Good grief, she could feel herself blushing at the thought of sleeping on his sheets and breathing in the echo of his aftershave. He might have come first to the attraction party, but she’d clearly made up for lost time since arriving.
How was she supposed to sleep at all, lying a yard away from him?
Her personal rule was no sex with anybody until she’d dated them at least a month. Not simplyknown. Actually dated. So far, she’d never had trouble waiting—not that she’d had a tremendous number of lovers, or even enough to count on all the fingers of one hand. It was a blow to her sense of self-restraint that she was sorely tempted to sleep with this man right now, less than three hours after their first real kiss.
She cleared her throat, trying to pick up the threads of the conversation. Lucrative monopoly ... extreme lengths ... Oh yes.
“I don’t see why a limited number of self-made convincers would threaten Kincaid’s business.”
“Ah,” he said, pulling the coverlet into place on his bespelled bed, “but there would be a tipping point. If a handful of people teach themselves, and they teach others, and those others teach others ...”
“Then the truth about magic would become common knowledge,” she said, seeing his point. A few convincers could be written off as stage performers, or kooks, but not thousands.
“Absent intervention, information spreads quickly now.” He sat on his temporary bed. “In large part thanks to microchips.”
She frowned. “But wouldn’t a trail of murders cause its own problems?”
“You’d be surprised how often the authorities think it’s an accident or suicide. A woman is found in her bath with a plugged-in hair dryer, the lone occupant of a house ‘trips’ down the steps and breaks his neck, a man ‘falls,’ puncturing a lung—”
“Stop, stop!” She thought of Willi’s wife and had to swallow the urge to be sick.
Hartgrave winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve lived with this for so long ...”
“When will we go? Tomorrow? The day after?When?”
His expression went from apologetic to horror-struck in record time. “Neither! If I’m having your assistanceforced on me, I’m spending severalweekstraining you first.”
“Forced! You drive me absolutely—wait, what sort of training?”
He blinked. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “That is you to a T, Daggett.”
“‘Daggett,’ eh? Are you going to keep calling me that?”
He reached across the small space separating their beds and ran his fingers down the line of her jaw, leaving a teasing, prickling trail. “I like it. It’s an obstinate sort of name that fits you perfectly.”
How alluring it was that he knew her, knew her shortcomings, and wanted her all the more.
“Now that you mention it,” she said, catching his hand and getting a pleasant little jolt, “I prefer your last name, too. Even though ‘Hartgrave’ sounds like it ought to belong to someoneabsolutelyappalling. And does.”
“Mm.” He leaned in and nipped at her ear. “One wonders why you’re fraternizing with appalling people.”
He began working his way down her neck. Argh, that felt good.
“I’m fond of the one in question,” she said, breathless and lightheaded.
Then he kissed her.
She pressed closer, stomach turning cartwheels as his magic zipped along her skin. The initial shock of contact was so explosive, it blanked out every other sensation. But that receded, leaving Hartgrave.
Really, magic had little to do with why she wanted him. It washim, plain and simple.
She pulled back after a while—possibly a long while—and looked at their twined hands as she caught her breath. A change of subject, that was what she needed. Something that didn’t involve tearing his clothes off.
The mild nipping of his magic suggested a question. “Hartgrave—how is it that you stayed under the Organization’s radar before they found you at Willi’s home?”
He looked completely wrong-footed. Perhaps she should have tried for a segue, or at least started with something that wouldn’t imply her mind had been wandering while her body was otherwise engaged.
“Sorry,” she said. “It occurred to me just now—you couldn’t have known to keep your magic levels down from the get-go, right?”
