Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Thirty-Three: Beginning In Earnest is Rocky

Eventually, I must have drifted off despite my wired brain. When I woke, it was well after ten and I had missed the normal dinner time. Strange that Van hadn't sent someone to check on me. I showered and dressed hastily.

I couldn't find him in any of the bars, dining rooms, or hotel common areas. Both Ace and Dare avoided me, which let me know they didn't want to tell me where he was.

That probably meant he was feeding on some pretty young thing. I sat at our usual table in the jazz club alone, trying to enjoy the Diamond Dukes set despite the threat of a returning headache. The waiter brought me champagne without being asked.

When Evander slipped into the seat beside me, he tucked his jacket with one hand and trailed the other over my shoulder and down my bare arm in a casual greeting that made me shiver. But not because his fingers were their normal temperature. Tonight they were warm.

I looked him over carefully. His hair was freshly trimmed and he looked younger than I had ever seen him. His lips were actually pink,  his face lit with blood and mischief.

He'd fed. And from the warmth of his skin tone, he'd probably fed a lot. I couldn't decide if he was more beautiful starving or sated.

He caught the eye of a waiter who nodded and hurried away to bring him a drink. I offered him my coupe glass. His flushed lips were very, very sexy as they curled into a smile for me.

"To the most intriguing and beautiful woman in the room." He raised the glass to me, "Your fiancé is a fool for leaving you unattended," he quipped just before he put the glass to his lips.

"Yes, he is," I agreed. "I missed him today."

The gulp in his mouth arrested, and he quirked an eyebrow at me. Slowly, he swallowed the mouthful, his Adam's apple moving with extreme caution as he pondered his next move. He leaned forward, one elbow on the table as he studied me. Then he reached out his other hand and brushed my curls behind my right ear, studying my earlobe as if it were some kind of work of air.

He met my gaze again, and smiled fondly. Affectionately. Intimately.

"Did you, now? I thought you might be entirely put out with him, after his ungentlemanly overtures last night."

I put a hand on his arm that had come to rest on the back of my chair, amazed that his flesh was warm and pliable for once.

"Well, I'm a witch. We're naughty by nature, you know. There's no accounting for what turns us on."

"Turns you on," Evander repeated, trying on the unfamiliar phrase, but catching the meaning perfectly, because he stretched his arm from the back of my chair to brush against the bottom of my bob, just at the nape of my neck, and then he set his fingers to playing down my cervical vertebra. I closed my eyes and sighed and he gave a sexy grunt in approval.

"Well, then. I think your fiancé would appreciate your instruction, Miss Dunne. So why don't you tell him exactly what turns you on, so that he may endeavor to see you glow?"

I opened my eyes and locked into his gaze, no worry at all for being enthralled. I trusted him.

"You," I whispered hoarsely. "You, the man. You the magical, magnificent monster. Your voice. Your wit. Your strength. Your honor. Your ferocity with everyone else. Your tenderness with me. Your body and your brain and, if I'm being totally honest, your blood."

For a brief moment, I rendered him utterly speechless. His head twerked every so slightly, his lips parted, and he stopped breathing. Then he smiled and took in a long satisfying breath. He reached for my hand that lay on the table and pulled it into his, in the old-fashioned way—my knuckles draped over the side of his fingers.