Chapter Fourteen
I slept the night inthe bedroom Holly had prepared for me, and when I entered the dining room for breakfast, Fin sat at the table and the Captain hovered near the coffee pot.
“Morning,” I called out as I took the seat across from Fin.
Heat washed across my skin, but I ignored it. Would this be our life now? Both of us leaking emotions and the other politely pretending they couldn’t feel it. The warm simmer under my skin, the answering pool of lust in my core, told me I wouldn’t survive that way for long.
I avoided looking at Fin while I scooped some French toast onto my plate. “I feel sore today. Like in my muscles, but also in a new way. Like I piled thirty extra pounds on me, wandered around for hours, and only just now let them fall away.”
Fin answered. “You can become fatigued from magical use. It’s common among those first learning to use their powers. As we said yesterday, it’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can control it and the longer you can wield it. It’ll take time, just like your healing.”
I glanced over at the Captain who stared into his coffee like it contained the answers to life’s questions. Obviously they’d been discussing something serious when I’d walked in the room, but I decided against prodding whatever the hell drama it was.
“Well, I want to hit the mats again today, but to physically work out. I feel stiff in my skin as well. It may sound silly but I feel like I need to re-situate inside it, fit everything in the right place again.” I shoved toast in my mouth and smiled at Fin around my bulging cheeks.
Let’s see him get all hot and bothered by that.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “We can see about your range of motion after the surgery and healing.”
At my look, he added. “I promise, I’m not playing babysitter. We can work out and you can decide when you’ve had enough.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but I let it go because Holly had made French toast and I loved that woman so much for it.
As I shoved the delicious food in my face, I thought about tracking Sol. Guilt swamped me, but I shoved it down, praying he didn’t catch the emotion in the moments I’d let it flare inside me. I risked a peek at him, but he sliced into his French toast with focus and precision. Comparatively, my plate looked like a minefield, the bread and syrup mixed up in haphazard pieces.
It only cemented my choice to keep things about Sol and tracking her to myself until I truly figured it all out. It wasn’t just my own need to save my ass from being handed to me again. I remembered his anger, his hurt, all the things he tried to hide every time we flipped over a rock and nothing turned up. No answer, no sister, no way to move forward.
I felt guilty, but I wouldn’t apologize for protecting him in this. For waiting until I could turn over that rock and hand him something tangible. I wanted to give him that knowledge most of all, put joy on his face for once, instead of hurt.
The French toast had turned dry in my mouth as my mind had fallen so far down the rabbit hole of my thoughts. I shoved the plate away and stood. Both men eyed me, then my plate, and me again.
Fin recovered first. “You okay?”
I headed toward the door. “Yeah, fine. I’ll meet you downstairs when you’re done.”
I wasn’t running away, I told myself. I was choosing to focus my attention elsewhere. Hopefully, sparring with Fin would help get me out of my head and back into my body.
. It would take time to work my magic, and it would take time to feel comfortable with myself again. The more I focused on both, the quicker I could get back to my life and pray others would stop trying to kill me. Well, at least when I wasn’t attempting to kill them first. I didn’t hold a grudge for self-defense... usually.
I threw myself onto the mats and stretched my legs slowly, savoring the way each loosened and eased as I shifted. Already, my thoughts were less murky, more focused.
I sighed out loud when I twisted into a new position.
“Are you stretching or thinking?” Fin asked, walking down the stairs then into the workout room.
He’d dressed in loose gray sweatpants and a black t-shirt. I hadn’t noticed at breakfast, but he’d braided his hair in a French braid, the tail curving around the long column of his neck.
I was glad I’d been too focused on food at breakfast or I would have embarrassed myself. Exactly like I was right now with him staring at me.
His little smirk told me he knew exactly the flavor of feeling rolling inside me and appreciated the compliment. When he reached the edge of the mats, he ran through his own stretching routine and then kicked off his shoes and socks to stand near my ankles.
I peered up the long line of his toned body and gulped. “Uh, give me a minute.”
He shrugged and stripped his shirt off over his head. It hit the mat on the far side of the room while he jumped and jogged around to warm up.
Holy Sweet Mother of Mercy.Men should not look like that. Every inch of his body was like chiseled ivory. While I knew what he looked like half naked from my short, and completely innocent, jaunt to his bedroom, I hadn’t seen all of this.
I couldn’t glance away, even though I was sure he could feel every damn bit of my reaction to him. “That’s not fair. How do you expect me to fight you when you’ve got all that happening?”
His smirk confirmed my suspicions. He liked me staring at him. “What? You’ve never fought with someone you’ve found attractive before?”
“Well, sure, but it’s usually like hey, this guy has really soft hair as I grab it and shove his face into a bar top.” I waved at his bare skin. “This is not the same thing.”
“Distractions can get you killed.”
I leaned back from my stretch.
“Fine, you want to play that game?” I tugged the hem of my shirt over my head and tossed it to join his. “You ready?”
The slow, soft flutter of heat across the bond from his reaction to me made me understand the smile on his face. It felt like someone had dug their fingers into the muscles at the back of my neck and massaged it gently, but firm enough that I had to let out a moan after each pass. Shit, this wasn’t simply a distraction, but a damned disturbance.
It took control to keep myself firmly seated on the mat and finish my stretching. He stopped his warmup and simply stared at me each of my twists and turns punctuated by the heady feeling pulsing down the bond from him.
It hit me then, before he’d even laid a hand on me, that I was going to fuck him. And it would not be a gentle thing between us. Not with how much tension had built and stretched in place of our pretend indifference.
I stood and hopped around a few times, but it wasn’t necessary. I’d been warmed up since he walked in. “Ready?”
He made a noise in his throat.
I let him come at me first, but he didn’t throw a physical punch. He used his magic and clocked me straight in the face. It hurt like a bitch.
“What the fuck was that?”
He closed the distance between us and lifted my chin to inspect my cheek. “Sorry, I assumed since magic was on the table, it was on the table for sparring too. Are you okay?”
I rubbed my cheek and jerked my chin from his grip. “Fine. I didn’t think about it, but you’re right. I won’t have time to tell the magic wielding bad guys not to hit me with it since I’m a student driver.”
His answering smile curled through me. I shoved him back with my hands and then used my fae magic to push him further with a blast of air.
“Good,” he said, and all I heard was the bedroom voice he used to say it.
I took another punch to the face that made my eyes water, and he winced as my leg went out from under me.
“You need to learn to block,” he said. “Use your power like a shield, sort of how you did with the Captain, but not directly against your body.”
I used the same air I’d hit him with and hardened it around me, curving it into a sort of wall. “Okay, try again, see if it worked.”
Fin stared at me as though he was trying to knock me over, his gaze hard.
When nothing happened to me and then he smiled, I couldn’t help but smile back. “It worked. Yes!”
The second my emotions surged, the air fell away, and his hit came through.
I stumbled back and fell onto my ass. “Damn it.”
He strode back over to me and crouched on the mat. “I told you magic is about controlling your emotion. It’s about balance above all.”
Easy for him to say, with years of practice, and not currently being assaulted with all this extra emotional output.
I blinked up at him, my mouth falling open. “You say it’s about control and yet I can feel everything you’re shooting at me through the bond. Things I don’t think you would say out loud.”
He studied me. “You don’t think I’d tell you you’re beautiful. Or that I want you?”
Oh, so we’re going straight there.
The easy confidence he put into the words touched me. There was no shame and no fear. How long had he felt this way, though? I didn’t trust it, especially with my mage blood setting me apart, and knowing how he felt about mages in general.
He leaned forward. “I never realized how much you do that, tuck yourself away for fear of others seeing too much of what you feel. It doesn’t work as well when you can’t hide it, right?”
Him calling me out on my shit didn’t put me in a mood for romance. And yet, I knew that when he looked at me, he saw me. Not my magic, not my abilities, not how I could help him.
“I can’t hide anymore,” I whispered.
He shook his head and traced the edge of my jaw with his thumb. “No, but you couldn’t hide before either. Not from me. I let you believe you could.”
I slapped his hand away and shoved him back with my magic. He landed hard on his back with a gentle oof.
When he moved to get up, I curved my magic around him, the same way I did before, but instead of keeping things out, I used it to keep him contained. He stayed there, poking and prodding my shield with his own magic until I hovered over him, staring down.
His voice came out soft, as if he called out from inside another room. “Impressive, but how long can you hold it?”
I shrugged and decided to get a little payback. Payback and reward rolled into one. My favorite kind of treat.
He watched me, his magic falling away in a shimmer around us. I pulled the shield off him and knelt down beside his hip, then swung one leg over his body and straddled him, aligning my hips just below his navel.
He had a foot of height on me so I couldn’t reach his face easily from my position. When he moved to grab hold of me around the waist, I shoved him down with my hands and my magic.
I gave myself this brief moment to enjoy the warm heat of his skin against my palm. But that enjoyment proved too distracting. He flipped us so I lay on my back and he pressed me down into the mats.
“Nice trick,” he murmured, bringing his face in line with mine. “You’re learning quickly, but always be ready for distractions, in any form, magical or physical.”
He arched into me, and the firm length of his cock rubbing against my inner thigh brought the entire world around us into sharp focus.
I stared up at him, wondering how we’d gone from polite civility to the overwhelming pressure building around us right now.
Instead of giving myself the opening to ruin everything, I cupped the back of his neck and dragged his face to mine. Before I finished closing the distance, I halted and gave myself a second to just look at him. His eyes glowed a deep aquamarine. His lips looked full and soft. I’d been thinking about kissing them for far longer than I would admit under oath.
“Zoey,” he whispered, his gaze roving over my features the same way I studied his.
All I wanted right now was him inside me. My body felt molten, liquid and so unfulfilled I ached from it. No man in my life had ever amped me up this much, especially without touching me first.
“What’s happening?” I whispered. “Is this—”
“Real?” he finished. “What do you think?”
I skimmed my fingers through his silky soft hair. “I don’t know. It could be the bond, maybe it’s influencing us.”
He shook his head and then swallowed as his eyes dropped to my lips. “No, the bond only shows what’s present. It can’t fabricate something that isn’t there. Nor amplify it. It shows only the truth.”
As if confirming his words, another blast of heat spread through my body. Along with it came a tendril of something much more illicit, a deep need I couldn’t even begin to understand. Not because I didn’t feel it myself, but because I did, and I’d pushed it away, denied it for so long.
“Zoey.”
I met his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Are you going to kiss me or not? Because I’m about to come out of my skin if you don’t touch more of me.”
I swallowed heavily, my heart threatening to tear itself out of my chest. “Ward the room. If anyone interrupts, I can’t guarantee their safety.”