Inked Magic Read Online Free Page B

him.
    “Should I be?” he asked, confidence shading nearly into arrogance. A subtext that said,
They can’t give you the things I can. They can’t do what I can do for
you.
    Etaín laughed, making a sweeping glance around the restaurant, eyes lingering on a few of the waiters before giving him an answer. “Probably not,” she said, ceding that much to Cathal.
    They moved beneath an archway, their destination becoming clear then. Glassed doors, manned like the front ones by men in suits, led to an enclosed terrace. Another layer of privacy.
    As she passed through the doorway, bells tinkled again. Not as loudly as when she’d entered the restaurant. This time they blended with the sound of surf, and along her forearms it felt as though the vines were streams, flooded and rushing after a hard rain.
    The sound and sensation passed within steps. A low bridge crossed a shallow waterway where koi swam in an endless circle around the dining area.
    It was shades of an elaborate Japanese garden, with a decorative brazier at the center of it burning incense as if in offering to an ancestral deity. Elegant. Beautiful. But those descriptions were not what lodged in her mind as she took in the scene.
    The water. The sky above and plants in their bed of dirt. The glowing red charcoal and sinuous, thin-smoke scent of rising incense.
Containment
. The word settled inside of her with absolute certainty and brought the same deep-seated wariness that approaching Aesirs had.
    She refused to let it take hold and control her. There were far more terrifying things than the unknown. Things she feared. Things she’d seen and experienced.
    The tables were small and placed in cozy, private settings, each of them semisurrounded by an arrangement of living plants. All of them occupied except for one.
    The maître d’ led them to it, pulling out Etaín’s chair for her as though she were dressed in fur and jewels instead of jeans and a faded shirt. She draped her jacket over her lap rather than surrender it.
    Somewhere along the way they’d picked up a waiter and server, or perhaps both had followed unobtrusively from the start since the maître d’ carried no menus. The server balanced a tray on one hand, placed the two glasses of water on the table before departing.
    The waiter stepped into the place the server had vacated. He had the same look as the others she’d seen, except up close he seemed so much older. Not in face or form, but in the weight of his gaze as he offered her a menu, the sigils on the red-sun earring he wore adding to her curiosity.
    She reached out, but for all his seeming maturity, when her hand was a needle’s width from his, he released the menu and it dropped to the table, striking the water glass with enough force to turn it over if Cathal hadn’t prevented it.
    “My apologies,” the waiter said, taking a step backward and passing the remaining menu to Cathal before turning and leaving the terrace.
    He didn’t hurry and yet there was purpose in his stride. Fluid movement and controlled grace, more the walk of a man who owned the space around him than of one who merely worked in it.
    Etaín opened the menu and noted the lack of prices. She laughedand said, “I guess if you have to ask what a selection costs, then they’ve let you in by mistake.”
    Cathal’s smile sent a rush of heat through her. “Something like that. Order what you want. I’m good for it.”
    The purr in his voice was like the hot, wet lap of a tongue over sensitive flesh, a promise he was good for a lot of things. “I bet you are,” she said, wondering again which she’d regret more, giving in to desire, or resisting it.
    E amon stood in his office, captivated by the sight of the changeling visible through the glassed ceiling of the terraced dining area. Her aura was deep gold, more Elven than human though her ears were still rounded.
    They’d be sensitive now, an erogenous zone he already longed to tease with lips and tongue and the