Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  “You okay?” Travers asked.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said, and stepped across the threshold.

  The wet-dog smell was even stronger in here. Part of the carpet squished under her feet, and for a moment, Zoe thought that Bartholomew’s bladder problems had extended to this dimension.

  Then she realized that she hadn’t had a towel in that bathroom—at least not one big enough for a squirming, obese dachshund. The creature had waddled into her main office, sat down, and proceeded to drip water on her terribly thin, poorly maintained carpet.

  “Whew!” Travers said. “Stinks in here.”

  “No kidding,” Zoe said.

  “I’d advise you to open a window, but then it might take all day for the air-conditioning to get the temperature back to this.”

  “Try all week,” Zoe said.

  She snapped her fingers, and the rug dried instantly. Then she went into the bathroom. For a moment, she just stared at the mess—hair everywhere, all of it short and brown and probably canine. The sink was filled with hair and the remnants of soapy water. Kyle hadn’t even pulled the plug to drain it.

  Travers peered over Zoe’s shoulder, startling her.

  “I forgot to check on him,” Travers said. “My fault. Clean-up still isn’t his strong suit.”

  “It’s okay,” Zoe said, and snapped her fingers again. The bathroom sparkled, all the hair gone, and the smell with it.

  “I’m still confused,” Travers said. “I thought you weren’t supposed to use your magic except in emergencies.”

  “I can use it whenever I want,” Zoe said, “except when I would compromise some mortals.”

  “Compromise?”

  “Make them understand that magic exists,” Zoe said. “And I shouldn’t use it for personal gain, whatever that means. And most of all, I should try to live my life as anonymously as possible, since the Fates—our Fates—were trying to crack down on new myths and legends, or as they called them, leaks from the magical realm.”

  “Leaks.” Travers grinned. “Sounds like something Fang would do.”

  “You’re calling him Fang now?” Zoe felt surprised. The dog wasn’t even close to a Fang.

  “Bartholomew Fang,” Travers said. “It suits him.”

  Zoe shook her head, but didn’t argue. The dog really was bamboozling him, and it was kind of sweet.

  Travers leaned against the doorjamb, then stood as if the pressure against his skin hurt him.

  “So,” he said, perhaps to cover that awkward moment, “you can use your magic at any time without penalty.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Zoe ran a finger in the sink. She had gotten it clean, but the wet-dog smell lingered. Maybe the odor had just gotten caught in her nose. “There is a penalty. The more power I use, the more I age.”

  “Power,” Travers said. “Not magic.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes they’re related.”

  She turned to head out of the bathroom. Travers put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. His touch seared through her shirt, running through her entire body as if he were current and she were the conductor.

  “You must not have used very much power,” he said. “You don’t look old to me.”

  She felt torn: part of her flattered at his compliment, and the other part worried about their age difference. He ran his other hand along her cheek.

  “In fact,” he said, “you’re probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  And you’re the best-looking man, she thought, but didn’t say, grateful that Kyle wasn’t here. She was certain she was broadcasting.

  Travers leaned toward her. He was going to kiss her, and she should use the better part of valor to move away. Not that it would be easy to move in this small bathroom. And not that she wanted to move. But it would be better for both of them and the Fates, and Kyle, and even that stupid dog, if she just stepped aside.

  But she dithered too long. Travers’ lips touched hers, and hers parted. Somehow her arms found their way around his neck, and his found their way around her waist, and she was pressed against him, her body fitting his as if they had been made for each other.

  She willed her brain into silence, not that it took much work, and surrendered to the kiss. It was slow and leisurely, as if their mouths were getting to know each other as a prelude to them getting to know each other.

  In the middle of it, Zoe forgot to breathe. She realized she was getting short of air at the moment Travers’ lips left hers.

  “Wow,” he said, his mouth only an inch or so from hers. “I haven’t kissed anyone in a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being that good.”

  Neither did she. And she’d probably kissed a lot more people over a lot longer time.

  She leaned her forehead against his, felt the heat of his skin, and realized she was probably hurting him.

  She stepped back, out of his arms, and held out her hand. A bottle of lotion appeared in it.

  “Let me take care of that burn,” she said, and winced inwardly. She had meant to say that she would give him the cream and he would take care of the burn —maybe even learn a simple healing spell—but that wasn’t what she said.

  He looked at the lotion, then at her, as if he were trying to understand the transition. Finally, he nodded.

  “What do we do?” he asked.

  It was another opening. We as opposed to me or you. But she didn’t take it. And now she couldn’t believe that her subconscious was guiding her. Her conscious brain knew what her subconscious was doing, and heartily approved.

  Maybe only one other part of her disapproved and that part came out of fear.

  “Sit here,” she said, moving ever so slightly so that Travers could sit on the closed toilet seat. “And take off your shirt.”

  As well as everything else. But that sentence stayed inside. She was managing some control—just not enough.

  Travers pulled his shirt over his head, moving slightly so that the fabric didn’t brush his skin. He was as well-built as she had guessed—broad shoulders, a firm, muscular chest, and a flat stomach. The muscles didn’t ripple on him—for which she was grateful; she never liked ripply men—but they were visible with his movements, giving him a strength he didn’t have when he was clothed.

  He was lightly furred, the hair as blond as the hair on his head, and it tapered down his chest, into a line that pointed even lower—

  Zoe made herself look at his sunburn, as she struggled to control her breathing.

  Underneath his shirt, his skin was very white. A firm line had been etched in his biceps, where the skin went from white to bright red.

  It was a sunburn—no doubt about that—and part of it was already beginning to blister.

  “You should have said something,” Zoe said as she squeezed lotion onto her hand.

  “You probably would have moved away if I had,” Travers said.

  Zoe felt her face heat. She was blushing. Dammit! She continued to blush around this man. She had been so certain she had outgrown that habit.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, I meant that you should have said something about the sunburn.”

  “Oh.” His head was down. She couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking, and that made her feel odd. “I figured it would be okay to say something when we got here.”

  “Well,” she said, “it clearly wasn’t okay. You’re wind-burned and sunburned, and beginning to blister.”

  She rubbed the lotion on her hands, and then applied it to the back of his neck. The skin there was almost too hot to touch. She silently recited a small spell that would take the pain from the burn and heal the skin.

  “I get burned a lot,” he said. “I just live with it—hey, what’re you doing?”

  She pulled her hands away, afraid she was doing something wrong. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” He sounded surprised. “In fact, the places you touched feel even better than they felt before the burn.”

  Maybe a bi
t too much healing, then. Or she was taking tension out, too. She poured lotion on his burned right arm, and rubbed, relishing the feel of his skin beneath hers.

  “Are you doing magic?” he asked. “I mean, besides making the bottle just appear?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s a simple healing spell.”

  And the next sentence out of her mouth should have been about teaching him the spell, but she didn’t say a word. Instead, she ran both hands along his arm, feeling the muscles, the firm skin, the warmth. Then she took his hand in her own, caressing it, massaging the fingers.

  He sat very still, almost too still, as if he were trying to hold himself in reserve. But that sense she had had the day before, that sense of him vanishing, wasn’t there. It was almost as if he had tried to vanish, and couldn’t, as if he had forgotten how.

  She moved to the other arm, and massaged it, taking the pain away with the burn, the lotion making her movements quick and gentle.

  Travers’ breathing was ragged, and he closed his eyes. But somehow he maintained the stillness.

  She wanted to interrupt that stillness, to break through it, to take away his control. She moved in front of him, planning to sit on his lap while she put the lotion on his face when he grabbed the lotion bottle from her.

  “Okay,” he said, and his voice was a little raspy, “now explain to me how this is done.”

  His gaze met hers. His eyes were a slightly different color than they had been before—a deeper blue, as if she had gotten closer to his core self.

  He was clearly as aroused as she was.

  “Later,” she said, and reached for the lotion.

  He pulled it back toward the wall, out of her reach, like a little boy playing keep-away on a school yard.

  “Teach me now,” he said. His voice had a little more control.

  He was the one who had started this with his kiss. He was the one who let her touch him like that, who clearly enjoyed it. Why was he stopping now?

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Wrong?” He stood slowly, so as not to bang into her. She still had to step out of the bathroom to get out of his way. “It’s not you, Zoe.”

  She frowned. If he wanted her to be off-balance, he was succeeding. She couldn’t remember the last time a man made her feel so many emotions at the same time.

  Including frustration. That little dance in the cramped bathroom had let her feel just how attracted she was to this man, and she was willing to explore that attraction, even if there was no future in it.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He set the lotion on the sink and looked at his arms in the mirror. They were considerably less red than his face. The heat and pain had clearly left them.

  He looked at his skin for a moment, as if he were trying to think of what to say, and then he spoke. “I can’t have a casual relationship, Zoe. Not as long as Kyle’s living with me.”

  “Not at all?” she asked, not sure if “casual” was what she wanted, either.

  Travers shook his head. “My ex-wife walked out on my son, and the only women I want in his life are the ones who are going to stay.”

  “Like the Fates?” Zoe asked, confused.

  “No.” Travers turned and leaned against the sink. His face almost glowed. She longed to touch it, to remove the ache, but she kept her lotion-covered hands at her sides. “He understands friendship and casual acquaintances. But I’m not going to lie to him about my relationship with someone, and I’m not going to subject him to loss like the one he experienced before.”

  “Him?” Zoe asked. “Or you?”

  Travers gave her that sideways, rueful smile that she liked. “Believe me, I thought of that. And it’s not me I’m protecting. It’s sad to say I don’t think I ever loved Cheryl. I was a teenage boy, lost in hormones, and I thought marriage was the right thing.”

  “That still had to hurt,” Zoe said.

  Travers nodded. “It hurt, but it was eleven years ago. I’m long past it.”

  “Except that you haven’t had another relationship.”

  “Because of Kyle,” Travers said. His certainty made her doubt him even more. Travers hadn’t looked at this at all. “If I bring someone else into his life before he graduates from high school, she’d better be the woman I’m spending the rest of my life with.”

  “Or?” Zoe asked.

  “Or there’s no relationship.”

  “It sounds impossible,” she said. “How are you going to know the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with—and it’s going to be a very long life, you know—without giving a few other women a test run?”

  “I’ll know,” Travers said.

  She didn’t believe him. She sighed. Now was the time. Now that they were putting everything between them, making their sides clear.

  “I’ve been around for more than a hundred years, Travers,” Zoe said. “I’ve fallen in love a few times. But none of those men were the One the Fates talk about—the soulmate, the man I’ll spend the rest of my life with.”

  “But you knew that going in,” Travers said, once again not noticing the age thing.

  “I knew that once I was already in,” Zoe said. “There’s no such thing as a bolt out of the blue that makes you believe you’ve found your one and only.”

  Something changed in his eyes, something cooled, and he finally achieved that distance she had noted the day before. It felt as if he had left the room, even though he was still only a few feet from her.

  “So is that why you kissed me?” he asked. “For fun? For experimentation?”

  “You kissed me,” she said, with more heat than she wanted to. “And I liked it, so I kissed you back. I thought we had something going here.”

  “If Kyle weren’t in my life,” Travers said, “maybe. But he is.”

  “This kiss, then,” Zoe said. “It was—what? Impulse? A tease? An experimentation to see how I’d react?”

  He dropped his gaze, his eyelashes brushing against that inflamed skin. “I just—wanted—I couldn’t—you’re so beautiful, Zoe. I just wanted to—just once…”

  His voice trailed off. He didn’t look up. She felt her own skin coloring. It had been impulse, and it embarrassed him. Or she had embarrassed him by taking things one step farther.

  “Give me the lotion,” she said, suppressing a sigh. “Let me teach you a very simple spell for healing.”

  Twenty

  The spell was simple. Travers performed it slowly, carefully, with a single finger tracing a visible path on his sunburned skin. He stood in front of the mirror, and examined his face with a care he hadn’t used since he was a teenage boy about to go to his first prom.

  At first, his fingers had shaken. Zoe had given him a cool smile, told him that was normal, and decamped for the main part of the office. He supposed he could call her if something went wrong.

  But nothing did. His skin stopped looking so red, and the pain—which felt like someone had placed a hot mask over his face—eased to nearly nothing.

  Now, as he examined his arms, he realized the sunburn had faded into a tan, something that hadn’t happened to him in his entire life.

  Just like that kiss. He had never experienced a kiss like that in his entire life, either. And then, with her hands on his, taking his own hand between them, rubbing—

  He had to end it. Just to maintain his own control.

  He had thought he was past that, that loss of control that would lead him into making a mistake he would later regret. Not that he regretted Kyle. But Travers regretted the circumstances of his marriage, which no one knew except himself and Cheryl, and he regretted being the cause of it all.

  Hormones.

  Maybe he had misunderstood the magical explanations. He thought the Fates (or was it Zoe?) had said people came into their magic when their hormones no longer controlled them.

  He snorted, and shook his head. Until today, his hormones hadn’t controlled him for a long time.

  But h
e couldn’t pass up that kiss. Zoe had been so close and the floral scent of her hair, mixed with a scent that he had already come to recognize as uniquely Zoe, enticed him to act on impulse.

  Now he wished he hadn’t. She was angry at him, and he was angry at himself, making a physical promise that he couldn’t keep.

  He knew the arguments: He could have let that moment continue, taken it all the way; they were both adults. But he didn’t dare. Not with his heart already intrigued. And not with Kyle able to read—what did he call it?—broadcast thoughts.

  The last thing Travers needed was explaining risky, unprotected (and impulsively enjoyable) sex to his son.

  Travers finished the spell and washed the lotion off his hands. Then he squared his shoulders and carried the bottle into the main part of the office.

  Zoe sat at her desk chair with her back to the room. She was hunched over her computer, her fingers dancing across the keys. Rays of light peeked through the blinds, making her skin look striped.

  “What do you want me to do with the lotion?” he asked.

  “Keep it.” Her words were clipped. “It’s a gift.”

  He sighed, ever so silently, knowing he deserved her withdrawal, and not sure how to apologize for giving into his impulse without sounding like he was apologizing for the kiss. He hadn’t felt sorry for that.

  Sometimes his own rules seemed harsh, even to him.

  “Finding anything?” he asked.

  She rotated her chair with the tips of her toes. “You ready to talk business?”

  As if he hadn’t been. As if the discussion of invisibility and the lessons in healing had been his idea.

  But he didn’t let those thoughts out. It was better for him to keep as much control around Zoe as he could, so he wouldn’t make another mistake.

  “Yes,” he said. The word sounded meek. He wasn’t feeling meek. The irritation he felt was fueled by a sexual tension he had buried long ago. He wished he could bury it again.

  “All right.” She nodded toward a chair. “Sit.”