Page 46 of Trapped By Clocks and Hearts

A snort of laughter escaping Allie startled me from my reverie.

I gave her a wary look. “What?”

“Nothing.” She bit her lip. “The uh…Duchess was telling stories about your dalliances back in the day. The story with the pineapple in particular was quite amusing. She refers to your…gift,” she ventured the word, “as something kind of big, powerful, and dangerous.”

I huffed. “If it worked on you, I wouldn’t have to bother explaining it.”

Allie rolled her eyes. “It’s just that it’s all so superficial.”

I shrugged. “Either way, it works. That’s all I care about. It’s my job.”

She paused from her task. “So, how do you do it? You know, seduce all of those women,” she prompted. “Is it a spell?”

I shot her a look.

For the briefest of moments, I thought her gaze dropped to my mouth. “I’m curious.”

“Sometimes…” I mumbled. “Sometimes I cast a spell. Sometimes I just look into their eyes. Sometimes it takes a kiss…” I couldn’t help my own gaze dropping to her mouth.

Tamping down an irrational urge to move closer, I took a slow, deep breath. “But as we’ve already established, for some reason, the spell doesn’t work on you, so there’s no way you would understand.”

Her eyebrow rose. “So you’ve actually cast this spell on me before and it didn’t work?”

Meeting her gaze once again, I gave her a pointed, mocking look. “Are you in love with me yet?”

Those red lips quirked up in amusement. “No…” A wistful faraway look crossed her face, hinting at remorse, even embarrassment. “I don’t fully remember but…I feel like it’s always been like that with me though. I don’t think I’ll ever truly give my heart to anybody.”

A gratifying spark of satisfaction, of self-assuredness warmed my chest. I studied the curve of her smooth cheek, that graceful neck, the way her hair tumbled over her shoulders. “But…I stole your heart. Doesn’t that make it mine?”

Those honey-brown eyes snapped over to meet my languid prompting gaze in surprise. She scoffed in mocking to recover, taking my statement as if it was a joke. “Yeah. Right.”

Turning her attention back to treating my wound, she cleared her throat. “So do you miss your clock tower? This whole swamp is a bit dreary, isn’t it?”

My skin prickled under her butterfly touch. She was stroking the balm in circles to even it out, wary not to press too hard on my injury. Slightly disoriented, I grunted noncommittally.

“Chez said you hadn’t been across the river in a long while,” she went on, not waiting to hear my responses to her questions. “I don’t know. It felt more normal to me there. Without the magic.”

Almost offended again, I narrowed my eyes. “What sort of mad world do you come from anyway? There’s no magic at all? None whatsoever?”

“Well, nothing like what I’ve seen you do, that’s for sure. But I suppose there are other kinds of magic in my world.”

“Like what?”

Her eyes clouded over. “I can’t…explain it right now. But I feel like…there is.” She paused to give her head a brisk shake as if to clear it. “There.” Finishing up with my wound, she moved to sit back on the couch. With a deep sigh, she leaned her head against my uninjured shoulder, shifting her head near the hollow of my neck, likely involuntarily.

I could imagine she was exhausted from the day’s events and injuries certainly didn’t help fatigue.

My shoulder was getting stiff from the awkward angle of her leaning against me. I sighed in resignation and put my arm around her shoulders. “You need to rest.”

Somehow she melted against me. “It’s already a struggle to fall asleep without the ticking of the big clock. I guess I’d gotten used to it. It’s…soothing, I guess.” A faint wave of calm was slowly working its way through her aura. A relief. A settledness. She blinked as though trying to keep awake but her eyelids were drooping. “Your world is indeed amazing. I wonder what it was like before… before all this… before you lost your…”

Her mumbling turned incoherent and then she passed out.

I shook my head. I could barely remember the days when I didn’t have to put up with an annoying helpless trouble-seeking female mortal. She didn’t even realize how lucky she was. In her helpless state, without me to protect her, she would have been completely vulnerable.

Once she was quietly snoring, I set Allie down across the couch properly before straightening up. Her hand was resting slack on her chest, where her heart ought to be. The moonlight shone on her messy hair that had fallen partway across her forehead.

Checking the urge to find a blanket to cover her with, I spun around to leave.