Page 37 of Which Witch is Willing?
So mired had he been in his own misery that Nick hadn’t even heard Julian come. But then, Julian Roarke had always been one slick motherfucker. Like the virulent lifeforms that were his birthright, you didn’t see him until it was already too late and you were bleeding out the ass.
With one dexterous sweep, Julian cleared his long coat tails from the backs of his thighs so he could lower himself without catching them.
Nick took his proffered hand, gloved in the finest, buttery leather and was once again surprised at the wiry strength in his brother’s grip when Julian hauled him upright. Nick remained seated, still unsure of trying his legs.
Unfailingly polite, Julian did not stand, his knees bent and his weight on the heels of his hand-tooled leather boots so they could converse at a level as egalitarian as possible.
“May I ask what you said that vexed her so?”
Some of the seizing pain having passed, Nick tried a breath. “I just told her that out of all the women I had known in my millennia on the planet, she’s the one I wanted.”
Julian narrowed eyes the color of a scrap of sky. “Were those the exact words you employed?”
“Well, not the exact words,” Nick admitted. “I might have mentioned how ironic it was that I would fall for a woman with her disadvantages.”
Chagrin dug a delicate crease at the center of Julian’s forehead as he sighed. “Have you?” he asked. “Fallen for her, that is.”
Something turned in Nick’s gut, thankfully several inches north of the still-throbbing heat.
At first he thought it might be indigestion from one of the earth witch’s meatless lunches or perhaps his testicles descending back into place from his diaphragm.
But no.
As much as he disliked those particular sensations, they weren’t unfamiliar to him. They didn’t come with the strange spreading warmth he felt now. Like someone had tipped a jar of heated honey inside his chest.
“It’s possible,” he said to Julian. “That I might have a kind of attachment to her that exceeds a general feeling of not-hate.”
“Nicholas,” Julian said, pinning him with the icy edge of his unfettered regard. “Slice the excrement. We know each other of old.”
“I fucking love her, Julian.” Nick paused, something like wonder dipping him into a beat of silence. “Holy shit. I really do.”
The corners of Julian’s lips tipped up in a knowing smile. “Then you must tell her. Preferably in a way that doesn’t involve insulting everything she holds dear.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” Slowly, carefully, and with infinite deference to his aching scrotal region, Nick rolled over to all fours and pushed himself to his feet. “You saw how this turned out.”
Julian followed suit, lithe in his black suit as he stood. “Are you familiar with Pride and Prejudice?”
“You mean that one book by that one mopey chick who wrote lots of books about lots of other mopey chicks?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Julian said, procuring an antiquated volume from the pocket of his suitcoat and handing it to Nick. Like the trunk he kept in his room, it seemed Julian’s bottomless pockets could produce any much-needed tome upon demand.
Like Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins caused explosive diarrhea and imminent death.
“It might be helpful for you to study the case of one Mr. Darcy as you seem to share a similar penchant for inserting your loafers in your mouth,” Julian said.
“And what did this Darcy fucker do to fix it?”
“In Mr. Darcy’s case, it was to arrange for payment of an annual income so the heroine’s sister can be legally wed to the man she’d eloped with, thereby warming the heart of the heroine and securing her affections.”
“Jules, you beautiful fucking brain!” Nick clapped his brother on the back, seized by a sudden onslaught of inspiration. “A grand gesture. Bitches love grand gestures!”
“Yes, well, perhaps you ought not state your intentions in just such a way.” Julian dusted Nick’s dirty handprint from his velvet smoking jacket, cordial as a cat.
“Freak not, brother,” Nick said, already jogging toward the Maserati parked on the street in front of the De Moray manse. “I got this.”
18
Igot this.
