Free 1 Witchy Business by Eve Paludan, Stuart Sharp Page B

paused. “Niall—”
    “Elle, please. I want to take you dancing.”
    “But we can’t. Dinner was one thing, but dancing with someone whose case I am investigating…no, I can’t. Niall.”
    That was what I said. What I felt …that was all about the fear worming its way up through me. The fear of what would happen if I stepped into the middle of a crowded club. The onslaught of feelings that would crush me utterly.
    Niall nodded firmly. “We can.” He put an arm around me, and I could feel the tight strength of him pressed up against me. “You won’t go mad, Elle. I promise. I won’t let you. I will be right there with you every moment.”
    I glanced down, still trying to find an excuse. “They won’t even let us in. I mean, I’m still in my work clothes.”
    “And even dressed like that, you will still be the most beautiful woman in the room,” Niall whispered. He drew me forward gently to the door, where not only did they let us in, but they didn’t even make us wait in line. Right then, it seemed impossible to resist him.
    Inside, the steady thrum of the music was almost deafening. People were crushed together in a space that barely seemed big enough to hold them all, wedged between a bar and a small stage. On the stage, a DJ was pumping out track after track at a volume that made it feel like the music was pulsing right through my body.
    The music and the emotions both moved through me like a psychic river. I clamped down on my talents as tightly as I could, standing there with my fists balled, closing my eyes against the multicolored flare of strobe lights, while around me I could feel fierce waves of feelings battering against the edges of my shields. Joy and exhilaration, desire and the simple need to be one with the rest of that huddled sea of flesh…I couldn’t keep it out. I couldn’t.
    “Breathe, Elle,” Niall said, standing in front of me, taking my hands, rubbing my fingers and my palms with utter gentleness. Somehow, his presence seemed like a calm spot amid the rest of it. “Breathe and let it in.”
    “Let it in?” There barely seemed to be enough of me to shape the words among all the chaos that was battering against me. “I can’t. It will crush me. I can’t.”
    “You can,” Niall said softly, his fingers running gently across my knuckles. “I’m doing it. Do I look mad to you?”
    I opened my eyes then, staring at him in something that felt close to wonder. How could he stand there so calmly in this thumping, thrumming bucket of people’s emotions, not to mention ours? Why wasn’t he bunched tight with tension like I was, trying to keep out the raw power of the emotions around us? Or, if he really did have his defenses down, why wasn’t he on his knees, clutching at his head and going steadily insane?
    “Trust me, Elle,” Niall said. “Let it in. All of it. I am with you here and I shall not forsake you.”
    I wasn’t sure what it was in his voice that I latched onto in that moment, but there was something in that vow that I knew without thinking that I could trust. Something utterly reassuring. Something that made it sound like nothing in the world could hurt me if he was at my side. Since I was standing there, my whole head feeling like a tin shack with people pounding on the walls from outside, that had to be better, didn’t it?
    I took a breath, then I let my defenses drop. All of them.
    The first rush of emotion from the crowd almost overwhelmed me. I couldn’t even pick out individual emotions in that second. There was just a wall of feeling, only it wasn’t a wall, because walls couldn’t have run through me, feeling like a hundred people were trying to fit into my skin all at once. For a moment, I thought I might fall, but I felt strong hands holding me up. His hands. Holding me in place and steady while more emotion poured into me. Poured in past my brain and straight into my soul with the glorious collective emotion of a crowd having fun and letting