“Did your crystals just zap me?” he asked, a wary expression creasing his face. I tried to sit up, and he placed a firm handagainst my chest, and I swear I got as much voltage from that touch as I had from the crystals. “Lie down. You’re not completelyhealed. The internal injuries remain.”
Which explained why my lungs ached with each deep breath. “I just want to remove the crystals.”
We didn’t need to be zapped on top of everything else. Lifting my head enough to get them off, Logan grabbed their chains,careful not to touch the crystals as he placed them on his side table. He eyed them for a long moment, assessing, before returningthe full force of his gaze on me. It was too much. Caught in his focus, I half wondered if I might not have been safer withthe monster.
Still, choices made in a dying moment couldn’t be held against me, so I relaxed and let him press his hands to my side oncemore, that all-consuming heat filling me. When my insides started to knit together, I jerked and caught myself on one strong,inked forearm. His eyes snapped to meet mine, but I couldn’t let go. It was an anchor stabilizing me in the storm of his power.
His power burned but it wasn’t fire; it was creation, and beyond what any of us should control. My energy responded to his,now that he was sending it deeper, and just as it had that day in his first spellcaster class, my power rose, bringing withit a completely different sort of ache.
It started with a pulse in my core, until need shattered through my gut and out into my limbs. Visions of my dreams filled my mind, those mornings waking with the echoing memories of his hands on my body. In real life, we’d never touched like this, but in my dreams he knew me intimately. “I didn’t know you had tattoos,” I whispered. Even in my dreams, that part of him was always in shadow. His eyes were the only part that reflected clearly.
“Why would you?” He assessed me. Delved deeper. Stripped back the essence of my being.
Unsure if this was blood loss, or the pure presence of Logan, I tried to shake off the need flooding me. Shake off the familiaritythat had me wanting to lift my head and press my lips to his. His perfect full lips that haunted me.
An animalistic rumble shook his chest, and when my hand on his arm started to glow, I was close enough to see his eyes darken.“Logan,” I mumbled, lifting my other hand toward his face.
There was a moment, as his eyes deepened to moss, that I swore he was going to kick me out of his room. Instead, he leanedcloser enough that minty evergreen invaded my nostrils.
“What are you doing, Paisley?”
The way he asked that question, it was as if he already knew the answer. An answer that was carved into our bones, as permanentas the power within us. Later, I’d blame my next actions on almost dying and being hopped up on our combined powers, but fornow I was beyond such rational thought.
The driving force within me was need, desire, and desperation. The dreams had brought me to my knees,literally, many times, and tonight their hold was relentless. I lifted my head to find the pain manageable, the movement bringing me closer to Logan’s face. We both stilled as energy crackled between us. “Fuck it.” I lost my mind and thrust myself forward to slam my lips to his.
There was a beat where his mouth parted, and then another beat where we were locked together until he tore away. Shame crashedinto me as hard as the lust had, and Logan stared down at me as if he had no fucking idea what I was. Feeling the flush ofembarrassment coat my cheeks, along with most of my body—this wasbig shame—I was about to stammer out an apology, when another low rumble escaped his body.
His hand shot under the back of my head faster than I could track, pulling me against him as his tongue parted my lips. Thekiss deepened so fast that my head spun, and without conscious thought my fingers tangled in his shirt, desperate for more.
Logan was an immovable wall when he wanted to be, so I tugged against him. “You’re injured,” he bit out.
“More,” I demanded, mindless with the sensations filling me. “This is healing me.”
We both felt the heat of his power knitting my body back together. Our kiss brought our powers closer, and I couldn’t havestopped now. Not even if a monster burst through the door.
Logan lifted his head and examined my side, his brow furrowing as he found evidence of my words. “You want my power like this,Precious?” he asked.
His power.Him.Every fucking part of the spellcaster. “I need it,” I admitted. There was no way I should be this vulnerable with my enemy,but in this moment I was base instinct and desperation.
With my consent expressly given, Logan’s kisses turned demanding, drugging, and they tasted like power.
He pressed me into the bed, hands tracing across my skin, skimming the top of my bra before it all but dissolved under his touch. Spellcasters, able to manipulate energy, couldcreate and destroy as easily as that. But he hadn’t destroyed me . . . yet.
He kissed along my neck and down my chest, his mouth burning against my skin as I shifted against the sensations driving meout of my mind. If I didn’t get an orgasm out of this night, Logan would have wasted his time on the healing, because I wasabout to combust.
His lips closed around my nipple, tongue sliding across the hard peak, and I felt a pull all the way to my pussy. Even myclit throbbed in response. “Goddess be damned,” I moaned, the heat consuming me.
Or was it Logan? One and the same, really.
He explored every inch of my skin and was thorough, just like the dreams, leaving me with a disconcerting sense of familiarity.This was a billion times more intense, as if I’d felt everything before tonight through a filter.
Logan and I were strangers, and yet he’d been in my mind for months, in my dreams, even longer, and destroying my world withbarely any effort at all. When his touch smoothed over my black panties, the lace on the sides strained against his initialtug. His teeth scraped over my lower stomach muscles and I arched against him, and almost sobbed when his power dissolvedmy underwear, leaving me bare.
Bare, and at the mercy of a powerful spellcaster, my enemy who kept saving my life, confusing me.
Logan kissed along my thighs so slowly that I went a little insane, and when his huge hands wrapped around them, he partedmy legs just as slowly. Logan hadn’t said a word sinceYou want my power. I expected it to feel awkward, but all I had was the pulse of our powers as they crashed together.
I cried out when his tongue, hot and firm, grazed across my clit, sucking the sensitive flesh inside his mouth. Low mewlingslipped from my lips as I rocked against him, and his grip on my thighs tightened, holding me so he had the access he desired.
