Chapter 22

"Nathaniel?" I asked wondering what was happening to me. If this was a dream, then I wondered why I didn't feel any better. All my injuries were giving me hell.
"Julia, come on, let me help you," he said lifting me off the ground. It took me a moment to realise that this wasn’t a dream, because then I saw Michael and Kelsie.
"You called him?" I shouted trying to stand up, but Nathaniel only held me closer. Michael ignored me. When I glanced at Kelsie she looked away.
"You didn't want to go to the hospital, Miss. Taylor, so I thought that your boyfriend—"
"He is not my boyfriend," I said as we approached Nathaniel’s limo. Roberto opened the door as Nathaniel placed me in the back.
"Thank you again, and you too, Kelsie," I heard him say.
"You know who I am?" my friend asked.
"Of course, you’re Julia’s best friend and Lucinda’s PR. Come and see me later. I need to give you a raise.”
I didn't hear the rest of the conversation, because I closed my eyes hoping to rest for a moment. I felt Nathaniel sitting next to me and then Roberto started the engine.
"Where are you taking me, to your apartment?" I asked later on.
"No, we can't go there, I’ve called a healer to the hotel room. She’s going to patch you up," he explained breathing heavily. "Then you’re going to explain what happened to you tonight."
I was going to tell him that he had no right to know my business, but I was too tried to even speak.
The drive wasn't long and when I started hearing traffic I relaxed, knowing that I was around people again. Nathaniel insisted on carrying me upstairs. My feet were still bleeding, and I was so tired that I wouldn’t be able to walk anyway.
He didn't take me to a fancy hotel, this one was small and away from town but beautiful. He laid me on the bed and glanced at my feet; they were red, bruised and looked like they went through a meat grinder.
"I won’t ask you anything now, the healer will be here any minute, but you can't imagine what I was thinking when that shifter called me!" Nathaniel shouted pacing around the room. I just wanted to close my eyes and drift to sleep. The nightmare was finally over, and I had two days off, time to recover and hide my wounds.
"He had no right to call you, this has nothing to do with you. It’s complicated, very complicated," I said not opening my eyes. In any other situation I would have kissed him, despite the guilt, but right now the painful pulsing in my body was making it difficult to bear or even talk.
Nathaniel was going to say something but then we heard a knock at the door. He swore under his breath, possibly because he wanted to take me across his knee and spank me.
When I opened my eyes again I had a very short hag leaning over me. Her face was covered with warts and she had a large nose with a pimple in the middle. She must have been around for a hundred years.
"You have to take her clothes off. She is filthy, and stinks of trolls and shifters," the woman ordered, narrowing her eyes at my feet.
Nathaniel clenched his fists but obeyed and began to undo my soaked pyjamas. I had nothing on underneath and this whole situation wasn't erotic at all, even though I was lying in only my panties on a clean bed.
"Now leave, and let me work," the woman barked, pushing Nathaniel through the door. I could tell straight away that he wasn't too happy about that.
"My name is Jacaba. I'll wash your feet first and then apply a balsam that will heat up your veins. It will heal much quicker."
"Okay," I breathed out. Jacaba was the oddest healer that I’d ever came across and I kept wondering what her story was. When something in witch’s life didn't go how it supposed to and she went through some sort of emotional breakdown, she turned into a hag, that’s why I was curious.
She disappeared in the bathroom then brought hot water and started to clean my feet along with the rest of my body. She was muttering to herself the whole time, and I kept feeling magic evaporating through her fingers. Her touch was gentle but when she started to extract pieces of glass it freaking hurt. After I was cleaned up I saw the extent of my injuries. In my head I was trying to go over and over what happened to me that night. The clock on the wall was showing four in the morning. My dad had probably already got the call about the mermaid. The entire police department was after me. Nothing was going as it was supposed to. It looked like I killed that girl while I wasn’t lucid. When my magic took over I lost a piece of me, my own soul, the darkness was taking over.
I clenched my teeth as the healer started applying the balsam. My feet were already sore and now my legs were burning like hell. Once the magical balsam was on the hag took care of my forehead. My stomach heaved when I thought about that troll and what would have happened if Kelsie and Michael hadn’t shown up.
When she moved over my forehead, she was still whispering; her eyes were strange, wide and clam. My magic was flaring up, tossing my insides up and down. Soon enough I drifted off to sleep after the healer promised that I wouldn’t have any dreams. Also, before I closed my eyes she leaned over and said:
"That man out there loves you, but he’s greedy and possessive. You’ll never get enough of him, so you must let go."
I wanted to reply that it was all my fault. I just had to make a decision. He wanted to cancel his engagement for me, and I needed to let him do it. Theses lies had gone too far. Sometime later I drifted off.
It was the middle of the night when I woke up. For a brief moment I had no idea where I was, but memories washed over me like a waterfall in the mountains. The sheets smelled of lavender and all my muscles ached. I was still in the hotel where Nathaniel left me with the healer. My energy picked up, long annoying tingles of magic started moving down my body.
"I want to know what happened to you in the past few hours."
The voice startled me; it came out of nowhere boiling my blood with fear. I sat up seeing Nathaniel sitting in the chair next to the bed bare chested. He was holding a glass of Scotch in his right hand.
"How long have you been sitting here?" I asked knowing that when I avoided answering, he’d get mad.
Indeed, he narrowed his eyes taking a long deep breath like he was trying to calm down, the vein in his neck throbbed dangerously fast.
"Julia, this isn't a joke. If you force me, I’ll call your father and then you’d have to explain it to him," he said placing his glass on the side table. He got up and, in the darkness, I tried to picture his body, admiring his chest as memories of us in my bathroom flashed through my mind.
Nathaniel sat on the bed next to me.
"Okay, fine, I’ll explain but please don’t get mad at me?"
"Too late, I'm fucking furious with you, not that it matters." He shrugged, touching my hand. Why did it always have to be so hard being around him, listening to the sound of his voice?
"Just calm down and I’ll explain. I started having blackouts a couple of months ago, the first one happened when I was with Quentin…"
Nathaniel wasn’t saying anything, but he grew more and more agitated as I was talking about my magic, about Jennifer, Ella and then finally getting to last night.
When my voice started shaking he climbed into the bed with me and pulled me to his chest. For a moment I was seeing flashes and the body of that girl. I was the one who chased her.
"This is beyond what I imagined. Why didn't you mention anything earlier when we—"
"Fucked?"
"Yes, when we had the best sex of our lives," he added with a tone of amusement in his voice.
"We can't keep seeing each other anymore. I have to talk to Quentin and you to Meredith. We are good together, but I could be arrested anytime soon and charged with multiple homicide," I hissed.
"I'm going to call Meredith now and tell her about us and you’re going to do the same, then we will deal with the rest," he said and reached for his phone by the dresser.
"No, no and no. I can't deal with this right now. If I don’t control my magic my mother is going to die. I’ll kill more people who are close to me."
Nathaniel sighed.
"In that case, let me talk to those guys who are teaching you. They aren’t doing anything to stop this from happening. You nearly died today, and I can’t imagine what that old bastard, Gordon, would’ve done to you."
A cold chill raced over my spine when I thought about those stone-cold vampire eyes. Something turned inside my stomach when I thought about staying in his hands a moment longer. I was lucky, really lucky.
"No, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the training, so you have to pretend that you don’t know anything. It’s not only about me, it’s also about Ella!"
"Stop stressing and let’s go to sleep. You need rest," he growled pulling me down to the bed. His body was attached to mine and I felt his erection, so I couldn't even think about sleeping.
"We won’t have sex even if I really want to, you’re injured."
Somehow, I managed to fall asleep, anxious that maybe the next time I’d wake up, I’d be somewhere else, killing another person. For some reason I didn’t dream and in the late morning I opened my eyes feeling much better. There were still some scratches on my feet, but my energy was back. It felt like Nathaniel was the one who energised me. The air was charged with magic that circulated throughout the room igniting my body. He was asleep snuggled next to me.
This was what I always dreamed of when I was near him, to wake up in the morning in his arms. My heart thumped faster, and I knew that even though I was the dirty mistress I was still in love with him. For many days after he left for Geneva I kept telling myself that we were never compatible. Elf and vampire; no one ever heard about relationship like that ever working out, but now the differences didn't matter. He came to my rescue.
The smell of lime zest and lemon caused an eruption of those old emotions to swirl inside me again. And then just like that, a light switch, my desire was back, and I wanted him more than anyone else. The raw feelings were splitting my soul, our closeness was slowly killing me. We were meant for each other against the odds and other paranormals.
I tried to move slightly not to wake him up, but a loud gasp escaped his lips and he started gently kissing my neck. We were spooned against each other closer than we’d ever been, but I wanted to be the one who could take control.
Instead of letting him lead me or listening to my reasonable voice that screamed for me to end it, I dove beneath the covers and started kissing his stomach. Guilt was still there making me aware that if I was going to head down this path, then things between us were going to be even more complicated than they were now.
"Firecracker, what are you doing to me?" He moaned as I sucked on his nipples moving my hands over his warmth chest. I was drunk, just being there, tasting him again. Then my lips brushed over his stomach while my hands moved over the waistband of his boxers. He growled saying something in his native French.
He was fully erect, and I needed to have him inside me, but I wanted to pleasure him, knowing that the time we had together was limited. I pulled down his boxers and started running my tongue over his hardness, gently at first. The waves of heat and magic swirled over my body, increasing the pulsation between my legs.
I took him into my mouth tasting the saltiness.
"God, I'm going to explode, Julia.” He moaned as I started moving my head up and down licking the head of his cock, then taking his length in my mouth. I was more turned on by him being in a state of ecstasy than ever before. He lifted his hips and I continued to lick and suck. His hands pushed my head down and I took it all.
When he was close I lifted myself from beneath the covers and continued giving him a hand job until he exploded. I grabbed the tissue box from the dresser and cleaned him up, shaking with anticipation of what would happen next.
He stretched his long arms.
“You're going to regret that, in a good way, my firecracker." He pulled me towards his chest. "We need to get rid of these."
He was talking about my panties and before I could protest he pushed me on top of him, his breathing was heavy, and he encased me in his arms; our bodies were sticky with sweat. It was glorious.
He kissed me violently to the point where my lips became swollen. His hardness was positioned near my core, but his hands began moving over my back. Sparks of magical energy began floating over my exposed skin. Nathaniel squeezed my breast. My breath was short as his tongue dipped inside my mouth.
He turned me around and dove into my breasts, kissing and nibbling my nipples. I cried out hearing something explode but I didn't care, because his hand was moving between my legs.
“Don't worry, I'm just getting started," he said with a wicked smile and then thrust two fingers inside me; his thumb began circling my clit. My head started to swim, and I moaned as fire exploded inside me.
My energy ran through my body making my skin supersensitive. The heat between my legs kept growing and I tried to breathe, but I couldn't stop thinking he was going to make me come.
His lips were on mine again and I panted feeling an approaching orgasm, but he withdrew his fingers.
"What are you doing? You’re an arsehole," I shouted. A whacky grin appeared on his flushed face.
"Shhhh, stop being impatient. I’m planning to fuck you all day long until you beg me to stop," he whispered and with his knee, he spread my legs and trust himself inside me. Nathaniel wasn’t a man who made me wait for my pleasure; he started slow moving inside me.
Many more orgasms later I fell asleep, exhausted on the bed, drenched with sweat and soaked in his scent. The room smelled of sweat, sex and blood. He drank from me, but only a mouthful, controlling himself like he was supposed to.
We lay naked next to each other high on love, knowing that this couldn't continue until we came clean. The sneaking around was killing us both. It was late afternoon when Nathaniel ordered room service and forced me eat the most delicious breakfast.
"I have to go home today, I’ve been here since last night and Quentin’s probably left me tons of messages," I said stuffing my face with fresh eggs and toast. For the first time I had a chance to take a closer look at the room: cream carpets, large bed and pink wallpaper. Nathaniel had chosen wisely, staying away from a place where he would be expected to stay. He stood from the bed and put his boxers and jeans on. His hair was way too long, and I thought that yet again I was completely and utterly in love with him.