“No one would look at you and have the faintest idea what we’ve been up to.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “It smells like sex in here.”
He took a long, slow inhale. “That it does, my darling.”
Brigan bent, resting his lips over hers for a long, soft beat, but when she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Chapter Four
Suddenly alone in the dim room, Cat startled, whipping her head to the left and then the right.
What just happened?
Where the hell did he go?
She pushed away from the wall, turning in a half circle, trying not to panic because, with Brigan’s departure, the room had gone cold and empty; all trace of his scent and the weight of sex in the air was gone. Her skin felt cool, her pulse no longer a thundering presence deep in her belly, between her legs. It was like he’d never been there.
Had she hallucinated everything?
Had anyone actually been in here with her?
Terrified for a beat that she’d either lost her mind or had somehow just had sex with a fucking ghost, Cat bolted from the room, ignoring Harry’s drunken shout of apology when they clipped shoulders in the hall, ignoring Jake’s voice calling to her from across the living room. She grabbed her coat from the pile on the couch near the door and yanked it on, rushing out and pulling up short as the front door slammed at her back.
She stared down the front steps where Brigan stood, in all his impossible glory, carefully arranging himself into a darkovercoat. She pulled in a deep breath of relief. He was not a ghost.
But staring down at him in the streetlight, she could easily confirm that he wasn’t simply a man either.
“How did you do that?”
Startled, Brigan turned at the sound of her voice. Humans never snuck up on him, particularly unthinkable after sex, and especially not door-slamming, foot-stomping humans that smelled like sugar and lust and him. But his mind was an absolute mess, and so here she was: Catalina, on the front stoop, bundled in her coat and sheep’s cap, cheeks still flushed, lips swollen. She was so beautiful, it made him ache.
“Do what?” he asked as evenly as he could.
“Back there. What did you do to me?”
Brigan forced himself to appear unaffected, grinning seductively at her. “Everything you asked, and then some.”
Catalina scowled. “You know what I mean.”
He did know. He knew, because he felt the same disorientation she felt—he’d never had sex like that with a human, and never left a human in a state other than sleeping peacefully, temporarily drained of energy. Not only was she awake and alert, but she’d also been sweetly ravaged and sated, smelling like him, warm with continued longing. Leaving Catalina in that room had been nearly impossible.
“I believe I asked for your consent,” he hedged, “and you obliged.”
“I’m not saying—” She cut the words off, exhaling a small cloud of air that quickly turned opaque in the cold air. “Yes, I wanted to do what we did, but ...”
“But?”
“But I’ve never wanted to have sex with a stranger before, and with you, it was more than that. You didn’tfeellike a stranger, and I just—I just—” She was flustered, and he had to fight the urge to walk up the steps to her. “I just want to understand.”
Brigan let his gaze sweep over her in the porch light: the shiny, dark curls spilling out beneath her cap, those enormous hazel eyes and full heart-shaped mouth, the strong angle of her jaw and cheekbones, the graceful line of her neck, the perfect breasts he’d had his hands and mouth all over not ten minutes ago.
He felt suddenly and disorientingly ashamed of their experience in the bedroom inside that hovel of a brownstone. The sex had been transcendent, but it was still only rutting against a wall like animals. He would have liked to have peeled her clothing away an article at a time and laid her bare, sipping lazily at her amber glow as he pleasured her for hour upon hour. For a moment, Brigan imagined taking her in a bed, slow and patient and teasing. He imagined watching her sleep, feeling her wake up in his arms.
He inhaled sharply, pulling himself away from the fantasy. “Understand what, Catalina?”
If he were to be honest with himself, he wanted to understand too. Wanted to know why he was so deeply drawn to this human if she wasn’t the curse breaker—and how could she be if she didn’t see what he needed her to see? After all, Brigan knew Catalina would have said something if she saw him fully. She wouldn’t be able to resist remarking upon it.
So, what was this, then? Just another one of the sorceress’s twists of the knife, making him want connection with someone who couldn’t break the curse, who would still grow old and die in a blink of his eye?
