Inked Magic (14 page)

“Call me when she leaves Pacific Heights.”

“Will do.”

Cathal hung up. He hesitated for a second, then direct dialed his father.

His father answered immediately. “Your uncle just left. He saw something on the news that upset him.”

Cathal rubbed a hand over his chest. He had the feeling everything was spinning out of control. “You calm him down?”

“For now. But Denis can’t take much more in the way of bad. He needs something good to keep him holding steady, like you showing up for dinner tonight with that woman you’re interested in.”

Cathal’s gaze once again went to the bed with its tangle of sheets, empty of the woman who’d invaded his dreams and was with another man right now. Determination eradicated any whisper of conscience. He’d have her beneath him by morning.

“Make it a late breakfast tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell Denis. I’m counting on you, son. Don’t let me down.”

Cathal’s hand tightened on the phone before he set it on the nightstand. He dressed, a plan already forming, so after eating breakfast he went directly to Stylin’ Ink.

Her bike wasn’t there, but then Sean hadn’t called, so he knew it wouldn’t be. She was still with Eamon.

The thought made his mood ugly and dangerous, a combination
capable of sending a musician crying from an audition. He shouldn’t care where she was or who she was with. On some level he recognized that.

It didn’t change anything.

The best he could do to manage the jealousy eating at him was to tell himself she was a challenge. And he wasn’t used to losing.

Through the window, the only person he could see was Bryce. Perfect. The conversation during dinner had made it clear to him that Bryce and the other two, Derrick and Jamaal, were more like family to Etaín than coworkers.

He entered the tattoo shop, knowing the advantage was his because Etaín had already given him the leverage he needed.

“She’s not here,” Bryce said.

It took effort not to snarl.“I know.”

Cathal extended a hand and introduced himself. “You’re the one I’m here to see. Etaín mentioned Salina and her band. I’d like to get in touch with her as a surprise for Etaín.”

Bryce laughed. “Etaín passed on going home with you, huh. You must have spooked her. What happened?”

Cathal fought to keep his lips from pulling back and his fury from rising. “Her brother called.”

Bryce’s amusement died in a frown. “Asshole.”

“She took off afterward. I haven’t heard from her since.” The inclination toward violence heightened as he imagined her naked, lying beneath Eamon.

Bryce looked at the computer screen, moving and clicking the mouse on the counter. “A couple of hours and she’ll be here.”

“I’d rather see her at my club later tonight.”

“Slick move. So that’s where Salina comes in. You give her band a chance to play at Saoirse and Etaín is grateful, meaning maybe you get laid instead of getting the brush-off.”

Cathal managed to keep his temper in check. Barely. “I don’t need gratitude when it comes to Etaín. I don’t need to pay a woman for sex,
in favors or in hard cash. Not that what happens between Etaín and me is your business.”

“Good thing to know but you’re wrong. Coming here and asking for Salina’s number makes it my business.”

Cathal pulled his phone from his pocket and called up Etaín’s number before showing Bryce the screen. “I don’t give a fuck about Salina and her band. Any day of the week I’ve got a dozen musicians trying to crawl up my ass. It suits me to combine business with a surprise for Etaín but I’m flexible when it comes to arranging time with her.”

Bryce laughed. “Don’t hold back just because Etaín and I are tight. You know, you’re not the type she usually goes for. But I’m thinking maybe that’s not a bad thing. She needs someone who’s not going to let her walk away after a hot night between the sheets.”

Cathal’s cock throbbed in anticipation of having that hot night. And though his rational mind denied Bryce’s assumption that this was about more than a casual fuck, the jealousy clawing through him made it a lie.

He could tell himself he was doing this in order to keep Etaín from ending up on a collision course with his uncle, but there was more to it than that. What had begun as duty, the lesser of two evils, had morphed into something else the moment he’d seen her through the front window of Stylin’ Ink.

A couple of clicks with the mouse and Bryce lifted the shop phone, punching in a number. “
Hola, chica
. You interested in playing a gig at Saoirse?”

From across the counter Cathal heard the scream.

Bryce handed off the phone. “All yours.”

Cathal didn’t bother with setting up an audition. Drinks on the house made even the worst band survivable as far as the club’s reputation went.

It took less time to outline his requirements and expectations than it had taken to get Bryce to make the call. Failure to deliver wasn’t an
option. Not on Salina’s part. And not on his when it came to meeting his father and uncle for breakfast and having Etaín accompany him.

“No problem,” Salina assured him for the fourth or fifth time. “Etaín won’t let me down. She knows how big a deal this is for the band. I’ll come by the shop and get her promise in person. When does she work today?”

“You’ll have to ask Bryce.” Cathal passed the phone back to Bryce and left the shop.

Fierce desire moved downward, settling in his cock at the prospect of Etaín coming to the club. He’d warned her what would happen if she stepped foot in Saoirse.

Tonight he’d make good on the threat. Then follow it up with a long encore at his house.

E
taín woke to the feel of a warm chest against her back and a hardened cock against her buttocks. She turned to face Eamon, a heated tide of pleasure rolling through her at the sight of him sleeping, the sheet falling erotically across his abdomen.

Last night there hadn’t been time to study him, but this morning she took the opportunity to appreciate just how beautiful he truly was.

His features appealed to her as an artist and a woman. Aristocratic nose and chin. Lips that could thin with censure and anger, but, as she had reason to know, could also deliver on the sultry promise of passion.

Need unfurled in her belly. She pressed her thighs together, enjoying the swell and heat of desire. Enjoying the memory of what it had been like with him.

Portraits weren’t her natural calling, but looking at him, she thought she could spend hours capturing his image on paper, his moods and expressions, all the subtle nuances of who he was.

Glancing away from him, she took in her surroundings for the first time. The multi-multimillion dollar view of the ocean was breathtaking, but it faded into nothing compared with the paintings hanging on the walls.

Cézanne. Van Gogh. Henri-Edmond Cross. Georges Lemmen. Postimpressionists she’d fallen in love with when she’d taken an art class.

The sight of them made her shiver in an ecstasy there was nothing carnal about. She left the bed, drawn to the artwork though standing a breath away brought uneasiness.
Why had he sought her
out?

Glancing at her palms, she saw the answer there but was unsure of what she would do with it. What he might tell her about her gift and how to gain better control of it would come with a price. And given the masterpieces gracing
Lord
Eamon’s walls, she doubted she’d be willing to pay it.

She shrugged the concern away. She’d lived this long without understanding the full truth of what the call to ink meant. She could go a lifetime not knowing.

She was happy most of the time, which was more than most people could say. She loved how she spent her days and valued the friendships that formed as a result of it. And if she wanted to mix things up, she had standing invites to work in Vegas or LA as a guest artist.

Moving from one painting to the next, she studied them with the same intensity she’d studied Eamon, as if she could know everything about them and capture a part of their essence in her own art. She finished with the Lemmen, then turned to find Eamon awake, on his back, watching her, the sheet tented as a result of his erection.

It was a draw of a different kind and one she couldn’t resist. She crossed to the bed and straddled him, leaving the sheet between them.

Her hands went to his chest and he immediately imprisoned her wrists.

“Afraid of what I’ll see?”

A soft laugh answered her, and a release of her captured wrists. “Do your worst.”

“And have you forget me?”

“There’s no possibility of that.”

“How can you be certain? It’s happened before.”

He took her hands, holding them so his thumbs brushed over the eyes on her palms. “Spend time with me and I’ll give you the answers you need.”

It was something she couldn’t allow herself when it came to lovers. Something she wasn’t sure she’d want even if it were possible, especially if it came with boundaries and conditions. She felt sure involvement with Eamon would bring them.

She glanced down at their joined hands, feeling each of his strokes to the inked eyes as if they were connected directly to a coil of need in her belly. “How do you know what they mean? How do you know about any of it?”

“I’ve studied magic my entire life.”

Her first impulse was to laugh. She stifled it. “Magic?”

“You don’t believe in it?”

In the power of belief, definitely. In abilities that slid into the paranormal, sure, she’d have to be an idiot practicing denial not to. But magic . . . She shrugged. “I’ve never given it much thought.”

She tugged her hands from his and leaned forward, placing her palms against his smooth warm chest and changing the angle of her hips so her clit pressed to his sheet-covered erection. A spike of pleasure shot through her, and from the sudden lowering of his eyelids she knew he wasn’t unaffected.

“This is the kind of magic that interests me the most,” she said, rubbing his nipples with her fingertips and feeling them harden.

His expression went taut, color fanning across his cheeks. He reached up, tangling his fingers in her hair and applying pressure, bringing her lips to his.

She went, but not all the way. Or not fast enough. He lifted to meet her, giving her a hungry moan, his tongue thrusting against hers as he rolled them, putting her beneath him. The sheet disappearing with the movement.

She liked his weight. His strength. The hard press of his body against hers and the inherent danger she sensed in him.

The last should send her running, the same way his obvious wealth should. But the only thing to escape was a whimper when he took his lips from hers.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, lifting, engaging him again with the touch of her mouth to his, with the coaxing of her tongue against the seam of his lips and the slow sucking of his when it came out to play.

A hard throb went through Eamon’s cock, a wave of heat as he remembered her mouth on him in the shower. With a touch she’d wrested control of the situation away from him, turned him from his mission to convince her that she needed him for more than this.

He ended the kiss for a second time, his mouth going to her ear. Her breath caught when he captured a velvety lobe. He caressed it with his tongue, pulled the lobe deeper. Sucking. Laving.

The breathy sounds she made excited him. The way she ground against his hardened length had him fighting the urge to join his body to hers.

“Now,” she said. “I want you now.”

In the end it would be
always
.
I want you always
. But he wasn’t so foolish as to voice that claim, or yet so enthralled he wouldn’t attempt to use the desire between them to gain an advantage with her.

A thrust and he’d be inside her. And inside her, all that would matter was finding release.

He left the lobe, tongue tracing the edge of her ear, going to the tip that would soon become pointed but was already a pleasure zone. He stroked and sucked, leaving to dip his tongue into her ear canal with an erotic thrust.

She wanted a fuck. He gave her the slow mimic of one, a tormenting seduction as his lower body ruthlessly pinned hers to the mattress.

He would have kept her from orgasming if it were possible. But she was too sensual a creature, too uninhibited in her passion to depend on him for ecstasy.

She writhed, using his cock to deliver what he would have staved off. Pressing and grinding her clit against him.

Her cry of release and relaxed body filled him with satisfaction regardless of his intentions. One day she’d trust him enough to give
him total control of her pleasure, allowing herself to be made helpless in tethered restraints.

A shudder went through him at imagining her held open and bound to the bed. It took effort to keep from sheathing himself inside her. He needed her to understand the danger of her situation so she would come to him.
She
needed it. Without him she might not survive the changeling period. And even if she did, there were other dangers equally deadly.

With a final swirl of his tongue in her ear, a last slow suck to the tip, he shifted onto an elbow and rubbed his palm over her nipple, considered how much knowledge to offer. “You use this as an outlet,” he guessed, pausing to give the rigid areola a kiss before meeting her eyes. “You use sex to vent the pressure that comes from using your gift.”