I place my palm to his and he grips my fingers tightly. “We should make love while we do it. It will increase the strength of the spell,” I whisper.
“I am ready when you are,” he says.
Oh yes, he sure is. I raise myself up over him and sink slowly onto him as he grips my hip with his other hand.
I start to mutter the words from the pages in my head as I move over him and my magickal wind starts to swirl around us. The candles scattered around the room flare up as I light them with my mind, the flames licking the air. The wind changes to a fiery vortex the same as when Xane and I performed this ritual and I hope against hope that CK never finds out about that. I carry on, muttering the chant as he picks up the words and says them after me.
“Do you feel it?” I whisper to him when the words are complete.
He nods, his eyes wide with wonder. “I feel your Power. Christ, Aefre.” He closes his eyes and I do as well and kiss him deeply as our blood flows through each other’s vein’s, the Power of the ritual keeping the wounds opens to allow the sharing of our blood, and we come together, crushing each other’s hands as our wounds heal completely.
“Fuck me,” he says, opening his eyes. “That was incredible.”
“I know.”
“You are more Powerful than you know, Aefre. Why don’t you use it?”
“I’m scared,” I say softly.
“What of?”
“Remember what Tiamat said that fi
rst time? About not letting it corrupt me? I’m scared that it will. And need I already remind you of alternate me? Other CK said the Power had gone to her head. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“You will never end up like that.”
“How do you know? Maybe your other self said that to her, five hundred years ago.”
“I won’t let it,” he says. “We will be together soon; a true couple and I will be your anchor.”
I smile at him as I stand up, adjusting my clothes. “One of these days we should really disrobe entirely. Might be slightly more romantic,” I say as I pick up his ripped shirt and hand it to him.
“I didn’t peg you as the romantic type. What do you expect me to do with this?” he asks, taking it.
“It might be nice, once in a while, to be swept off my feet. Put it on,” I say and shrug. “I thought you might like everyone to see how I ripped it off you to get my hands on you.” I wink at him and he laughs.
“Noted. I didn’t think of it that way,” he admits and quickly puts it on, minus all the buttons and very clear claw mark slashes down the front. “Yes. I like this look,” he adds as he puts his jacket on. I am staring at the photo on the bedside cabinet of Cole and me, the one of us downstairs. CK sees me staring at it and comes across to me. “You will still be together,” he says softly. “You saw he was still there in the future.”
“Yes, but he was in pain. He didn’t leave me because he wanted to. Something happened and he gave up on me, on us.”
“And I will be eternally grateful,” he says but at my look he adds, “I won’t apologize for wanting to be with you, Aefre, so don’t expect me to not be happy.”
I just nod and we move over to the door where I undo the spell. Can’t say that I am all that surprised when I open it, and everyone is standing there with their ears pressed close. Eavesdropping toads.
“May we help you?” CK says, all smug.
“Err, we were worried, we couldn’t hear anything, and we couldn’t get in,” Devon says.
“That was the idea,” CK replies, sliding his arm around me and bringing the attention to his ripped shirt. “In fact, come tomorrow until Thursday, we wish to be completely undisturbed. We are going away, and no one is to follow us or try to find us.”
“But what if there is an emergency?” Cade asks.
“You will be coming with us,” I say with a hard look at CK who shrugs. He isn’t bothered about Cade as he knows he won’t be a distraction.
“Fine,” he says. “But find me something to do other than sit around and watch you two.”
“Only in your dreams would you be sitting around watching us,” I snort. “Where we are going, you will have plenty to keep you occupied and Nico will be there.”