for him as fondness. As for his company, it was more maddening and disruptive than enjoyable. The man was a thorn in her side. A threat to everything that mattered to her. Bad news. Trouble. The kind of complication she didn’t need. And she wanted him more than she could bear.

She wanted to kiss him; she wanted to know the taste of
him
layered over whiskey, and to breathe him in until her head was spinning and she couldn’t hold any more. She wanted to feel him, the cool silkiness of his long hair sliding over her skin and the taut ripple of his muscles beneath her fingertips. And she wanted to press her cheek against his chest and feel his heart pounding hard and fast. For
her
.

Then she wanted to rip off his clothes so she could touch and lick and nibble and do all the things she’d imagined doing when she should have been thinking about something else. Something safe.

She must be crazy. And, she decided as the steady drumbeat of her desire became louder and more insistent, that was probably for the best.

Crazy people had a right to do crazy things. In fact, it was almost an obligation. It was up to them to counteract the sort of controlled, reasonable person she used to be, to shake things up and keep the world from sliding into monotony. The best part was that they couldn’t be held accountable after the fact. It was the law.
Not guilty by reason of insanity, Your Honor.
Even the temporarily insane were given a pass.

Maybe that’s what this was, temporary insanity. Maybe if she left right then and got a good night’s sleep, she would be her old self in the morning. The self that knew better, the self that didn’t take chances or act impulsively or daydream about ripping off men’s clothes.

That’s what she would do. She would stop staring into Gabriel Hazard’s eyes; she would forget those amazing amber flecks mixed in with the gray, flecks so small you had to get really close to him to see them. She would forget all about amber flecks and obscenely long eyelashes black as soot. She would snap out of it and pull herself together and go home. And life would go on as planned.

Temptation resisted.

Status quo maintained.

Disaster averted.

On the other hand, if this really was t
emporary
insanity, it might be best to wait it out. Driving while crazy could be dangerous. The smart,
sensible
thing to do might be to stay off the roads and let nature take its course and
then
get on with her life as planned.

Maybe it was because, to a crazy woman, temptation was just opportunity dressed up in racy black lingerie, but for reasons she didn’t want to examine just then, Eve decided that’s what she would do, she would play it smart and stay. With that settled, it seemed only natural that she should be the one to make the first move.

She lifted her hand to touch Hazard’s face and he caught it in midair.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. His usually smooth voice had gone all low and gritty.

The real Eve wanted to say “I don’t know” or “Oops, sorry, my hand slipped,” but the real Eve wasn’t driving this bus and that’s not what came out of her mouth.

The response that came out, in a tone that matched his, was, “I’m making the first move.”

Hazard’s eyes narrowed. “That would be a mistake.”

“I know,” said the crazy woman at the wheel. “But I’m tired of waiting for you to do it.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes, and the barest hint of amusement.

“You do understand that nothing good can come from this?” he asked. Rhetorically, since even as he said the words his grip on her arm gentled and his thumb began to slide back and forth across the inside of her wrist.

Eve might have nodded. She wasn’t sure. His touch brought a drift of pleasure as light and buoyant as champagne bubbles, and she went with it happily.

“I have nothing to offer you,” he warned. “No pretty words. No promises. Not even tomorrow.”

“You have what I need,” she told him. “You have tonight.”

“One night?” He regarded her solemnly, his full bottom lip curling with what might be regret. “You deserve so much more.”

“Yes. I do. So you better make it memorable.”

His smile was slow and wicked.

“I shall do my best,” he promised, pulling her close with a quick, hard tug.

Eve stumbled, but it didn’t matter because Hazard caught her with his body. And then he took control.

He put his arms around her, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other at the small of her back. She wasn’t petite, or delicate, but that’s how he made her feel as he easily tipped her back just enough so that her weight was resting on his arm. Eve wound her arms around his neck purely for pleasure and not because she had the slightest fear that he would let her fall. He didn’t press or push, he leaned, he nudged, he guided. He had moves that must have taken all of his two hundred years to perfect.

When her hair fell back, he lowered his mouth to the hollow below her ear. His breath was warm against her skin, but she shivered anyway as he slid kisses over her throat and jaw, edging closer and closer to her lips, always slowly, too slowly, so slowly impatience made her skin prickle and her breath come fast, and even with all that rapid breathing it seemed not enough oxygen was reaching her brain. Or maybe it was getting too much oxygen; she tried to think which of the two it was that made you lightheaded.

Then at last he was kissing her lips and there was an explosion inside her and she didn’t think at all. She felt. She’d heard the expression “zero to sixty in six point seven seconds”; that was her, her sensory speed shot from zero to sixty . . . to a hundred . . . faster . . . in the time it took his tongue to find hers.

Sensations collided and tumbled through her, all of them new and exciting. It was the heady, consuming feeling she had the first time she saw him multiplied by a zillion, like being caught in a storm that was raging inside and out. There was heat in her belly and sparks danced along her nerve endings; it was more stimulation than she’d ever felt, more than she’d known she could feel, and it still wasn’t enough.